Few hurts sting as deeply as the pain of betrayal. especially when it comes from family. Why was it not an issue for Joseph? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes a closer look at Joseph's response to the brothers who wronged him and shares four lessons about our flaws and God's faithfulness.
From God Meant It for Good, The Story of Joseph. Here's David with the conclusion of betrayed by his brothers. One of my most favorite assignments when I teach the Bible is to teach the life of one of the personalities of Scripture. I love the story of David, of Abraham, of Paul, certainly of Jesus. Um but Joseph is one of my favorites too.
And Joseph encompasses so much about life as it is today. We're learning so many powerful lessons, and we'll learn a few more today as we continue our discussion from the lesson called Betrayed by His Brothers. Friends, we have a wonderful resource for the month of September. I find myself smiling when I talk about it because it's so beautiful. It's a wonderful wall calendar that we make available each year.
Each year is a different edition. This year, the title of the calendar is Following in His Footsteps. And it's a 14-month calendar, which means you can start chronicling your events in November and stay focused all the way through the new year. This is something you won't get anyplace else. You won't find this in any bookstores or any of the big box stores.
It's available from Turning Point only, and it's yours for a gift of any size during the month of September. Could I encourage you to make a special effort to send a gift this month? And when you do, ask for the calendar, and it'll be on its way. You'll have it in plenty of time so you can begin. Filling it out in November.
Now let's get back to our study of Joseph, and here's part two of Betrayed by His Brothers.
So it came to pass, verse 23, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped him of his tunic. The tunic of many colors. that was on him, and they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty, and there was no water in it.
Now, watch this. And they sat down to eat a meal. But the story continues. Another brother gets involved. This brother is named Judah.
Now let me just tell you about Judah. He seems to be the materialist. in the family. Because he figures a way he can get something out of Joseph. Watch this.
Verse 25, and they lifted their eyes and looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing spices, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry them down to Egypt.
So Judas said to his brothers, What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Let's sell them to the Ishmaelites. And let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brothers listened, and the Midianite traders passed by.
So the brothers pulled Joseph up out of the pit. and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver, And the Ishmaelites took Joseph to Egypt. Those brothers sold Joseph for the equivalent of $9. Apparently Reuben wasn't present when all this scheming took place, for when he rejoined his brothers, Joseph was gone. And Genesis 37 records what happened next.
Then Reuben returned to the pit, and indeed Joseph was not in the pit, and he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, The lad is no more, and where shall I go? When he found Joseph missing, Reuben was terrified. He knew he was in hot water with his father. And if you go back and read the story, Reuben had earlier made the mistake of sleeping with one of his father's concubines.
So their relationship was already strained, and you know that because in chapter 49 of Genesis, when Jacob is blessing all of his sons, Here's what he says about Reuben. Unstable as water, you shall not excel, because you went up to your father's bed and you defiled it.
So Reumen was not in a good place. We're Jacob. He didn't have a strong character. And maybe he did have a strong character because his father didn't have a strong character. But for whatever reason, in the midst of the great wrong that had been perpetuated against Joseph, Reuben had one thought.
Not about Joseph. but about himself. What is going to happen? To me.
So The Bible says they took Joseph's tunic. they killed a kid of the goats and dipped the tunic in the blood, And they sent the tunic of many colours, and they brought it to their father, and said, We have found this. Do you know whether this is your son's tunic or not? And he recognized it and said, It is my son's tunic. A wild beast has devoured him.
without doubt Joseph is torn to pieces. With Joseph on his way to Egypt as a slave, The boys purposefully deceived their father.
Somebody said they weren't willing to lie to their father, but they didn't have any problem deceiving him. as if there's a difference between the two. It is ironic that Jacob was deceived by a goat. Since he himself had used the skin of a goat to deceive. his own father.
What he did came back to haunt him. The Bible says we reap what we sow and Jacob reaped a lifetime of deception.
