Missions Paul

Whatever has been stripped from you, whatever dry and dark place you find yourself in today, there is something you need to know. God prepared that cistern before you ever arrived in it.

“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. ²⁰ “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” ²¹ When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. ²² “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father. ²³ So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— ²⁴ and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.” (Genesis 37 v 19-24)

The enemy of your life (and, incredibly, for Joseph, it was his own brothers) has a plan, and that is to remove you from the place and position God has given to you. Ultimately, to steal, kill and destroy.

These brothers had a plan: to silence Joseph once and for all. The story of your life is the story that God is writing, not anyone else.

God had watched a cistern dry up over time. This was crucial for the story. It saved Joseph’s life. We may not realise that even the dry circumstances of our lives could be used to save us.

Reuben was the firstborn and responsible in ways the others weren’t. He had already fallen out with his father (chapter 35) for sleeping with Jacob’s concubine. Perhaps this was his attempt at recompense for saving Jacob’s favourite son.

A dried-up cistern and a smart brother. That’s what God had to use. They would be used for a new chapter in the story of Joseph’s life.

Whatever you are going through, let me speak these words over your life – the cistern is empty. You may be stripped of everything that once made you feel significant, and this may be the greatest trial of your life, but you will not drown, for there is no water in the cistern.

You may find yourself in a dry place, and you may not know if you will ever come out of this experience. But you will. This is the story of a dreamer who went into the pit and came out.

What do you need to see or hear that reveals the condition of your heart? Across some fields comes that multi-coloured coat. The brothers see him long before he sees them. They have time to prepare and to choose their response. Or they have time to plot. The dreamer was still in the fields when they’d already decided his fate.

“Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, ¹³ and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.” “Very well,” he replied. ¹⁴ So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, ¹⁵ a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?” ¹⁶ He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?” ¹⁷ “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. ¹⁸ But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.” (Genesis 37 v 12-18)

They saw him from afar. He was on his own, away from the protection of his father and alone in the fields, coming ever closer to them. The jealous brothers didn’t take long once they saw the distant figure. They plotted to kill him.

What or who can you see in the distance that would make your fists clench?

Joseph, with his coloured coat, was an easy target. They didn’t see that he was carrying his father’s love for them. This was another provocation, but this time he was entering their space without his father’s protection.

Have you interpreted your vision correctly? Even if you have, are you in the right place to receive it? Jealousy distorts, insecurity makes everything feel like a threat, and unresolved wounds can make you the one who harms.

If we don’t have transformed hearts, then we will mishandle the opportunities presented to us.

Who will you be when that person comes onto your horizon?

Joseph received his dreams at 17 years of age. These dreams came from God. Some dreams do perhaps more than we realise. Between the dream and its fulfilment is the slow and costly work of becoming the person the dream requires.

“Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. ² 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. ³ 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 ornaterobe for him. ⁴ 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. ⁵ Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. ⁶ He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: ⁷ 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.” ⁸ 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. ⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ 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?” ¹¹ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.” (Genesis 37 v 1-11)

So we begin a new story. Focused on a 17-year-old son of Jacob (Israel), who loved him more than his other children, Joseph is given an ornate robe to wear; the favouritism was for all to see.

This favouritism led to Joseph becoming the hated one.

Joseph has 2 dreams about what God was going to do in his life – promotion over his family. But these dreams would require him to pay the price of seeing them worked out. He could never have imagined what these dreams would ask of him.

Perhaps you know that tension. You know what God has said to you. You know His hand is on your life. You may not be seventeen, and you may not have a flashy coat, but you know God has called you, and He may be using you already. You carry a dream in your heart. What we see from the opening of this story is that when God gives us something to carry, it may not be a smooth path. This dream has come to a son of a dysfunctional household: a father who shows favouritism, his brothers who hate him and the impetuousness of youth. This is the context in which the God-dream was planted, and it wasn’t ideal; it didn’t look like God-soil. There seemed to be a definite lack of wisdom. Joseph seems to have said the right thing at the wrong time.

I think this sums it up. The beautiful coat was given to him to wear. The character wearing it would have to mature.

The dreams God gives us are not too big for us, but perhaps at the time they are given, we are too small to carry them. So we need God to prepare us, develop our character, perhaps we need to go through trials to shape us, in order to see the dreams come into fulfilment. Preparation is everything.

Jacob came home. Three words that mean everything to a dying father. Whatever this means for you today, let it encourage you that those estranged from you, from God, can come home.

