No Ordinary Joe: Dreamer
Genesis 37:1-11
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
9-19-202
Why Study Joseph?
I’m excited to begin a new sermon series on the life of Joseph entitled, “No Ordinary Joe.” Those of you who grew up in church may think you know the story of Joseph but there is a lot the flannel graphs didn’t teach you.
Let’s start the series out with five reasons to study the life of Joseph:
Two chapters of Genesis are devoted to the creation account. But 28 chapters are dedicated to two different people - Abraham and Joseph. There are more of Joseph’s words recorded in Genesis than any other patriarch. 25% of Genesis about Joseph’s life so it must be important for us to know.
Paul wrote in Romans:
“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4)
These 14 chapters are what theologians called the “locus classicus” (the ultimate example) of the doctrine of providence. We will talk more about what providence is and how it plays out in the story of Joseph at the end of this sermon.
The story of Joseph helps us understand how the Israelites ended up in Egypt and then the Promised Land.
God made this clear to Abraham in Genesis 15:
“Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” (Gen 15:13-16)
4. Joseph is a type, a foreshadowing, of Jesus. We’ll look at how Joseph’s life points to Jesus at the end of this sermon.
5. Joseph is from an incredibly dysfunctional family and, yet, he shows us that there is hope for those of us who have a few nuts on the family tree.
The story is full of deceit, favoritism, jealousy, hatred, mass murder, incest, rape, human trafficking, polygamy, and somehow Joseph keeps his eyes on God the whole story.
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 37.
Prayer.
Background to Begin
In order to set the stage for our study, let me walk you through Joseph’s family tree.
His great-grandfather was the “father of the faith,” Abraham. God had called him to
“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:1-3)
God told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky:
“Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Gen 15:5)
There was just one problem - they had no children and they were growing old.
So Sarah took matters into her own hands and gave Abraham their Egyptian slave Hagar to be another wife. (See Genesis 16)
God nowhere condones polygamy and when it happened it always ends in disaster.
Abraham had a son with Hagar named Ishmael but that would not be the son of the promise.
After 15 years of waiting, three angels showed up and announced to them that within the year they would have a son. At this, Sarah laughed at the absurdity of it all. That’s why the baby was named Isaac (see Gen 21) Michael Card has a song about this:
“The called him laughter, for he came after, God made an impossible promise come true. The birth of a baby, to a helpless old lady, they called him laughter for no other name would do.”
Some time later, God told Abraham to take Issac up on a mountain and sacrifice him. Just as Abraham was about plunge the knife into Isaac’s chest, God stops him and provides a ram caught in a thicket to be Isaac’s substitute. (See Gen 22)
Issac went back to his family’s homeland to find a wife and married Rebecca. They had twins - Jacob and Esau. (See Gen 25)
This family was marked by favoritism with Rebecca favoring Jacob and Isaac favoring Esau.
Jacob name means “deceiver” and he lived up to that reputation. He swindled his brother out of his birthright of the first born and, when Isaac was dying, tricked him into giving him the blessing reserved for Esau.
Because of Esau’s murderous rage, Jacob goes to visit his uncle Laban and falls head over heels in love with Rachel. (See Gen 29)
He worked for Laban for seven years in order to marry Rachel but when he woke up in the morning after the wedding, it was Leah in his bed! The deceiver had been deceived.
He worked for another seven years in order to marry Rachel.
Rich Mullins wrote a song about this:
“Jacob he loved Rachel and Rachel she loved him and Leah was just there for dramatic effect. Well, it’s right there in the Bible so it must not be a sin but sure does seem like an awful dirty trick.”
Now, Jacob was married to the original sisters wives, which is a recipe for dysfunction.
The sisters began a competition to see who could have the most children and Jacob was more than happy to oblige. (See Gen 29-30)
Leah had four in a row - Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
When Rachel couldn’t get pregnant, she gave her maid, Bilhah to Jacob and she bore two sons - Dan and Naphtali. ?
So Leah gave her maid, Zilphah, to Jacob and she bore two more sons - Gad and Asher.
Then Leah got pregnant again and bore two more sons- Issachar and Zebulon, and a daughter Dinah.
Finally, when Jacob was older, Rachel conceived had gave birth to Joseph and finally to Benjamin, which she died giving birth to. (See Gen 35)
Her death rocked Jacob to his core because he loved her more than all the others.
This brings us to the story of Joseph.
David Guzik writes that from
Adam we learn the nature of faith
Abel we learn the basis of faith
Enoch we learn the walk of faith
Noah we learn the presence of faith
Abraham we learn the obedience of faith
Issac we learn the power of faith
Jacob we learn the purpose of faith
Joseph we learn the triumph of faith
[Slide] Favored
[Slide] “Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob’s family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, 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 he made an ornate robe for him.” (v. 1-3)
The family was living in Hebron, about forty miles south of Jerusalem. Jacob is 108 years old at this time.
