Genesis 37 October 24, 1999
Family troubles: How did I get in this pit?
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever asked yourself this question: “How in the world did I get in this mess?” Maybe the mess that you find yourself in is your marriage. You fight constantly, you never seem to see things from one another’s point of view, the honeymoon ended a long time ago, you’re beginning to wonder if the other person really loves you or even if you still love the other person. Maybe the mess is your family. You feel like you’ve done everything that could be required of a parent for your kids, and still they rebel against you. They won’t listen, they go their own way, you try to give them wisdom, but nothing seems to impact their actions or attitudes. Maybe the mess is your relationship with someone – a neighbor, a co-worker, a relative, someone in the church. You want to do what is right, but they just rub you the wrong way. You know that there has got to be a better way, but you can’t seem to find it. So since you don’t know how to solve the problem, you avoid the problem and just stay away from the person. These kinds of messes create great pain for us. And when that pain and the pressure it brings get too heavy, we find a corner to hide in, the tears start to come, and we cry out, “How in the world did I get in this mess? How did I get into this deep, dark pit?” It’s a good question to ask, because once you figure out how you got to where you are, it helps you to figure out how to get out of where you are. That’s what we want to do this morning. We want to see what creates the messes that invade our lives, and how we can find healing for those messes.
Beginning today and continuing for the next 4 weeks or so, we’re going to take a look at the life of Joseph. Joseph’s story is told in Genesis chapters 37 – 50. In Genesis 37, we are introduced to Joseph and the things that happened in his life to get him into a real doozy of a mess. Open your Bibles to Genesis 37, and let’s start reading at verse 12. {read verses 12-14 – give synopsis of events} Now, let’s start reading again at verse 18. {read verses 18-25a – give synopsis of events} Now, get the picture in your head of what is going on here. Joseph is at the base of a dry well. He’s bruised and maybe got some broken bones from the fall. He can hear his brothers laughing up above him, and he knows that their laughter is about the fact that they have finally gotten rid of him. It’s dark & cold, and he really doesn’t know what is going to happen to him. It wouldn’t do any good to yell. That would just give his brothers more to laugh about and possibly more reason to kill him. He’s got nothing to do but think. “Here I am; I’m in a real mess now here at the bottom of this pit. How in the world did I get here?” The Bible doesn’t say that he did this, but if Joseph reacted to his troubles like most of us react to ours, he began to blame other people and circumstances for the mess that he faced. There were a lot of people and circumstances that Joseph could have blamed too. Look back at the beginning of Genesis 37, and let’s see some of those factors that he could have pinpointed as to why he was where he was.
Joseph could have blamed . . .
1. his dysfunctional family ancestry (vs. 1) “the land of his fathers”
- Abraham (great-grandfather) – left home because he heard the voice of God
- Isaac (grandfather) – he lied in order to protect himself. When he was in unfamiliar territory, he told everyone that his wife was his sister so that they would not kill him in order to get her.
- Jacob/Israel (father) – he and my uncle, Esau, were always fighting when they were growing up. Dad even made uncle so mad one time that dad had to run away so that uncle wouldn’t kill him. Dad was always tricking people. That made him a lot of enemies. Then when it came time for dad to get married, that’s when things got really messed up. See, Dad loved this one girl, but he got tricked into marrying this other girl, who he really didn’t think too much of. Well, then he married both of them! So he’s got one wife that he loves and one that he doesn’t love! What a mess. But oh, it gets worse. You can read about it in Gen. 29:31-30:24. See, since God knew that Leah, that’s Dad’s first wife, was not loved, God started blessing her with sons. She had four of them in a row. She was trying to earn dad’s love by giving him sons. But then, she stopped having kids, so she told dad to go have sex with her servant girl so that her servant could produce more sons for Jacob. So that’s how my next 2 brothers came along. Then, when Rachel, that’s dad’s second wife, the one that he loved – when she saw that no matter how hard she and Jacob tried, she just couldn’t seem to get pregnant, she latched onto Leah’s idea, and told Jacob to have sex with her servant girl, Bilhah in order that Jacob could have more sons through her. That’s where the next 2 brothers came from. Then, dad and Leah – back to the first wife – spent some more time together, and brothers #9 and #10 came along. Finally, after years of trying, Rachel had a son. That’s where I came into the picture.
“Sounds pretty messed up”
“Yeah, but dad was loving it. He had four women around him all of whom were desperate to get pregnant. His wives even pushed him into having sex with the hired help. He could have a different woman every night! But it sure created a mess for us. Think about it from my point of view. I’ve got 4 women all telling me what to do, and all of whom are jealous of the other woman’s sons. I’m the youngest of eleven brothers which means that they all pick on me and never let me have a moment’s rest.”
