Alright, we're continuing our study of the book of Genesis, and so I'm going to actually ask you to turn to the book of Genesis rather than to the book of Obadiah or somewhere else. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 37. ever since I was a little boy. I have loved the story of Joseph. Joseph is one of my spiritual heroes. In a narrative that has so much corruption and sin, it's refreshing to see his love of the Lord, his pursuit of holiness in the midst of all the trials that he went through. In Genesis 37, we're going to read the entire chapter together, and God willing, I'm going to preach through the entire chapter this morning. Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. This is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age. Also, he made him a tunic of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. Now, Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more. So he said to them, Please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then, behold, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright. And indeed, your sheaves stood all around, and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brothers said to him, Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed still another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Look, I have dreamed another dream, and this time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me. So he told it to his father, and his brothers, and his father rebuked him, and said to him, What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you? And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Then his brothers went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, I will send you to them. So he said to him, Here I am. Then he said to him, Please go and see if it is well with your brothers, and well with the flocks, and bring back word to me. So he sent him out of the valley of Hebron, and he went to Shechem. Now a certain man found him, and there he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, What are you seeking? So he said, I'm seeking my brothers. Please tell me where they are feeding their flocks. And the man said, They have departed from here, for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. Then they said to one another, Look, this dreamer is coming. Come, therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit. And we will say, Some wild beast has devoured him. We shall see what will become of his dreams. But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not kill him. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him, that he might deliver him out of their hands, and bring him back to his father. So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. Then they took him and cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty, and there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat a meal. Then 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 Judah said to his brothers, What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brothers listened. Then Midianite traders passed by, and so the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. Then Reuben returned to the pit, and indeed Joseph was not in the pit, and he tore his clothes. And he returned to his brothers and said, The lad is no more, and I, where shall I go? So they took Joseph's tunic, killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the tunic in the blood. Then they sent the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to their father and said, We have found this. Do you know whether it's your son's tunic or not? He recognized it and said, It is my son's tunic. A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt, Joseph is torn to pieces. And Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, For I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning. Thus his father wept for him. Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard. Let's pray. Father, your Word has power, and we would pray, Lord, this morning as I seek to preach your Word, however imperfectly, that the Holy Spirit would own the preaching of the Word to the good of souls. Father, for us who are in Christ, we pray that you will edify us, strengthen us, stir up holy affections in us for you. Open our eyes to see how you intervening in this situation, Lord, was for our good, not just for the good of Joseph's brothers, but even for our good many thousands of years later. We pray, Lord, for those who are outside of Christ, who will recognize their own sin reflected in this chapter. We pray, Father, You'll convict them, that Your law would cause them to be full of the terror of the Lord, And then you would open their eyes to see how wonderfully gracious and loving and merciful you are, that you have sent your Son to die for sinners like us, and grant grace that they might repent of their sins, stop trusting in their own righteousness, and trust in Christ alone to save them. Lord, would you do a great work for your glory alone. So do these things for your honor. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. The theme of the entire Bible, from cover to cover, is the glory of the triune God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. And consistent with that theme is the theme of Genesis, which is found really in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. If I was going to go back, I wouldn't call this series, The Gospel According to Genesis, because you could do that with every book of the Old Testament, The Gospel According to Exodus and Leviticus, etc., etc., etc. I would call it The Propagation and the Preservation of the Messianic Seed. Because that is what this entire book is about. God made a promise to Adam and Eve when He cursed the serpent. In Genesis 3, verse 15, He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. It's both a promise and a prophecy. I'm going to send a man born of a woman who is going to redeem my people from their sins. He's going to set them free from the tyranny of sin and of Satan. And everything else in the rest of the Bible is all about God bringing that Messiah into the world. The whole Old Testament breathes with messianic expectation. And when you come to the opening pages of the New Testament, it comes to a crescendo. as the people are all in expectation, wondering, when will the Messiah come? But not only is that theme running throughout the entire Old Testament, There's something else going on here as well. In Genesis 3.15, there's something else being hinted at, and that's the fact that ever since the fall of man, there have been two distinct seeds upon this present globe, in this present age. There are two distinct spiritual families. There are those who, by grace, are the sons of God, and those who by nature are the sons of the devil, the elect and the non-elect, the believing and the unbelieving, the repentant and the unrepentant, the forgiven and the unforgiven, the sheep and the goats, the church and the world. And when we think about that, isn't it not true that ever since the fall of man, that the world has been snapping its jaws at the heels of the church, ever persecuting it? And what we find to our horror and astonishment, even to the present day, but it begins right there in Genesis chapter 4, is that these two spiritual families are very often found mixed under the same roof. that the same natural family will have these different spiritual families among them. And we all know the pain of that, don't we, if we're in Christ? We know what it is to be rejected by family because of the gospel. For people to shun us, to marginalize us, to openly mock us and persecute us and drag our reputations through the mud because of the gospel we believe in. We find it with Cain murdering Abel. We find it with the unregenerate daughters of men seducing the adopted sons of God. