The Joseph Experience – Attitude City 01 Series

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This new series is about The Joseph Experience. We’ll be studying what the Joseph Experience is exactly, what paves the path, what can keep a person in it, and most importantly how to navigate out. Bring a notebook, because we will be going over the Joseph story in depth. The Holy Spirit has some insight for us, and you won’t want to forget it.

This week we’re going to study Joseph’s bad attitude problem when he was seventeen, Attitude City. You may not be seventeen, daddy’s favorite child, or extremely wealthy; but you can still pave the path for a spiritual Joseph Experience in your life.

Before we jump into studying the Word, I want to say the Lord never sits up in Heaven cooking up plans to give us Joseph Experiences, Job Experiences, Jacob Experiences, and so on. We are the ones that accidentally pave these paths (Jeremiah 29:11). God is love. God is good. That’s exactly what this study is about.

We’ll read most of the verses in this story, for time’s sake I may skip over some. Let’s jump right in…

Genesis 37 NKJV

2…This is the history of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father.

These brothers were the sons of the maids. In Genesis 30, Rachel and Leah were contending with each other over Jacob. Both Rachel and Leah gave their maids to Jacob as his wives, which made all the children legitimate in the ancient person’s mind. Bilhah was Rachel’s maid that had Dan and Naphtali. Zilpah was Leah’s maid that had Gad and Asher.

I assume Joseph knew these were originally the maid’s children that his father married. It leaves us to wonder, did Joseph view these brothers differently than the other brothers? Maybe that’s why they were mentioned by their mothers’ names and not their own.

Let’s take a side journey for a moment. It’s very important to realize that Jacob, Joseph’s father, was a very wealthy man at this point. We read about Jacob’s wealth when he left Leban and again when he met Esau on the road. We are in no way talking about a poor family!

From the scriptures we just read; Joseph, the favorite, was tattling on his brothers. Whatever bad report he brought back was a pivotal moment. It’s truly difficult to imagine what awful things the brothers were doing… fight night with the goats, goat tipping, or a kid tossing contest. But whatever it was, we have to realize Joseph is seventeen years old, and well past the age where this is acceptable behavior. What could he have done instead of bringing a bad report to their father? “Hey guys, we’re great-grandchildren of Abraham, we shouldn’t be having 3-legged goat races.” Pep talk kind of thing and bring back a good report. Whatever behavior he tattled on obviously caused some type of serious problem.

3Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of many colors.

The tunic of many colors is very important information in the ancient world. The word tunic, kthoneth, in Hebrew means robe or garment as well. It’s the same word used for what God made Adam and Eve; and also the same word for what the priests wore. Using a lot of colors in ancient times was something reserved for the wealthy, such as Kings. It was a status symbol and also signified some type of authority. His father didn’t just make him a pretty shirt, he made him a wealthy status symbol of being the honored/favored son.

4But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

This had to be very painful for the 10 other brothers that were older than Joseph. The first born was supposed to be first in line for the inheritance in ancient times, and he would have become the leader of the family. As we read on, we’ll see the first born acting as the leader. If you’ve read Genesis before, you know birth order was even the custom of Leah and Rachel (the oldest had to be married first). In all honesty, we’re seeing the same favoritism and problems with Leah and Rachel being passed down to the children.

Genesis 29:31 NKJV

When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved

We can even go back farther to Jacob and talk about how he was favored by his mother who helped him swindle the blessing of the Lord from his father, Isaac, who favored Esau. The lesson we can learn here is favoritism can hurt children and move down through generations. This is also another reason why God’s love had to come, Jesus, and we needed to be spiritually born into a love covenant and have God’s love placed inside of us. Back to the story…