God Brings Life Out of Death - Joseph "The Torah" [2 of4] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 1/15/2012

um so today we are continuing in our series in the first five books of the bible that we're reading through in these first nine weeks of 2012 uh reading through the torah which is the traditional jewish name for the first five books of the bible and to give as an entry point if you want to open your bibles you can turn with me to genesis chapter 37 we're going to be telling part of the story of joseph here today joseph and his brothers but to do that let me tell you one more story after i read those stories one more story before we read this story we are in a one-story building no two stories or two stories can you find how many times i say the word story okay i'm not going to use that one the rest of the day there you go spontaneous and it will stay that way so there you go so you see a picture up here of a flag of a country probably most of you don't know what country this is any takers anybody in the other rooms this is the flag of the country mozambique mozambique uh it's on south southeast on the eastern side of africa and it's pretty large country 20 almost 23 million people it's the only flag of all the flags in the world that has a machine gun as a part of the symbolism of the flag and that might kind of strike us as well it's kind of crazy uh but it's actually not funny the the symbol tells a story of the history of these people so uh mozambique was was colonized the people were colonized by portugal a long time ago and it was just in the 1970s uh i think of 75 uh the the people of mozambique gained independence and began to form their own government and so on and very quickly in 1977 a number of groups were vying for power and a very bitter uh civil war began uh the lasted 15 years from 77 to 92 and it was a very brutal uh bitter bitter war a lot of a lot of people died machine guns are very much a part of the story of mozambique 1992 they gain independence and you know there are people who are trying to pick up the pieces and build their future as a people together six years ago in 2006 a group of artists christian artists who live who are mozambicans and they are part of a much larger art collective in mozambique called nucleo de art and they got together and they wanted to start making art that would tell stories about their hope for their people and for the future of mozambique but through the lens of their worldview through the lens of the gospel and what hope does the gospel hold for their people and so they made lots and lots of art during this those years and one piece has gained international attention it stands in the british museum today and it's this big thing right here it's a gigantic sculpture it's called the tree of life and it's obviously it's taken uh from the image drawn right out of the beginning of the book of genesis which most of you read about earlier and it's big tall thing it's over 10 10 feet tall and it's the tree of life this image of of flourishing of divine life shared with humanity and there's lots of creatures and insects buzzing and hopping around and so on it's very beautiful image now the tree of life doesn't only occur in the book of genesis it occurs uh one other key time in the bible not in the first pages but you'll read about it in december so in the last pages of the bible so in john the visionaries uh kind of vision of the new creation of the restored new heavens and earth he envisions a city but also a garden that's also a temple at the same time and it's just a lot of imagery kind of melded together and he envisions a river and the tree of life is there and he envisions the tree of life he says its leaves are for the healing of the nations and so the tree of life in the bible is a symbol of hope it's a symbol of god's life restored to bring renewed flourishing to humanity and that's what they are crafting as they made the sculpture right here now that's cool tree of life what makes it most powerful is what it's made out of which is probably most of what most of you are trying to figure out as you're looking at it right what's this thing made out of it's made entirely out of bits and pieces of machine gun parts the machine guns that were used in the civil war to kill people do i need to say anything more you know this is this is very very powerful image right this tells a story right there doesn't it so what's the story it's telling is is that there because of the resurrection of jesus because of the gospel and where god is taking our world there's hope the tree of life for the healing of the nations but that hope does not cancel out or ignore the tragic violence and bitterness and selfishness and tragedy of sin and death in our world they go together and it's precisely out of the tragedy that god weaves a new story and he makes something beautiful this this sculpture tells the story of the gospel visually right and it tells the story of the bible and uh specifically it it's a perfect way of symbolizing what's happening in the book of genesis that we have been uh reading through so keep this image in your mind as we jump into genesis chapter 37. let's uh let's get rolling verse one we're just going to read a lot of this story today and let the story kind of make its impression on us verse one jacob he lived in the land where his father had stayed in the land of canaan and this is the account of jacob's family line so let's first get a context here big picture so i remember the big story of genesis chapters 1 through 11 this is the god creates a good world humans mess everything up because of sin and rebellion the fall and the world just falls apart so last week we talked about god's rescue plan he's starting a new family through abraham a family a blessing through whom blessing and salvation will spread somehow to all humanity through something god's going to do with his family and so the promise as you got read through genesis the promise of blessing it moves from abraham it gets repeated to his son isaac it gets repeated to his son jacob whose name gets changed to israel so it's two names but same guy in the story and israel means he struggles with god okay now as you read through the book of genesis are these