Trinity Baptist Church June 11, 2006
Character on Display
Exiled for Good
Genesis 37
People have said that character can be measured by how you act when no one’s watching -- and how you treat people who can do you no good -- and how you treat people who can’t fight back.
We want to talk about character this Summer. Specifically, we’ll scrutinize a man’s life under the lens of Scripture, taking a look at what I’ve called “character on display”.
The NT tells us that OT accounts like Joseph’s story were recorded "for our instruction". God provides OT biographies for a pointed reason: to remove truth from theory and teach it to us through the flesh and blood lives of every day people.
Joseph’s life and character will speak to us as believers. We’ll be challenged as we see how God builds character into His man. Joseph will model integrity for us -- for instance, when a brazen woman throws herself at him. Then he’ll sit in prison for years, waiting for God to move. Both in slavery and in prison, he’ll exhibit faithfulness in serving well. In the end, as a powerful government official, Joseph will choose grace and forgiveness when revenge would be a lot more natural.
Character on display. We need to take a hard look. Because the character God created in Joseph’s life is identical to the variety He wants to build into ours.
Joseph is one of few people about whom Scripture says almost no negative word. Considering his family of origin, that’s pretty amazing.
You may remember that Joseph was the son of Jacob’s old age. He’s the son of Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife. Since she was his favorite, Joseph automatically became Jacob’s favorite son. And everyone knew it.
Jacob had other issues. He’d been his mother’s favorite. He had connived and manipulated with her to cheat his brother Esau out of his birthright and out of the blessing of his dying father. Then he ran from his angry brother -- he went off to live with Uncle Laban, a man as deceitful as Jacob. Somehow the two managed to peacefully coexist -- long enough for Jacob to gain two wives and put together a large herd of livestock and gain servants and possessions. Then -- deceitfully -- they parted company.
The reunion with brother Esau wasn’t completely forthright. The pattern Joseph had seen in his father was largely living life his way. Jacob knew God, he’d encountered Him on a more than one occasion, but the evidence is God never became His object of worship, or passion or the center of his life. Life for Jacob was all about Jacob. Toward the end of our study, when Jacob’s other sons return from Egypt and report they must take Benjamin with them back to Egypt, Jacob whines with words that reflect his immaturity: he says, all these things are against me!! Jacob is a materialistic man who’s consumed with his own welfare. He’s also a passive husband and father.
His passivity as a parent was most visible in Genesis chapter 34 -- where Leah’s daughter Dinah goes out to visit some young women nearby. In Shechem, Dinah was approached by a prince of the land -- he saw her -- was infatuated with her and he raped her. Then when he sought to take her as a wife, there was zero response from Jacob -- but there was from his sons. They deceived the prince and other men of the land, and in a scheme, ended up killing all the men in the city.
Jacob heard what they had done and he was angry! Not angry that his daughter had been raped. Not angry at himself for having done nothing about it. Not even angry at his sons’ revenge -- he was upset because, he said, his sons would bring trouble down on him.
So the account of Jacob describes a passive, scheming, deceiving, self-centered father.
Enter Joseph,
Enjoying his father’s favor. (37:1-4)
As I said, Joseph was Jacob’s firstborn from his favorite wife, Rachel. He was born in Jacob’s old age, and he seemed to give the old man a new lease on life. He doted on him. Gave him the honored place, even before his much older brothers, who were mostly grown by then.
But Jacob’s other boys weren’t fools. They watched things transpire and likely did a slow burn, watching their elderly father turn this young son into a pet.
Look at chapter 37, verse 3. …Israel -- Jacob -- loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic.
Blatant favoritism. Swindoll says, “passive fathers tend to favor the child who’s easiest to raise.” If that’s true in this case, Joseph was probably super compliant. And why wouldn’t he be?
He likely got everything he wanted. That tunic dad gave him wasn’t just multi-colored -- the Hebrew word shows that it was likely wrist-length and maybe even ankle-length. It was a piece of clothing that said not only that he was special but also probably meant he’d couldn’t do much work in it. Joseph probably had things pretty easy.
When he was seventeen -- verse 2. He was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father.
Verse 4. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms.
Before the explosion, there was bad blood between him and his brothers. He tattled on them, they stewed and hated him for it. Mostly the came straight out of Jacob’s decision to treat one son differently than all the others. Jacob’s immature modeling paved the way for what was about to happen.
