Missions Paul

Joseph has been sold into slavery and finds himself in Egypt; we will come back to him, but for now, we are back with his family. A family full of moral disorder, and this chapter will show us that, but it’s not a comfortable read.

“At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah. ² There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; ³ she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. ⁴ She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. ⁵ She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him. ⁶ Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. ⁷ But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death. ⁸ Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” ⁹ But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. ¹⁰ What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.” (Genesis 38 v 1-10)

Judah left his brothers. These four words reveal perhaps the state of his heart. He has seen his brother sold into slavery and then his father being lied to about his death. But there is something else beneath the leaving. It was Judah who proposed selling Joseph in the first place (Genesis 37:26-27). He didn’t just witness a tragedy — he helped engineer it. He left carrying that guilt. So he separates himself from his family and from God. He befriends a Canaanite and moves into his house, then marries a Canaanite woman. Each of these decisions reveals a spiritual drifting away from God — the kind of drift that often begins with a guilty conscience and an unwillingness to face what we have done.

Genesis 38 is not an easy read. We are told little details at times.

Er, “was wicked in the Lord’s sight” — and that is all. We are given nothing else. Whatever the wickedness was, God took it seriously, and Er was no more.

We are told more about Onan. The outcome was the same; God killed him, too. The reason was that he found a way to take the privilege and not the responsibility, v9. Onan took the privilege (sleeping with Tamar, his dead brother’s wife) but not the responsibility (the law of levirate marriage — fathering children with the wife of his dead brother to preserve the name). Onan died because of his deception and contempt for his dead brother. Onan wanted the privilege but not the cost.

And we should not pass over Tamar too quickly. She is introduced in verse 6, named — which itself is significant — and already by verse 10 she has been widowed twice through no fault of her own. She is a woman caught inside a system she cannot control, wronged first by Er, then exploited by Onan, who used her while deliberately denying her the protection and future she was owed. She could not expose him. She had no recourse. But her story is not over, and God has not forgotten her.

God sees everything. We don’t know why Er died, except that he had done something wicked. We know why Onan died. No one else did except Tamar, and she would not expose him. But God knew why. The hidden deception, God saw it all. God sees everything.

This passage is saturated with pain, and yet we read a word that changes everything: meanwhile. What looks like a tragedy is, in reality, an incomplete picture. Meanwhile. It’s a word you will see in the last verse. A beautiful word. It means when you’re not looking or unaware, God is still working. At the same time as you are doing what you are doing, whether you are in success or struggling, when perhaps the centre stage is the whole stage, and you see no one else or nothing changing, remember this word: Meanwhile.

“When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. ³⁰ He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?” ³¹ Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. ³² They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.” ³³ He recognised it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.” ³⁴ Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. ³⁵ All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him. ³⁶ Meanwhile, the Midianitessold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.” (Genesis 37 v 29-36)

While the father is inconsolable, Joseph is still alive. He may not know what the future holds, but he is very much alive. The truth is there, but the pain of a report hides it.

I see three things this morning:

• We can do the same as Jacob. We react to what we think is reality, when it is often an incomplete story. We react to what is in front of us or what we assume isn’t. Yet behind the scenes, there may well be many things taking place that we simply do not know.
• We can be like the brothers. We can often overlook the weight of our actions. The brothers may have rid themselves of Joseph, but they could not escape the consequences of their deception, their father’s prolonged suffering, and the burden of a lie they must carry.
• We can lose perspective so easily. We can mistake appearance for truth, and how deeply that mistake can shape our emotions, our decisions, and our lives. Sometimes, what looks like an ending is only a chapter unfolding out of sight.

Jacob mourned for a son who was still alive. He was handed the blood-stained robe. It told one story, but God was writing another. You may be holding something today that tells you that something is over, but nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever your pit, whatever your bloodstained robe, whatever feels final and closed — remember the last word of this story isn’t grief. It isn’t betrayal. It isn’t even the grave. It’s meanwhile. And meanwhile, God is working.

The brothers have thrown their youngest sibling into a dry well. Their intent is to kill him, but first, in an ordinary but callous act, they sit down to eat their lunch. There are times when we are staggered by others’ actions, and this is one of them. However, these dark days often become examples of wonderful periods of grace as the true author is writing silently behind the scenes of our lives.

“As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. ²⁶ Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? ²⁷ Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed. ²⁸ So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekelsof silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.” (Genesis 37 v 25-28)

If you have ever been betrayed by a friend or a colleague, maybe a family member, then you will know it wasn’t what they did to you that twisted the knife, but it was how easy it was for them to hurt you. Over a meal, they decided not to kill their brother (thanks to Judah) but to sell him on. The twist of the knife was the price they were happy to receive for him. It was the price of a slave. Joseph was valued no more than a slave.

This is only one side of the story – the other is to know that God was involved from the beginning.

Often seeming like a coincidence, things begin to happen, and only when we look back a few chapters further do we see the hand of God at work from the beginning of what was a difficult period.

Before the decision to sell Joseph, before they sat down for a meal, before they threw their brother down the cistern, and before Joseph even set out from his father to see if they were okay, a caravan of Midianites had already set out for Egypt.

The brothers meant it for evil, but God was providing the transport for Joseph as a springboard into the next chapter of his life. That sentence alone is worth a pause and ponder.

Twenty shekels of silver, that’s the price of betrayal. Centuries later, the price had risen to thirty pieces of silver. The connection is real. The betrayal is even more so.

In Joseph’s story, as in the gospel, the betrayal is real. The suffering is real. The tears are real. But they are not the final word.

Perhaps you can see some similarities in this story?

Your situation may be very painful, and the anxiety is overwhelming because you do not know what will happen in this chapter, never mind the next. As I read this story, I realise God is the holder of our stories, your story. It doesn’t mean your pain is minimised, nor that it won’t get worse before it gets better. But you are not in the hands of the enemy; rather, your Sovereign God has got you. He is writing your story. Even when it looks like everything is finished, it isn’t. It is often later when we can look back and see the footprint of God in our most difficult chapters of life. Did you spot the particular spice that the traders were carrying? Myrrh was one of the three gifts the Magi brought to Mary and Joseph for the Christ-child. Myrrh was mixed with wine and offered to Jesus on the cross, and it was used by Nicodemus and Joseph to wrap his body as he was laid in the tomb. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Centuries previously, there was a cargo with a beautiful scent, speaking of the death and resurrection of another Son, the Son, passing by in a prophetic act.

How beautiful is this?!

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.