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Both were his natural-born sons, but Ishmael persecuted Isaac. Isaac, who was the bearer of the Messianic seed. But then as Isaac grows up, he also has two sons, Esau and Jacob. And what do we find Esau planning to do? He conspires to murder Jacob, who was again the Messianic seed bearer. All of which brings us to our chapter this morning, Genesis chapter 37. Because we see the same thing going on here. This is the beginning of the last major section of Genesis. There's light at the end of the tunnel, as it were. The last part of the narrative is going to focus most particularly upon Jacob's favorite son, Joseph. and tell us the story through him. Joseph, as I've already said to you, has always been one of my favorite spiritual heroes of the Old Testament, because in the midst of all the foibles and follies of Jacob's sons, here's a light and a beacon that stands out among them. His integrity, his love of holiness and purity and of obedience to the Lord stands out. Not that he was a perfect man, but nonetheless, a man saved by grace. A man who apparently was saved early by grace, long before his brothers were. And he stands out for his integrity, and it's refreshing, and it's exemplary, and it points us to the greatness of his God. But, it's set in contrast to the fact that if his brothers ultimately were regenerated, if God ultimately converted them, and I believe He did, by Genesis 37, that hadn't happened yet. And it's very obvious because there's two spiritual families living under Jacob's house. Because Simeon and Levi have already shown what violent, bloodthirsty men they were by slaughtering the men of Shechem. When God told Jacob to return to Bethel, he had to tell his children, put away your idols. Stop worshipping the gods of the Canaanites. Reuben has committed an unspeakable act of incest with his father's concubine Bilhah. When we come to chapter 38, we're going to read next week, God willing, of how Judah impregnated his own daughter-in-law, Tamar. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were a prostitute, is his response. Now understand, that's the lineage of the Messiah right there. That's Judah. This is the tribe of Judah. And then the contrast is obvious in chapter 39, when Joseph has a temptation brought before him sexually, and yet resists and does the right thing, and yet, despite the fact he does the right thing, gets thrown in prison for it. But the point I'm making to you is this. We find these men, these wicked men, rising up to do to Joseph the same things they had done in Shechem. To destroy, to murder their own brother, and to cover it up and lie about it. What wicked, hideous men they are. Why in the world does God want His name connected to these twelve brothers? And the only answer we can come to is this, God is a God of grace. And His grace abounds greater than sin that abounds. And we're going to see that this morning, God willing. But the big thing we're going to see in the coming weeks, you cannot read Joseph without getting this. The great overarching theme is the providence of God. Joseph is a living illustration of the truth of Romans 8.28. The reality that God works all things for His own glory and for the ultimate good of His people, even in the short run. If it's not good in the short run, ultimately it's for the good of His people. And we're going to see that very, very clearly in the text before us. So I want to preach our text to you under five headings, which, as it turned out, illiterate. They're five Ps. There's a prophecy, a plot, a preservation, a perjury, and a providence. So a prophecy, a plot, a preservation, a perjury, and a providence. First of all, a prophecy. Chapter 37, verse 1 begins by saying, Jacob dwells in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. And by reminding us that Isaac had been a stranger there, as was Jacob, it's telling us something important. The patriarchs lived in the promised land by faith. Because God promised they were going to inherit it, but you realize they never inherited it in their lifetime. Future generations that they would not know, that they would never see, would inherit the promised land. And the fact that they remained in the promised land, while they did not have so much as a set of their foot upon, as far as their own property, tells you that they were doing so by faith. The writer of Hebrews tells us that when people do this, when they remain in a place like this, they're clearly proclaiming to us that they're looking for a homeland. that they understood God was promising more than real estate in Palestine. That God was saying, this is symbolic of a greater inheritance in the age to come. That is, you're going to have real estate in the new heaven and in the new earth. And so they stood there. And then notice verse 2. This is the history of Jacob. This is the 11th time, and the final time in Genesis, that a saying like this is ever said. And any time Moses gives us this writing, What he's saying to us is, here's the new section. Here's a new theme I'm going to be focusing upon. So what he's doing is he's introducing the theme that will be the theme all the way from chapter 37 all the way to the end in chapter 50. Joseph is 17 years old. Remember, he is Rachel's oldest son. Jacob's favorite wife and his favorite son of his favorite wife. And what we see in this text is a progression of hatred. It's not that his brothers just hate him a little bit and that sort of remains static. It's more like a malignant cancer that grows and grows and gets worse and worse until finally they conspire to kill him. Let me show you what I'm talking about. Notice here in verse 3. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, which is part of the cause of their hatred. Verse 4, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. Verse 5, and they hated him even more. Verse 8, so they hated him even more. Then verse 11, his brothers envied him. then look over at verse 18, they conspired against him to kill him. You see how the hatred starts but it continues to grow and get worse until finally it moves to murder. They already murdered him in their hearts and now they're going to do it with their actions. So let's consider the causes of this thing because there's four basic parts of the progression here. The first reason that they hate him is found in verse 2. It says, "...the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah." So, to remind you who those were, there were four brothers who belonged to these women. Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. He's with them. He's with them and he brings a bad report of them to his father. Now, we're not told exactly what it is he told them. I do not get the impression, though, that this is him being a tattletale. His brothers were wicked, ungodly men. And apparently there was some wickedness that Joseph saw in them that was so bad that he felt he was constrained and morally obligated to come and bring it to his father. We're not told what the nature of that report is, but he brings it to them. And, of course, this begins the hatred that they have for him. Because, as I told you earlier this morning, the third chapter of John's first epistle tells us that Cain murdered Abel, and why did he do it? Because his works were evil, and his brothers were righteous. Jesus himself said, The world hates me, John chapter 7 verse 7, because I testify of it, that its works are evil. Do you know why the world persecutes the church? It's because our message and our lifestyle bring conviction of sin to them. And it says to them, you've got to do something about this. You can't go on living in this because there's a day of judgment coming, and you're going to have to give an account. You're going to have to own up to your responsibility for your sins that you have committed against a holy God. You've offended them, and people don't want to hear that. Because they love their sins so much, they don't want to give it up. John 3, Jesus says, men love the darkness and hate the light, and don't come to the light, lest their deeds should be exposed. So what do they do? Just like Felix we read in the public scripture reading this morning. Go away! And come back at a time that's more convenient. Push you aside, shun you, isolate you, because I don't want to hear your message, and I don't want to hear your lifestyle. And so the world persecutes the church. That's why there's such a thing as Fox's Book of Martyrs. Because the world does not want to hear that they're responsible to a holy God. And so they hate us. And I believe that's what started the hatred here. These men were sons of the devil. Here is Joseph being a son of God, by grace. And they look at him and they don't like what he's doing. And they're convicted of their sin. And so that's where the hatred begins. But it doesn't just stay with these four brothers. It goes on from there. The second reason that they hated Joseph is because of a fault in Jacob's character. Notice verse 3. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children. We've seen this over and over again, haven't we, throughout the narrative of Genesis, that partiality and prejudice marked the patriarchs over and over again. Isaac preferred Esau over Jacob. Rebekah loved Jacob over Esau. Then when Jacob gets married, he favors Rachel and he neglects Leah. And now Rachel's dead. And here's the firstborn son that she gave him, a product of his love for his favorite wife. And of course, he loves Joseph more than his other brothers. And the sad thing is for them, and for him, and unfortunately for Joseph, is this doesn't remain the world's greatest secret. Because he makes a special tunic for him, a special robe to distinguish him almost as royalty from the rest of his brothers. A tunic which, by the way, he forgets to give to the rest of them. So here's this walking reminder, this symbol, every time he puts on that tunic, our Father loves Him more than He loves us, and they resent Him. And they become jealous and envious of Him. Well, verse 4, it says, "...when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him." They couldn't even have a civil conversation with him because they hated him so much. Well, so those are the first two causes. He showed them their sin, Joseph did, but also the favoritism of Jacob was another cause. There's a third cause, and it's a prophecy that comes from God. A prophecy that comes to Joseph in the form of a dream. Joseph has this dream. And notice there's bookends, verse 5 and verse 8 are bookends to their hatred for him when he tells them the dream. They hated him even more, verse 5, he gets through telling them the dream, so they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. God gives him a vision. And it's interesting because it's sort of foreshadowing the basis on which they're going to bow down before him. Because you know the story, if you skip ahead, 20 years later, what's going to happen? A great famine is going to hit the world. Egypt is going to have a repository of wheat, and so all the world is basically going to become subservient to Egypt because they're going to be depending upon them for their wheat supply. It made Egypt a great superpower, the greatest superpower in the world at that time. So that's what's going to happen, but what's the dream? The dream is we were all out in the field binding up wheat sheaves. And we all bound our sheaves, and your sheaves bow down before me. and worship me." Now, you need to understand the vision's from God. This is a prophecy, but you also need to understand there's fault here in Joseph, I'm convinced. Because what happens when a 17-year-old gets told that he's going to be a great ruler? His head is inflated. And I believe what he's doing here, rather than keeping the dream to himself and saying, okay, it's from the Lord, he's got to go tell his brothers and do a little braggadocio. You all are going to bow down in front of me someday." And of course they hate him, and they resent what he's saying. So their hatred grows even more, but it's not over because he has a second dream. This time it's not just his brothers, now it's dad and mom too. And of course he's got to go tell it. Look, I've dreamed another dream! Good news, he doesn't get the hint, does he? Okay, they hated me the first time, let me give them more reasons to hate my guts. And this time, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me. I'm going to be somebody." You see, pride can be found in the strangest places, can't it? And this time, even Jacob, for all his favoritism, for all his love for his son Joseph, even he's incensed. And he gives them some rebuke, which tells us, perhaps, an indication of just how proud and arrogant this came across. Now, the odd thing is, everything he's saying is actually true. He really did have these dreams. God gave him a prophecy of what was going to happen. But even when God tells the truth, it's just like Peter, isn't it? Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but our Father in heaven. And by the way, I've come to die. And what's Peter do? Remember me? The one God talks to. And this isn't going to happen to you. You're wrong. He takes it upon himself to tell Jesus, the Son of God, he's wrong. I mean, how arrogant is that? And then Jesus, who's just blessed him, has to turn around and say, get behind me, Satan. But you don't know what you're saying. You're speaking like men. You have no idea what you're doing. So he has to rebuke the one he's just blessed. Well, that's what's going on here. God has given a vision to Joseph and it's gone straight to his head. Everybody's going to bow down to me. This robe? Get used to seeing me in it. That's what's going on here. So Jacob rebukes him. And he says, what is this dream you've dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to you before you on the earth? Notice the different responses in verse 11. His brothers envied him. In other words, they hate him even more. His father kept the matter in mind. Even in the pride that my son is showing, I wonder if God's speaking to him. It's like Mary who kept these things in her heart. She keeps these things realizing maybe God is showing something or doing something here that's extraordinary. I appreciated Matthew Henry pointed out something else. You're thinking to yourself, if God knew that Joseph was going to respond the way he did. Why did he give him the prophecies? Why did he give him the visions? And he points out something very important, and I think this is helpful. What he showed is this. Joseph was about to endure some extremely difficult times. He was about to go through some great tribulation. And God gave him this vision before those tribulations. Why? So that he