good guys or bad guys abraham isaac jacob good guys are bad guys yeah you know right so they're kind of both they're like most of us right and that's the whole point of the story is that we find ourselves in their story so yeah like they're they struggle to have faith they make a lot of dumb dumb decisions and jacob oh my jacob means deceiver his other name means he struggles with god right this guy's a total chump right he's a cheat he's a liar he's a thief and god sticks with him you know what i mean not because god approves of his behavior but because god is committed to working out his salvation in the midst of stubborn stupid humans and that's good news for most of us you know what i'm saying like we should read these stories and not be like oh like what's wrong with why would god like hang out with these people or bless these people or something and he's like well he gave salvation to you you know he wants to give it to you so come on give these guys a break like that's what we're supposed to do is we read these stories this is our story these are our mistakes that we read as we go through the book of genesis so this is a story we're reading about jacob's family here jacob has a bunch of a bunch of kids here's one of them joseph joseph was a young man of 17. and he was tending the flocks with his brothers the sons of bilhah and the sons of zilpah his father's wives and he brought their father a bad report about them now israel loved joseph more than any of his other sons because he had been born to him in his old age and so he made for him an ornate robe and when his brother saw that their father loved him more than any of them they hated him they could not speak a kind word to him so just again this gets kind of complicated because jacob has a really big big family so jacob uh trump that he is right how many how many women does he sleep with to produce children how many wives does he have his four wives his four wives now again there's an interesting discussion on uh facebook pages black facebook page this week about like you know like what's up with like all these people in the bible doing all these morally questionable things and god's like blessing them and you know okay well first of all if you read a story in the bible about somebody doing and we're like well that is so screwed up does it mean that the story of the bible is like promoting it or saying yeah here's a good way to live you know just because it's in the bible no it's actually most likely it's in the bible because the story is criticizing their behavior right so jacob takes four wives and and how does that turn out for their family the whole story is about their family disintegrating because of this it's actually criticizing what he's doing here and so and how does this disintegration work itself out so he has four wives from whom come the twelve sons and these become the twelve tribes of jacob who does he love the most which wife does he love the most rachel therefore he loves her kids the most joseph and benjamin and joseph he loves the most for sure so what uh what does joseph do excuse me what does jacob do for joseph to show his favoritism he makes the robe the rope some of your translations might have the coat of many colors some of your translations might have the the variegated colors or ornately embroidered or something like this the reason why our translations differ so much is because nobody actually has a clue what this word means right so it's a really obscure hebrew word i think the probably the best uh stab anyone has taken at it was by a guy named andrew lloyd webber in the late 1960s yeah so he is a technicolor dreamcoat and if you want to see one just go to any high school in america and you can probably see it performed so there you go all right what uh what does this favoritism do to joseph what does it do to him it has an effect on his character what are we told in verse two we're told that uh he he brings a bad report about his brother to his father's this is the same word used in the proverbs bad report to describe gossip or slander he's a little tattletail that's what he is right and uh his brothers can't speak a kind word to him he's a little he's like a punks it's not he knows little kid that's what he is right to all his brothers and one of the youngest little brothers and look what happens here his character is revealed here in the next part of the story verse five joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers they hated him all the more he said to them listen listen everybody this dream i had we were out binding sheaves of grain out in the field and suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright and your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it what do you think about that so chief what's a sheaf anybody i'm guessing most of us are not farmers here refresh our memories this is a picture of a sheath so you're out kind of gathering wheat you tie it together and bundles stack them together i kind of think it's a sheep and he's saying mine stood upright taller than yours and euros came and bound out to me how about that right and uh what happened his brother said to him you think you're gonna reign over us are you actually gonna rule us and so they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said then he had another dream and he told it to his brothers he just doesn't know how to stay quiet listen he said i had another dream this time the sun and the moon and the 11 stars were bowing down to me then he told his father as well as his brothers and his father rebuked him he said what is this dream you had are your mother and i and your brother is actually going to come and bow down to the ground before you and so his brothers they're hopelessly jealous of him but his father he keeps he keeps the matter in mind okay what so this is first first piece here when the biblical authors want to invite you in and share and challenge and and teach you things about god about yourself about the world the biblical authors never sit down dear reader let me tell you a thing or two about god's word and yourself something they never do that what do they do they tell stories they draw you into a world and then begin to shape the story to challenge how you think