Music Joseph, Isaac's son in the book of Genesis, may have felt special when he received a fancy coat and had extraordinary dreams, but he likely questioned his favored status when his brothers bound him and threw him into a cistern. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg assures us that God is in control in our deep, dark pits as much as he is when the sun is shining and all seems well. We're looking at Genesis chapter 37. They hated him jealously because of the bad report he brought. They hated him because of the richly ornamented robe he wore.
And they hated him because of the dreams that he had.
Now, obviously, these dreams were no ordinary dreams. Because if you think about this, everybody dreams.
Some people remember their dreams and some don't. And at breakfast time, it's sometimes quite a laugh and a hoot, you know, to hear your dreams. You know, did you dream about anything last night? Oh, yeah, I was such and such, and so on. And you laughed them off.
And it would have been perfectly possible for the brothers to do that. Oh, man, he's crazy. What a dumb idea. Silly dreams, silly coat. Doesn't he look daft in his coat?
Ha ha. And it would all have washed off them, but it didn't. And the reason that it didn't, because it was obvious in some significant way that God was involved in these dreams, that these were no ordinary dreams, that these were portents of what God would yet do, and that God was speaking by means of dreams in order that when the events unfolded, as they do, and we'll discover that, it would become apparent to everybody that these things had not happened fortuitously, but that they had happened underneath the overarching unfolding of God's plan. And so it is that he tells his brothers these extraordinary dreams. Should he have told them?
Probably not. We could excuse him the first one. The second one was a bad error of judgment, I think, you know.
Well, I had a dream, and I was standing up, and you were bowing down. Fine. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for that, Joseph.
Get your coat and take off. Oh, by the way, hang on. I had another dream. uh-huh yeah well this time the sun the moon and 11 stars were bowing down and worshiping me joseph we hate you did you tell dad this one what did he say well he rebuked me he said something like you know will your mother and father and your brothers come and bow down to you But you see, something was involved in this. There was within these dreams the strong hint that Joseph was the object of God's special favor and the servant of his special purpose.
And that, of course, was exactly the case. And that is why there is this increasing intensity in the hatred of the brothers.
Now, this was no gravy train for Joseph. Seventeen years old, and nobody really likes him. His father, who is putting up with him and has had affection for him, he's beginning to cool a little bit on it as well, it would seem. And his brothers, they just want nothing to do with it. Do you remember when you were seventeen?
Do you remember how important approval was?
So the last thing in the world you want to be is a kind of isolated person, an endangered species. Wander in the corridors with no one to talk to and no one who talks to you, without any kind of in-crowd, with no gang to hang out with, with no point of identification beyond yourself. That's the worst possible predicament. And that was Joseph's predicament. his brothers had no time for him.
He was 17 years old. We would not have been surprised if the Joseph that emerges from this context had drawn into his shell and in the pain of his life had become inward-looking. He was full of fear. He was full of resentment. And all he did was lie on a floor and listen to CDs.
I mean, that's just to bring it into the 20th century. In other words, he just went in his room, closed the door, and listened to really bizarre music. Because when he went out of the door, it was into a world that hated him, a world that was alien from him, a world that even in the production of things that were expressions of love caused him confusion and discord and the fracturing of relationships, and so we might have anticipated that he would have become some introspective little weed. No. Look at him.
Resilient. focused, clear, ready to obey, with a vision of the future. In fact, for me, the resiliency of his personality is absolutely striking, and it's part of the charm and the intrigue of his story. Because in human terms, Joseph shouldn't be like this. Right?
And yet, look at him. Why is that? Why is that? Well, that brings me to my third and final point. It's because not only was Joseph the object of his father special interest and the object of his brother jealous hatred but he was in and through it all the object of God providential care The providence of God is that act of his grace and kindness by which, in his wisdom and power, he preserves and governs all the events of the lives of his creatures.
And God was providentially involved in these events in Joseph's life. Look at him in verse 12 as he goes to find his brothers. And Israel, verse 13, said to Joseph, As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I'm going to send you to them.
Now, we might have anticipated that the verse then reads, Oh, please don't send me. Couldn't you send a servant? Don't you realize my brothers hate me? It's miles away and so on. Hey, I'm going to send you to them.
Answer, that's fine, Dad. Very well, he replied. I'll go.
Now, how do you explain that in the life of a 17-year-old? I can only explain it in terms of the fact that there was somehow or another increasingly the earth in the very center of Joseph's being, an awareness of the fact that God, who was his heavenly father, was providentially in control of his life, and that somehow or another in these dreams and in the coat and in the chaos and in the background, he was master and sovereign over it all. And so he said, I will go in obedience to seek out those who hate me and will not speak a word to me. I don't know how tuned in Jacob was to even send him on this journey. Did he realize that he was putting his boy in jeopardy?