“Jacob came home to his father Isaac in Mamre, near Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had stayed. ²⁸ Isaac lived a hundred and eighty years. ²⁹ Then he breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people, old and full of years. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” (Genesis 35 v 27-29)

If we hadn’t read the story of Jacob, we would miss the importance of those opening three words. He had left home at least 20 years previously after deceiving his father, Isaac, and now here he is, the prodigal returning home. Even after all the family disputes, here he is, the son at his father’s deathbed. If you have wandered away, you can come home, you can return.

The text beautifully states that he was ‘gathered to his people’; a phrase pointing to a homecoming, a gathering and a reunion with those who had gone before.

It also says how the two estranged sons are together burying their father. Death has a way of levelling out what is really important in life. I remember being at the hospital bed of a man who was dying, and there gathered around were two old, estranged friends who shared a common bond of friendship with the man. They both loved their dying friend, and his death brought them together after many years of being separated.

An estranged son is home. Two divided brothers together. A father dies in peace.

Isaac’s life was far from perfect, but to die this way was surely a blessing to him.

Whatever you have done, wherever you have wandered, the story of Jacob whispers the same invitation: you can come home.

Twelve sons, four mothers, equalling one complicated family. But we see a faithful God who is not fazed by family dysfunction, rivalry and failure.

“Jacob had twelve sons: ²³ The sons of Leah: Reuben the firstborn of Jacob, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun. ²⁴ The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. ²⁵ The sons of Rachel’s servant Bilhah: Dan and Naphtali. ²⁶ The sons of Leah’s servant Zilpah: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob, who were born to him in Paddan Aram.” (Genesis 32 v 22-26)

These verses are the ones we might be tempted to skip over. The sons of four women who would become the twelve tribes of Israel. In these four verses is the story of love, rivalry and heartache. This family were anything but peaceful. Leah and Rachel were constantly competing, and the sons would resent one another over time.

In this list of names, we don’t see the Biblical story that will unfold. Reuben, the firstborn, is not the one who will save them all; that will be someone near the bottom of the list, Joseph. The first king of the nation that will be born from this family will be Benjamin, but the greatest King born in a small, humble place of Nazareth will come from the fourth-born, Judah.

We can’t see this from the list of names born outside the Promised Land, in an exiled situation. That is the story we are being called to understand. They were born in the wandering years, but they tell the same story: we survived, we multiplied, for God did not forget us, even when we took our eyes off Him.

I think this is what speaks the loudest. Every name carries a story, and that wasn’t always a pretty one. Yet God’s story manages to weave throughout the human one. God had spoken to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and given them promises, and no matter what the ‘family’ did, He would continue to fulfil His word.

God has never required a perfect family to work through.

This is the heart of God’s message to the world in every generation: just because the family is messy, this will not affect His faithfulness to it.

There are times when we move from one episode of grief to another. Israel (Jacob) has just buried the love of his life, but what followed was perhaps the twisting of the knife further into his heart.

 ^“Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder. ²² While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it.” (Genesis 35 v 21-22)

“Israel moved on …” It is hard to do that at times, isn’t it? He had just buried the love of his life, Rachel and now he moves on to Migdal Eder, Hebrew for ‘Tower of the Flock’. Here, there was a watchtower, a place for sheltering flocks (Micah 4 v 8). Located in the hills of Bethlehem, it could be in the vicinity of the shepherds at the time of Jesus’ birth; if so, those shepherds would have understood the significance of the place.

Sometimes we move on from an episode of grief only to another chapter of pain, thinking the worst is behind us and finding it’s not. Only a few verses before, Rachel, the love of Israel’s life, was buried, and now we read that one of the wives of Jacob and the mother of Dan and Naphtali, (when Rachel was barren), is visited by the firstborn of Jacob and a scandal is written similar to Absalom who did the same to his father David (2 Samuel 16:22).

“Israel heard of it.” Nothing else is said. Maybe nothing else was needed. But Israel never forgot and, on his deathbed, told Reuben in no uncertain terms, “You will no longer excel, for you went up onto your father’s bed” (Genesis 49:4).

Why was nothing more said? Maybe it was because he was just too broken and wounded to say anything. The man who was renamed because he struggled with God discovers that the greatest struggles can be the disappointments from those we have loved.

Some news can force us to stay silent. We lose our voice.

But God has seen, and He has heard.

We may have to continue to limp into the next chapter, but we do so knowing that, though we cannot speak of it, His love is stronger than our grief.

Here in the centre of the opening book of the Old Testament, we see another link to the gospel.  On a road to a place called Bethlehem is the heart of the Christian gospel.

“Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. ¹⁷ And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” ¹⁸ As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin. ¹⁹ So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). ²⁰ Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb.” (Genesis 35 v 16-20)

Israel (Jacob) is on the move again, and this time to Ephrath, which would later be known as Bethlehem.