wouldn't lose hope. so that he would have something to look forward to on the other side of it all. Jesus Himself, who had no pride to be rebuked, but when He was commanded by the Father to submit Himself to the cruel death of the cross, the Scripture says He endured the suffering. Why? Despising the shame for the joy that was set before Him. He knew there was resurrected glory on the other end of the suffering. He was going to receive an inheritance of the nations. He was going to bring many sons to glory through His death. So, for the joy set before Him, He endured. And the point being this, you and I go through hard times too. Tragedies, funerals, burials, loss of friends, loss of family who turn their back on us because of the gospel. The tribulations we endure in this present age, and sometimes they get overwhelming. And sometimes we cry out, is it really worth it? And yet, what does God do? He reminds us that this present age is not all that there is. There is an age that is to come. And Paul could say with all the things he endured, and frankly, he endured a whole lot more than you and I have ever had to endure. He endured all that, but he says, I can count it as momentary, light affliction. not worthy to be compared with a greater weight of glory that shall be revealed." In other words, think of it as a 500-pound rock on his back. That's the way this life is. And he says, but weigh that in the balance, that 500-pound burden with a greater weight of glory. And if you put it on a seesaw, the greater weight of glory, when it falls, will just send that other 500-pound rock flying. Because there's something so much greater in the age to come that I can endure this in the present age. Because it's just momentary. It's going to be over before you know it. And suddenly we're going to be standing before God and we're going to have eternal rest. And that hope burning in his heart is what kept him persevering through it all. And brothers and sisters, that's why you and I need to be more and more heavenly minded. It gets us through coronaviruses. It gets us through pandemics. It gets us through tribulation and hardship and persecution because of the Word. When we remember Jesus Christ is worth it, and someday we're going to see Him face to face, and we're going to realize it's going to be all right. And that keeps me enduring, knowing there's glory, there's a crown. If I will endure the cross, if you will endure the cross, and this presents, there's a crown awaiting you on the other side of glory, if we could just be found faithful by God's grace. So press on and persevere. Here's the exact quote. of what Matthew Henry said, quote, God has ways of preparing his people beforehand for the trials which they cannot foresee, but which he has an eye to in the comforts with which he furnishes them. So what are we seeing first? We're seeing prophecy. Secondly, we see a plot. Down in verse 12, the brothers go up to Shechem. Now this was 50 miles north of where they were in Hebron. They go back to Shechem to feed their flocks and remember Joseph owned land in Shechem because he had purchased it with his own money. He purchased it, he actually dug a well there. Hundreds of years later, Jesus would sit by the woman from Samaria at Sychar, buy that well, it's still there to this day by the way, and had a conversation with her at Sychar. It's the same plot of ground. But here's the problem, do you remember what happened the last time that Jacob's sons were in Shechem? They slaughtered the entire city for the sake of their sister Dinah. And remember what Jacob's response was to all of this. He says, you have given me a bad name among the nations. Now they're going to come and destroy us before anything else happens. And God had to supernaturally intervene as Jacob traveled from there to put the nations with the terror of the Lord so they would not touch Jacob or his family. Well, now he sent his sons back to his herds that are there in Shechem to tend them, and obviously he's concerned, are my sons okay? Because they've returned to very hostile territory because they made a bad name for themselves. And so Joseph is at home with them, and he wants to send Joseph on an errand to go check upon them and check upon their welfare. So notice what he says. He sends for him, and notice verse 13. He said to him, Here I am. And I think there's indicating for us something there of Joseph's nature already. That he had come to know the Lord because when God saves someone, he writes his law upon their heart. And my point being, here Jacob says, I need you to go on an errand, and instantly Jacob says, I'll honor my father, I'll do what you say. So he's showing something of his regenerate nature here. Well, he tells them, he goes, check on their welfare and come back and tell me how they're doing. And so he travels the 50 miles. Now understand, he's by himself. This is really a treacherous journey for a 17-year-old young man to make through hostile territory surrounded by pagan Canaanites. He comes to the land of Shechem and they've already moved. They've gone about 17 miles further north. to a place called Dothan, but he can't find anything. Now here's the odd thing. Let me just throw this out to you. The very young man that these men were conspiring to murder was the means of their own deliverance 20 years hence. If they kill him, they killed themselves and didn't even know it. And so here's this young man who is the means of their preservation, but he's lost in hostile territory. So what happens? Well, God providentially intervenes. He sends a stranger. A certain man finds him. And it's interesting to me, it's always struck me, that the Holy Spirit spends three verses telling us about this man. We're not told who he is, just he was a certain man. I've always wondered, was he an angel that God sent especially to direct him? Was this actually even a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, perhaps? Maybe. It's all speculation. But whoever he was, maybe he was just a stranger, a guy who lived near Shechem. Whoever he is, what we can take to the bank is this, there are no coincidences, there's only providence. God sends providentially this man to find this young man in a hostile territory and guide his steps so that he doesn't perish there. And by doing that, he not only spared Joseph, he spared all his brothers as well, ultimately, 20 years later. So God providentially protects him. Well, he goes to Dothan then, verse 18. And they saw him afar off. And even before he came near them, they recognized who this is coming to them. It says they conspired against him to kill him. We hate him so bad, we'll just kill him." And not only do they kill him, they say, we'll even figure out how to cover up the crime. They've got this all figured out even before he gets there. We'll throw his body down into a pit so nobody can find the evidence of his corpse. And then, here's the story we'll tell Dad. It's a rough country, Dad. Wild beasts got him. They tore him. And no one will be the wiser. And here are these brothers, these patriarchs, the people after whom God's nation is named, who are conspiring to murder their brother in cold blood and already figuring out how to cover up the crime. Well, God intervenes in the strangest way yet again. He's already intervened with a stranger, and now He's going to intervene in the most unlikely of sources. Reuben and Judah are going to be His means to deliver them, and the way He delivers them is really extraordinary. Let's talk about that. First of all, Reuben. We have the story of Reuben in verses 21 to 24. Reuben heard it, and he delivered them out of their hands and said, Let us not kill him. There's a voice of reason in the midst of all of it. