Life of Joseph: Into the Pit - Genesis 37:12-28

please open up your Bible to the book of Genesis chapter 34 Genesis exceed me 34 37 please Genesis chapter 37 beginning now at verse 12 I'll just start reading the text and read the first several verses starting at verse 12 then his brothers went to feed their father's flock in Shechem and Israel said to and Israel said to Joseph are not your brothers feeding the flock and Shechem come I will send you to them so he said to him Here I am then he said please go 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 hip bran anyone to Shechem now a certain man found him and there he was wandering in the field and the men asked him saying what are you seeking and he said I'm seeking my brother's 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 last week when we began a series taking a look at the life of Joseph and in particular how the life of Joseph points towards the person and the work of Jesus Christ we saw that Joseph came from a very messed-up family I mean sometimes we use the phrase dysfunctional family Joseph's family was extremely dysfunctional things were very messed up and part of the problem was was that when you have one man who has 13 children from four different wives there's going to be a lot of sibling rivalry especially when you pick out one of those sons and so obviously make him the favorite over the others so now we see that Joseph's brothers now I'm gonna count his brothers as 10 there were 12 total but Joseph is back at home and I'm gonna assume though I don't really know that perhaps Benjamin the other favored son was at home so let's just say there were ten brothers of Joseph out managing the livestock these were agricultural people in a big part of their business was to manage huge flocks of sheep and goats numbering in the thousands and that was sort of a nomadic lifestyle you had to take them from place to place so that they could good ground to graze on in any regard the brothers are out doing their thing feeding the flocks and what does Jacob the father of Joseph say he says to him verse 14 please go and see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks the first thing I want you to notice Joseph's brothers are out doing the hard work sleeping on the ground under tents dealing with all the sheep all the difficulty joseph is back at home he's not out with his brothers doing the hard work then when his father wants somebody to check up on his brothers to supervise them to inform on their bad behavior who does he send Joseph and if that's not enough look at the phrasing there in verse 14 please go and see if it is well with your brothers now look I grew up in a good home with a loving mother and a loving father but I don't ever remember my parents telling me please when I went to go do the chores no it wasn't David could you please go pick up the dog mess in the backyard it didn't work like that it was just do it and again I was a loving good home but you get it doesn't it seem strange to you that Joseph is so favored in his father's eyes that the father says please to him to go do it and he sends him off on a rare errand that's going to put him in a supervisory role over his ten other brothers who already hated him you got the wheels turning this is not going to end out well verse eighteen now when they saw him afar off even before they came near them they conspired against him to kill him you have the picture there's Joseph walking from afar if the brothers are there with the thousands of sheep and goats there in Dothan it was about a 10 or 15 mile walk from Shechem to dote then there they are in the midst of it they're all there together they'd see him coming afar off and they say there's Joseph we hate that guy our Father Jacob has sent Joseph to us to inspect us to supervise us to tell us what to do he's gonna walk around with a clipboard and a cup of coffee and tell us what we're doing wrong and then he's gonna go back and and rat us out to dad we hate this guy that's what they said seeing him from afar off coming and then we read the words that are shocking in verse 18 and later I want you to feel how shocking this is sometimes we read the Bible and we kind of go on automatic pilot where we'll read outrageous things in the Bible now I don't mean outrageous and that they're not true but they're genuinely shocking things and we just get kind of Numb when we read erupts oh yeah okay great would you read verse 18 and be shocked by it they conspired against him to kill him this is their own brother they didn't say you know what let's bully him really good let's give him an Indian burn he will never forget do you know what an Indian burn is I might have tuned to it Indian burn is where they take your skin and brothers older brothers seem to specialize in doing this on younger brothers where they just rub your skin really hard until it makes it just kind of red and uncomfortable let's give him an Indian burn he'll never forget let's push we're gonna bully him oh he's gonna hear it from us now that I'm not saying any of those things would be right but it would be understandable given the troubled relationship between Joseph and his brothers but do you realize how bizarre it is that they'll say let's kill him not only because of what it would do against Joseph but they knew that it would be like a dagger in the heart of their father they didn't care we see the depths of the hatred and the the dysfunction in this family and were shocked by it now the other thing I want to point out before going to verse 19 when we see how shocking their sin is we understand that the sin was in their heart before it was ever acted out do you understand that our sin problem begins in the heart sometimes we think our sin problem is all about our behavior and look the behavior is a big deal I'm not saying that we ignore the behavior but your behavior has a cause that comes from the inside Christian transformation is not just about changing your behavior it's about having Jesus Christ changes from the inside out we just don't need to act in a different way we need Jesus to make us different people and again I'm not ignoring the place of behavior that we got to focus on it there's a time and a place for that but don't miss the inside that