In the middle of an ordinary day, have you ever had your whole world turned upside down? Today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg points out how God often utilizes routine instructions, along with the emotions and reactions of others, in the process of shaping and preparing us to be used for His purposes. Here's Alistair. Genesis thirty-seven, and we pick up the story of Joseph. This story of Joseph is quite wonderful.
And at the moment it's my favorite story. We have said on each occasion that there is probably no greater illustration in Holy Scripture of the truth of God's providential care than that which we find in the life of Joseph. Joseph was not at the mercy of fate or chance. He's not driven along by some blind and impersonal force, and nor are we. The pagans run after all these things.
They believe that if there ever was a creator, and they're questionable about that, since he finished creation. He's had his hands off it. And the whole matter and all of the ups and downs and ebb and flow of human history is churning along somehow helplessly and hopelessly in space. And we, these poor peons, are caught up in the midst of this mechanism. But no, no, says Jesus to the disciples in Matthew 6.
Why would you be worrying about this and worrying about that and worrying about the next thing? Leave the pagans, he says, to worry about all of that. You just keep your eyes on me. And I'll take care of you. For there's not a sparrow falls to the ground, but I know it.
and the very grass of the field is clothed by my mighty power. and I'm going to look after you too.
So, in other words, it is a wonderful picture as well of the truth of Romans 8:28. That We know that in all things, says Paul, God works for the good of those who love Him and who have been called according to His purpose. All of our days and our desires, our hopes and our heartaches, our fears and our failures are being worked out as a child of God according to the beneficient bestowal of the wise and gracious, loving, compassionate mind of God. And even if you drove here alone this morning, spent last evening alone, and are fearful of the prospect of the week, allow the word of God to come and warm and fill your heart today. with the intimate awareness of a father's love.
and tender care. For this we find in the life of Joseph.
Now, one of the challenges of navigating through a narrative like this. Is to find a way to break it up in bite-sized chunks so that we can follow along without imposing a structure on the narrative that makes people in listening say, I don't know where he got that from. I want to give you four words to help us track to the end of the chapter. With the focus on Joseph, with the camera as it were on Joseph, I want us to notice that he was sent.
Sold Sad. And safe. And if you can't find that in there, it's probably not there. But I think it is and I want to show you. First of all, he was sent.
There's no problem with this. Seventeen years old, obedient to his father's directive, he is given the responsibility of going to check on the well-being of his brothers and actually to see how the flocks are coming along as well. That's verse 14. His dad says, Here you are. Got a wee job for you, Joseph.
I want you to go check on your brothers and the flocks, and then bring me word back. Straightforward? Every father wants to nurture in his children responsibility. To increasingly give them opportunities which force them into regions and realms, which will test them and will train them, which will give them the opportunities of taking initiative and solving problems and essentially standing on their own two feet. And Jacob, in the process of doing this, perhaps after some of the disasters of his earlier boys, figuring that he might do a better job now with young Joseph.
puts together one such plan. I want you to go check. and report back. Straightforward. And so it was that Joseph went off down the road from his father's house, from the dwelling.
As he went off down the road, he could never have imagined That it would be twenty long years before ever he looked into the eyes of his dad again. 20 long years before he got another hug. Twenty years before he heard his voice. Twenty years. before he enjoyed his fellowship.
and the warmth of his company, Parting Says the poet. is such sweet sorrow. That's why Bus terminals. and railway stations. and airport terminals.
are such fascinating places. Because they're so full of human emotion. And not least of all, the emotion of hellos and goodbyes. And hellos and goodbyes. Say something about us insofar as the way you say hello and the way you say goodbye, me too, I mean us.
Says something about what goes on inside of us.
Now, think about this for just a moment. Did his father watch him down the road? What do you think? Yes or no? Yes, most of you think yes, I'm sure you know.
Even though it was supposed to be a brief journey, I think his dad watched him go. Do you think he waved goodbye, yes or no? Yes.
Okay. That'd be quite unusual for a 17-year-old, so it's interesting that many of you said yes. He did, he waved goodbye. Yes, he did. I personally think that his dad watched him for a long way.