Things got worse. Joseph went being the favorite to
Dreaming and bragging (37:5-11).
For some reason, God reveals to Joseph some of his future through dreams. First came a dream about sheaves in the field. The boys had bound sheaves and stood them up in the field. Joseph’s sheaf rose up and the other sons’ sheaves all bowed down to his!
Joseph couldn’t wait to tell them -- and when he did -- they were flabbergasted, retorting that he certainly wouldn’t become their ruler. Verses 8 tells us they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. Then came the dream of the sun and moon and eleven stars, all bowing to Joseph. Even his father had trouble with that one.
The result with his brothers was almost inevitable. There had to come a parting of the ways. The simplest solution to them was murder. When he came out to the wilderness to find them, they stripped him of the hated garment, threw him in a pit and left him for some time. Then the discussion turned -- not to killing him -- but to selling him to some Midianite traders who passed nearby.
The favorite and dreamer is now
Exiled and alone (37:12-36) Imagine what went through young Joseph’s heart and mind. His brothers burning anger and hatred finally got fully bared to him. He’s been in the pit. There he imagined the worst as he heard them recite his evils and their thoughts and plan to kill him. Then everything familiar gets stripped away.
He’s pulled out and handed over -- for the price of a cheap slave -- to some hardened traders. He’s hauled to Egypt and put on the block to be sold to a stranger. All in strange language and culture. The favorite son is now a slave. The dreamer’s vision is dashed. There would be unimaginable pain -- both from separation from his dad and home -- and also from the cruel abandonment by his own brothers.
But we know the rest of the story. And Joseph was about to learn it. Someone said,
We turn to God when our foundations start shaking, only to discover it’s God Who’s doing the shaking.
The accounts in chapters 37-50, as we’ll see, tell us Joseph grasped, early in the process, that God was deeply involved in his exile. We know that because of what we read in chapter 50. Joseph tells his repentant brothers there: You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. He uses the same word for the brothers’ planning that He uses for God’s plan.
In other words, God didn’t come along after the fact and clean up what the brothers had done.
And God didn’t turn His back, and miss what the brothers were going to do to their brother.
What we hear at the end of Joseph’s story is an unflinching declaration that the sovereign God picked him up out of his homeland and put him down in Egypt -- why? What was God about?
To do good in his life, and to bring good from his life.
That’s the critical truth you and I need when it comes to pain and problems and affliction.
God is out to work His desires in me and through me. Pain is very often His tool of choice to make me into a person after His own heart, and one who is highly useable in His hands.
My cooperation in that process -- trusting Him -- waiting on Him to work -- and being faithful
in the process brings glory to God.
With that in mind, let me give you some Principles we can learn about this character building coursework God so often puts us through.
First,(PPT)
God removes familiar props to lay His foundation.
The familiar things provide us with a strong sense of security. We all want security.
The problem is, we begin to depend on the familiar props to provide us what God alone will give us. Someone said, “what seems to be the worst turns out to be the best”. The truth about character is, it’s built into us by God, but it often comes at the price of something we love. Possessions, people, places, jobs.
God did some pretty drastic demolition work in Joseph’s life, in order to get Joseph to trust in Him alone. Remember, Joseph could never have been God’s man if he’d stayed with dear old dad. He’d have likely become what his father was. That home life would most likely have made him a conniving deceiver like Jacob. The problem is when God kicks out the props of my life it hurts.
That relates to the second principle. (PPT)
God’s curriculum is seldom one we’d select.
I’ve never experienced the kind of stuff Joseph did. I’ve never known the kind of affliction some of you have. But when it comes to the pain I have experienced, I can tell you one thing: if God had warned me ahead of time -- if He’d asked me whether it was okay to let a particular person or event or loss cut across my path, so that I would learn to trust Him more -- I’m pretty positive I’d have said, “no thanks, God, I’ll just audit that course. I’ll just take an elective that’s a lot easier than that one.” Joseph didn’t get a vote. God knew precisely the kind of work that must be done to make him into His man. And He moved to do it.
Therefore, third, (PPT)
God prepares people prior to using them.