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness. Go ahead and cast him into the pit like you were planning, but not his lifeless corpse. Put him down there alive. and do not lay a hand on him." And then this Holy Spirit, who is the discerner of hearts, tells us what the motivation here is, that He might deliver him out of their hands and bring them back to His Father. Now, we're not told why He was motivated this way. Was it compassion? Or was it kind of trying to save His own skin? Because think about it, here's the man who had already sinned against Jacob by going into his own concubine Bilhah. So maybe this will save a little face with dad or whatever. We're not told his motivation. But whatever his motivation, his intervention worked and spared the life of Joseph. And I say it's unlikely for him to do this because, think about it, Reuben was the firstborn son. He was the heir to his father's inheritance. He had more to lose by Joseph being Jacob's favorite than any other son did. So isn't it unlikely that this would be the very son whom God uses providentially to spare Joseph's life? Well, they listen to them, and they take his tunic, which is this visible reminder of their father's favoritism, and they yank it off of him and throw him down in the pit. And it seems very obvious from the rest of the text, Reuben left at this point. We're not told why he left. He left at this point, apparently, my guess would be, to secure safe passage for Joseph back down to his father. Going to find some caravan that he can travel with to get back safely to his father would be my guess. But he doesn't see all that happens next, is my point. Well, they throw him down in the pit, and then the next deliverance comes from Judah. And whereas we don't know exactly what motivated Reuben, we're told exactly what motivated Judah, and it's not exactly the greatest of motivations. Notice verse 25, first of all, they sat down to eat a meal. They're brothers down in a pit. And we're told later, they'll say this later in Genesis 42. As a matter of fact, turn there, I want you to see this. Genesis 42 and verse 21. This is 20 years later when they're confronted by Joseph. They don't know it's Joseph that they're talking to. But look at verse 21, it says, and we would not hear. Therefore this distress has come upon us." So imagine you're Joseph, your brothers have cast you down into a pit, they've taken your tunic. You don't know what the future holds. You don't know what their intentions are. Are they going to murder me in just a moment? Thankfully they threw me into a well that doesn't have water, so I didn't drown. But nonetheless, what is going to happen? And he's crying from the pit. They can hear his cries and his sobs. Please get me out of here. And they're so hardened, they're so calloused, their consciences are so seared that they have a party. Let's have supper and get out the wine and kill the fatted calf. They are just completely unconcerned about their brother. But notice then, they lifted their eyes, verse 25. And they looked and there was a company of Ishmaelites. Now you'll notice the scriptures go back and forth calling them either Ishmaelites or Midianites. That's because the Ishmaelites and the Midianites by this point had become one people. So it's the same people. So it's using the words as synonyms. But the Ishmaelites come. And they're going from Gilead with their camels and they're going to sell their merchandise in Egypt. And Judah has a great idea. Verse 26. What profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? You know what? If we have a lifeless corpse, we can't make any money off of it. It's greed. But if we keep him alive and sell him as a slave, we can line our pocket with a little silver and get rid of Joseph. It's the best of both worlds. Isn't it strange how God uses even our sin to accomplish His purposes? Here's the greed, the sinful greed of Judah, and yet God uses it to preserve Joseph's life. Isn't God wonderful? Even when we are pathetic and wicked, God does great and mighty things. He accomplishes His purposes even through the sinfulness of men. So that's what they do. They said, he's our brother in our flesh. We wouldn't want to kill him. That would be bad. And so his brothers listened, and the Midianite traders passed by. So the brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and they sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver, and they took Joseph to Egypt. Out of sight, Out of mind, good riddance. And now look, we've got a little more silver to spend on our desires. So we've seen a prophecy, and we've seen a plot, and we've seen a preservation. In the fourth place, we see a perjury. Verse 29, Reuben returns to the pit. Wherever he had gone, he's come back. He doesn't know that Joseph has been sold into slavery. All he does is he comes back now to get him out of the pit, apparently to deliver him to whatever he had arranged to send him back to Jacob. And he comes and he's not there. And he comes to the conclusion he's dead. And he tears his clothes, and maybe this hints a little bit in verse 30 as to what his motivation was. The lad is no more, and I, where shall I go? I'm the firstborn son and it's my responsibility more than anyone else to protect my little brother and my dad's never going to let me back in the house now because of this. And he tears his clothes while his brothers seize the opportunity to make a proposal. One, apparently without ever telling him what they've done to Joseph. They don't tell him they sold him, but they let him presume he's dead. But he goes along with their idea. We had this idea when we were going to kill him, and then we decided instead to sell him as a slave. But the idea was after we killed him, we'd throw him in a pit, and then we would tell Dad he was torn by wild beasts. Well, we sold him to slaves instead, but what we'll do, we'll still keep that second part of the plan intact. We'll let Dad think he was killed by wild beasts. And so note what they did in verse 31, they took Joseph's tunic and killed a kid of goats and dipped the tunic in its blood, tore it apart so it would look like he had been torn and killed and had bled. Derek Kidner points out a cruel irony in this verse, by the way. Remember when Jacob had tried to deceive his father Isaac? He killed a goat and used the goat's fur to deceive him. Now Jacob's own sons kill a goat in an effort to deceive their father. It's a cruel irony that we see here. And notice how conniving they are. Do you recognize they don't out and out lie to him? They let Jacob's own imagination fill in the blanks. They don't say, look, your son's been killed by a wild beast. No, what they say is, is this your son's tunic? And it seems to me there's a cruel jab at this tunic that reminds us that he's the favorite. Is this his? Identify, is this his? And what's happened here? Do you know whether it's your son's tunic or not? And of course he recognizes the tunic as the very one he had woven with his own hands to give to him. And he fills in the blanks. Notice in verse 33, "...as my son's tunic of wild beasts has devoured him." Without doubt, Joseph is torn to pieces. "...when Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days." Now, in a chapter that is full of cruelty and hatred, personally, I believe this is the most cruel, the most