Shattered Dreams
Genesis 37 (ESV)
November 6, 2022
Pastor Josh Beakley

We’re going to look at the book of Genesis. It’s the first book in the Scriptures. It’s the first of the five of the Torah, the Pentateuch, given to us by Moses. It’s the inspired Word of God. We hear from Him. We’re dropping right into the middle of Genesis in chapter 37. We’re going to kind of cover the story of Joseph and see what God has been doing in the history of humanity, but then through this very particular family of Abraham. Right here is a kind of momentous occasion of Joseph and his brothers. It starts to unpack everything else that happens throughout the Scriptures, but also the history of the world in some unique ways. So wherever you come from in the challenges of life, there is a blessing that God gives us and some stories that really capture our attention and affections and should stir within us about the kind of God that we serve.

1 Jacob lived in the land of his sojournings, in the land of Canaan.

2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

5 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: 7 Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” 11 And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

12 Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” 14 So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.” So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. 15 And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” 16 “I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” 17 And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

18 They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him. 19 They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.” 21 But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22 And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. 23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore. 24 And they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

25 Then they sat down to eat. And looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. 26 Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?” 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers listened to him. 28 Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.

29 When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes 30 and returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?” 31 Then they took Joseph’s robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. 32 And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, “This we have found; please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not.” 33 And he identified it and said, “It is my son’s robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.” 34 Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. 36 Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.

Cornelia was the baby of the family. She was born the youngest child to her mother, Johanna, and her father, Casper, who was a watchmaker. She eventually trained herself to become a watchmaker and was the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in the Netherlands. She established a youth club for girls and her family offered food and shelter and money to those in need. It was a wonderful life until one day, the Netherlands was invaded. Life changed dramatically. Food became scarce. Youth club was banned. Persecution arose for many oppressed groups, particularly those who were Jewish.

Corrie and her family gave shelter to her neighbors and eventually built a secret room they called the Hiding Place, where refugees in the house could hide. It’s estimated that over eight hundred Jews were saved through their kindness. But eventually, this safe harbor was discovered and so she, her sister Betsie, and her father Casper, were all arrested. Only a few weeks later, their father was dead. Corrie and Betsie were in a labor camp under conditions so terrible that we can barely stomach them. The sisters tried to encourage each other and prisoners too, through conversation and worship services. But sometime later, Betsie’s health declined to the point where she died and left Cornelia alone and heartbroken.

Here was a woman whose country, whose family, and whose own body had been ravaged by the terrors of evil. She was a woman who once could have been described as living the dream, but then through not any wrongdoing of her own, in fact, because of doing what was right, her dreams for life had shattered into a living nightmare. We want to imagine that our own lives are protected from this kind of pain. We think that we can figure out what to do and the right formula and if we follow the right steps, that we’ll escape unscathed. To be sure, there are ways in which we are living the dream of many other past generations and people around the world. But that doesn’t mean that we can avoid the suffering that is caused by sin. No matter what we do, this world is very, very broken. No life or dream eventually goes untouched by this force of evil. It devastates lives in ways that leaves earthly dreams in shatters.

For all of our technology, our creativity and our prosperity, we have not found a solution to the brokenness of this world. Whether it’s children without parents, homes split, we think about the legal system. We think about foster care, violent crime, prisons, poverty, conflict internationally, scandals about, substance abuse, addictions, adult entertainment, human trafficking, chronic pain, disability, malpractice, sexual harassment, depression, self harm, childhood cancer, abuse in all forms. These are things with which we’re not unfamiliar because this world is broken. Some will know more than others, but none of us will fail to learn that life can be very, very hard.

We imagine that we can do anything we set our mind to. There is great reason to work hard and to strive after what God would call us into and to wisdom. But not one of us will make it through life untouched by the miseries like these and so many others because of the evil of sin. Eventually we have to come to realize that even if we try to do everything right, our lives are not entirely under our control. But just because the outcome of our lives is not under our direct control, it does not mean that they are out of control entirely. The beautiful dream life that we’re trying to weave may end up in knots, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still another great Designer right on track at the loom. The truth is that nothing happens outside of God’s all-wise, almighty, all-good plan for His glory. Do you believe that? Do you believe that nothing happens outside of God’s all-wise, almighty, all-good plan for His glory? If you do, then at some point, you won’t be able to help yourself but ask what is He doing?