So the Lord allowed him to be deceived in the same way he had deceived his father. Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son for many days. And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, and he said, I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning. and his father wept for him. It is interesting to note men and women that years later Jacob was still mourning.
for his son. thinking that he was dead. And Jacob their father, Genesis 42, 36, said to them, You have bereaved me, Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. It's evident as you read the story. But Jacob believed that Joseph was dead throughout all of his adult life.
and his whole world was colored by the fact that he had lost his son. He thought about it every day. It was never far from his mind. What a sad story. For a man to lose his beloved son in such a way, and what hardness there must have been in the hearts of his boys.
Who allowed their own father to go through such awful grief when they knew? What was going on was not the real story.
So There you go. I told you this story as fast as I could. Showing you where it was in the scripture. And you remember it because most of you have read it before. One of the great betrayals of the Bible, the betrayal.
of Jacob. by his own sons.
So, I want to talk with you for a moment about what we should learn from this as God's people. First of all, We should learn about the power of envy. Acts 7:9 says, The patriarchs becoming envious sold Joseph into Egypt. But God was with him. Envy caused these boys to sell their brother into slavery.
They did it because they were jealous of Joseph. He was an affront to them. That's why they put him in the pit. That's why they told his father he was dead. That's why they sold him to the Midianite traders.
Not because they didn't like him as a person. but because they were jealous of him, and his role in the family, he had the coat of many colors. It teaches us a little bit, doesn't it? About sibling rivalry, could I just put this little practical thought in here? Don't ever say to your kids, why are you not like your brother?
Why are you not like your sister? I'll tell you why they are not like their brother and sister, because they are not their brother and sister. And they're all individuals, and thank God they're all different. What a sad story it would be if they were all alike. But if you're not careful as a family, you can engender envy among the children, and certainly Jacob bore some guilt here.
When he pulled off the tunic thing, he set the brothers' hearts on fire with envy and jealousy. Envy caused Cain to kill his brother. Envy made King Saul pursue David. Envy kept the prodigal son's older brother from welcoming him back home, and envy caused the Jews to nail the Son of God to the cross. Envy is a Powerful.
powerful emotion. Proverbs 27 says, Wrath is cruel and anger is a torrent. But who is able to stand before jealousy? Envy leads us into the great evil, and we can have great trouble in our lives if we allow it to exist. James 3.16 says, For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.
Now, I'm going to tell you a story about this that has more to do with me than it does with you, but if you listen carefully, you'll get the same blessing I did from it. At the end of the 19th century, The City of London had two very famous pastors. FB Meyer? And Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Two living legends in the pulpit.
London was barely big enough for the two of them, but then in 1904, the great preacher G. Campbell Morgan came to town. Morgan was a world-class Bible expositor and all of London was buzzing with his arrival. It was easy, said Meyer. to pray for the success of G.
Campbell Morgan when he was in America. But when he came back to England and took a church near to mine, That was something different. How many of you know we never get jealous of anybody who's not in our circle? For instance, I've never been jealous of a dentist. I've never been jealous of a surgeon.
But I could get jealous of other pastors because they're in my circle. You get jealous of the people that are in your circle who do what you do.
So here comes G. Campbell Morgan to London. F.B. Meyers there. Charles had Spurgeons there.
But The old Adam and me, said this preacher, was inclined to jealousy. But I got my heel upon his head. I determined to act right.
So F.B. Meyer began to pray for his pulpit rival. Day and night, even as he worried about losing members to the hot new preacher in town, he prayed for the preacher. He later explained, My church gave a reception for him. And I acknowledged at that reception that if I didn't have to preach on Sunday night, I'd go and hear them myself.
Well, that made me feel right toward him. The Lord helped me out of my difficulty. There was trial spurgeon on one side of me. And there was mister Morgan on the other side of me. And they drew such huge crowds that the overflow filled up my church.
So he said, I prayed for them, for their success. And the success came back to bless me.
So, the weed of envy can be deep and firmly entrenched, but if you want to drive it out, if you've got envy towards somebody, I'm going to tell you how to get rid of it. Pray for them every day.
Somebody said, pray for the person if you have to with your teeth and your fist clenched. But pray for them. every day. and see if God doesn't honor your faith and change your heart. You don't have to live with envy and jealousy.