We are told that Joseph was seventeen years old. We aren’t given any details of how he grew up here but we know that:
When he was little, Jacob took his wives and children and escaped from Laban and they were chased down armed men. (See Gen 31)
When Jacob knew that Esau was headed their way and didn’t know what is intentions were, he had Rachel and Joseph hide in the back of the caravan.
His older sister Dinah had been raped and, in response, his brothers, Simeon and Levi, committed mass murder, slaughtering every male in the village. (Gen 34)
In secession, Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse, died (Gen 35:8), his mother, Rachel, died giving birth to his little brother (Gen 35:19), and grandpa Isaac died (Gen 35:28).
His growing up years had been full of violence and deceit and death and you know that had to affected Joseph’s heart.
We are told that he brought back a “bad” report. The actually word is “evil” and it implies a sense of motivation. In other words, he tattled on his brothers!
Now, remember that these were terrible, vile men and whatever tale Joseph carried back was most likely completely true.
But no one likes a tattletale.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t sub for classes below 4th grade. Because they tell on each other incessantly! One time, another teacher gave me an idea. After lunch, I told the class if they felt the need to tell on someone, please walk to the board and tell it to the board and I’ll listen to it after school. Before I was even finished talking, a little girl was already at the board!
My brother made a living of this when we were younger. I made a lot of unwise decisions and there were certain things I didn’t want my parents to know.
Mark would walk in my room and say, “Hey, didn’t you get the new Journey album?” Hand it over or I’ll tell mom and dad.” That’s called blackmail by the way. He ended up with a really nice record collection!
We are told that Jacob loved Joseph more than the other the other sons because he was born to him in his old age.
Where did Jacob get this idea to play favorites? From his mom and dad! How often do we say that we aren’t going to repeat the same mistakes as our parents and then we do just that.
Joseph was the first born son of his favorite wife, Rachel. He favored him publicly, without thought of how it would affect the other children.
In order to show his love for him, he had a robe, or coat made for him. Now this is the part of the story that you may remember from Sunday school. Or from seeing, Donny Osmond play Joseph in Broadway hit, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
Most tunics were brown or black and to have color would have made this a very expensive robe. But the color is not the most important piece of the story.
It had long sleeves and went to the ankles. In other words, it wasn’t a working outfit. Most tunics were sleeveless and down to the knees to make it easier to work in. Joseph’s robe was the equivalent of wearing an Armani tuxedo to a construction site.
It was also a sign of authority. Reuben, the first born had lost his birthright , when he slept with his step mother, Bilhah. (I told you this was a Jerry Springer story!) So Jacob had chosen Joseph, the second to youngest, to be the heir and have authority.
Can you imagine Jospeh, standing in his dazzling coat, supervising the brothers as they shepherded the flock? How do you think that went over?
Well we actually know how the bothers felt about Joseph and his stupid coat.
[Slide] Hated
[Slide] “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.” (v. 4)
In verse four, five, and eight, we are told that the brothers hated Joseph. And in verse 11, we are told that they were jealous of him.
This was not normal sibling rivalry, which we all see clearly in the next section of verses.
They couldn’t even say “shalom” to him. At the dinner table, “Dad, could you tell your darling little boy with the coat to pass the butter?”
Jacob outright favoritism had set this dynamic up. As parents, we say that we love our children equally.
But that’s not always the case.
My mother overtly favored my sister-in-law over Maxine. Even Kelley, my sister-in-law thought it was ridiculous. It was incredibly hurtful to Maxine and caused a lot of conflict between my mother and me. It was unnecessary and the dysfunction that it produced was completely avoidable.
Please as parents and grandparents, let’s make sure that we don’t follow Jacob’s model here in these verses.
This favoritism led to jealousy which lead to hatred which ultimately leads to attempted murder and human trafficking!
A quick word on jealousy. The story is told of a statute that was erected in a town square in Greece of a famous athlete. A rival athlete was so incensed that we would sneak out at night with a hammer and chisel and work to weaken the base of the statute so it would collapse.
One night, his work finally paid off. It did collapse, right on top of him, killing him instantly.
Solomon wrote in the Song of Songs that:
“Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.” (SOS 8:6)
If you thought they were mad at him now, wait until he starts telling them his dreams.
[Slide] Dreamer
Harvest Dream
We will learn later that Joseph has the ability to interpret dreams. But for now, he shares two dreams with his brothers.
[Slide] Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. (v.5-8)
It’s interesting that the dream is about wheat. They were shepherds, not farmers, but wheat will figure prominently in the story when he is in Egypt.
His sheaf stood up and your sheaves bowed down.