It’s a question that was probably asked over and over by those Hebrew slaves in Egypt for generations. They could have asked, “How did we get here? What is God doing?” Imagine them even now as they’re receiving some of this instruction from Moses. They’re exiting Egypt. They are there at Sinai and perhaps just following. They’re receiving the Law. Here they are and they had grown up and seen the hieroglyphics. They had seen the stories of Egypt and heard the legends of their own back story. But now they’re receiving it straight from God. Moses is giving them the book of Genesis, the words of God. They’re asking, “What is it that God is doing?” The answer is He is rescuing us.

But at this point, a young child might say, “We’re already out of Egypt. He already rescued us. Now what is He doing?” He’s doing the same thing He was doing. He is rescuing us. But He is saving us not just from Egypt. He is saving us from sin. He is saving us from judgment, from death. We still need to be rescued. You see, God is on a mission to save, but not just out of Egypt. It’s much bigger than this. This is actually about the entire world. This is about the issue of death and all have fallen. Here we see what God is doing. He explains in this book that this story not just of this particular family but humanity as a whole, and what went wrong in the very beginning.

He made things very good, but there was a great fall and the paradise of creation was broken. It was cursed, corrupted, broken, shattered, marred and stained by sin. Where there was life, there is now death. Where there was joy, there is now despair. Where there was intimacy and closeness with God and one another, there is now separation. Before there was truth, and now there are lies. Before, there was goodness and now there is evil. That dream of paradise forever is lost. But in the very midst of that bad news, we see that God is a God who made a promise. He made a promise to that first couple, Adam and Eve, that He would send a child. The word there is seed. He would send a seed to save the world. A child would come from the woman. It’s a promise that Adam seemed to believe by faith. He named his wife Eve because she was not the mother of the dead, but of the living. There would be a child that would rescue this world of shattered dreams, but how? Who was this child going to be? As the book unfolds, we look at every new child that is born with some hope, but it just seems not to be. With the first brothers, there is murder. Then we see just name after name and then death. The question is where is this going? What is God doing?

If you live long enough, you’re going to experience some kind of suffering and problem so big that it seems impossible for anyone, even God, to put back together. Here in Genesis is a story of someone living the dream and finding it shattered. It’s the account of the boy named Joseph that helps us begin to answer this very question. What is it that God is doing? How could He bring good in a world that is so broken, that is so shattered? What we’re going to unpack from Joseph’s life this morning and over the next couple of weeks is that this world will break your heart, but it will never break the promises of God.

This real dream life is ultimately one that only can be designed and defined by God. We all have these things that draw us in and the allure and the desire and the design of our lives. But ultimately the great dream and the hope that we have is in the promise and the design that comes from God alone. Is His plan really that unshakeable? I mean, it seems pretty imperiled. Even when you look at Genesis, it goes bad pretty quickly and it just continues to unravel. Is this plan really unshakeable? Is it really unbreakable? The proof that God gives is in the story of His own people, this family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and here, of Joseph. It’s a people that is racked by deep fractures that show us that despite how terrible and how much these kinds of fractures threaten to break God’s promise, it proves that they are incapable of doing so. But they seem intimidating. The first fracture is

#1 A Broken Family: Sin Cuts Deeper Than We Could Ever Imagine (1-11)

Sin cuts deeper and breaks more things that we could possibly imagine. Family is a special word at the heart of human relationships. We don’t enter this world without a mother and a father and many of us with siblings. But even that statement is hard to reconcile with the fact that so many never come to know or at some point lose relationship with their mother or father or sister or brother. Some of us are separated from family because of events that occurred before we were born. Some of us have seen firsthand the separation caused by broken relationships. Maybe there is just hardship or sickness. Maybe in the best of cases, there is just death. There is brokenness that no family will escape. The brokenness that is caused by sin here in this family is one that cuts exceedingly deep.

