Two dreams & a sale

Good morning. We have, as you see, a little different arrangement up front here, so hopefully the adjustments will go smoothly. One of the things that we'd want to bring forward is something we announced initially last week. You also have them itemized in your bulletin briefly, and that's the electives.

One of them that we'll be asking you to consider here is you and Christ, and Christ and you, and I would Put forth to you an important point about these. This series is not simply a repetition of prior electives, but will in fact be looking at some different perspectives and angles, particularly with you in Christ and Christ in you, having to do with how did we get here? Not simply what is our position in Christ, but how did we get to the place of being in Christ and having Christ in us? So I'd encourage you to give consideration to that.

We also have the book of Ephesians that's being offered, as well as the book of Revelation. And the sign-up sheets for each of those is in the... lobby bulletin board there, so we ask that you sign up. That really helps with planning materials, where classes are, where they can be accommodated, and what kind of setup we need. So if you can do that, make your considerations and decisions, and then sign up accordingly, that'll be real helpful to us.

We'll have an update on the Uganda trip and ministry. Bruce gave me my Uganda visa this morning, so I guess I'm going. So anyway, it is kind of a neat thing, an exciting thing to look forward to. I heard from Joseph, who is the pastor of this Shisenyo Bible Church, Mango Village Bible Church over there. and it is real encouraging to hear from him, so I anticipate spending some time with him. He is a part-time pastor, part-time farmer, so I might be helping with both, we'll see.

As we started this book of Genesis way back in the beginning, oh yes, and there was a beginning, Way back in the beginning, as a matter of fact, that was about a year ago, we started Genesis and we presented the creation account and one of the things we also presented there was we wanted you to memorize the book of Genesis. Remember that?

There may be some rapid heartbeat or something like that going along with it. But what we said is, no, we'll boil it down to eight words. So I'd like to have you go through those with me. Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. And we had some sort of little memory tool, like if it helps you to think of Courtney Fling's Fig Newtons. Sorry about that. Alan is just joking.

If that helps you, then fine. But anyway, those are the words we'd like you to memorize in order to memorize Genesis. We are in fact embarking on this section, this last section here today, that begins to center upon Joseph. Joseph isn't the sole character. No, there are other things that will be involved and other people, but we'll see from this point forward that Joseph will be a principal character as we study through the rest of the book of Genesis here.

Now, one of the things that comes out of the passage that we'll be studying through is, we kind of title this slide, Boys Will Be Men. taking the usual statement that people will say, and the reality is they will grow up, at least in some sense. And an important perspective, since Jacob had 12 sons, and yes, they all did grow up. One of the perspectives here, as we step into this, Jacob is more than 100 years old here. He is quite aged. Of course, one of the things you'll notice looking at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the longevity at that particular period of time is greater than it is now, although it was nowhere near what it was prior to the flood.

His oldest sons by this time are grown men, some of them young, some of them older, but all grown men. Joseph is the second youngest. He is specifically stated here to be 17 years old. It calls him a youth there in verse 2. So imagine, here's the scenario. You've got these grown men from younger to older. The oldest one is Reuben and then I'm kind of stair-stepping down through that. Now is Joseph.

Benjamin was too young at this point to have been involved with these events. That's one reason you won't see his name brought up. It's not that he wasn't around. He was. But he is simply too young, being kind of the one at the tail end, to have been involved. Later on, we'll see that he is involved in this account with Joseph. Benjamin here is this last one, number 12, and he was born not a year or two later apart from the others, but rather many years later.

The other thing that comes out of this is as Jacob is now over 100 years old, he is also not moving around much. It seems in this account, particularly, sticks around the city of Hebron, while his older sons watched the flocks. It was the pattern in those days, and is even among those who have the latitude to do so, to move the flocks around to different places depending on the time of year and the specific weather for that year. And so Jacob would stay in Hebron while the older sons watched the flocks wherever that would be, frequently at some distance away from Hebron.

Now, Joseph came back, as verses two through four lay out here, a bad report to dad. Of course, since they're watching the flocks, maybe it's a bad report to dad. Okay? All right. But anyway, So he's got a bad report to dad. Now it doesn't tell us the detail of what's bad.

We don't know whether the sheep are just going crazy. Being as sheep are. And by the way, I've spent some time watching sheep and they are crazy. I remember being absolutely stunned one time watching a sheep just bang his head repeatedly again and again and again. Bang his head against the fence.

