Sometimes life takes a dark turn without warning. That doesn't mean God has given up on you. Today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg explains that while it's natural to want to avoid trials, God may intentionally place you right in the middle of a storm. Find out why as we continue a study in the book of Genesis, we're in chapter 37. Do you remember Reuben in chapter 35 and verse 22?
Do you remember the last time the camera zoomed in on Reuben'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. Instinctively, then, we assume that Reuben'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. 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.
Do you gravitate towards despair and discouragement? Do you gravitate towards lust and impurity? Do you gravitate towards jealousy? What is it? What's your thing?
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. 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. We shouldn't read that in terms of, may I take your coat for you, Joseph? And wasn't that way of saying, hey! 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.
Now, look at verse 25. One of the most graphic statements in the whole of the book of Genesis is an unbelievable statement. As they sat down to eat their meal. Does anything put you off your foot?
Some of us can eat like horses anytime, I believe, but most people. Dealing in the realm of human emotion, have faced occasions. Where they've just said, I'm sorry, I can't eat. Yeah. Maybe later on, maybe when I get over this, but I can't eat.
You stand outside in that room, you walk up and down the hall when the loved one is in surgery, and you wait and wait and wait, and people offer you this and offer that and say, Thanks a lot, but no, I can't eat just now, I can't eat. Those meals after the funeral are so helpful and so wonderful for the people who come from the distance and everything, and an opportunity for fellowship. But I've observed something, the widow, she doesn't eat much. The widower, he doesn't eat much. Because it's splagitzumite, it's good right in his heart, it's right in there.
It's, oh, I can't eat. But I'll tell you something. When you can tear the clothes off the back of your 17-year-old brother. Bind him by his hand and feet. Throw him down a hole in the ground and leave him there to die, and then turn around and say, Hey, Has anyone got ketchup for these fries?
You know. You got a problem. And that is exactly what we find happening. The question in verse 26. introduces us to Judah's intervention.
Now we have another uh amendment to the motion. These traders come by, and Judas sees an opportunity. He asks the question in verse 26: What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? They were too sensible to answer incorrectly to that. They realized we're not going to gain a lot, we'll only gain heartache.
So the question registered. He then follows it up with a suggestion in verse 27: why don't we sell him to the Ishmaelites? We won't lay our hands on him. After all, he's our brother, he's our own flesh and blood. Little tinge of conscience here creeping in now in the life of Judah.
And so they take action in 28, the question in 26, the suggestion in 27, and the action in 28.
So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled them up out of the cistern, sold them for twenty shekels of silver. Any Took him off into Egypt. In other words, their consciences registered the fact that they shouldn't kill Joseph, but their jealousy demanded that they must at least sell him.
So there you have it. Joseph is gone. By the time Reuben returns, I've mentioned that to you earlier there in verse 30. And the brothers in 31 to 36 go back to their father, full of hypocrisy and deceit, a deception which they were to maintain for some 20 years.
Now let me say something in passing. It is virtually impossible to commit one sin. I actually defy you to have ever committed just one sin. Ie, I'm just gonna I just did one sin. One knocker is easy just No, you didn't.
When you sin, You'll sin again. And mostly in the area of lies. When a man is prepared to kill Don't be surprised. If he will tell Thousands of lies. To protest his innocence and shield himself from the shame of his actions.
It is to be expected. And therefore, it is no surprise that these brothers who were capable of the grossest of indecency, of the worst of their venom being meted out on their brother, it is no surprise that they are then guilty of the worst kind of hypocrisy and duplicity and of lying. And they weave for themselves a web in which they tie themselves up and trap themselves. I want to say a word of warning to you this morning, especially if you're a young person. And you've started to take refuge in lies.
You might be ten, you might be twelve, fourteen, six, seven, whatever it is. Let me tell you something, on the authority of God's Word. If you keep this up. You will destroy your life. If you become Um A liar.
You will weave a web for yourself. That will strangle you in the end. and will trip up countless other people in the process. If you've started it in your business, And you have woven a web of deceit in your business dealings. You know you're in the worst of all positions.