it's possible for somebody to look fine on the outside but be corrupt on the inside but even when you see somebody who displays bad stuff on the outside it's because there is corruption on the inside that's how it was with Joseph Brothers now verse 19 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 shall say some wild beast has devoured him we shall see what becomes of his dreams so his brothers mocked him as the dreamer in a sense Joseph brought this upon himself by the foolish way that he spoke of his god-given dreams before his brothers but leaving that aside notice the depravity of the brothers hearts not only did they initially say let's kill him now they're applauding it and they're already plotting the cover-up okay so we kill him we tear him limb from limb we clubbed him to death what do we do then oh we can tell Dad that a wild beast aadum yeah that'll work they're planning the cover-up already man it it's one thing isn't it to have sin in your heart then it's another thing to think about doing it then it's another thing to say you'll do it and then it's a thing on top of that to already start plotting your cover-up you got to break the sane you got to break this cycle and say no we got to stop we can't go down this road but to me that's not even the worst part about verses 19 and 20 look at what they say in verse 20 we shall see what will become of his dreams now there's a lot of talk about Joseph being a dreamer and there's kind of a standard way that preachers take the life of Joseph I hope nobody misunderstands you I'm not trying to speak against any other preach or anything but just I just kind of got in touch with it this week in my own mind there's an approach to the life of Joseph that says the life of Joseph shows us how to fulfill your dreams God's given you a dream and Joseph will show you how to fulfill it later of the life of Joseph is not about you fulfilling your dreams it's just not matter of fact the life of Joseph wasn't really about him fulfilling his dreams when Joseph was in the coat of many colors enjoying his father's favour with the clipboard and the coffee cup bossing around his brothers he was living his dream he already had it but I'll tell you this about Joseph Joseph's never dreamed of being a slave Joseph never dreamed of being falsely accused of rape he never dreamed of being left in prison to rot he never dreamed of being the second most powerful man in Egypt he never dreamed of saving the world from famine but God's dream for Joseph was better and greater than any dream that Joseph could have come up with by himself here's the problem with focusing on your dream for your life God's dream is probably even bigger and better for you than the your own dream for your own life now please it's very important that nobody misunderstand me I don't mean to imply that if you want something for your life then it's automatically wrong no God often builds those desires in our heart and in our life sometimes it can be totally consistent with calling and purpose in everything that he gives us but the important point is this poor bird has realized that I can't live my life focus on fulfilling my dreams I have to seek on say God what is your dream and your plan for my life and somewhere along the line that may mean dying two aspects of my dream what's the price of getting this wrong the price of getting this wrong is that you can have a completely wrong perception of the Christian life and when I say completely I mean completely let me explain to you how some people perceive the Christian life something like this I have my story let's say the movie of my life I'm the writer I'm the director but it hasn't gone so well movie in my life stinks so you know what I need I need to bring Jesus into the movie of my life now not as the lead actor come on that's me but Jesus man you're great you can be best supporting actor in the movie of my life man and you know what this is gonna make this movie a hit this movie's gonna come up just exactly like cuz I invited Jesus into be the Best Supporting Actor of the movie of my life that is not Jesus's plan for your life you know what Jesus says rip up the script lay it down and I want you to be a player in my great plan I want you to have a place in my great purpose Jesus says let me be the writer let me be the director and I will show you things of yourself and in yourself and use you to a capacity that you never thought possible you're gonna see that it's so much greater than what you ever dream for yourself but it'll never happen as long as you're fixated on your dreams and make Jesus just a means just a way to accomplish your dreams in life that's the first thing we notice but the second thing we notice look at what the brothers say in verse 20 they say we shall see what will become of his dreams no the life of Joseph isn't really about fulfilling my dreams it's about God fulfilling his word do you understand what Joseph's dreams were they were messages from God they were God's Word to Joseph and his family and these brothers deliberately said that word is not true and we're going to defeat it Joseph dreamed that we would bow down to him it's never gonna happen we're gonna defeat that dream we're gonna defeat God's Word and so they determined to defeat God's Word let me give you the little principle it's not hard to understand God's Word never fails never never what God said about Joseph was true and it would come to pass no matter what the brothers tried to do against it but I'll tell you what else is true what God said about Jesus Christ is true and it will completely come to pass now you might think well I thought what God said about Jesus is all in the past tense he was the son of God he did miracles he taught he died on the cross my sands he rose him dead although that's true but do you realize what God says about what Jesus will do in the future is true as well Jesus Christ is going to return to this earth to judge the living and the dead it's true you can bank on it you can invest your entire life into trying to defeat that proposition it will never ever happen our job is to prepare for it our job is to be ready for Jesus to be ready to face him as judge to be ready to face the one who created us and offers us redemption in his