I thought, what are you doing that for? The grass on this side is the same as the grass on that side. You know? It didn't make any sense. But that's sheep for you. Okay. The end of verse 2 has him bringing back this bad report to his father Jacob. And we don't know exactly how that came about. It might have come about in such a way as to make his brothers ticked off. Let's imagine a scenario that might have taken place. Maybe one of the brothers, or maybe more than one of the brothers, did some things that was not too wise and not too helpful for the sheep.

And Joseph says, I'm going home and telling Dad. And they say, oh boy, okay, they're not liking this. Or maybe he doesn't tell them, but he goes home and tells Dad anyway. Now, no doubt Jacob wasn't pleased to hear this bad news about his other sons.

But one of the things that it did is, ah, Joseph will tell me the truth. Joseph will be the one to come and bring this to me. And Joseph looks even better compared to the ones who are doing the bad thing. Verse 3 says, and boy this is a potent verse.

Now Israel, that is Jacob, Israel was the name the Lord gave him, loved Joseph more than all his sons. We've been, as we've been going through the chapters in Genesis, stepping our way through the chapters and noticing that for generations this favoritism has been a problem. It was a problem even between Jacob and Esau. It was a problem in Jacob's earlier life, even favoritism between Rachel and Leah. In Genesis 37, Jacob is called, and this is a note that's not in your handout, Jacob is called Jacob in verses 1, 2, and 34, but he's called Israel every time it's in relationship to Joseph.

Isn't that interesting? Called by the name that the Lord gave him when it's in relationship to Joseph. Otherwise, he's called Jacob. Fascinating. Some possibilities that come out of this and out of this whole account. Here's the first one. It may be that Jacob, who was named Israel by God himself, spent more time talking with Joseph about the Lord since Joseph was his favored son. I won't spend time talking for the rest of these, but this is my favorite son. I'll talk to the Lord with him. Can you see that happening?

Can you see that making Joseph have a whole different perspective and outlook than his brothers, and a different spiritual outlook? Here's another possibility, and I would consider both of these possible. It may also be that Jacob, having learned some things from the Lord later in life, okay, had more time and opportunity to share spiritually with Joseph, because the others were already out with the sheep most often. And so Joseph, who was still at home there in Hebron, or wherever else they were, would be the one with whom, okay, now that I've learned these things, the rest are gone, but Joseph, I can talk to you about the Lord. So part of it may have been simply a fatherly ministry of opportunity that's going on here. But that opportunity, that window of opportunity had already passed for the older sons.

Okay. No doubt this report here about Jacob's other sons from Joseph reinforced Jacob's favoritism towards Joseph. Now, everyone's sentiments are quite apparent. Everybody can see what's happening here, maybe except Joseph. We'll see. Jacob had not seen the error of his parents' ways, even though it was quite evident there was a lot of problem because of Isaac favoring Esau and Rebekah favoring Jacob. He'd seen that and seen all of what it caused, even to the point of him being terrified of a meeting decades later with Esau. And yet, he still didn't see, ah, the favoritism was the problem. He should have, but he didn't.

Jacob carries on this family tradition with his wives, favoring one over the other. Rachel he loved. Leah, not so much. Then among the 12 sons, he figures, hey, Jacobs, excuse me, Joseph is my favorite. Joseph is the one that I really love. The rest of them, they are sons, and I'll deal with them as sons, but boy, Joseph, boy, he really is my favorite. And what happens is his brothers hate him for that. Joseph, you always get the best. You always get Father's attention. Father always favors you in every decision that he makes. It says there that they could not speak peaceably to him. Isn't it interesting? It didn't say that they didn't do it very often. They just couldn't.

Jacob declares his favoritism by making Joseph, oh man, a special multicolored tunic. I'm going to mark my favored son with this multicolored tunic. of whatever kind. We don't know what the pattern was, but with this multicolored, boy, this guy stood out. You can imagine the sons walking through a town. What's with this guy, you know?

And he's not the oldest one, as would be traditional, but the youngest one among them, since Benjamin was still little. It was also a problem You see, Joseph could have said, Dad, that's a very nice tunic, but if you don't mind, I'll not wear it very often. That might have been the wise move, but what he did is instead wear it everywhere.