“Then the story gets sad too. Mom got pregnant one more time. When it came time for her to give birth, something went wrong. She died moments after my little brother, Benjamin, was born (35:16-20). Now I’ve got 3 women in the house but no mother, 10 older half-brothers, and a little brother that I have to watch out for. No wonder I’m at the bottom of this pit. No wonder my life has turned out this way. It’s all my ancestry’s fault.”
“Hey Joseph, we have a lot of people in my day too who like to blame the mess of their life on their family background. They blame it on mom or dad, or if they want to go back even further, they blame it on their ancestry. Only now, we have a more scientific term for it. We blame it on our genes. It’s because of my genes that I’m angry, stubborn, selfish, or homosexual. The problem with that is that God created us. He would not have created us with something that forced us to sin against Him and make a mess of our lives. Sure, life can be tough, and it sounds like you have a lot of tough factors in your life. But your responsibility is to overcome those factors rather than allowing them to have control of your life. Have you got another possible reason why you are down at the bottom of that pit?”
2. his brothers (vs. 4) “they hated him”
“Well, I could blame it on my brothers. I mean I was on a journey out here to check on them for dad, and they threw me into this pit. They’re up there plotting right now about killing me and how they’re going to tell dad that I was killed by some wild animal. They never liked me. In fact, I think that they hated me.”
“Well, you’re right about that Joseph. I’ve got a Bible right here, and it says in verse 4 of Gen. 37 that your brothers hated you. Oh, and then it says it again in verse 5 and then again in verse 8. Man, they must have really had something against you. What did you do to them?”
“I didn’t do anything to them.”
“Nothing? Are you sure that they hated you for no reason?”
“Well . . . there was this one time some of my half-brothers – if you can call them that, they were the sons of my dad’s servant girls – they were doing something that dad had told them not to do. So, being the good son that I am, I went and told dad (vs. 2). He needed to know. They got in BIG trouble, but they deserved it. And then, there was the robe. Dad liked me best of all the boys, so he gave me a special robe. I think it says something about the robe in verse 3 of my story. It was great! It was just like the kind of robe that a king would wear. Dad had spent a lot of money having it made. I wore it everywhere. I wanted everyone to know that I was dad’s favorite. I had taken enough ridicule at the hands of my brothers. It was time for a little payback. Oh, and then there were the dreams. I had these two dreams about 11 sheaves of wheat bowing down to my sheaf, and 11 stars and the sun and the moon bowing down to me. Obviously, my brothers got a little offended at that – to think that I was saying that they were going to bow down to me one day. Dad even got a little mad about that one.”
“Do you think that it was really such a good idea telling your brothers about those dreams knowing how they felt about you anyway? Do you think that it might have been wiser to keep your mouth shut?”
“Well, maybe. But they didn’t have to react the way that they did! It’s their fault that I’m down here in this pit. They’re going to make sure that my dreams never come true. If my brothers didn’t hate me so much, then my life wouldn’t be so messed up.”
“Joseph, I know what it’s like to feel that everyone is against you and that you haven’t got a friend in the world. Part of you wants to crawl into a corner and hide, and the other part of you wants to strike out at whoever comes your way. But you helped to create the feelings of your brothers toward you by your actions toward them. And you certainly didn’t actively work to bring about change in the relationship that you had with them. That doesn’t excuse their feelings or actions, but it means that you bear at least partial responsibility for the hatred that they felt for you – the hatred which caused them to throw you into this pit. . . Can you think of any other reason why you are at the bottom of that pit?”
3. his dad’s attitude toward him (vs. 3) “Israel loved Joseph”
“My dad’s attitude toward me has got to have something to do with it.”
“What, did he hate you too?”
“No, it tells how he felt about me there at the beginning of verse 3”
“It says, ‘Now Israel’ – that’s your dad’s nickname, right – ‘Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons’. So it says that your dad loved you. And you’re saying that your dad’s love for you is at least partly to blame for the mess that you are in?! How do you figure that one?”
“Well, first of all, if you read it carefully – and you should always read your Bible very carefully – it doesn’t say that he loved me. It says that he loved me more than he loved his other sons. In other words, I was his favorite. That’s not the way that it was supposed to be. The way that it works in our day is that the first-born son – that would be Reuben – was supposed to be dad’s right hand man. He was the one that got the bigger share of the inheritance and would be the family head when dad wasn’t able to because of death, sickness, or absence. But dad was never one who did things the way that they were supposed to be done. He wasn’t the firstborn in his family; uncle Esau was. Dad knew that uncle Esau was grandpa Isaac’s favorite. Dad always resented that and tricked grandpa Isaac into giving him most of the inheritance instead of Esau. So instead of choosing Reuben – his firstborn – to be his favorite – I think everyone in the family would have been ok with that, he chose me. I’m the firstborn of his favorite wife – Rachel – so maybe that made it ok in his eyes.”
“Let me get this straight; you’re mad at your dad because he treated you better than the rest of the family?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I never wanted to be treated differently. I just wanted to be an equal. To be treated like everyone else, to be accepted. And dad’s attitude toward me prevented that from ever happening.”