Good grief, Joseph! You don’t have share everything that God tells you.
The brothers were indignant. Will you rule over us? Take your coat and your dreams and get away from us. And Scripture says they hated him more.
Their hatred is headed toward a dangerous boiling point.
Celestial Dream
Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.” (9-11)
Wow! The arrogance of youth and the naiveté of a seventeen year old. Guess what guys…I had another dream!
Jacob rebuked him, “Enough Joe! Do you really think the sun, (Jacob), the moon (Leah), and eleven stars (the brothers) will bow down to you? You’re getting a little big for your britches.”
But look how that verse ends - “but his father kept the matter in mind.”
This is very similar to what is said of Mary in response to the birth of Jesus and the angels singing and the shepherds arriving:
“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)
Jacob had experienced dreams from God himself in which he saw a stairway to heaven and God said to him:
“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Gen 28:13-15)
Jacob must have looked at his son and thought, maybe, just maybe ,these dreams were from God and would come true.
Application
Let’s close our time together this morning by looking at four applications: providence, dreams, Joseph and Jesus, and hope for the dysfunctional family.
Providence
The 14 chapters that contain the life of Joseph are called the “locus classicus” (the ultimate example) of the doctrine of providence in the Old Testament.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism question 18 reads,
“What are the works of providence?
“God’s works of providence are His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, ordering them, and all their actions, to His own glory.”
I’m currently working my way through John Piper’s newest 750 page book entitled simply, “Providence.” In it, he defined providence as:
“The belief that God upholds and governs all things - from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movement of nations, from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary people - all in accord with His eternal, all wise purposes to glorify Himself, yet in such a way that He never sins, nor ever condemn a person unjustly; but that His ordaining and governing is compatible with the moral accountability of all persons created in his image.”
In other words, God is in charge and He is working things out behind the scenes for His ultimate glory and our eternal good.
There are no miracles in the story of Joseph but God works through normal circumstances in supernatural ways to bring about his will and plans.
In 1990, a little redheaded girl was upset because her visa at not been renewed to stay in Thailand. This meant she had to come back to the states. When she came to Atlanta to see her parents, she saw advertisement in the paper about a job position at a little school in the mountains of North Carolina, called Crossnore. She moved there in 1990.
At the same time, thousands of miles away, a boy named Jeff was born again and started praying about about how God use him in ministry. Reading the paper one day, he saw a job opening at a little Christian school in North Carolina called Crossnore. He quit graduate school, quit his job, and left his friends for the great adventure of faith. He arrived about three months after the little redheaded girl named Maxine.
No miracles. Just God working through natural means supernaturally to make sure we crossed paths. Looking back, nearly thirty years later, it is easy to see the hand of God behind all of those events. But it’s hard to see them in real time.
Piper has said, and I’ve repeated it for years, “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life and, at any given time, you may be aware of three of them.”
It’s like looking at the huge tapestries in Europe. From behind, they are a big jumbled mess of yarn. It makes not sense from that angle. But God sees the finished product and it is a masterpiece.
If Jacob had not favored Joseph and gifted him the coat, his brothers wouldn’t have wanted to kill him and end up selling him into human trafficking.
If he had not been sold into slavery, he wouldn’t have ended up in Potiphar’s house and wouldn’t have been falsely accused of rape by Potiphar’s wife.
If we hadn’t of been accused of rape, he wouldn’t have ended up in prison where he met and interpreted dreams for two officials.
If we had hadn’t of interpreted those dreams, he would have never been asked to interpret Pharaoh’s dream and placed second in command of all Egypt.
If he hadn’t have been placed second in command, he wouldn’t have been there to rescue his family from starvation.
If he hadn’t have been there to rescue the brothers, the family line would have died out and the Messiah wouldn’t have come.
We see Joseph’s understanding of providence when he reveals himself to his brothers at the end of the story and they are terrified:
“But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:19-20)
Paul affirms the hand of providence in Romans:
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
If you are wondering if God has abandoned you, or if He’s not interested in what’s going on in your life, let me assure you that He is working out everything for His glory and our eternal good. He is good and can be trusted.
A.W. Pink wrote a generation ago,
“While it looks like things are out of control, behind the scenes there is a God that has not surrendered His authority.”
Dreams
We all dream. Some remember their dreams and some don’t. We’ve all had the dream where we are stage in front of a bunch of people and we look down and realize we are in our underwear.
Or you are running into class and there is a test and you haven’t studied.
The other night, I dreamed I had hair as long as Maxine’s and the whole dream I was trying to find a pony tail holder. What?
Can God speak through dreams? He obviously did in the Old Testament. God spoke to both Jacob, Laban, and Joseph in dreams. The gift ran in the family.
We know that God can use dreams today as well.