hateful thing in the entire chapter. Our brother's alive. They know it. But they'll let their father mourn, and weep, and wail, and cry, and let a cloud of depression hang over his head. And all they have to do, one person just has to speak up and say, Dad, we lied. He's over in Egypt. Let's go and let's buy him back. But not only do they not tell him that, they let him go on mourning for 20 years. I can't think of anything more cruel or vicious than to torment their old father with such a thing. But they would rather him be tormented than that they should acknowledge their sin." And so they cover it up. And notice the hypocrisy of verse 35. It just makes you want to throw up, doesn't it? He says, "...and all his sons and all his daughters rose to comfort him." It'll be okay, Dad. But he refused to be comforted. I will go to my grave mourning. My life will never be the same. Imagine watching your father, your own father for two decades, mourn the loss of a son who the whole time you know is alive. And yet so cruel, so hateful are these men that they refuse to do so. Why on earth does God want his name associated with men like this? But why on earth does God want his name associated with men like me? men and women like you, because He's a God of grace who delights in mercy and loves to forgive sinners and justifies people who are ungodly. That's the God we serve. Well, what have we seen thus far? We've seen a prophecy, a plot, a preservation, a perjury, finally a providence. And this will be very short, verse 36. Now, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard. All these bad things are going on in Joseph's household. Meanwhile, back in Egypt, Joseph's still alive and well. And here's what happened. He's been sold as a slave. He's been sold to Potiphar's household. Obviously, the Midianites made a little profit. They bought him for 20 pieces of silver, sold him for a little bit more than that. Potiphar, the captain of the guard in Pharaoh's house. Several things to think about that. Isn't it interesting? First of all, isn't God's providence strange? Because you get a vision, two visions actually, prophecies. You're going to be a great ruler! Slave. Next thing, prisoner. Not exactly the route to the kingdom. And yet, for the benefit of hindsight, Look how God was using this as the straight path to fulfill the very things He had done, but yet the way it worked out was very different from what anyone would have expected, which is how it always is, isn't it? God never takes us down the path that we would have expected, and yet it was the straight path to it. What's God doing here? Three things I want to observe very quickly, and then we're going to talk about some applications. First of all, do you realize that what God's doing with Joseph is He's fulfilling a prophecy He had made to Abraham hundreds of years earlier? Remember when God made His covenant with Abraham in Genesis chapter 15? God appeared as the smoking lamp and the burning pot between the pieces of the covenant. And what did He say? Know that your people, know that your descendants will be strangers in a strange land, and a nation will hold them captive. Afterwards, I will deliver them out with a mighty deliverance and bring them back to this land. I'll make them prisoners in a strange land. And now we know what the strange land is. It's Egypt. And Joseph's travel there is God Himself fulfilling what He had said He was going to do hundreds of years earlier. Brothers and sisters, I hope you've gotten over and over again as we've gone through Genesis how God says something and it always comes to pass. He always delivers on every promise He ever makes. Not once have we seen a single promise He's made fail. Even the promise that your descendants will be slaves in a foreign land, He's fulfilling it right here. Through the strangeness of His own chosen people conspiring to murder their brother. Isn't providence strange in how it works its way out? But God's purposes are being done. The second thing I would set before you is that, make no mistake, while it was the cruelty and the greed of Joseph's brothers that landed him in Egypt, it was God who sent him there. It was God himself. The scriptures themselves say this in two different places, at least. Turn over with me to Psalm 105, verses 16 and 17. Moreover, he, that is God, called for a famine in the land. So nothing happens without his providence, does it? God called for a coronavirus in the world. Everything that happens, happens by God's design. He called for a famine in the land. He destroyed all the provision of bread. He sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. Who sent him? God sent him. Not his brothers sent him. They sold him as a slave, but it was God who sent him. And then turn back to Genesis, Genesis chapter 45. This is the place where Joseph is revealed to his brothers finally. Look at verse 4, Genesis 45 verse 4. And Joseph said to his brothers, Please come near to me. So they came near. Then he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, And there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt." Three different times he says, then, you think you sent me here, you didn't. God sent me here. May I suggest God's providence and understanding his providential direction has helped us to forgive one another for our sins, to recognize that what others mean for evil, God means for good. And that's how Joseph found peace with his wicked brothers, was recognizing in it, behind it all, the hand of providence, was directing all of these things for his glory and the good of his people. And there's a third thing, note again, What this is telling us is that God fulfilled what he promised Joseph he would do 20 years earlier. Your brothers, your father, your adoptive mother Leah, they will bow down before you in the time of my choosing, not the time of your choosing. But God, once again, has fulfilled his promise. Well, there's three applications I want to make this morning to you. And may the Holy Spirit drive these home to your heart. First of all, He who covers his transgressions will not prosper, but whosoever confesses and forsakes them will find mercy. Joseph's brothers may have gotten rid of him, but while they got rid of him, they bound their own consciences. They put something inside of them that was like an acid that would eat away at them for the next 20 years. When they're finally confronted by Joseph in Egypt, they acknowledge, we did this 20 years ago. And now the retribution is coming back upon us. They'd carried that guilt in their conscience for 20 long years. Their silence and their attempt to hide what they had done did not allow them to escape conscience. It would carry with them over and over and over again. We'll hide it from Dad. We'll say a beast killed them. We'll do all these things. And yet they couldn't hide it from the eyes of the Lord. And their souls did not prosper. What bondage they must have been in, year after year, watching all these things go on, knowing what the truth was, and yet concealing it from view. What about you? Is there some great sin that you have concealed? Some sin that you refuse to acknowledge to the Lord, to come to Him and say, I have sinned against you. You know, David tried very carefully to conceal his sin with Bathsheba. murdered her husband, married her quickly so it would look like her pregnancy was just something that happened because he was married to her, rather than the fact that he had been an adulterer. And he got away with it for at least nine months, because