And I would not be at all surprised if Joseph turned round a lot. And every time he turned around, he was saying that this parting was a sweet sorrow. Every gaze from his father, even in the distance, was a gaze of love and a gaze of compassion. It's as though the love of the father follows with the boy. Lord, bless this boy and watch him and keep him and oh, bring him back safe to me.
I remember one of my friends telling me about the first time his son went to college, his oldest of four children, went to college, and how he was quite looking forward to it, and it was okay. And even on the morning when they woke up, and even when they had breakfast, and even when they put the stuff in the car, and even when he got into the car, but he said as soon as the car turned out of the driveway and went round the first bend of Warm Springs Drive. The father just broke down in tears. Because of all that is represented. in that kind of parting.
Can I say just a little word of exhortation to parents? Would you teach your children to greet people? Properly? To speak when they're spoken to. And now I may be an ogre, I don't know.
I may have something sticking out of my head that I haven't seen. But it is interesting to me that the average child under 10 is increasingly Unresponsive to the common courtesies of adult initiative. Hi, honey, how are you? Nothing. That's a lovely head.
Nothing. Now that starts In your house. And then mine. And when your children and my children are unresponsive in greeting, it's because we have largely made them unresponsive.
Now, I know that you've taught them, don't speak to strange men, and maybe that's what's happening to me, okay? But I don't think so. I think it's something other than that.
Now, within the framework of who you are and your personality, it is an important thing, and it is very important as they grow up. When you see these people who walk around with their eyes on the ground, who can't catch the gaze of somebody, I overheard a lady last week at brunch, and it just was a voice from the past. And I heard this young mother saying to a child, and it made me turn around. I heard this phrase: look at my eyes. And I turned around and I said, Whoa, here we go.
We got contact here. And I stood back and watched. And the mother said, Now look in my eyes. Because in your eyes, I see your soul. In your eyes, I find out who you are.
You've got to teach your children how to look in people's eyes when they speak to them, how to respond to them, how to say hello, how to say Cheerio. That's how it's a wonderful world, Louis Armstrong told us. Remember? Ah. I see friends greeting friends.
Saying, how do you do? And they're really sin. I love you. And I think to myself, What a wonderful world. Boy, I love that guy.
What a What a trumpet player, what a singer. I was in Starbucks every morning this week in Chicago. I sit in the same place, same newspaper, Chicago Tribune, little bench, little stool, just to watch the world go by at 6 a.m. I see friends greeting friends. Saying how do you do?
You see, you're not making a bit much of this? Yeah, maybe. But I want to tell you something. There is a last time for every journey. You'll never know when is the last time you said goodbye to your wife.
You'll never know when the last time you kissed your mom goodbye. You'll never know when that day is. And so it is good to make much of our partings. And it is good to make much of our hellos. And if we don't teach children that hellos and goodbyes are significant events in life, then they will go through their days with hardly any consideration of it at all.
Now, I have to confess to you, it has become epidemic in my family.
Some years ago, I don't know when it was, beyond the realm of common human sense, somebody in waving farewell to a member within our family structure took a brush or something and waved it out a second floor window. And that started a whole tradition in our family. I mean, it's completely weird, but when I was in Shropshire in November, And I bid farewell to my sister. And I left in the car from the front of our house. Everyone was there.
And in Britain, nobody closes the door on you. Everybody closes the door on you here in America. He said Cheerio!
Okay? You go to your car, you put the key in. And you turn around and say Cheerio for the second time, and hey, it was Cheerio the first time.
So where did that guy go? I only said my first cheery. Oh, where are you? This guy, that was his last one. Hey, we got places to go, people to see, you know.
So he did the first six Cheerios at the front. Which was a s it was enough. And I drove the car round up here to the end of the drive, down the end of another drive and out onto the main road, and the house goes back across this property line. By the time I start the car down the road, they're all up at the bedroom window. He had an angle-poised lamp swinging out of the window like this.
Now this is a fairly respectable neighbourhood. And the people looking saying, what's the deal with the Angle Poise Lamp? I'll tell you what it is. Hey Al. Thanks for coming.
