Genesis 37:12-1312 Soon after this, Joseph’s brothers went to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem. 13 When they had been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, “Your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shechem. Get ready, and I will send you to them.” “I’m ready to go,” Joseph replied. |
Genesis 37:18-24Joseph Sold into Slavery18 When Joseph’s brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him. 19 “Here comes the dreamer!” they said. 20 “Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. We can tell our father, ‘A wild animal has eaten him.’ Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!” 21 But when Reuben heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph’s rescue. “Let’s not kill him,” he said. 22 “Why should we shed any blood? Let’s just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness. Then he’ll die without our laying a hand on him.” Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. 23 So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing. 24 Then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it. |
Genesis 50:2020 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. |
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe)
I think this simple little song is one of my all-time favourites. Laura, you outdid yourself this morning. I don't know what happened to you, but it happened to me.
As you were playing, I was just overwhelmed. I still am. My emotions were just all over the place, and I just see that as the spirit that was doing that.
So, thank you for your gift that became God's gift to us. Thank you. Sorry, old man's emotions get to him a little bit.
We're starting a new series. By the way, it's written by Darlene Czech. She didn't write too many, and the last song we're singing was also written by Darlene, so it's a Darlene morning, this morning.
Starting a new series today called At the Right Time. Sorry about Joseph, but we'll get to Joseph in a moment. Father, help me to breathe in this moment.
Thank you that you breathe your breath into each one of us, that living breath of your Holy Spirit. May your breath just cover this place today as you blow the wind of your Holy Spirit. And as always, we pray, Lord Jesus, that we may see you and only you.
We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. This painting that I have here this morning is an original oil painting.
I got this as a gift in my first congregation in 1988, so that made me 30 years old. When I received this from the artist that made this, a young woman by the name, sorry, my bladder is leaking. I got this from a young woman called Tia Barnard in 1988 because of something that we shared in 1987.
So, I'm saying the age because I want you to understand a little bit of the impact, because I still carry the impact of that to this day. I was 29 years old. It was about 9, 9.30 in the evening.
Elsie and I were sitting. We still had a manse in those days. We were sitting in the manse.
The kids, two of the three were born. They were in bed, and we were having a cup of tea. And the phone rang in my office.
Now, remember those days we did not have cell phones. We still had phones that had tails on them. Phone rang in the office.
I went to the office. I picked up the phone, and the voice on the other side, it was just this deadly, shocked, couldn't really speak voice, was Tia. She just said, Aubrey, you need to come to my house immediately.
Something terrible has happened. You need to come to my house. Tia's kids were about the same age as ours.
Her little girl was five. Her little boy was three. I said to Elsie, something's really wrong at Tia's house.
I need to get there. So, I jump in the car, and I drive as fast as I can, and I get there. She's waiting at the door, and this woman is shaking.
Got two little kids clinging to her legs. I come in there. I said, Tia, what's going on? She said, just come in, and we walk into the living room, and I'm stunned, because there on the floor lies her husband, dead with a gunshot wound in his head.
He committed suicide in front of her and those two little kids. That leaves a mark in your life forever. The cops came, sorry, the police came a few minutes later.
The ambulance folks came a few minutes later, and it was chaos. So, they wanted to talk to Tia. So, I took the two little ones.
Good thing we knew each other. So, I took the two little ones, and we went to their bedroom, and I tried to settle them down, and when all the stuff was done, I helped Tia put the little ones to bed, and we just sat there, and I cried with her, and I was stunned with her, because you do not have too many words in moments like those. It was early morning when I left.
I did call Elsie from her house just to say, I'm okay, don't worry, I'm going to be there late. Go to bed. I left in the early hours of the morning to go back home.
As we stood at the door, Tia just held on to me. She didn't want to let go, and I said to her, Tia, I know you don't want to hear this right now, and I know it's going to sound really crazy, but you will get through this. It's not going to be easy.
It's going to be really hard and really tough. It's not going to be quick. It's going to take an awful long time.