Now, this is the first dream drama, or since we're talking about sheep, dream drama, okay? All right, part one. There are two dreams and one of the patterns that we're going to begin seeing in this section of Genesis, dreams where they take place and have significance happen in pairs. And one of the advantages of them happening in pairs is the understanding of one is consistent with the understanding of the other and you have a confirmation, a means of making sure I have the right understanding because both dreams mean the same thing. So that's a pattern. We're seeing the first of it. We're going to see more as we step our way through Genesis. Here's this dream drama. Joseph tells his brothers about a dream, asking them all to listen.

Now let me ask you this. Was that a good idea? Maybe not so much, okay? Now, no doubt the Lord gave him the dream as an insight into what was to take place, and that's fine. And it might have been wiser if he were to go to his father and say, hey, this is what I was dreaming. What do you think about that? And what do you think I ought to say? But he doesn't do that. Instead, he goes and announces to his brothers, hey, I had a dream, guys. I want you all to listen. Oh, wow. OK?

His first dream here has to do with these sheaves, sheaves usually being in the harvesting of some kind of a grain crop. In the dream, they were all in the field, binding sheaves, when Joseph's sheaves stood up and rose up, not only standing erect, but standing above all the others. Joseph's brother's sheaves, every one of them, all bowed down to Joseph's one upright sheave.

Well, guess what? The brothers did not hear this and say, I wonder what that means. They knew exactly what this is about. As a matter of fact, well, I'll tell you about that next, I don't want to spoil the story. Okay, so here's Joseph's first dream. He's dreaming and here are these sheaves and he's telling his brothers all boldly about it, saying even, I had a dream, everybody listen.

Boy, not only was that a problem in terms of is this the wise thing to do, it maybe even reflects either something between being naive and being arrogant. Okay, isn't that interesting? Now, on hearing about the dream, the brothers said, oh, isn't that nice? No. The brothers now hate Joseph even more than they did before.

He just turned up the heat. This is getting to be boiling. But we're only at the end of dream one. Oh boy, it gets better. Something interesting, those of you who have been looking maybe in the how to study the Bible class, here's a little bit of a Hebrew poetry pattern. Notice that the repetition and then the rhyming. While we're working on that, let's move on to dream drama part two. This is on page one of your handout.

Joseph figures, well that one didn't hit a home run, I'll just do another one. Right? No. So anyway, he then tells another dream to his brothers, as if that's going to help. This time he includes his father in the loop here. Apparently a change of situation allowed that.

The dream here has the sun and the moon and eleven stars all bowing down to Joseph. Now, oddly enough, they're not puzzled about that one either. And the pattern that I told you, remember there's two dreams paralleled and the pattern was that one dream would reinforce that you had the correct understanding of the other. And strangely enough, both dreams they were just as clear as could be exactly what it meant. The family is bowing down to Joseph here.

So Jacob Jacob, now the father, responded to hearing this dream by rebuking Joseph with a question. What are you talking about? Your father and mother and the brothers are all going to be bowing down to you? Boy, what can you be thinking? Well, Joseph's brothers were all jealous, and Jacob pondered this. What's going on here? What's happening? It's probably one of those rare moments when he was puzzled by his son Joseph and maybe not totally pleased. Well, the next circumstance that comes about, this is the slide on a mission.

Joseph's brothers go to pasture up there in Shechem. Shechem was the city that you remember a few chapters back where Joseph Joseph had not been there but his brothers had been there and Jacob had bought some property while he was there. And so now Jacob sends his son Joseph off to check on his brothers and do what? Bring back a report. I'm sure it was in triplicate, right? But bring back a report of what is going on up there with the flocks and your brothers, okay?

So Joseph gets there. If he was walking, it was about three days' trip at normal speed, a couple days if he hustled, okay? So he gets up to Shechem, and he's kind of walking around and looking for them, and some fellow there who happened to notice that his brothers had talked about moving north to Dauphin, I told Joseph, hey, I overheard him saying, we're going to head north to Dauphin. So about roughly 15 miles to the north, they head there. And so he's off to Dauphin.

It was a Canaanite city, prominent. There are still fairly recognizable ruins of it to today. And the area around that is very good pasture. The pictures of it, the green and lush, ideal place to pasture the sheep. So here's Joseph, and they see him coming at a distance, which the area around there, it's possible to pasture the sheep in such a way that you're up on a hillside, and then the valley there is kind of long and flat, and see somebody coming from quite a distance.

So that's doable. Now, as Joseph begins to become visible, and guess what? How could they tell it was him? the coat, you know? Here comes the coat! Right? Here comes the coat. So here's this guy, he's like a flashing neon light. Uh-oh, here's Joseph, okay? And of course, they just love him dearly. Not so much, right?