For your integrity is shot. Your personal conscience is ruined. You are always trying to work out what the other person is thinking, saying, doing, imagining because you have become such a liar and you've assumed that everyone else lies just like you, and maybe they do. I'm speaking to somebody this morning, to people this morning who have begun to weave a web of lies in your life. It's keeping you.
from the kingdom. It's keeping you from usefulness. and it will destroy your life. And I say to you, repent of it. Be done with it.
and ask God's help. to liberate you from it. I met people this week in Chicago who came to tell me that their whole life had been a lie. Their whole lifestyle had been a lie. That they were living a life in front of their families, and their families didn't know all that was going on inside of them and behind them.
And that is exactly what these chaps were doing now for the next 20 years. Beware it. There is no pit deep enough. There is no cistern wide enough. There is nothing that we can find in which we may be able to hide our sin from the eye of an all seeing God.
You'll never do it. There's only one way to handle it. Come clean. Come clean today. Clean it up.
Move on. Otherwise You'll trip yourself up. and others will fall down with you.
So I thought Reap an action.
So in action? Reap a habit.
So a habit. Reby character.
So a character. Reaper Destiny. The person says to me, You can't deal with him. He is a pathological liar. I tell you how it began.
No, I didn't touch the cookies. He was sent. He was sold. Thirdly, and very briefly, he was sad. This goes without saying, doesn't it?
Maybe. But one of the things we have to beware in this is that we don't allow our familiarity with the story to dull our sense of sensitivity. This is a 17-year-old boy. Any 17 year olds here, just hold up your hand if you're 17. Hold up your hand, you 17.
Right, one, two. Two.
Okay, that's good. Two, fine. Do you remember when you were seventeen, old folks? Is your memory still working enough? Remember that weird time of life?
You look in the mirror, you say, Who am I? What am I? What am I going to be? Will anyone like me? What did I do next?
I don't know. You got a driver's license, at least I did. We're a bit slow over there, it takes an extra year. But you got your driver's license, and the world was at your feet. Janicean was singing about being 17, remember that?
Nobody does?
Okay, well I won't sing the song. It's a famous song about 17, the teenage girls with zits and things, and da da da da da. And no one invites them to the prom, and da da da. And 17 and 17. I mean, everybody knew that song, goodness gracious.
It's a famous song. The reason that it sold so many copies was because people said, I remember 17. I am 17.
Well, this kid was 17. Hey, Joseph. Do you remember when you were 17? Yeah, I do. What stands out for you, Joseph, about your seventeenth year?
Oh. That's easy. That's when my dad sent me to uh She can. I was supposed to go there for a few days and come back. I went there, I was gone 20 years.
That's pretty memorable. Yes, it is. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined it would end up like that, and I had some pretty wild dreams. When I got to my brothers. I thought they were only interested in my coat because they tore it off.
I thought they wanted to share it, wear it. I found out they wanted me. I couldn't believe they hated me that much. They threw me in the pit. I cried in the pit.
I cried from the pit. I cried for mercy. I cried for my life. I cried and I asked him to help me. At one point, they pulled me out and I thought I was in the clear, but they actually pulled me out to tie me up to a bale of straw, put me on the back of a Manji camel, and shipped me off to Egypt.
And I cried on the back of the camel. And actually, every time that I could try and turn my neck and look back down the dusty path, I looked and I longed and I wondered if my dad would find out, send a little party of guys, get me, take me off the camel, and take me home, because I wanted to go home. All I wanted to do was just go home. But nobody came. And I didn't go home.
And I was gone. You say, Well, you know, I'm going to start making the story up, Al.
Well, no, I don't. You say, Well, are you sure he was distressed and sad? Yeah, it doesn't say it in 37, but it does say it in 42. Forty two twenty one The brothers are talking to one another in a different context, and they say, Surely we're being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but he wouldn't listen.
We wouldn't listen. That brings me to my final word. It's the word safe. Sif.
So Joseph, what was it that kept you? What was it they captured?
Now this is a conjecture on my part. When we get to heaven, you can check. But I think in part he would have said this. One of the things that kept me was the memory of my grandpa's stories. You see now.
Alistair, you're getting a little soft on us here. No, hold on for just a minute. You remember who his grandpa was, right? Isaac. And any kid who loves her grandpa.
Loves their grandpa's stories. You get up on your grandpa's knee, you say, Tell me about the First World War. If he was in a First World War, otherwise he shouldn't do that. Unless it's an intelligence test or something, you know. Tell me about the old days.