There's going to be a lot of frustration, a lot of questions, a lot of hurt, but don't despair. You will get through this. A little audacious of me, right? Where do I get the right to speak such a promise into such tragedy? Well, actually, I got it in a pit, a really deep, dark pit, and the young boy who was in the bottom of that pit could not get out of that pit even if he wanted to, and if he tried, his brothers would kick him right down back into the pit.
But don't let me tell you the story. Let's read the story. Genesis chapter 37, verse 12.
Soon after this, Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flocks at Shechem. When they'd been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shechem. Get ready, and I will send you to them.
I'm ready to go, Joseph replied. When Joseph's brothers saw him coming, they recognised him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him.
Here comes the dreamer, they said. Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. We can tell our father a wild animal has eaten him, and then we'll see what becomes of his dreams.
But when Reuben heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph's rescue. Let's not kill him, he said. Why should we shed any blood? Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness, and then you'll die without our laying a hand on him.
Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. Now note this verse. So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing.
Then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty. There was no water in it.
He didn't land with a splash. Then, just as they were sitting down to eat, they looked up and saw a caravan of camels in the distance coming toward them. It was a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers, what will we gain by killing our brother? We'd have to cover up the crime. Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders. After all, he's our brother, our own flesh and blood.
His brothers agreed. So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph's brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for 20 pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt.
Can you imagine being Joseph? He's crying out for help and his brothers care more about their lunch than they do about their little brother or helping him. They despised the boy. Why? A little family background in this.
Jacob, Joseph's father and the brother's father, treated Joseph differently from all of the other kids. Why? Well, there's a reason. Remember, Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel, but only one love.
Rachel. And when Rachel died, giving birth to her second son, Ben-Oni, or as we know him, Benjamin, Jacob just poured out all of his love on his son, Joseph. The other boys would work outside.
Joseph played inside. They got their clothes from Value Village. Joseph had a coat that was handmade, hand-stitched with long sleeves, specifically for him.
No, it wasn't a coat of multi-colours. Never says that ever in the Bible. I don't know where they got that.
The Hebrew is actually a kind of difficult word. It actually, that word is the same word that is used for the robe that a young prince would wear, but never said anything about amazing technicolour twinkle. I was dreamed out by a man called Andrew.
Sorry about that. The brothers would work. Joseph would play.
The brothers would be out in the field, we read. Joseph would hang out at home. Jacob treated his 11th-born son like he was the firstborn.
So to say that his brothers didn't like him was a little bit of a understatement. If I take you back in this chapter to verse 4, 5, and 8, verse 4 says, they hated him. Verse 5 says, they hated him even more.
Verse 8 says, they hated him more and more. So do you get it? They hated him. They really hated him.
So when Joseph shows up where they're working in the field, they go ballistic on this boy. They ripped the robe off him. They grabbed him and they threw him in the cistern.
Angry words. Rip, grab, throw. And Joseph, Joseph never saw it coming.
He had no idea this was going to happen. Neither did Tia. Neither do we.
Before you know it, the pit is there. Joseph's pit was a cistern. Tia's pit was a gunshot in her living room.
Yours? Mine? I don't know. But you do. You know those pits.
Loss of someone. Relationship that breaks up. A really bad diagnosis.
No diagnosis. Losses? Struggles? I don't know. But what I do know about the pit is that it's really deep and it's really dark.
And when you're in that pit, your focus is to get out of the hurt, get out of the pit as fast as you can. But that's easier said than done, right? Think about Joseph. Before Joseph's life would get any better, it got really worse.
Went from abandonment to enslavement, to being entrapped, to imprisonment. That pit just got deeper and deeper. And despite that, this is where I want you to get.
Despite that, Joseph's anger never became hatred. Joseph's heart never became hard. But through all of this adversity, Joseph didn't just survive.
Joseph thrived. Took 20 years. 20 years later, Joseph was the second most powerful man of his generation.
So how did Joseph flourish through the tragedy? Can I take you back to our story? And I'm doing a little bit of the story that I will finish in the last sermon in the series. So we're doing four and the last one that's coming just before the summer comes. I'll do the rest of this.