As they see him coming, as soon as they see him coming, they begin working up a plan how we're going to deal with this guy. The initial discussion was along the lines of, let's kill him, okay? Now, one of the things you've got to remember as we go through this is the plan was real dynamic, shifting, depending on who was speaking and what their motivations and intents were. Initially, they said, let's just kill them and throw them in one of these cisterns.

Now, a cistern had various forms, but very commonly there would be a hole in the ground, sometimes fairly small, sometimes a little bit larger, but usually not too large because they'd want to cover it up and then they would go down into the rock below and in that cistern they would often times have to line it with plaster or somehow seal it off so it wouldn't dissipate and then you just fill it with water and use it for a dry period. So during the wet period to fill up the cistern, be able to draw upon it.

Now you'd have to cover it up or do something to keep people from falling into it. But if you were down in a dry cistern, and apparently this was a dry one, in a dry cistern it was tough to see much other than the hole above you. There was no lights down there. And if you yell for help, unless somebody's standing right above the opening, they can't hear you. So they said, all right, let's throw them in one of these cisterns. That was the plan.

Ruben is the oldest. Now, Ruben is the oldest and being the oldest, there may have been some sense, oh, I need to kind of protect my brother here and this let's kill him idea needs to be put aside because that's a real problem. And as the oldest, I need to do something to preserve my father's, you know, place here since, you know, I'm the oldest and that's my responsibility. So then, Reuben talks them out of taking Joseph's life.

Let's just put him in this cistern, this pit, but let's not kill him. Then we can deal with him later. Maybe let him go or something. So the brothers, one thing they've got to do before they put him in that hole, get that coat off. So they get the coat off. First thing we've got to do is get that coat off that guy. Then we put him down the hole.

So he's trapped there alive. He can't go anywhere. It was dry. He couldn't even drink any water. Even if he did, he was standing in it, so it wasn't great. So he was down in this dry cistern without his coat and without anybody really able to listen to him.

So as Joseph's older brothers are sitting down to a meal, they might have thrown something down to Joseph, who knows, They see a caravan of traders. Oh, and by the way, if they threw something at Joseph, interesting, the next meal they would have with him would be with Joseph at the head of the table. Isn't that interesting? So now, they see these traders.

The Bible says they're Ishmaelites. The Ishmaelites, as you may recall, were those who were descended from Ishmael who was a son of Abraham but not of the designated line. So here are people who are descended from Ishmael and that would be that genealogical title. someone descended from Ishmael. In this case, however, we have to remember that the Ishmaelites, those descended from Ishmael, so commonly were involved in trading that that became a name for anybody who did trading.

And that's why at first you might say, well, wait a minute, they're Midianites. Are they Midianites? And by the way, Midian was another son of Abraham, not of the line of Isaac. Are they Midianites or Ishmaelites? Well, they are ethnically, and of the lineage of Midian, they're Ishmaelites because they're traitors, okay?

So that's the explanation there. So now these traitors come and Judah gets an idea. Judah is the third son, excuse me, the fourth son in line, and Judah is the one who cooks up this idea, hey, Of course, we're not going to kill him. Let's just sell him. That way he'll still be alive, right? Let's just sell him to these traders. We'll make some money and our problem will go away. In fact, our problem will go to Egypt. So he cooks up this scheme. Apparently, the Ishmaelites are not going to stand around for a long time. So this was something rather hastily brought together. That's what they decided to do.

They pull him up out of the pit. And of course, they're not going to give him his coat. But they say, hey, how much money you give us? And the amount that they gave was, according to all the records, the standard amount that you'd pay for a slave of that age. They gave him the going rate for a slave. And off he goes with a free ride. Well, all expenses paid, I guess, to Egypt, okay?

Down to the house of Potiphar. Now, Reuben comes back, apparently he had been like in town or away getting supplies, comes back, looks down at the pit, Joseph isn't there. Ah, he's in a panic, okay? Well, finally they get him settled down and they cook up a scheme, how are we going to cover this with our father? And so they kill a male goat and put the blood all over this coat. They bring the coat down to his father and his father looks at it and concludes, Joseph must be, with all this blood, torn to shreds. And there's no sense even looking for body parts. He is just shredded and gone.

He says, and then I'll go down to Sheol grieving. By the way, that's the first time this word shows up, and it was a common Hebrew term, is my distress is so great that I will go to the grave with this distress. That's what the expression means, essentially.