name and to say we are ready for it because what God says about Jesus is true and it's gonna come to pass and there's nothing any one of us can do about it except be ready for it the brothers thought that they could defeat God's Word and they never ever could now starting at verse 21 we see a small glimmer of encouragement look at verse 21 but Rueben 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 the 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 ok I know that the scene in my mind at least that works out in my mind the the brothers are crowding around Joseph they're punching him they're kicking him there he's got a black eye all ready to push him around they're saying the most cruel hateful things towards him they've been took we're gonna kill him we're gonna kill him and I don't mean metaphorically they're ready to kill him somebody's rustling up a club or a knife to finish the deed Reuben comes over ruin no no no no stop some sums us up and Reuben doesn't try to persuade them not to do it he just suggests an alternative plan Reuben isn't trying to stop them he's trying to outsmart them yes no no no no let's delay it let's throw them in that pit over there we can have some lunch and then we can come back to the business of killing them when we have our stomachs filled how about that no okay great sounds pretty good Reuben was able to talk them out of immediately killing Joseph and delaying it a little bit until they had cast him into a pit so notice what happens I'm gonna start reading from verse 23 and I'm gonna read to the middle of verse 25 okay so ready for this 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 there was no water in it and they sat down to eat a meal they're shoving punching kicking Joseph they're saying the most hateful things to him and then you know what they do they grab ahold of that coat of many colors that's on them and they rip it from them and they're laughing and mocking him as they do it verse 23 says they stripped Joseph's others tunic the tunic of many colors that was on him with cruel pleasure they bullied Joseph and they ripped from him the sign of his father's favor do you know what the coat of many colors said the coat of many colors said I specially love my son he's my favorite that's what the code minute and the brothers hated that you can see why they hated it they rip it from Joseph they throw it on the ground they're laughing and mocking and ladies a gentleman I cannot picture this scene without thinking of how our Savior Jesus Christ was stripped of everything before he was crucified how they stripped everything away and they mocked him as being cursed of God you're not favoured by the father Jesus you're cursed we're gonna strip from you everything we're gonna mock you instead we're gonna beat you and even though Jesus was lifted up on a cross and Joseph was thrown down into a pit I want you to notice that both Joseph and Jesus were stripped they were declared cursed and they were put into a place that they could seemingly never rescue themselves from you see how closely Joseph's experience speaks to us of the experience of Jesus the friends there is another aspect of this as well there's the aspect of thinking that upon every believer God has displayed his love in his favor I'm speaking to those of you who are followers of Jesus Christ you're not waiting to make that decision you already have and you know what it is to have a walk with God listen God has given you a coat of many colors that says I love you you're precious to me he's God he's giving you this garment you're clothed in his favor in his righteousness can you just think of that picture can you think of everybody she's just having a coat of many colors on I don't want to look like but just picture it in your mind we all have this coat aminika leave opal way but wait you have an enemy of your souls who hates the fact that you enjoy the favour of your father you know it's like God whispers down into your ear I love you you're my favorite you ever feel that way between you and God now of course we're all his favorite it's almost that thing that parents will do you're my favourite but don't tell your sister you know God wants us all to feel as if we're his favor because we are we're all specially loved of the Father so there's a coat of many colors upon all of us but but there's an enemy of your soul who wants to rip it from you there's an enemy of your soul who does not want to see you living in the love in the peace in the satisfaction in the favor of God your father and there's just some of us who just need to say father I'm gonna reject that I'm gonna receive and live and walk in this coat of many colors that you've given me I'm gonna proudly take on and appropriately take on I'm gonna receive it in Jesus name this special mark of favor that you've given to me that's not what they did with Joseph they stripped him they threw him down in the pit what it was was an old cistern it was sort of a a pit used to store water in I don't know it could be as little as ten feet deep maybe 20 or 25 feet deep you know they came in different sizes they had a narrow opening at it they pushed him down it he falls down hard at the bottom he's bruised it maybe there's a bone out of joint he doesn't know what to do with it and then what is he here he hears the brothers say hey can you pass me that lamb chop a little more bread over here please look at what it says in the beginning of verse 25 and they sat down to eat a meal do you see how heartless these brothers are they could eat a meal with Joseph agonizing in the pit they could all sit down and enjoy their food contemplating the murder of Joseph for dessert it's worse Genesis chapter 42 verse 21 describes the conviction of sin that they ignored at that moment in that passage the brothers say this looking back we are truly guilty concerning our brother for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us and we would not hear when Joseph was cast into that pit he pled with his brothers can you hear the voice of Joseph sim in I'm so sorry I've been such a jerk I think my arms broken can you guys help me please please don't leave me down here what are the brothers say pass the salt that's what the brothers say that's cruel it's heartless