the child conceived in this adulterous union was born, and it was after that time that the prophet Nathan came and rebuked him and said, you are the man. He tried to hide everything from view, but the Scriptures tell us this ominous thing, the Lord was not pleased with what he had done. And when he finally comes to the point of repenting of his sin, and he confesses his sin, do you hear what he says in Psalm 51? My sin is ever before me. I try to pray and I see my sin. I try to fellowship with the saints and I see my sin. Everywhere I go it torments me. I try to hide it from view, but it's here. In Psalm 32, I think he's talking about a different time in his life, and he says, When I kept silent about my sin, my moisture dried up. My bones dried up within me and I had no rest day or night, and my joints were tormented with fever. It had physical consequences to me. And then finally I said, I'll go and I'll confess my sin. And I'll be free from the snare and the burden. And I ask you, is there some sin that you have concealed from God? you refuse to acknowledge it for what it is. Some burden you've been carrying around because your pride won't let you acknowledge it, because you're too embarrassed to admit it to the Lord, or whatever, or you're afraid of the consequences, because very often our sin is not just things that had to be confessed before God, but also before men. If you wronged someone in your life and you know you need to go make it right, but if I own up to it, the consequences are going to be too great for me to bear. But he who covers his transgressions will not prosper. How many times as a teenager growing up, and now even as an adult, there's times I know that I just need to go and confess even private sin, personal sin, secret sin to the Lord. But some of those sins, it's important for me to go to trusted brothers to share those things with them for their accountability. And I know in my heart how many times I would struggle with this as a teenager. I would know in my heart that I'm not going to have peace in my conscience until I not only confess it before God, but come and confess my fault before a trusted brother, a father, whoever. And I knew, Lord, no, it's you, you only have a sin. Let me just try to confess it to you and not to men. But I knew I could have no peace until I had gone to that brother, gone to my father, gone to whoever it was, gone to an accountability partner. I said, brother, I've been struggling with something. I need to talk to you about it. Because it's a part of me fully forsaking it and repenting of it. Maybe you've stolen something from an employer. And you say, I'm so convicted in my sins ever before me, but you know, if I go and tell them, I might lose my job. Whoever covers his transgressions will not prosper. Well, I'm a student, and I cheated on my homework, and I cheated on my exam, and I got away with it. The teacher didn't catch me. The professor didn't catch me. If I tell them, they might kick me out of school. I might lose their trust. I might do this. I might do that. I should dare not tell them. He who covers his transgressions will not prosper. My favorite professor in Bible college is a man named Jack Lehman. He said every single year, former students would call him, students he had 10 years earlier, and say, Mr. Lehman, when I was in your class, I cheated on this test when I took Western Man, and I want to call you and ask your forgiveness. And he would say to them, certainly I appreciate your honesty, I appreciate you calling to seek my forgiveness, I do forgive you, and I will go back to your permanent record and make the appropriate changes. And he said, very often when he would say that, suddenly they would get angry. You're going to change my permanent record? Yes. Did you just say that you cheated? And they would get angry. And he said, it made me wonder how repentant they really were. Because when I acknowledge my sin, I also recognize I have to bear the consequences that come from it. Is it possible someone has been unfaithful to their spouse? Had an affair and got away with it. If I come clean and acknowledge it, my spouse may leave me. He who covers his transgressions will not prosper. But whosoever confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy." How much better to bear the consequences but be free in your soul. To know the forgiveness and the cleansing and the blessing of a liberated conscience. To know God has taken your sin and removed it from you as far as the east is from the west. And to submit yourself to the consequences and say, I'll take it as the chasing hand of God who loves me enough to chase me, to help me to realize I should never do this again. your spiritual progress will be impeded. Every time you try to come before the Lord to pray, your sin is going to be there between you and Him. Sometimes this causes us to emotionally distance ourselves from our brothers and sisters, lest they discover the secret of my sin. Would you be set free? There's mercy right at your fingertips, waiting. You come to the Lord and you rip apart your excuses and all your blame shifting, and you say, I am guilty as charged. I have no excuse. I have no alibi. The devil didn't make me do it. It wasn't my upbringing. It wasn't this. I'm a sinner. Your grace was sufficient to deliver me from the temptation, but I wanted to bask and wallow in my sin, like a pig wallowing in the mud, and I did it on purpose. I sinned because I was driven enticed by my own lust. I'm not asking for excuses, Father. I'm asking for mercy. Then to have the Lord wash that sin away by the blood of Christ. We stop covering ourselves, and then a great thing happens. God Himself covers it. And when He covers it, He covers it for all time and eternity. Why keep yourself from the freedom that God Himself offers you if you'll just come clean, confess your sin, and forsake your sin before Him? And then you'll obtain mercy. Secondly, God moves in mysterious ways, and even the hardest of his providences turn out for the good of your never-dying soul if you're in Christ. I've already noted how the strange providence... Okay, Joseph, you're going to be a great ruler. Now you're going to be a slave. Now you're going to be a prisoner for doing the right thing, by the way. And by the way, you're going to interpret the dreams for these two other guys, and then they're going to forget about you for two years and let you languish in prison for a little bit longer. Isn't that just like God, to do stuff like that? And yes, it was the straight way to fulfill His promises, but I'm going to submit to you something else. These were calculated and put together for the good of Joseph's soul. The pride that momentarily lifted him up, God quickly deflated, didn't He? He squished all the pride right out of him. And all the struggles he endured weren't just about getting him from Canaan to Egypt. They were about helping forge a leader through suffering. Because when God makes a leader of His people, He takes them through hardship. He breaks them. If you're here and you aspire to the ministry, and I know a number of you do, it's a good thing you aspire to. It's a noble task. It's a worthy thing to aspire to. But let me tell you something. If you need to be content with doing anything else, you better do it. Because if God's truly calling you into the ministry, He will break you. He will take you through hardship. He will take you through the loss of friends. He will drag your reputation right through the mud. He may take you through some