about yourself and god and so on and so where's god in this story so far has god been mentioned yet no it's just a story about a bunch of very dysfunctional family that's what the story is about let's keep reading now his brothers had gone to graze their father's flocks near shechem and israel said to joseph as you know your brothers are grazing their flocks near kim so come on i'm gonna go send you to them very well he replied so he said to him go see if all is well with your brothers and the flocks and bring word back to me and so i sent them off from the valley of hebron when joseph arrived at shekim a man found him wandering around the fields and asked him what you're looking for he said i'm looking for her brothers can you tell me where they're grazing their flocks uh they moved on from here the man answered i heard them say let's go to dotan so joseph went after his brothers and found them near dotan now this is what's great about this little scene you could totally take that out of the story and you wouldn't miss it for a moment you know what i mean but it's just it's just the realism wouldn't you know you could be extra in the movie or something in this scene right so it's just great it's good storytelling so they saw him in the distance and before he reached them they plotted to kill him here comes that dreamer they said to each other come now let's kill him and throw him in to one of these cisterns which is a big pit in the ground for water let's throw him into a cistern let's say a ferocious animal devoured him then we'll see what becomes of his dreams but reuben he heard of this and he tried to rescue him from their hand let's not take his life he said don't shed any blood throw him into the cistern here in the wilderness but don't lay a hand on him reuben who's reuben what order birth order does he come in he's the firstborn he's going to be responsible for what happens right so he's like holy cow i'm going to stop this so reuben said this to rescue him from them he was going to take him back to his father when joseph came to his brothers they stripped him of his robe the ornate robe he was the technicolor dreamcoat that he was wearing and they took him and they threw him into the sister now just in case you're wondering is joseph's going to drown how is he going to swim in the water the cistern was empty there was no there's no water in it now as they sat down to eat their meal they looked up and oh wouldn't you know it a caravan of ishmaelites was coming down from gilead their camels were loaded with spices and bomb and myrrh and they were on their way to take them down to egypt this is the first time egypt gets mentioned this is where the whole family's going to end up judah said to his brothers you know what are we going to gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood so come on let's sell him to these ishmaelites listen not lay our hands on him i mean he is our brother he has our own flesh and blood and so the brothers they they agreed how gracious of them right so when the midianite merchants came by they pulled joseph up out of the cistern they sold him for 20 shekels of silver to the ishmaelites who took him down to to egypt okay let's pause for a moment here and reflect so this is a cool story i mean this is told well this is great it's kind of interesting in and of itself but let's just pause for a moment here whenever you're reading in the bible especially in the old testament as you go through you always have to ask there's a story within a story within a story here we're at the smallest level here small level story here but what's the big picture why do we care about these people you know like why do you get to read these stories about these brothers and so on okay big picture genesis 1-11 world's falling apart humans are ruining it god's rescuing the world through abraham's family and who's abraham's family these people this is the rescue team you know what i'm saying right so we're like what on earth like somehow god's gonna bring blessing to all nations through this bunch you know like a bunch of two-faced murderous you know hypocritical what but that's exactly right this is this is god's word has god been mentioned in the story yet does that mean god's not at work so god's silent in the story so far it does not mean god is absent doesn't mean he's absent let's keep reading to go over to chapter 39. uh chapter 38 is rated r or nc 17 i'm not sure so read it with your kids if they're going to read it whatever okay chapter 39. when joseph had been uh taken down to egypt potiphar an egyptian who was one of pharaoh's officials the captain of the guard brought him from the ishmaelites bought him from the ishmaelites who had taken him there you're 17 years old you've been kidnapped sold to slave traders taken to a country you don't know you don't know the language you're now a house slave of a military captain how do you feel about your life so my life's over my life's over but the lord was with joseph so that he prospered and he lived in the house of this egyptian master and when the master saw that the lord was with him and that the lord gave him success and everything he did joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant and so potiphar put him in charge of his house he entrusted to his care everything he owned and from the time he put him in charge of his house and of all he owned the lord did what to the household power be blessed he blessed what was the promise to abraham through your family blessing would would flow to the nations it's happening spreading spreading the blessing of the lord was on everything potiphar had both in the house and in the field and so potiphar left everything he had in joseph's care when joseph in charge he didn't concern himself with anything except the food that he ate okay so of all the given scenarios right so you're a slave in a foreign country you are trying to learn the language and but you know this is pretty good you know this is pretty good god meets him there does god solve all his problems does god intervene and like teleport him back to his father no but he meets him in the midst of this very dark time in his in his life this is the author's giving us a clue to how god is at work in our world