Listen to me, here's the funny thing about it, the person you're envious of and jealous of probably doesn't even know it.
So you're bearing all the pain and they're bearing none of the pain. Why would you do that to yourself when you don't have to? Do what My friend did. Clench your fist. Clench your teeth.
and pray for the person you're envious of. Then notice, secondly, not only the power of envy, but the pretense of morality. This is throughout the story and it's really amazing to me. How these brothers patted themselves on the back, for not killing their brother when they sent him off to Egypt. as a slave.
In other words, we could have done worse and we didn't do worse and we are really good people. We're righteous people. We could have killed this boy, but we didn't. We just sent him off as a slave. You say.
Nobody does that. You do it, and I do it. We Congratulate ourselves that we haven't done the worst thing when we've done something that's just as sinful. on God's chart as what we didn't do. The natural man will do almost anything to substitute his own morality for God's morality.
It's just how we're made. The brothers, far from God in their spiritual walk, used pious words to make themselves believe they were doing Joseph a favor by not killing him. But what difference is there morally between killing your brother and selling him into slavery? They didn't lie outright to their father about Joseph being killed by an animal. But they allowed him to come to that conclusion by himself.
Good for us.
Somehow that makes them seem better as though withholding the truth is moral compared to lying. The pretense of morality leads us to think We are good people because we are Looking at ourselves, and we don't recognize that we are great sinners. A man was telling how he had overcome temptation in the village general store one day. He said he had the chance to steal a bag of flour while the shopkeeper was out of the room for a minute. And I resisted the impulse and just took a loaf of bread instead.
That's how we reason.
Sometimes people substitute a lesser sin for a greater sin and they're almost overcome by their righteousness. I think maybe the boys that day thought, well, You know, we could have killed him, but we didn't. We just sold him. But one was as evil as the other. Watch out for the pretense of morality.
Don't make yourself better than you should be when you're doing something you shouldn't do. the power of envy. And the pretense of morality and the penalty of sin. Sin always hurts people. Even when we can't see the hurt right away.
The brother's sin hurt Joseph. making him a slave and causing him to be separated from his brothers and his father for twenty years. It hurt Jacob, who thought his son was dead, and grieved all those years for Joseph. But most of all, that sin hurt the brothers. As the memory of that wicked day replayed over and over in their minds.
We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking we can get away with sin. Everybody pays the penalty. And there's a verse in the Bible that says this. Be sure your sin will find you out. I've been watching this now for over half a century.
And I can promise you. It's pretty accurate. Hardly anybody gets away over a long period of time. with things like what the brothers did. They carried it in their heart.
and it destroyed their ability to sleep at night. Then let me talk with you about the providence of God finally. The brothers sold Joseph into slavery, thinking they had shut him up and his dreams were over. But you know what happened? In doing what they did, they made his dreams come true.
In seeking to defeat God's purposes, they helped in their fulfillment. Let's turn to Psalm 105. And verse 16. And notice how this paragraph summarizes what happened to Joseph's life. Moreover, God called for a famine in the land.
He destroyed all the provision of bread. And he sent a man before them, Joseph. who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with fetters. He was laid in irons until the time that his word came to pass.
The word of the Lord tested him. The king sent and released him. The ruler of the people let him go free. He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his possessions. to bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his elders wisdom.
If you read that paragraph, you see God's perspective on this. God sent him before them. He prepared all of this. This was providential on God's part. Joseph didn't know it when it was happening.
He probably wondered, why is this happening to me? But as time went by, The key point in the passage is that even before the famine, The Lord sent Joseph ahead. From our limited perspective, it might seem as though Joseph's suffering was a mistake. or an oversight by God. We might find ourselves asking, Lord, what in the world are you doing?
Have we not asked ourselves that about our own situations on occasion? But we can't judge the story until we see it from God's perspective. What seemed like a tragedy was, in fact, God's plan for good. One of my gripes about television is. that too many of the stories end Without telling you what really happened to all the characters that were in the story.
That just irritates me to death. I must confess to you, I do watch a few movies. And quite often at the end of the movie, There's things I want to know about what happened to the people. And it's not there. And it makes me not want to ever watch another one because it just frustrates me to death.