not only does it show us the heartlessness of the brothers here's what else it shows us it shows us that Joseph was a normal man look what we're going to be talking big about Joseph just gonna get a lot of praise but he's not Superman Genesis 42 21 tells us that Joseph wasn't down in the Picon oh I just love you Jesus I just want to commune with you down in the pit not at all he's screaming help I'm hurt you guys got to get me out of here lower down a rope but they didn't care they didn't listen they ignored his cries as they ate their meal now pick it up in the middle of verse 25 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 Judis said to his brothers what profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand to be upon him for he's our brother and our flesh and his brothers listened this company of Arab traders they came from the family of the great uncle their great uncle Ishmael they said hey here's a brilliant idea we don't have to kill him we'll just sell him as a lifelong slave to the instruments isn't that a greater after all he is our brother in that in that amazing you know he's our brother let's not murder him let's just sell him into slavery and could will cover this next week and tell dad that he's dead that's the brothers that's what they did so verse 28 then the Midianite traders passed by and so his brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver and they took Joseph to Egypt looking at their in verse 28 the brothers live pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit do you have that scene in your mind the Rope gets lowered down into the cistern Joseph is gone finally finally as they're pulling on but Joe said gosh I am so sorry I know I've been such a jerk I'll be better believe me you have taught me a lesson I will never forgive this you're gonna see you know June a new Joseph out of this I'm not gonna be that irritating little brother and I'm not even gonna tell Dad all this stuff you did no I won't say a thing hey hey and before Joseph knows it he's being taken away with the Ishmaelites and he can hear the clinking sound of silver for the exchange of money when they pulled him up out of the pit he thought he was rescued but now he goes from one pit to another pit and he sold as a slave to Egypt we kinda have to end it right here end it with the idea that the brothers laughed as the Ishmaelites made their way to Egypt do you see them waving to Joseph bye-bye dreamer it's never gonna happen I guess that wasn't God's Word they're laughing and they probably felt good that they didn't kill Joseph yeah we're pretty good guys aren't we after all we did let him live we've got a little pocket money out of it too no we're pretty good guys aren't we Joseph makes his way away the best of all the brothers thought that they had defeated the dream the revelation from God but it wouldn't happen now let me just bring it to a very direct point with you all there's no reason to kind of dance around this some of you have been treated horribly by other people some of you have been by analogy you've been cast into the pit some of you lived with lives filled with abuse some of you have had terrible violence practice against you some of you have known up-close horrible treatment maybe it's been in the home maybe it was some violence committed against you maybe even raped maybe even robbed maybe your life has been derailed just by some cruel person again and again you've been down in the pit and there's something in your life that haunts you and says it's over for me now it's never going to be what it could have been I'm here to tell you that just as much as it's true that what Joseph's brothers did against him could not derail God's plan for his life so God's plan for your life has not been derailed by the evil other people have done against you it's absolutely true and you can take great comfort in that God has not left you at the mercy of other people now listen I'm not saying that other people can't hurt you they can and they probably have but God promises they he will be Lord of your life and no matter how terrible it's been in the past or maybe even in the present God is mighty and can redeem and restore and he can even take the evil that's been done against you and I'm not calling it anything other than evil God can take it and use it for his glory and use it for good I don't even know how exactly God does that in and out but he does it because God's Word about Joseph was proved true no matter what his brothers did to him God's Word about Jesus was proved true no matter what others did to him and God's Word about you will be proved true no matter what others do or have done Joseph did not have to pretend you know my brother's really care about me they just have a funny way of showing it no Joseph could be real about it those men hate me and I should be grateful that I'm not dead but they hate me yeah the same time see but God you are still Lord in heaven this terrible thing that's happened to me does not mean that you have exited your throne would you exert your lordship in my very life here's the good news for you that because of what Jesus did on the cross and in raising from the dead and in being lord over your life you are not bound by what others have done to you surrender to God's plan but put your trust in God's plan more than in your dreams and why don't you see what God will do let's pray together father this this is big because lord I that there's people here who have lived through a great injustice they have been the victim of great crimes Lord are they they wonder where you were when they were being thrown into a pit or sold into slavery Jesus I pray that just as you showed the triumphing plan of God in every circumstance and what seemed to be the worst thing in the world you on a cross you turned into the greatest thing in the world the love of God for all humanity Lord we need you to work that Redemption in our life - would you do it by your presence and by your power Lord please do this we pray

Channel: David Guzik

Views: 16,790

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: Joseph, brothers, pit, suffering, abuse, Jesus, Israel, Genesis

Id: jpJx756Jsvg

Length: 31min 44sec (1904 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2018