so who's responsible for joseph ending up in this situation who's responsible his brothers right his brothers they meant to do him harm they sold him into slavery does god want that no that's not good it's not good but god's at work redeeming at work behind the scenes weaving something beautiful out of the mess of human sin the author saying this is how god works that's how it works let's keep reading now joseph was well built and handsome the biblical authors almost never tell you what people look like you know i mean some modern novels that tell you about the strapping young man or something you know and he's muscular and rides a horse or something and whatever they'll describe the shape of his nose or something that never happens in the bible so it's always very very stark economy of words that the author uses they only tell you stuff that's important for the plot so is it important to know that he's a good-looking man it is important because after a while his master's wife took notice of joseph and said come to bed with me he refused with me in charge he told her my master doesn't concern himself with anything in the house everything he owns he's entrusted to my care and no one's greater in this house than i am my master's withheld nothing from me except you because you're his wife how then could i do such a wicked thing and sin against whom does he say sin against potiphar because that would be true wouldn't it but that's joseph has a much bigger view of things he says this is a sin against god and though he spoke to jo she spoke to joseph day after day he refused to go to bed with her or even to be with her okay let's just stop for a minute just don't pay attention to something it's very intentional in the author the last time joseph spoke we heard words come out of joseph's mouth when was that it was his dreams and how he brings the bat he brings gossip back to his father right the punk little kid right is this a punk little kid right here that we're encountering here holy no like this is a changed man this is a man of integrity this is a man of honesty he he wants to honor god with every part of his life every part of his body all right this something's happened to him and the authors he's again he's not just going to tell us you know god uses hardship to teach you lessons or something like that i know he's going to tell you a story he's going to say look at this guy this was a snotty nose little kid who was like provoking his brothers this god used the hardships in joseph's life to chip away chip away at the rough edges to do deep character formation in joseph that maybe could have happened no other way and so the sufferings that joseph goes through are both the worst thing that's ever happened to him and the best thing that's ever happened to him the story embraces that paradox of hardship in our lives let's keep reading one day joseph he went into the house to attend to his duties and none of the household servants was inside she caught him by his cloak and said come to bed with me but he left his cloak in her hands a great little image he wriggles out of his jacket and he ran out of the house and when she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and run out of the house she called her household servants look she said this hebrew he's been brought here to make sport of us this kind of dual meaning it means to make fun of or to mock someone that has sexual connotations too this phrase does he came in here to sleep with me but i screamed and and when he heard me scream for help he left his cloak beside me he ran out of the house and so she kept his cloak beside her until master came home and then she told him this story this hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me and as soon as i screamed for help he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house when his master heard the story his wife told him saying this is how your slave treated me burned with anger this is not a guy you want to take off you know the captain of the military joseph master took him put him in prison the place where the king's prisoners were confined okay let's stop let's stop for a moment here right so here's what happens in most of our minds when we read this kind of kind of scenario has god mentioned yet again in the start god bless joseph right but in this scenario here where's god is is joseph doing the right thing in this story sir yeah like okay he was a punk kid he maybe had something coming from his brothers did he have this coming he's doing the right thing he's he's like the most upstanding guy you could imagine the most godly man you could imagine he's doing the right thing and that's the reason why he enters into suffering and hardship again he's doing the right thing now most of us we would look at this kind of story or when this scenario happens in our lives i'm doing the right thing and my life falls apart and what's our first instinct god's nowhere to be found he's abandoned me he's not good he's asleep at the wheel he's not in control that's where we first go and what this story is saying is it's precisely the opposite it's precisely the opposite things are not out of control now who's responsible for joseph's getting in trouble here the god no it's potiphar's wife it's her sin and selfishness god did not cause that but god can redeem it he can use it he can weave it into the story he can bring a tree of life out of machine guns and so what happens he ends up in prison but while joseph was there in prisons verse 20 the lord was with him showed him kindness granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden and oh we've heard the story before haven't we right and so every time joseph again you read through the story he gets into hot water again and again and again because he's doing the right thing god's at work behind the scenes and so on so what the story is getting at is is that life is very ambiguous for most of us sometimes we end up in difficult scenarios because we had it coming you know we had a role to play like the snotty nose punk little kid and maybe we didn't get the full you know we don't deserve everything that happened to us but we had a role to play in it and we need to own up to that but other times things happened to us