But that's not the way the Bible is. The Bible tells you what really happened. The Bible tells you what happened to Joseph when he was taken away. You'd think, well, what if the story ended when he was sold as a slave? Story didn't end there.
The Bible tells you what happened. Behind the scenes, God is at work.
So, if you're going through a difficult and confusing time, and you're asking yourself in your mind, God, what are you doing? Remember that if you walk with God, God's purpose will be resolved in this life or in the next. Often we only see his hand in hindsight, Right now, it may seem like betrayal and hurt and confusion are dominating your life. But his grand design will eventually come to light and you will trust him. And it may seem like the dark clouds hover over you, but the Lord is at work.
in your life. That's been so true in my life. And I know it's true in yours. Ladies and gentlemen. We don't have to live our lives dominated by envy and jealousy.
I don't know which ones of you have that problem. I hope you'll deal with that. Pray for the person you're envious and get over it. Because you're not hurting them, you're hurting yourself. You're burning up your own spiritual vitality and you don't want to do that.
Because that doesn't do any good. Maybe you're like some people I know who go about driving their car and making up speeches that they're going to give to somebody when they ever see them. Talking out loud. Whenever you see somebody talking in their car and nobody's there, they're probably making up a speech for somebody they're going to go see. But don't live your life like that.
Live your life with joy. And don't be afraid to meet a person because you've been jealous of them. Pray for that person with clenched fists and clenched teeth. And God will give you victory. And if you've been playing this silly game that so many people play, Or you think you're righteous because you're not doing as many bad things as other people you know.
That's also dead end straight. You go down that road and you're going to get in a lot of trouble. Don't do that. Be honest with what's going on in your life. And then, most of all, remember God is at work.
He's at work. If you trust him, He's trustworthy. And the Bible tells us that He does these things for us. who are called according to his purpose, That he might show us. His power in our lives.
I'm going through some stuff right now I never anticipated. But I know that God is at work in my life. And I don't know what he's up to, and he hasn't given me the final story. I'm going to hang on as long as I can until he does. But I want you to know I can trust God.
You know, someone once told me that. When preachers preach about God's benevolent and loving spirit is wonderful until something happens to them. But I want to tell you something. What's happened to me is not... diminished my love for God.
or my trust in him. He's fair. He's faithful. And along the way, he's shown me some things I didn't know before. and helping me be strong in the midst of Physical weakness, I must tell you that I spent a whole week at the Mayo Clinic.
Wow, it wore me out. Eight and nine appointments every day. I learned some things that will help me. I didn't get any magic cure. that's going to take all of this away.
But every day I trust God to show me what to do, and He never fails. And he's always there.
Sometimes I have moments, as you can well imagine. But I never have a moment when the Lord God is not there to help me. I know that Joseph Was a prosperous man. We've learned that. He was a godly man, and there's no record of his having sinned, although I'm sure he did.
I can't be like Joseph. I'm not capable of that. But all of us in the midst of whatever we go through should ask the Lord to help us be his person in the midst of it. and trust him every day. to give us the wisdom we need.
as we go forward. You know what? That's one of the big takeaways from this lesson. Every day there's a takeaway from the lesson on Joseph. I don't think there's any series I've ever taught in my church or on the radio that has more applications for us today than the life of Joseph.
Tomorrow on Friday, we'll take part one of the lesson called Temptation, What Happens to Joseph When He Faces Serious Temptation, which if he yielded to would have ruined his life, and you and I would probably never have heard of him. We'll see how he overcame temptation. Wow, what a lesson for today, and what a practical thing for us to observe as we face the temptations that surround us in our culture today. Don't forget to be with us tomorrow for part one of temptation. And be sure and ask for your copy of the.
2026 calendar when you send your gift a Turning Point this month. It's our way of saying thank you, and it will be a reminder on the wall for the whole year for you to pray for us, and we'll be excited about that, too. See you next time right here on This Good Station. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor.
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This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series God Meant It for Good: The Story of Joseph on Turning Point.