It seems small, just like the first sin, but each time in Genesis we see sin occur, it’s like that little crack on your windshield. It’s just a little nick, but then it begins to splinter out until you see the entire picture shattered. Here is what sin does. We see the break in this family, even the family of God. Here is a broken family, if ever there was one. Just look at a few divisions in this home that show how broken they actually are. First, just look at the brokenness of their back story, their background.

We mentioned that the book opens here with Adam and Eve, the first couple, there. Then there was the casting out of this couple from paradise, from the garden, because of their fall. Yet there is the promise that there would be a seed, a chosen one, through this woman. So we’re tracing Genesis looking for God to keep His promise to save people from sin and death. How will He do this? Well, each seed shows up and turns out to be not a fulfillment of His promise. It’s a great disappointment. So mankind gets worse and worse, so much so that God actually has to wipe them from the face of the earth. But He specifies through the family of Noah that He will keep this promise. So Noah comes, but his own son shames him in his drunkenness. What should have been hope and of multiplying and filling the earth and maybe providing one of these seeds, all of the human race gathers together and builds to heaven to try to challenge God’s plan and His glory. So God scatters them. He scatters their language and He chooses a new family to carry the promise forward.

It is specifically here a man named Abram and his wife Sarah, who is barren. This is an unlikely couple. God plans to continue His promise through this line. Abram has a nephew, Lot, who becomes encircled in the debauchery of Sodom and Gomorrah. He has to be rescued by angels and then is lured into brokenness and an incestual continuation of his line through his daughters, influenced by the dark culture. Abraham himself escapes slightly, but then he is even lured into doubting the promises of God. “Will we really have a child?” So his own wife gives him her servant, her handmaiden, Hagar, thinking we’re going to help God along here. So they have a child through Hagar, this young man named Ishmael. But he is not the chosen one. God says, “I don’t need help.” God miraculously provides a son that was hard to believe for Sarah. It was so shocking that she names him Isaac, which is the word for laughter. This mess though builds a broken dynamic of contentious rivalry between those two boys and their mothers. Hagar and Ishmael are sent out, but that dynamic had an impact.

You see Isaac, who is provided a bride from the family through a woman named Rebekah. But she also comes from a broken background in some ways. They have twins, but these twins, Jacob and Esau, develop a deep rivalry. Esau is sort of this firstborn hairy, meat-loving hunter. His father loved him. Jacob is sort of the smaller of the two. He is a conniving chef preferred by his mother. Jacob ends up swindling his brother out of his birthright, deceiving his father, and stealing the inheritance of the firstborn. Then his own brother wants to kill him, so he has to get out of town. He goes to his Uncle Laban to try to get out of there.

There, he falls in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, the prettier of the two. He labors seven years for her, but then he gets a taste of his own medicine when his own uncle on his wedding night, swindles him. He wakes up the next day and finds where his uncle had switched out Rachel for the less attractive firstborn sister, Leah. Jacob ends up working for Laban further years and it leads to him marrying Rachel, but there is a deep rivalry between the two women. They are sisters and are now sharing the same husband. It becomes a war between the two over who is going to sleep with Jacob to have more children to win his affection. It’s so much a war that when Rachel is barren, she offers her servant as a surrogate to bear children on her behalf and then Leah does the same. This is a broken family.

It’s almost like when someone is trying to get you to follow the car to the shell game and you’re trying to say, where is the seed going to be? You see the kids coming out of here and the different spouses and you think, “I lost it. I have no idea what God is going to do with this one. Where is the child going to come from?” Now in the end, God listens to Rachel in the midst of all this mess. Eventually she prays and appeals to God and He grants her this son in Jacob’s old age, Joseph. So the favored wife has this son and he enters into this dysfunctional mess.

Now, they had to leave Laban. They left because Jacob’s swindling had gotten the best of him. As they are on their way out, he has a wrestling night with God because he knows he is actually returning to where his older brother wants to kill him. So Jacob wrestles. He was a schemer. He created a plan of how to protect the people that he loved the most. He decides to split his family up into different groups and send them out. The group in the back had the most chance to get away and escape if they needed to. So he puts some of the children in the front and then some of the other children behind them, and then another group of children. The last group was his most favorite family members. Rachel and Joseph were in the very back. Do you think you would forget where you were in the pecking order? Do you think you would remember where your dad assigned you when he thought death was coming? That’s not something you forget.