Joseph was in God’s training program. Unfair treatment from his family. We’ll witness him be unjustly accused next time. Then abandoned in prison. Thirteen years, he will wait for God. But it was a thirteen-year course in character development. And when God’s out to build character, it will not the kind of training that no money could buy.
I think D. L. Moody was the one who said, “when God wants to use a person greatly, He takes him and crushes him.” That sounds so harsh to us. But the point of that, and the point of Joseph’s life of tough, hard, gut-wrenching affliction is this:
God cannot work greatly through us until He works deeply in us.
God needed a leader. And Joseph became one that even secular history recognizes.
My friend Pastor Jack Magness was in Egypt a year or so ago -- he was in the Cairo Museum and he saw a statue of Joseph, with his wife and his two sons. The statue’s inscription said, “Yusuf: the Hebrew man who delivered Egypt from the great famine.”
Here’s a man who not only made the history books, God used him to rescue his people from famine, bring them to Egypt, and provide a place for them to multiply from a few dozen to over a million by the time of the Exodus. God needed a leader. But God always wants leaders with character. So He prepares them.
So why is pain and suffering such a part of God‘s program? Because they press us trust Him. To trust Him alone. And trusting Him in the middle of affliction brings you to a tender, sensitive walk with Him. It’s unlikely that any of us will get there any other way. When Joseph finally gets elevated, there won’t be a doubt in His mind about Who put him there.
And here’s the good part: (PPT)
God never leaves us alone.
Jump over just two chapters, to Genesis 39. To 39:2. Look how it starts.
And the Lord was with Joseph. Then verse 3. The Lord was with him. Verse 5: the Lord blessed the Egyptian‘s house on account of Joseph. And the final verse in chapter 23: where Joseph sits in prison, as we’ll see next time. The Lord was with him and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper.
I don’t know about you, but if I’d been around Jacob and the boys -- if I’d know Joseph -- and watched the events transpire -- witnessed the hatred, them throwing him in the pit, selling him like a piece of furniture; his being bought in the slave market, and then going on through all the next 13 years: I’d think I’d be tempted to tell Joseph: “Looks like God has forgotten you! God’s abandoned you!”
That’s because we witness pain in someone else, we see it from the outside. We don’t look past the superficial, we don’t think like God thinks. But the God of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob says, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. Jesus says to us,
I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. Paul writes in Romans,
what shall separate us from the Love of Christ? Persecution, famine, sword, peril?
Will people, circumstances, cancer, friends or brothers who turn their back on us? No.
Not any of those, or any other thing we‘ll ever experience. Because God has sworn to be faithful to us. He’s given us His Spirit’s intimate Presence and He will not -- He will never go back on His Word. God was with Joseph during every awful moment. He not only made him prosper in spite of the awful circumstances, He whispered in his ear, “you are Mine. I have called you by name. You follow Me. You trust Me. You walk with Me. You be faithful to Me.”
Listen: that is the wellspring and source of Joseph’s character. He didn’t get to Egypt and (like people say these days) “reach down deep inside himself” and find the wherewithal to gut it out and muster up character on his own.
Joseph believed God. He knew God. He trusted God. And through the awfulness, God laid a foundation of character into this man which stood the test of time, and the test of temptation, and the test of years of waiting, and every other test God would throw his way.
God was with him. That’s all we need to know about the what went on in the secret and tough times of Joseph’s experience in Egypt.
The evidence of his having learned to trust God, as I said at the beginning, comes in those powerful words in chapter 50: You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
Steps I need to take
Can I ask you: How is the trust issue with you? Do you have some familiar props that give you some sense of security? Is it relationships, or a job, or possessions that keep you directing your trust in their direction?
God is determined to move your trust to Him alone. That may mean He will take from our tight little fists anything we hold onto as faith objects. God will grow you in faith, and He anticipates a response -- one like we’ll see produced in Joseph’s life.
You’ll grow in your view of God. You’ll take some strong strides in trusting in Him alone. And your character will grow! It will hurt at times. It will be costly at times. But His character development course is always well worth it. And He’s always right next to us.
As we begin this Summer study, would you do an assessment?
Check on the things you’d just as soon keep at the center of your focus and trust. And then consciously, lay them on the line before God; tell Him you’re ready to grow in trusting Him.
Spend some time reading through chapters 37-50 of Genesis. Discover with me how God worked to build a man of character. And consider how He will build character into you.