Or was he just so tuned out by this time that he could pay no attention to it, and he was only superficially aware of the vitriolic hatred of his older boys for this younger son? It's possible for parents to lose touch with it and to try and explain it a way, it's much easier for me to explain the fact that it's not as it is than to face the difficulty that is really there. Oh, I'm sure it's not as bad as you think, he may have said to himself. I know they sometimes don't speak to him, and I know they didn't like that coat, and I know they got ticked off with the dreams, but, ach, I don't think they really hate him. After all, how can you hate your brother, you know?
Now, you go on, Joseph. You'll be fine. Go on now. You go find your brothers. If Jacob had realized that the back of his son's head, his 17-year-old's head, was the last he would see of his boy for the next 20 years, I'm not so sure he would still have decided to dispatch him on the journey.
Because when Joseph walked out that day, neither he nor Jacob realized that he'd never see his dad again for 20 years. And God was providentially in control of those circumstances. It was actually better for Joseph to be isolated from his home in the center of God's plan than for him to be living in his home in isolation from God's purposes. And that, you see, is the mistake that we make when we try and determine God's guidance on the basis of what is most comfortable to us and what is most acceptable to us and what is most rationally obvious to us.
Well, he surely wouldn't want me gone for all that time to leave my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters and so on, we would explain, when in point of fact God in his providential dealings will take care even of those fracturings and even of those separations and even of those jealousies. What an amazing picture it is of him arriving now in the region, having gone some 50 miles from Hebron to Shechem, finding this individual wandering in the fields and saying, have you seen my brothers discovering that they've moved on another 15 miles into the region of Dothan. And so, now as a result of some sixty-five miles of travail through hilly terrain and difficult country, he finally gets his brothers in his gaze, and they in turn get him in their sights. And so we read in verse 18, But when they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. The irony of it is surely not to be missed.
As they sit watching the appearance of Joseph, they are plotting to kill the very person without whom they will be unable to live. Isn't that right? For God is purposing to take him into Egypt so that in the time of famine, they will not die in the famine, but will be the recipients of God's providential care and through the life of the very one they're trying to kill. And so, as he comes across the horizon, they plan to kill the only one who can save them. Keep that thought in your mind.
I'll come back to it in just a moment. Indeed, we'll come back to the whole detailed account on our next occasion. For now, let me make one or two, as it were, bullet points of observation and application in drawing this to a close. First of all, let us recognize that as in Joseph's circumstances, so in ours, God is as much in control of the trauma and of the cistern and of the pit and of the hatred and of the difficulty as he is in the fulfillment of the dreams in raising Joseph to a position of unique usefulness When we cannot understand why it is that we would be the object of such hatred that we would be on the receiving end of such difficulty, that we would be facing nothing more, as it were, than a lousy hole in the ground with no prospect of escape, at that point we need to recognize that God is on the throne and is providentially interested in the affairs of our lives. That's not easy, but it is necessary.
And many of you have walked that road in the months that have passed, have been rolled into that CAT scan machine, or worse still, have watched your loved one wheeled into it and have emerged to deal with the trauma and the emptiness and the pain of it all and the temptation to say, well, where is God in all of this? Couldn't we simply go on vacation and have a nice time? And the answer is, God is as much sovereignly in control of all of this as he ever is in all of the blessing. Secondly, in just spinning, as it were, the diamond to take another facet and glint from it, we need to learn with Joseph not to be grieved when God determines to prosper us, and in so doing, others become jealous. This is a hard lesson for many people to learn.
So do you want to bury yourself because everyone is jealous about you when you know you weren't smart enough to put the business deal together in the first place? When you know that the very breath you breathe is a gift from God's hand, and you can only explain the bottom line in terms of something that God has chosen to do, and the reason he didn't do it for the guy who has the factory next door, you have no explanation for, but he's chosen to do it for you. Listen to Calvin. Let us not be grieved if at any time the shining of the grace of God upon us should cause us to be envied. Let us not be grieved if God shines his grace upon us and other people envy us.
If the brothers had a beef, they had a beef with the father. They don't have a beef with Joseph. Joseph never asked for the coat. Joseph never produced the dreams. Think it out.