“You didn’t seem to mind very much when he gave you that special coat. You wore it everywhere. That’s how your brothers knew it was you coming when they saw you from such a distance. You had that coat on which made you stand out from everyone else around. No one else has a coat like it.”
“You want to know why I wore that stupid coat all the time. It wasn’t because I liked it so much. It was because it was a part of dad. Dad never spent too much time with me – he never spent much time with any of us except when we were working the fields together. But I felt like that wearing that coat was the only way that I could have a part of my dad with me that no one else could have. If dad really loved me, then he would have given me himself rather than giving me that coat. If dad really loved me, then he wouldn’t have let momma die. You know the only reason that dad loved me – it says why right there in that Bible that you’ve got. Look there at verse 3.”
“It says that he loved you because you were born to him in his old age.”
“Yeah. He doesn’t love me because of who I am or anything. He loves me because I’m the proof that he’s still got what it takes to get a woman pregnant. Even in his old age, he’s still a man’s man. He can go up to all his buddies, give them a high five, and say, ‘I’ve still got what it takes boys. I’m not old yet.’ Great reason, huh.”
“Joseph, if you survive this ordeal, one day you’ll get married and become a parent. You’ll discover that parents make mistakes and that they don’t always communicate their love to their kids in the way that they should. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t love you. Joseph, I know what is going to happen tomorrow because I have read the rest of the chapter. It says in verses 31-35 that your brothers are going to sell you into slavery. Then they’re going to go home and convince your dad that you were killed by a wild beast. How do you think that your dad is going to react when he gets the news? It says {read it}. It’s going to tear him up inside so bad that he will refuse to be comforted by anyone for many years to come. Your supposed death will cause him to live in grief and sorrow until the day that he finds out that you are still alive. He loves you. Don’t blame him for not knowing how to show it or for not showing it the way that you think he should . . . Is there anyone or anything else that you can think of as a reason why you are in that pit?”
4. his age (vs. 2) “seventeen”
“Oh, I don’t know. . . Maybe it has something to do with my age. I’m just 17. Dad has never allowed me to grow up really either. He keeps me around the house most of the time even when he and the rest of his sons are out working the fields. I wanted to go with my brothers when dad sent them off to find better grazing for the livestock, but he wouldn’t let me go. Dad has always been over-protective of me. I think that’s because I’m the son of the wife he really loved, Rachel. I think that I remind him of her. He’s so afraid of losing me like he lost her that he’s babied me all my life. He’s never taught me to take responsibility for my own actions. I’ve never had to work very hard. This morning, when dad told me to go out into the fields to find my brothers, I was excited. He was letting me go off on my own. Maybe he was finally going to let me grow up. I’ve never had to grow up before. Surely, my age is reason enough for the pit that I am in.”
“Joseph, even in my day, people try to excuse their actions because of their age. Just the other day, I heard of a 13 year old boy who was on trial for a murder that he committed when he was 11. They’re debating about whether or not to try him as an adult. If he is tried as a kid, then when he turns 18, he will be set free. Do you think that is right, Joseph, for that boy to be set free when he is 18?”
“No, I guess not. Whether a person is 11, 13, 18 or 50, he has a responsibility to do what is right.”
“Then do you think that you can justify your actions simply because you are young?”
“No, right is right, and wrong is wrong regardless of what age a person is.”
“Joseph, have you got anyone else that you can blame your situation on? {silence} Did you hear me Joseph?”
“Yeah, I heard you. I could probably come up with a few more, but you would just shoot those out of the water, too.”
“Then can I make a suggestion as to where the blame for you being at the bottom of this pit actually rests?”
. . . but what he needed to do was to blame . . .
5. his sin (vs. 2)
- pride / attitude of superiority (vs. 2,5-10)
- hate (vs. 4,5,8 cf I John 2:9 “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness”)
- jealousy (vs. 11 cf I Cor. 3:3 “You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”)
- favoritism (vs. 3 cf James 2:9 “But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers”)
- murder (vs. 18-19 cf Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that it was said to he people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment’. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment”)
- unkind words (vs. 4 )
- lying (vs. 20,31-34 cf Col. 3:4 “Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices”)
- uncaring heart (vs. 35)
Most of the messes that we get ourselves into are because of sin (Matthew 7:24-27). There are many ways to deal with a sin problem that might ease the pain so that you don’t notice it so much, but that’s like putting a band-aid over a wound that needs surgery. The question is: do you want to deal with your problem, or do you want to heal your problem. There is only one method of bringing true healing.
1. Identification of the sin. (Mark 7:20-21; Romans 1:28-31; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 4:22,25-31; James 2:9; James 4:17; Proverbs 6:16-19; I Samuel 15:23)
2. Repentance from the sin. (Acts 3:19 – “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord”
3. Forgiveness for the sin. (I John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”)
