August 7, 2007

• Discovering God’s Character – Part 18
  
  
  
  Joseph and His Dream

  After we’ve spent a good deal of time on the investigations of the
  generations of Esau in Genesis 36, Genesis 37 opens up very quickly
  telling us we’ll be looking at the generations of Jacob hereafter. Its
  interesting how little hints like that don’t show up on our “mental
  radar” as we read along casually but after our extensive look at Esau,
  it stands right out at us.

  Jacob is now in Canaan, Hebron, in fact. Earlier, we saw Esau coming
  from Mount Seir when Jacob returned after his 20 year stint at Laban’s.
  Esau had already established himself there so things are fine between
  them at this point. So it would seem that life is good for Jacob, yet
  it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  It appears that Jacob was having some issues with his family.
  Favoritism between his sons was a problem with Joseph, now 17 years old
  being his favorite. His father even made him a multicolored tunic,
  something pretty special in those days. Yet Joseph’s brothers were
  extremely jealous and pretty aggravated with him. He had brought a bad
  report about them to their father… perhaps it was well deserved or
  perhaps he was doing the “little brother” tattling thing.  Given the
  history of Jacob’s son’s, it looks like it was probably  well deserved
  as we’ll find out later. At any rate, the brothers were barely on
  speaking terms with Joseph and even then it wasn’t civil. Things heat up
  even more when Joseph reveals his dreams to his father and brothers.
  His brothers hated him even more and Jacob rebukes him but keeps the
  sayings in mind.

  Now we find that his brothers went to pasture their flock in Shechem
  (Nabulus, today), over 50 miles away from Jerusalem, longer yet from
  Hebron. Jacob wants to know the status of the flocks and his sons so he
  sends Joseph out to find out. Joseph gets there and finds that they
  moved on to Dothan (near Ya’bad, today, west of Janin), northwest by
  about another 16 miles. (BTW, using Google Earth and my Bible maps is a
  fine combination when studying these things.) This is almost to
  Megiddo. The point here is to let you know that Jacob’s flocks aren’t
  grazing in his backyard. They are probably at least over 70 miles away
  by foot.

  Before Joseph arrives at their camp, we find that his brothers have
  been devising evil for him and planned to kill him but end up throwing
  him in a dry pit.  When it says that they planned to throw him into one
  of the pits, one has to wonder why these brothers are grazing their
  sheep around a place where there are a lot of pits for them to fall
  into.  Maybe we learn that Jacob’s sons aren’t so careful with Jacob’s
  flock after all. Perhaps Joseph was right in telling his father about
  what his brothers were doing… and they are at it again.

  Now these brothers sit down for a meal. Now this hits me the wrong
  way.  They take Joseph’s tunic off him and threw him in a dry pit after
  planning to murder him and decide not to and they want to sit down to
  eat.  If I had any respect for Jacob’s sons at this point, I just lost
  it. Now if that isn’t enough they spotted an Ishmaelite trade caravan
  traveling from Gilead and heading toward Egypt and Judah suggests
  selling his brother into slavery. Now it turns out that they end up
  selling him to some Midianite traders. Whether they were the same as
  the caravan they had seen earlier, it is not clear. If it was, the term
  Midianite and Ishmaelite would be considered about the same. Anyway,
  Reuben is not aware that this is going on. So the rest of them agree
  with this and sell their brother Joseph for 20 pieces of silver. 
  Reuben finds out what’s going on and literally says something like,
  “Ok, our father is going to ask me about this since I’m the oldest and
  I can’t look him in the eye and tell him what we’ve done.” So they
  devise a way to lie to their father about what they have done.  They
  take a male goat, kill it and dipped the tunic in blood and took it
  back to their father, saying something like “Check this out. We found
  this tunic. Is this your son’s?”  It is, of course, and they let their
  father invent the story in his own mind and do not tell him the truth. 
  Now Jacob goes into deep mourning and no one in the family can console
  him.

  In the meantime, the Midianites sell Joseph to Potiphar, the captain of
  Pharoah’s bodyguard.  We’ll pick up the story on Joseph in Genesis 39.
  We’ll need to learn a few things about Judah in Genesis 38 before we
  get there.

  This reminds me of the old western movies on television of the
  cattleman who’s sons have gone bad. What we’ve just witnessed is a
  disaster for a family. We’ve witnessed treachery and deceit, two
  powerful tools to decimate a family.  Yet God has an amazing way of
  allowing these scenarios to work out for the good. This will be made
  plain as we move along in the account.

  God is aware of what we do. It may take years to see Him bring things
  right again but He is aware of our deeds and why we do them.  The
  severity of what was done amplifies the importance of what will happen
  at the end. One cannot help but see that God even uses Joseph’s
  brothers intent to kill him as a way to enhance the power of
  forgiveness when years later Joseph has the power of life and death
  over them and could do to them what they had planned to do to him and
  more, yet he doesn’t.  God allows us to see the fruit of unforgiveness
  in these brothers and what it does to their family even at the very
  beginning of this part of the story.  We see its bitter dregs and the
  power that it has dries up the soul as surely as the drought and
  famine that will drive them to Egypt in search of food only to
  encounter Joseph again. 

  If there is anything we should learn from this story, it should be
  this. If evil comes upon us, we have the option to forgive and be free
  of the power of evil or not forgive and let the power of evil rule in
  us and control our lives. So as we progress through the story, we might
  be mindful of the thoughts that Joseph had while he was traveling in
  that Midianite caravan. His whole world was changed and would never be
  the same. He had an uncertain future and would most likely end up in
  slavery. If he was like most of us, he reacted with a number of
  different emotions over quite a long time yet in the end, when it
  counted, Joseph will have overcome his own issues and will be able to
  deal with the leadership tasks that God had awaiting him and save his
  family from certain death.

  Have you been wronged?  What would you do? Have you noticed that there
  are times when the memory of the “wrong done to you” has controlled
  your decisions and reactions? Have you been able to work past the hurt
  and anger that it has caused? Have you ever felt the release of “true
  forgiveness”? The memories of the past can be instructive to us and yet
  not be destructive as we will see in the life of Joseph. We do not have
  to live bound to them yet they can help us understand why God stresses
  the matter of forgiveness. He wants us to be free… and certainly He
  made sure we could be by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, in order that
  we could be free indeed.  Mr.Vee

  • 12:29 pm
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