very hard providences of losing loved ones and friends. He breaks His people. in order to make them useful for their master. He doesn't just do that for leaders, he does it for all of his children, doesn't he? We all have the scars to talk about, don't we? We can talk about the things God has taken us through. Some of you have now profited from being able to sit under the ministry of Pastor Alex Figueroa. I'll never forget when I first met him, I said to him, I could tell the aspiration to ministry was there, and I saw his humility, and I just told him, I said, brother, just know, God's calling you to the ministry, He's going to break you. We reconnected six years later, he said to me, you told me he was going to break me and he has. And he told me about the different ways, the different hard circumstances that he had had to endure. You got to see the fruit of it, didn't you? You got to hear the fruit of how God has made him a vessel fit for his master's use. What does the scripture say when he has tried me, I shall come forth as pure gold? Because God takes us through the hardship to pull the dross out of us. It's the old refiner's fire. If you pull gold ore out of a mine, that gold ore is not pure, it's very impure. And in order to purify it, what do you do? You put it in a big vat and you heat up this vat, superheat it, until everything inside melts. And what is on the inside, the impurities called dross, comes to the surface. The refiner scrapes it off with a ladle and then sets it aside. And then he lets it cool. And once it's cooled, you know what he does? He heats it up again. And more impurity comes to the surface, and he pulls that off, and he lets it cool again, and then he heats it up again. Seven times was considered the most refined of any. He refines it, and isn't that what God does to you and me? He puts the pressure on us so that everything that doesn't look like Jesus in our life comes to the surface and He takes it away, until we look more and more like the One who we belong to. And He will do just about anything to make His children like Jesus. Look at Joseph. He'll make him a slave. He'll make him falsely accused. He'll make him to be a man in prison. Why? To prepare him for the leadership that was in his place. That was not in spite of the fact that he prophesied he was going to be a leader. It was because he was going to be a leader. He took him through hard things and broke him. So his dependence and sufficiency was all in God by the time he came there. In fact, we're going to see something beautiful all throughout the story of Joseph. At every low point, the text will remind us, and God was with him. And God was with him. And God was with him. At every point, at every low point. Something else about that providence before we get to our third and final point. Do you realize that when God spared Joseph, He spared your soul and mine? You're going, how? This happened 3,000 years ago. What does this have to do with you and me? It has everything to do with you and me. Because if God hadn't spared Joseph, when the famine came, Judah would have died. And Judah was carrying the Messianic seed. If Judah had died, we would have no Savior. But our Lord and Savior is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. When God spared him, He spared my soul and yours, because He brought the Messiah to die for our sins and to give us a perfect righteousness. This is God moving heaven and earth in His pursuit of you and me, to save us. Third and final thing, and then on a very happy note, and that is this. When sin abounds, grace abounds far more. I know I keep coming back to that same application through Genesis, but how can you help it? When you look at what a bunch of scumbags Jacob's sons were, These were wretches. Men who had planned to kill their own brother, instead say, no, let's sell them into slavery instead, and line our pockets with the silver, and let's lie to Dad, and let Dad mourn for 20 years, and carry a cloud of depression over him until he dies, because we'll keep the truth to ourselves that Joseph is still alive. And yet, these are called the 12 tribes of Israel. Their names are written on the gates of the New Jerusalem that you and I are going to inherit someday. Does that not tell you that God is a God of grace? That He's a God who delights not to save righteous people, but to save guilty sinners. Wicked, vile, vermin, scum-of-the-earth kind of people are the people whom Jesus came to save. Now, doesn't that encourage you? Doesn't that comfort you? Because when I think about how sinful I am, how many things I've done that I am ashamed of, when I realize something of the depths of my own heart, my wife and I, from time to time, we'll say, you know, I trust you. We'll look at each other and say, you shouldn't. Because I don't trust my own heart, man. I look at my own heart and I'm going, just the little vileness I see in there, I'm going, yuck. What does Solomon say? He who trusts his own heart is a fool. And yet, Jesus came to die for wicked, wretched hearts just like that. He came to save sinners. I love the verse in Romans 4 that says, He who ceases from his works and believes on him who justifies whom? The righteous? He who justifies the good little kids? No, he who justifies the ungodly. He justifies the ungodly. He saves undeserving sinners. He shows mercy to the undeserving. Mercy, by its very definition, is voluntary. Because if God owes me mercy, that's a debt. But when He gives me mercy when He owes me something else, that's a voluntary choice on His part. He's voluntarily chosen to show mercy to us. What does God say to us through Paul in Romans 5? He says, some men might dare for a righteous man, might die for a righteous man, maybe, and push comes to shove, we can all say we lay our life down on somebody, but if it's the issue of, does the bad guy shoot him or shoot me? Go ahead and shoot him. That's what Paul's saying. Maybe for a good man someone would dare to die, but God shows His love for us in this. that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When we were His enemies, when we were rebels against His authority, that's when Jesus died for us. And that's how great His love is, that He died for His enemies. He showed mercy to us. He showed mercy to the sons of Jacob. And you're here and outside of Christ, that mercy is available to you today. Because Jesus Christ is a great Savior. You may be a great sinner, Christ is a great Savior. and He's willing and He's able to save anyone and everyone who comes to God through Him. Why would you resist such a God as this when He has pardon in His hands and He loves to grant mercy and forgiveness to sinners? Fry to Him that you might escape from the wrath that is to come. Let's pray. Father, we thank You and praise You for Your goodness and kindness in showing such grace to sinners like us. We do pray, Father, for any here who have been burdened and bound under some sort of sin that they have not been willing to confess to you or that they haven't been willing to confess to men and yet need to. Lord, grant them grace and boldness to submit themselves under your hand, to acknowledge their sin for all the wickedness and the guilt that's in it, knowing that you delight in washing away our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. We pray for anyone who hears outside of Christ. Would you help them to see their need of Christ and grant grace that they would flee to Him for the salvation only He can give. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.