I love you. I want you to come back. I can't wait to see you. I don't want you to ever forget me. And if you take swing in an angle-poised lamp, Let it swing.
There is an increasing callousness. about dwellers in the late nineties. Don't let us miss the chances. in the common, simple, everyday events of life, to declare the difference that Jesus makes when He gives us a sensitive, tender, honest, interested heart. See, Dad.
I'll be back. See you, Joseph. Remember, look out now, son. Just find them. Check on them and come straight back.
I'll be back, Dad. We'll see you, Dad. And I'll see you there. Must have rung. in Joseph's head for twenty years.
Because he had captured it as the last. statement from his son believing that his son was dead and he would never see him again. He was sent And in verse fifteen, you can only imagine him wondering. Wandering around in the fields, and the chap comes to him and says, What are you looking for? And he says, Well, my brother's there, somewhere around there with their flocks.
Oh, says the fellow, they've moved on. You'll have to go into the Dothan region. And on he goes. You can imagine him as he wanders, he wanders. About their location, about the potential of the reception he will receive.
Will absence have made the heart grow fonder? Will they love him a wee bit more, or will they still not be speaking to him? Will they abuse him? He wondered about those dreams, they kept coming back to mind, strange and haunting dreams. There is an almost guileless simplicity about Joseph at this point in his life.
Sent But notice that he was also sold. Verse 28 tells us that he was sold. He was sold for 20 shekels. It didn't amount to much. Just a couple of shekels each for the brothers.
Dirty money. I can't imagine that they enjoyed what they bought with it. Horrible money, ill-gotten gain in your pocket, rotting through your pocket. But what led to his being sold?
Well, you need to backtrack through the narrative. You find him coming in the distance, and it says in 18 that they saw him in the distance. How did they see him in the distance? Did he walk funny? He may have, he may have had a peculiar, you know, a peculiar gait.
He may have swung his head from side to side or something. We don't know. The chances are, though, they saw him in the distance because of what? It's cold. See, you are such a bright group.
You really are. Right? His coat. Because his coat, they couldn't think about anything else except his coat. Because that court represented to them everything they detested in the young guy.
And indeed, the very appearance of Joseph, we're told, aroused their fury. They saw him in the distance, and before he even reached them, before they had the chance to hear his voice, understand why he had come, or anything about it, they began to plot to kill him. Here comes the dreamer, they said. Verse 20: We'll kill him. Throw him in a cistern.
Lie about it, say that a ferocious animal ate him up. And then we'll see if he's doing any more dreaming after that. Ha ha ha ha, they must have said to one another. Over time, these brothers had sown the seeds of hatred in their heart. And these seeds are found fertile soil.
They'd watered them with jealousy, they'd cultivated them with selfishness, and now they begin to flower and bloom in an ugly. Horrible. spreading virus-like substance. Their hatred was disproportionate to any and all of Joseph's offenses against them. Oh.
You know, I mean, if this kid had been a really bad actor, We could have said, you know, well, it's not surprising that they felt the way they felt. But he hadn't gone out and purchased the coat so that everyone would see that he had a wonderful coat. He hadn't Initiated the dreams, they had come from a source other than his own fertile imagination, as we will see.
So, their hatred of him was absolutely disproportionate to the offense. And it is a reminder to us that hatred doesn't need a reason. When a man or a woman hates, they just hate. All that it needs is just a corner in a selfish heart. And from that little vantage point, hatred and fury and venom and vengeance.
We'll be out.
Now the original plan for his Destiny, according to the brothers, is there in verse 18. We've noticed that. Reuben comes in with an intervention in verse 21. He proposes an amendment to the motion in verse twenty two. Don't let shed his blood.
He said, why don't we just throw them in the cistern?
Well, in that way, we won't lay a hand on him.
Now we're told why he did this. He did this so that he could rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
So he was motivated by the best of reasons. The fact of the matter is that the brothers bought it not knowing that Reuben was trying to rescue him.