Also, let's recognize that God's providential care expresses itself in wonderful and in unusual ways. Out of this dark cistern, he is about to shine in the light of victory and power and provision. And so let us not see the dark times and the disappointing times as that which thwarts the unfolding of his purpose, but let us trust him. And finally, I want you to notice something that I hope has already been triggered in the minds of at least a few. Do you find yourself being propelled forward from Joseph to Jesus?
Do you see Jesus in this story? Do you see how in the experience of Joseph there is a foreshadowing of a far greater who is to come? And if you don't, let me explain to you what I mean. It was an account of envy and jealousy that Joseph ended up in the cistern in the dumper. It was an account of envy and jealousy that he was put into slavery and faced the prospect of death.
And when Pilate—in Matthew 27, we have the record of it—when Pilate asks the crowd, who would you have me release to you? Would you like me to release Barabbas, or would you like me to release Jesus? And the crowd says, we would rather have Barabbas. And then Matthew records, you see, Pilate understood that it was on account of envy that Jesus had been delivered over to him. It was flat-out jealousy on the part of the religious leaders.
They did not like the fact that God had sovereignly purposed to do in the person of Jesus Christ to unfold the reality of who he was. And the envy of the brothers through Joseph in a cistern, and the envy of those who had all the benefits of the prophets, all the wisdom of the Old Testament, all the expectation of the Messiah who was to come—it was the envy of those same people who put Jesus on the cross. We also have a picture of Jesus insofar as we find Joseph traveling across the country in search of his brothers, looking diligently for those who will reject him. Isn't that what Jesus has done? That he has come diligently across the terrain of life, looking earnestly for those who, upon seeing him, say, let's kill him?
who, like the brothers in response to Joseph, are saying, Do you think you're going to reign over us? Do you think that we will bow down to you? And Jesus comes in his word, and he comes in human friendship, and he comes, as the hymn writer says, although there are ninety-nine that are safely in the shelter of the fold, Jesus, the good shepherd, goes out over the hill country looking for the one individual, looking for you, searching for you, drawing you, wanting you? You're going to respond like the brothers? I won't have him ruling over me.
I don't mind a Jesus in the backseat of the car. I don't mind a Jesus in the trunk. I don't mind a Jesus as an insurance policy for something But I don want a Jesus to whom I have to bow down Then there is no Jesus for you For the Jesus who comes is the Jesus before whom we bow even as the brothers would bow at the feet of Joseph For Joseph you see, held in his hands the answer to their deepest needs, as Jesus holds in his power the answer to ours. Joseph was despised and he was rejected by those who he would one day rescue. What a wonderful picture of Isaiah chapter 53.
This could equally be said of Joseph. He was despised and rejected by men. He was a man of sorrows, and he was familiar with sufferings. and like one from whom men, particularly his brothers, hide their faces, he was despised, and we hated his guts. But the prophet speaks not of Joseph.
He speaks of him who took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, and we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted, and he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. I almost want to do the story of Joseph in one seven-hour sermon, quite honestly, because I just can't hardly stop myself from going forward. When you get to the scene where he is reunited with his brothers, and they come and they speak to him, and they speak through an interpreter, because by this time he is fluent in the Egyptian dialect.
And as he speaks through the interpreter to them, and as they explain the poverty of their condition and of their great need of provision, Moses tells us that Joseph went into a room on the side, and he wept. And he wept for his brothers. He cried great sobbing tears, and then he had to compose himself and come back out to them. That is Jesus over Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who've stolen the prophets, how often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not come to me.
O Cleveland, Cleveland, you who reject the Word of God, you who stone those who speak in truth to you, how often would I have gathered you to myself? But you would not come. We will not bow down to him, we will not come in contrition to him. A coat, the dreams, and a dark well. Joseph, the object of his father's special interest, the object of his brother's cruel hatred, the object of God's providential care, and the shadow of the Christ who was to come.
Today, as we hear God's voice in whatever area, it's telling us to step away from jealousy, to let go of favoritism, to quit our bellyaching, to understand that God is in control, to bow down before the Christ who came. Whatever it is, today if we hear God's voice, let us not harden our hearts. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. He returns in just a moment to close today's program. You know, we never know how God is using His Word through Truth for Life to change a life, but we trust that by God's Spirit's empowering, that's exactly what it does.
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Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Oh God, our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that its truths are timeless, that its impact is dynamic, that its appeal is all-embracing. We pray that we might, in the words of a mere man, hear the voice of the living God and that we may respond accordingly. and may the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God our Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of each one today and forevermore.
Amen. I'm Bob Lepine. Hope you'll join us tomorrow when we'll learn how God uses the ordinary events of life, routine instructions and the reactions of others to shape us and prepare us to be used for his purposes. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life.
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