On the road, Rachel goes into labour, and it’s not easy for her. She had ‘great difficulty’. The writer uses the phrase twice. Births are difficult at the best of times, but on the way, this was ‘great difficulty.’ Rachel fights for her life, and the child is also in danger. Then what happens is what you and I have known throughout life. Good news and grief sometimes come at the same time.

The irony is bitter. The one who prayed for children receives a second son but then dies. Before she does, she names her son Ben Oni – son of my sorrow. This is not her cursing her son; it is Rachel declaring her testimony of what she has experienced. Her voice dies away as she breathes her last.

Jacob does not let this naming be permanent. He will not let his son be defined by this tragedy.  He calls him Benjamin, meaning ‘son of my right hand’ or ‘son of honour’. Jacob will not let the sorrow of his start in life be the one that defines him. His mother’s experience will not be his son’s identity. Jacob copied his God, who would not let him be known as the deceiver, but Israel, the Prince of God.

So Rachel is buried in a place of great significance for our faith. Jacob set up a pillar. Rachel will not be forgotten.

In the future, a young couple will travel to the area that will be known as Bethlehem, and a son will be born. He would come and bring healing to all who are broken-hearted and will wipe away every tear.

The heart of the gospel is right here.

This passage is not just Jacob’s story; it is an invitation to every one of us to recognise that God’s promises do not expire, and that the God who met you even over 20 years ago is ready to meet you again now.

“And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. ‘ ” A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. ¹² The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.” ¹³ Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him. ¹⁴ Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. ¹⁵ Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel.” (Genesis 35 v11-15)

Look again at verses 11-12. These are true for you.

You are here to grow. Wherever you are, God is responding to your YES.

Your life reaches beyond your life. What God has started in you won’t end when you leave this earth. Your legacy will continue beyond you.

You will receive what others have sown. It is not only that others will benefit from you, but that you can still reap where the previous generations have sown.

You may not think these promises apply to you because no one knows you better than yourself!

But God does not rule out these blessings for Jacob despite the way he lived his life of deception.

Jacob’s response may seem rather strange to us in 2026. But this is worship in ancient form and a recognition that God was here. Jacob named that place Bethel, ‘the house of God’.

Hold on!

Wasn’t it already called Bethel? Yes, Jacob had named it Bethel around 20-25 years previously. There are moments when we need to rededicate our lives to being the house of God.

Perhaps you remember the Bethels in your life, and God may be waiting to meet you again. Even 20-25 years later!

What do you call yourself when no one is listening? What words come to mind when you look at your own life, your failures, your patterns, the things you can’t seem to shake off? What do you see when you look in the mirror? For many of us, the names we carry are heavier than we let on.

Jacob knew something about that. God had given him a new name at the Jabbok River. He would be renamed Israel.

But God comes again and reiterates the message that he is no longer to be called Jacob but Israel.

“After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram,God appeared to him again and blessed him. ¹⁰ God said to him, “Your name is Jacob,but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So he named him Israel.” (Genesis 35 v 9-10)

Again.

God had renamed Jacob back in chapter 32 after the wrestling match! But sometimes we need to hear things more than once.

God, in His grace, appears again and says the same thing: You are Israel, not Jacob.

The New Testament picks up this thread in striking ways. Jesus renames Simon as Peter, the rock. Paul (formerly Saul) carries a transformed identity into his apostolic calling. Revelation promises that the one who overcomes will receive “a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17).

The principle is this: God sees through any name given by some assessment of you. He speaks a greater name over you, which is based not on what you are doing but on what He is doing.

Maybe when you look at yourself, when you look over your life, then words to describe you are more destructive than life-giving.

God’s word to you is this: “That name will no longer call you.”

A single verse, that’s all we have to read today.

It’s about a nurse who dies.

She was buried under a tree.

Unassuming perhaps, but God made sure it was written down.

“Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak outside Bethel. So it was named Allon Bakuth.” (Genesis 35 v 8)

The Bible didn’t need to record her death. In Genesis 24 we first read of her when she went with Rebekah after marrying Isaac. Deborah was there for Rebekah in the silent, long years of barrenness, at the twins’ birth, and during the family strife; she remained by her mistress’s side.

By the time we reach this verse, Rebekah has probably died, and Deborah is Jacob’s final link to a past life. He named her burial plot, ‘the oak of weeping’. A woman we had largely forgotten, who is definitely not a major character in the Bible story, has been given her own tree, a named memorial. She is mentioned in Scripture, given a monument, yet never the central figure of any Bible story.

God always remembers the marginalised.

This verse sits here as a reminder that God remembers the small stories. That love for a minority person, a weeping for the unassuming, is never beneath the notice of God.

You are seen. You are known. You will be remembered. God knows you. This is perhaps the heart of the gospel in abbreviated form.