Now, let's take a look here. There are some slides here on page two of your handout. We want to look at what are some of the lessons to be drawn out of this chapter and the chapters before. One of those is Jacob as a husband and father. Jacob has consistently shown and carried on the family tradition of favoritism with his wives. The painful problems with that were evident. Here is Rachel, the one who was loved. That's inside a cistern. That's a cistern at night.

Okay, so he gets this free ride to Egypt. Here's the lineage of Ishmael, the Ishmaelites, and here's the lineage of Midian, another son of Abraham. Here's the reality vacation package that Joseph gets. There we go. Now, Jacob as a husband and father, certainly you think about Jacob, how he was brought up in this household where he was a twin. The other twin was certainly not an identical twin.

But father favored the son Esau, and Jacob was favored by Rebekah, his mother. They went through that selling of the birthright for a pot of lentils. They went through the deception the deception of Isaac with a goat skin. And now what's interesting is they're going to deceive Jacob with a goat's blood. Interesting, huh? Jacob had shown all this favoritism. Leah longed to be loved, even conditionally. I would even be happy, she said, if he would love me just for having sons for him. I would be happy even for the things that I do. She so longed to be loved.

Jacob didn't learn the lesson about the favoritism, did he? He saw what damage it did, but it didn't sink in. So he carried on the favoritism with his son Joseph. Even, I'm sure seeing some of the jealousy and hatred that that stirred, he continued to do so.

It resulted in his own needless sorrow. Why was it needless? Needless sorrow because, one, it was not something that was necessary. The favoritism was not required. But needless also because he thought, because of the deception, and that's also something he had grown up with and carried out himself, because of the deception, he thought Joseph was dead when in fact Joseph was still alive. He did not understand what was true.

Jacob's eldest 10 sons when Joseph was 17 were all grown men, some older and some younger, but grown men. They had seen their father Jacob living rightly at times and wrongly at times. They'd seen both. Rather than continuing to react to that set of rights and wrong circumstances, they should have taken responsibility as grown men for their actions and made the right decisions. Obviously, they didn't. Jacob's involvement with their guidance, even at some late stage, might have made a difference. Jacob's recognition of his favoritism might have made a difference.

How about Joseph as a son and as a brother? Recognizing that Joseph was 17 at this time, certainly he was still in the growing up process, We can see and understand that he might not have had a great deal of wisdom about all the family problems that were developing and he was in fact at the center of them. All these problems were things that both his brothers and his father were all casting upon him as the younger one.

He was in the midst of it. We can see in this passage that for the most part Joseph seems morally good and does seem to tell the truth and things of that sort. It also seems that he needs to outgrow some immaturity, some naivete, some tattling, maybe some arrogance and boasting. These are things that he needed to grow out of. He would learn not to boast about anyone's dreams, not even his own. Joseph was not perfect and had some growing up to do, no doubt. But what is significant?

He did learn the lessons that the Lord laid before him. Did you notice that? As we step through this, he learned the lessons that the Lord laid before him. He continued, from anything we can tell, to, I think as a good generalization, stay in continuing fellowship with the Lord.

Here is 2 Peter 3, 18, Apostle Peter says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Grow here is an imperative. What does that mean? We are to take an active part in that growing, that is to responsibly relate to the Lord, to be responsive to the Lord's ministry with us, the lessons that he's teaching us, especially those in this word.

Now, there's no doubt, we saw here and we'll see some more, the Lord allowed nasty things to happen in Joseph's life. And we're not done looking at those. But he did come to see that all those were of God's good purpose. Notice what he says to his brothers chapters later. As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. He did learn that lesson, didn't he? Do you think he realized that when they threw him down the pit? Probably not. When he was being hauled behind a camel on the way down to Egypt, that's a long walk. That's some kind of reality vacation.

Later, Paul would write to the saints in Rome, Romans 8, 28 and 29, for we know that God causes all things to work together for good. Does it mean that each thing that happens is immediately and in that circumstance recognized as good? No. No, it doesn't, does it? But there is a growing, a learning with this perspective in mind.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, what lessons for each of us, what lessons, Lord, as you have laid out there? And we pray that you would bring home to our hearts the lessons that you're teaching us and the recognition that through it, even the things that are difficult, even the things that are hard and painful, that they're all for good purpose, that you have good ultimate outcome and intent, that we be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, for all that you've written here for our benefit. In Jesus' name, amen.