After this, God miraculously brings about a restoration in the relationship between Jacob and Esau. Joseph is watching all of this take place. They go to this place called Shechem, which had a good watering ground for the flocks. They’re there, but this family has brokenness not only within, but without. Their one daughter, Dinah, ends up being raped by a man of Shechem. Reuben, Simeon and Levi, but especially Simeon and Levi, can’t handle that. They decide we’re going to hatch a scheme. They create this very interesting scheme and end up putting all of the men of that town in a vulnerable state. Then they slaughter those men and plunder their stuff. They plunder their animals. Jacob then says, “You guys have made me stink to these inhabitants of the land. We have to get out of here.” They have to get out of town. There are bad memories in that place of Shechem. So now, Jacob is older. That was the family background. Here is where we’re entering into the story.

1 Jacob lived in the land of his sojournings, in the land of Canaan. 2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives.

They’re pasturing the flocks. Joseph is here with some of his other brothers of, not the two sisters, Leah and Rachel, but of the servants, Bilhah and Zilpah. Somehow in the midst of it, these guys are a little rough around the edges. They do something that he perceives not to be in their father’s best interest.

And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.

Here are the consequences of sin. The broken back story ultimately leads to a broken culture. There is a broken dynamic or way of interacting here in the family. It is a very tense culture where there is the blatant favoritism that we saw, but then even more so here in chapter 37.

3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age.

He was the son of the favored wife, the wife who gave birth to Benjamin and then passed away. Now Joseph is being raised by the other women in the family. Maybe when Jacob looks at him, he sees his mother’s face in him. He loves him. It seems as if there is some level of nobility. He seems to want to do what is right. Something appealed to him to his father, and his father seems to put him in charge of his brothers or trust him more than his brothers. In fact, he does something in particular. On Christmas morning, everybody gets a gift, but Joseph’s is a little bit different. His attire is a little bit different. He gets a specific robe.

And he made him a robe of many colors.

It seems like a robe that is not really designed for the labor class, for someone who would be working there. It has longer sleeves, it seems like the text is saying. It’s not a working robe. It’s more of the oversight robe. So there is this blatant favoritism whereby Jacob loves Joseph more than his other sons.

4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

We don’t know exactly what is happening, but maybe Jacob knew what it felt like. He remembered what it was like to not have the affection of his father. He just got wrapped up in this particular son that he loved and he wanted him to have what he didn’t have. “I want him to have the special love of the father.” But he did so in a way that seems to bring some brokenness to the family or make it even more exaggerated. It’s not the main point of what is going on here, but for sure, it’s a part of what stirs up the hatred.

Not only that, there seems to be what I’ll call a perceived elitism. There is this favoritism that is blatant, but then there is this elitism that is perceived. He is acting like or seeming like just a little bit better, a little bit special. It’s not clear exactly what is going on in Joseph’s heart, but there seems to be at least a touch of immaturity or naivety. It would have been hard to avoid if you get that kind of special treatment. But here he is. He’s trying to do what’s right and he is enjoying his father’s particular love, but it seems like he takes his position or wearing this robe or even sharing his dreams just a little too liberally. He is just not quite aware of how it comes across. He is seventeen. In one sense, it could be endearing because he is young, but this being naive and without guile is just infuriating to them. It makes them sick. This goody-two shoes guy? They can’t even say a nice word. There is a profound antagonism. They couldn’t speak shalom to him. They couldn’t speak peacefully. They couldn’t even say Hi. They hated this guy! This is a seriously broken back story and a broken culture.

It actually builds toward this great rift. It’s sort of a division that comes over a family controversy. There is a brokenness of this controversy which comes about through these two dreams that Joseph has. The first is the dream of the sheaves and then the second is the dream of the stars and the sun and the moon. Joseph tells his brothers about this dream and how it represents what he believes to be them bowing down to him.