Martin Luther was invited to a wedding but had to turn it down because his wife Katie had a dream were he was killed traveling to the wedding. He apologized for his wife’s fear and tears.
After the wedding, he received a letter telling him that an assassination plot was discovered and that four men were lying in wait to kill him. The final line of the letter read, “You should kiss Katie’s tears for they saved your life.”
We know that Muslims are reporting dreams in which Jesus comes to them or they are directed to someone to share the Gospel with them.
Egyptian cultures valued deems highly and that will be important as we move through the story of Joseph.
Can God speak through dreams? Yes. But we must be very careful. Sometimes, it’s not God but the burrito you ate the night before! How can we tell?
If you have a dream that you think is from God you need to talk it through with a trusted mentor that is spiritually wise.
But most of all, you need to pass it through the filter of the Word of God:
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” (Heb 1:1-2)
If your dreams do not line with the living word, Jesus, and the written Word, the Bible, then we should take them for what they are - a movie your brain put together in order to receive stress while you sleep.
Dysfunctional Family
Joseph came from a highly dysfunctional family. And so did I. And maybe you did too. In one way or another, no family is perfect and we all have a family tree that nuts on it.
Chuck Swindoll writes,
“Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and even Laban, quite candidly, set some very poor examples for the rest of the family. In Joseph’s early life we can clearly see the effect of a passive father, an absent mother, a family filled with deceit, jealousy, and in fighting, children left on their own to figure out life for themselves, and the sin and mistreatment, that crept in, was in fact, tolerated.”
But there is hope for the broken, messed up family.
John Piper lists four Biblical concepts that bring hope to someone growing up in a dysfunctional home.
We need to be really clear that you are not responsible for your parent’s sins. If you are in Christ, there is no no condemnation for you.
I’ve had friends that were abused and feel like it was somehow their fault. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell.
I’ve known people that had alcoholic parents and feel if they would have been “better” kids their parents would have drank so much or used drugs. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell.
I’ve known grown adults who still feel like their parent’s divorce was their fault. That’s a lie straight from the pit of hell.
Ezekiel 18 makes clear that the we are not responsible for our parents sins.
2. We need to remember the kings in Chronicles and how the evil kings would have Godly sons, like Hezekiah and Ahaz.
I have a friend whose father was absent and mom was an alcoholic. She has grown up to be an amazing teacher who just got her Masters degree and an incredible wife and mother. And she loves Jesus with all her heart.
Just because your parents were train wrecks doesn’t mean you have to be.
I remember a woman walking up to my dad at my mom’s funeral and saying, “Wow! What did you do to get two pastors as sons?” My dad shrugged and said, “I did nothing but God had plans for them.”
3. Genealogical curses are broken in Christ. Maybe you are the one to break these patterns, to start a new healthy branch on a toxic family tree.
Paul wrote to the Galatians:
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” (Gal 3:13-14)
4. We all approach God with a distorted view of His love, grace, and kindness.
I used to think that God had His arms crossed and was shaking His head at me. That’s not God. That was my dad.
The Holy Spirit uses the Bible to make our vision of God clearer and more understandable.
Maxine thought that God was “out there somewhere and too busy with the world to deal with her.” But that wasn’t God. That was her dad.
Maybe the best thing you can do over the next year is to simply commit to read the Bible to learn who God really is so you can experience Him more freely as Father and redeemer.
The story of Joseph shows us what can happen when someone from a dysfunctional family focuses his entire life on his relationship with God.
James Montgomery Boice wrote:
“Joseph was loved and hated, favored and abused, tempted and trusted, exalted and abased. Yet at no point in his life did Joseph ever seems to get his eyes off of God and cease to trust Him.
Adversity didn’t hurt his character. Prosperity didn’t ruin him. He was the same person publicly as he was privately. He was truly a great man.”
Video: "Just hasn’t Seen it Yet"
Type of Christ
Joseph is one of two Old Testament characters that the writer has nothing bad to say about them. (The other is Daniel)
Joseph is said to be a type of Jesus, a word picture, a foreshadowing of the coming Messiah.
Abraham was a type of God the Father who offered His only begotten son, Issac, who was a type of the passive obedience of Jesus.
Blaise Pascal saw in Joseph a beautiful picture of Jesus:
“Innocent, beloved of the father, sent by his father to see his brothers, is sold for twenty pieces of silver. Through this, he becomes their Lord, their savior, savior of strangers, and savior of the world. None of this would have happened but for their plot to destroy him, the sale, and the rejection of Him.”
Again, we see God’s hand of providence working behind the scenes. The very rejection from the brothers of Joseph is what lead him to be a position to save them.
The same with Jesus. Our rejection of Him lead Him to the cross where He died in our place to pay for our sins to set us free!