But I need to go to that to explain how he could flourish despite all of this difficulty that he was going through. So 20 years later, the tables are turned. Joseph is the powerful one.
The brothers come to Egypt, and they're the weak ones. They have nothing. Joseph reveals himself to them, and they stand, look at Joseph, and they're thinking, okay, he's gonna pay us back.
We put him in the pit, he's gonna put us in the pit, and he's gonna leave us there, and we will die in prison forever. But he doesn't, does he? Why? Why doesn't he pay them back? Why doesn't he put them in that pit? The answer is in Scripture. Last chapter of Joseph's story, last chapter of the book of Genesis, chapter 50, verse 20, says this, speaks to his brothers, and he says, you intended to harm me.
And here comes the but, but this is about God, which is even bigger. You intended to harm me, but God, God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many.
See, here's the thing. In God's hands, the intended evil became eventual good. I'm not saying it's easy.
I'm not saying it's gonna happen right now. I'm not saying there's not frustration, but I'm saying you'll get through this, says the story of Joseph. That's why I could say that to Tia.
You'll get through this. Joseph never gave up. Can you remember the story, how it ended? That torn robe became a royal robe.
That pit became a palace. That broken family grew old in Egypt together. Why? Because of verse 20.
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. But I want to give you a little Hebrew lesson for today. And this is a good word to remember, but you're going to struggle to say it because it starts with a ch.
The Hebrew word that we translate for intended or meant to is the word chabash, a chashav. Chashav is an old primitive root and literally means to weave. So take that away.
Put that text back, Ted. Now let's take that word intended and let's use the word weave. You weaved wicked and bad things against me to harm me, but God took that and God rewove that into something good.
See, God is the master weaver. Satan will weave his Satan webs around our lives. Life will weave their webs sometimes, and life will weave sometimes really painful moments like 1987.
But the master weaver takes those old weaves that were so wrong and he weaves them all back and they will be beautiful. Don't give up. Don't give up.
If God could redeem Joseph's life, don't you think God will redeem yours? In the moment, it can sometimes feel hard and difficult and feel like it's never going to end. But that weaver has never changed. And God is good even when life isn't.
Will you hold on to that, please? In the good, in the bad, in the ugly. You'll get through it. As you see, that's one of God's favourite words, through.
God gets us through stuff. Through the Reed Sea, dry to leave the enemies behind. Through the wilderness with manna and quail and water from the rock.
Through the Jordan River into the land of milk and honey. Through the valley of the shadow of death to a table and green pastures and quiet waters. He is the God of getting us through.
Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to be painful because the weaving and the re-weaving might sometimes be hard and difficult. It's not always quick.
20 years from the age of 17 to the age of 37 for Joseph. Sometimes we see a perfect mess where God sees a perfect opportunity. We call it Egypt.
God calls it protective custody. We see Satan and Satan's tricks and God sees Satan being tripped up in his own tricks. Joseph will be the first one to tell each one of us that what we're talking about this morning is not easy.
But Joseph will remind us that when you're in the pit, you have only one place to look at. You can only look up. And when you look up, you look until someone comes down to give you a hand.
God did for Joseph. And at the right time, in the right way, he will for you. Amen.
Take a few moments of silent prayer. Thank you, Lord, that we may look up even from the pit. Actually, especially from the pit.
And that we may see you and know that you come down and you lift us up. Thank you for walking with us. Thank you that at the right time, in the right way, you, Lord, will get us through whatever we need to get through.
We're in a hurry, Lord, always, because everything is fast. We have to have the internet and it must be faster, and the cars must be faster, and the food must be faster. Thank you that you have your time and you're always on time at the right time.
Help us to walk with you through the Red Sea, through the desert, through the dark valleys, knowing there is a table and a feast, and we are the guest of honour. Thank you for what you do for us. Thank you for who you are in our lives.
So, Lord, can we pray together? And please pray with me. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
Amen.