Tell me about the things that happened to you when you were small. Tell me about my dad. Tell me about some of that stuff. And their stories would have come. And as he layered through them all, he comes to Genesis 22 and he tells the amazing story there of the provision of the lamb, of the ram caught in the thicket, and how it was that he was liberated.
How he who was to be the sacrifice was to become the one who walked free on account of the provision of God, and how the grandpa must have said in Joseph, If you will trust in God, if you will trust in the God of Abraham and of the God of Isaac, And the God of your father Jacob, if you will trust in him, you will discover that no matter what happens to you, son, no matter where you go, no matter how difficult life becomes, God Himself will provide for you, Joseph. And I can only but imagine, I have no other explanation for how this boy comes out the way he did, except for the fact that somehow, even in the extremities of these things, he was aware of the fact that God was still in control of his life, that he was learning to say with the psalmist, I have believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. His earthly father stayed in Canaan, but his heavenly father came with him into Egypt. You see, this whole story is moving to the conclusion in Genesis 50, and you almost can't do the previous sections without constantly acknowledging Genesis 50 and verse 19. Joseph, speaking to his brothers now in Egypt, says to them, Am I in the place of God?
You intended to harm me. But God intended it for good. To accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
So it was that this 17-year-old boy was being given the opportunity to understand that even in the exercise of his brother's hatred, God was working. That God was providing for young Joseph in the intervention of Reuben so as to prevent his death. and put him in the pit. It was God's intervention that enabled Reuben's brothers to comply with the proposal. It was not chance, it was not by chance that a caravan of Ishmaelitish merchants arrived at just the right time.
They were there by divine appointment. Oh, you mean that somehow or another God moved them there miraculously? No, they were just going the way they were going. They were doing business the way they were doing business. And they reached the point in the road at just the right moment in time for Judah to look up and say, Hey, I've got another idea.
It was the providence of God. that determined that they ought to buy him. They could have taken a look at him and said, forget it, we don't want the hassle of it, we don't need him. It's the providence of God overruling their response. It was divine providence that had inspired the thought in Judah.
And it was the divine providence of God that enabled the brothers to go along with it. If we'd asked the brothers why did you sell Joseph into slavery? They would have said to be rid of him and his lousy dreams. If we'd asked the Ishmaelite people why did you buy him? they would have said to turn a prophet.
And that's all of it. Yeah. And yet in each case In order to serve themselves, both the brothers and the Midianites did a great service to Joseph because their selfish interests. became in God's providence. instrumental in saving Joseph's life, and indeed saving the lives.
of the very brothers themselves. And let me just say this to you this morning. Out of all of this, and it will repay our further thoughtful, prayerful study. There are a number of lessons to be learned. One is that the center of God's will may be for us the very eye of the storm.
Another is simply this: that if God is for us, who can be against us? Another is this: that God will accomplish His purposes, even though for the time being it might appear as though we're strapped to the back of a Manji camel and we're going to who knows where. That's not a very nice way to describe a Monday. But that might be exactly how you feel. And it also is a reminder to us that as A.W.
Tozer once said. It is doubtful. that God will ever use us greatly. Until We have been hurt. deeply.
And some of us are just not as useful as we might be. Because in shunning The trials. We miss the blessings. And we do not have the tender eyes. that come from nights of tears.
We don't want to seek them. But they come. From a father's hand. Mm. You're listening to Truth for Life.
That is Alistair Begg reminding us that God is in control in every circumstance. Keep listening. Alistair will return shortly.
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Now here's Alastair with a closing prayer. Our gracious God and loving Father, Thank you for preserving for us in the Bible this wonderful story of Joseph. And now, by your spirit, bring it to bear upon our lives in such a way. That in hearing its truth and understanding it, we may be brought to see our need of you. and that we may be brought to repent of the Sin of lying.
that we may be brought to give up our preoccupation with selfishness and self-pity. And that we may be brought to the place of genuine encouragement which recognizes That you love us with an everlasting love. That all our days and all our doubts, all our fears and all our failures, all our fractured relationships and our broken-up dreams. are under your watch care. And that you are far more willing to bless us.
than we are ever to take the time. to ask you.
So may the blessing of God Almighty The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rest upon and remain with each one. Today and forevermore. Amen. Thanks for listening.
How would you respond if your life suddenly turned upside down like Joseph's did? Tomorrow, we'll learn how to avoid the silent killers that come with trials: resentment, self-pity. and bitterness. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