5 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: 7 Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?”

“Joseph, you’re pushing a little far.” The rivalry deepens, but there is some quiet reflection.

11 And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

In the moment, if you’re Jacob you might be thinking, “I remember being younger and in fact, I remember having some unique dreams. You know, God has done some things in my life. I wonder. Maybe He is at work. Maybe God is doing something. In fact, we have been waiting for a promise. I thought maybe it was all broken, but maybe there is a chance. Maybe something is going on.” Whatever it was, he pondered it. He reflected.

There is a broken family, a broken back story, a broken culture and this controversy over the dreams. It’s a deep brokenness. We’re going to see how deep in a few moments. But as deep as this sin cuts and as many shattered pieces as it will break this family into, it cannot break the promises of God. If you’re coming and you’re thinking about the deep cuts and wounds and scars that you’ve caused by your sin in your family or that you’ve suffered because of others’ sin in your family, God knows what kind of sin and suffering exists in the world. He put in the very first book of the Bible. He’s not saying this is those other people there. This is the family of God. He says all of this brokenness, as messy as it gets, it cannot break His promise. In fact, He is going to use all this brokenness and the ways that it’s happening exactly to keep His promise.

I don’t know what brokenness that you’ve experienced in your family. Whether it’s the baggage that you consider from your background or even the current status that you’re in or the dynamics, things that you can talk about, things that you don’t stop talking about, things that you can’t talk about. God is not stopped by brokenness in our family. The evil of sin brings this fracture in the family that is somewhat under the surface, but it’s going to get worse because the problems and frustrations of unresolved controversy are about to be exposed in this mighty way through some seriously broken so-called solutions.

#2 Broken Solutions: Sin Is Never As ‘Convenient’ As It Seems To Be (12-29)

God’s promise is not threatened by the problems of this broken family’s issues nor is His promise threatened by the broken solutions in how they respond to and react out of sin. These are broken solutions that they bring about. These are the ways that they try to deal with the problems that they’re in. Here are some very broken solutions that prove that sin is never quite what it appears to be. It doesn’t give the hope that it always promises to offer. You can see how what seems to be convenient is actually not what it appears. First, look at the convenient circumstances that give rise to the brothers’ so-called solution to this problem.

12 Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem.

This causes the father, who keeps Joseph very close to his side, to have some concerns.

13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem?

Jacob is always kind of scheming, thinking, worrying. He knows that’s not a good place. “I’ve got a bad taste in the mouth. Those guys knew what we’ve done. It’s probably not a good place to be there. It’s been about five years.

Come, I will send you to them.”

I trust you. You’re going to go.” This is going to be convenient for the brothers because it’s very rare for Joseph to be apart from his father in this way.

And he said to him, “Here I am.” 14 So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.” So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.

He is willing to go, not knowing that’s the last time he is going to speak to his father for a couple decades. He is willing to go. He is innocent enough even though it’s a bad part of town. He knows the history, but okay. I’ll go. He goes to Shechem, which was a good place to water. But the brothers are not there. It’s probably not surprising that even after five years, they probably thought, “Let’s just move on from here.” They had tried to solve things their own way and there were some bad memories and maybe a bad taste there in Shechem. So they moved on to this place called Dothan. It’s sixteen miles away down the road or so. Joseph gets to Shechem and can’t find the brothers. He could have said, “It looks like I couldn’t find them. I’m going back home.” But instead, he wanders around. He’s diligently doing what his dad asked him to. It’s been a multi-day trip. He’s in a rough part of town.

15 And a man found him wandering in the fields.

It kind of puts you into a concern for Joseph. Is he going to be okay? The stranger ends up noticing this kid. He seems kind unsuspecting and kind of innocent and naïve. He’s like a sitting duck. He’s pathetic. He’s sort of this innocent little lamb stumbling about before what would appear to be a group of ravenous lions. But he is safe here with this strange man, who answers him honestly. Where he isn’t safe is actually with his own family, but he doesn’t know it.