that we had no role in just hardship tragedy someone wrongs us and we say where is god and the story is saying hold on hold on just because hardship hits you square in the face does not mean god's not around there could be a bigger story and so for joseph we get to see that bigger story come to its completion we don't have that luxury in our lives most of the time but for joseph we do turn to chapter 50 with me chapter 15. so joseph's crazy set of circumstances if you're on the reading plan you'll read through it finish reading it this week he ends up through a friend of a friend of a friend meeting the king of egypt he becomes an advisor to the king of egypt and he guides the country skillfully through a time of famine and he he saves the lives of tens of thousands of people from starvation and so lo and behold who should come wandering into his court one day about who his brothers right it's exciting story you've got to read it so then he reveals himself to his brothers gets his family to come down he's reunited with his father and it's a tear-jerker scene everyone cries and uh and so then his father finally dies passes away jacob passes away look at verse 15 of chapter 50. when joseph's brothers when they saw that their father was dead they said now what if joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs that we did to him and so they sent word to joseph saying uh your father left us these instructions before he died they're back at it again you know what i'd say like they haven't learned their lesson yet right joseph is daddy's favorite so okay this is what you're to say to joseph i ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed and treating you so badly now please forgive the sins of your servants of god the servants of the god of your father when their message came to joseph what is his response he weeps ah man these guys don't get it they don't get it his brothers came and threw themselves down before him were your slaves they said what are they doing they're bowing down to him and joseph said to them okay what would the snotty nose punk little kid joseph say right you'd be like yeah that's right you better bow down but what is what does this joseph say who's been changed and shaped by his hardship he says you guys don't be afraid am i in the place of god look you intended to harm me that was fully your intent but god intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done to save many lives okay let's just stop right here there's a reason why this is at the very end of the book of genesis because the author's saying that dear reader if you haven't clued into what this book's about here you go in a sentence so that's what the book's about it's what the whole story of the bible is about is god responsible for joseph going through his hardship what does joseph say no his brothers are you intended this for harm but god is at work he didn't allow your evil to to whatever uh thwart his plan ultimately he's working it out behind the scenes and so on so author's trying to invite you to take a view of how god works in the world and it's it's not a view that most of us would prefer right so we prefer the version that's going to happen in the book of exodus where god sends fire down on the oppressor you know what i mean and we like i like that story because it's simple it's clean right this is not clean this is not simple this this story embraces all the ambiguity of our day-to-day lives and struggles to have faith with god's promises and his presence and so on and so the story just simply says this it says listen man your story's not over you don't know what god is up to and you may or may not have the luxury of finding out the tree of life that god is weaving out of just the machine gun bits of your story and so this is what the book of genesis it just lobs this ball at each of us and we can choose whether or not we're going to take it or not whether or not we're going to accept this view is are we going to boldly take a step of faith and say god did it in the life of joseph he did it in the resurrection of jesus from the dead he has something in mind for my story too there is there is a purpose and i may never find out what it is this is very powerful because there's many of us here you know we're like in prison with joseph right now you know we're in the pit we have people that we love deeply and they're in the pit and we're just wondering what on earth is going on and and this story is not trite it's not simple it's embracing the difficulty and the struggle and it's just saying will you boldly will you boldly trust in this god of the bible who's at work in ways that we don't know can you trust can you trust that he's doing something in your story shaping shaping you bringing a tree of life out of death so i don't know how this lands with you but this is the word this is the summary this is the book of genesis to us god's at work in our world and it doesn't mean he solves all of the problems instantly or intervenes the way we would like him to but he's redeeming he's at work so i don't know where this lands with you today but this is god's word to us as a community so we finish up the book of genesis this week and so we've got some time here at the end of our service for prayer for reflection for song and some of us just need to camp out right here and do business with god about what's happening happening in our lives and i just encourage you to wrestle with the time that we have here today let me close us with a word of prayer father i pray for all of us here my brothers and sisters you know every story that's sitting here and in the other rooms as we're gathered as your people today you know those of us who are sitting in the pit and in prison with joseph and we don't no we can't see the bigger story that you're weaving god i just pray that you're present as you were with joseph that your presence would be real and tangible to those of us who need it here today and as we go out from the gathering today we just ask you to speak to us and speak hope because of the resurrection of jesus from the dead and we pray in his name amen

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Length: 33min 59sec (2039 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020