So there is nothing nice about the brother's response. Because if you think about it, to be killed and then go in the cistern is better than going in the cistern and dying in the cistern. Because the way you die in the cistern is a long, slow, agonizing, dehydrating, starving to death death. Whereas if they chop your head off and then put you in the cistern, at least when you're in the cistern, you don't know.
So, when he said, let's just put him in the cistern, don't let's think for a moment the brothers said, Now that's a much nicer way to do it. It was only that somehow or another they were able to fiddle in their minds with the ramifications of their own conscience. The rubbing. Do you remember Reuben in chapter 35 and verse 22? Do you remember the last time the camera zoomed in on Ruben's face?
Genesis 35:22, while Israel, that is Jacob, was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father's concubine. He slept with Bilha, who was essentially his father's wife.
So, the last time that Reuben steps up on the scene is in the most gross way. In the most heinous of crimes, which offend against God, against his father, against the family, against the woman, and against himself. Instinctively, then, we assume that Ruben's a bad apple, right? And certainly, he's not particularly nice if he's prepared to pull a stunt like that. But are we to conclude That he is incapable then of genuine compassion and sympathy.
Are we to conclude, as most of the commentators suggest, that Reuben was not motivated by any sense of genuine concern or compassion, but he was motivated only because he saw it as an opportunity to balance out his iniquity?
So that his dad had a thing against him, and now if he could produce Joseph and explain that the rest of the naughty brothers were had a bad plan for him and he brought him back, then maybe his dad would think well about him.
Well, that's a possible interpretation. I don't know why, but I just want to cut Rubenhoe even more slightly than that. What's your particular problem with sin? What happens to you when you're left all alone by yourself, nobody watching? Just you.
James says That every individual In succumbing to temptation, it is enticed and led away by their own evil desire. That all of us face temptation, but not all of us are tempted by the same things.
So, the fact you see that Reuben was peculiarly tempted in this area. Does not mean that it gives us the right to assume that he didn't have any compassion in his heart for his younger brother. Says George Lawson, the commentator from Scotland in the middle of the 18th century, he says, Let not the worst of men be held worse than they really are.
Now, that's not in any way to mitigate 35. It's simply to say we don't have to read 37 in the light of 35. It may well be that Reuben was so broken by the events that had previously happened, his father had responded to it in such a way that he said, I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to talk about it. There was therefore no occasion for him to come to his dad and speak in any way, and he was probably crying out for an opportunity to do something that would be an expression of his repentance.
And here he sees the opportunity. And that's why later on, when he comes back and he finds that Joseph is gone, he says, Where's the boy gone? What am I going to do now? I've lost my one opportunity to declare to my father that I am genuinely sorry.
Now consider. In verse 23, the way the events unfold. What a tragic picture. of man's inhumanity to man. Of the way that brothers in the same earthly family can treat one another.
They stripped him of his robe. And then they bound him. And then they threw him. down into this pit. into this cistern.
And the cistern was empty, there was no water in it. The writer letting us know that there was no possibility of him drowning, there was no possibility of him drinking, there was only the possibility of him crashing and ripping his open back as he went down finally into the depth of it all. And so the seventeen year old brother, Was left according to these men to dehydrate and starve to death. And indeed, the best of all solutions would have been that some savage animal did actually come and kill him. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.
We'll hear more about Joseph's plight on Monday. You know, there's arguably no better habit to cultivate than the habit of spending time in God's Word every day.
Now if you struggle to find time or to prioritize reading God's Word, be sure to ask for a copy of the book we're recommending to day. It's called The Quiet Time Kick Start. Six weeks to a healthy Bible habit. In just six weeks this easy to use guide will help you adopt a pattern of daily Bible study and prayer. This book will guide you through reading a portion of Scripture, help you meditate on what you've read.
and learn how to apply the instruction to your daily life. and each day's study begins and ends with prayer. Ask for your copy of the Quiet Time Kickstart from Truth for Life Today to get started. It's yours when you donate to the ministry through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org/slash donate. I'm Bob Lepine.
Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church. On Monday, we'll learn that while it's only natural to want to avoid suffering, God often places us right in the middle of a storm. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