And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” 16 “I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” 17 And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

They had moved on from Shechem. Maybe that time had put them in a foul mood. Maybe they remembered what it was like to take blood. But those convenient circumstances all set up for this convenient conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy that just seems so easy. It just works out that Joseph happens to be walking there from afar and they see him.

18 They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him.

You can’t mistake that robe anywhere. You can see it from miles away. There he is, wandering and stumbling around in that robe that doesn’t belong in the desert. It belongs at home with dad. Here he is coming toward them.

19 They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.”

Maybe they’re thinking about the inheritance. Maybe they just hate this guy. But don’t be mistaken. This is where the sin of bitterness and envy ends. It ends with murder. You see that it’s been planted in their hearts and it’s growing and coming out. They decide to kill him. What is bizarre is that the very plans that they’re scheming are actually going to lead to the fulfillment of the dreams that they so despise. But they don’t see it yet. It seems so convenient. Here he comes. There is another convenience that occurs to Reuben in the moment. Maybe Simeon and Levi seem kind of bloodthirsty and they were always ready to attack. But Reuben here gets an idea.

21 But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22 And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.

Reuben has an idea. He’s the oldest. He’s the firstborn. He is ultimately responsible probably, for what is going to happen to these guys. Actually, if you think about the tracing of this seed, the first wife was Leah and the firstborn was Reuben. He actually would be the one ideal to be the seed in the line. Maybe he is the chosen one. Here he is rescuing Joseph. But if you recall from earlier in Genesis, actually Reuben had a problem with his dad in Genesis 35.

Genesis 35:22 While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine. And Israel heard of it.

Maybe they hadn’t talked about that, but whatever it was, there was a problem with Reuben. Reuben is probably not the right guy and Simeon and Levi are the guys who murdered everyone in Shechem. But here Reuben is making an attempt. I wonder what his motivation is. Maybe perhaps he is thinking, “If I rescue Joseph, maybe I can get just a little bit closer. Maybe I can fix what broke with me and my dad.” So here they are. There are all these grown men and Joseph is coming. You can imagine the shock and surprise coming to your own brothers. “Hey guys! I found you. I got lost.” Then it’s almost as if in slow motion, they just start taking the robe off of him.
23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore.

There is such emphasis on the robe. “What’s happening? What are you guys doing? Come on! Whoa!” They take the robe off, making sure that there is no clear proof for their father to search for, no reason to go for a search, no people looking into things.

24 And they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

This was a cistern that collected water. It was usually shaped like a bottle with a narrow top that you couldn’t get out of. We don’t hear Joseph. That’s not the emphasis of this chapter. But we’re told in Genesis 42 later on that Joseph hears what happened that day.

Genesis 42:21 Then they said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen.

They knew exactly what was going on. You can imagine him begging them, screaming their names. “Reuben, come on! Simeon, Levi, come on guys! Issachar, Zebulun, Judah!”

25 Then they sat down to eat.

This is the callous indifference of sin. They betray him and then they sit down to eat. The circumstance was convenient and this conspiracy all works out. It’s very convenient. But before it completely unfolds, we see the rise of a convenient opportunity. Reuben can’t be the seed. Simeon and Levi murdered everybody. But maybe there is hope in the next in line, Judah. In fact, it’s almost as if their crumbs are flying out of their mouths in slow motion and there is this slow pan up to the eyes of Judah. In their reflection, you can see through his eyes a small caravan on their way to Egypt.

And looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry it down to Egypt.

Then Judah gets an idea.

26 Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?” 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.”

“We’re not making anything. We might as well make a little bit of money. We don’t have to kill him. Let’s just sell him as a slave.” You see sort of the heartless indifference and the callousness of Judah. His eyes are just blind to the suffering of people around him. In fact, that’s going to become the theme of the next chapter. If you don’t understand the search for the seed and what’s going on in this story and what God is doing, then in the next chapter, you might think what is this chapter about Judah going on? What is this? I’m interested in Joseph. But we see here that God is actually doing something very important. He is showing the darkness of what is going on in Judah’s eyes. He doesn’t actually see what’s going on. He is blind and it’s going to get worse and worse.

You see depravity in a huge contrast with Joseph here in the next chapter. Judah is actually going to find a place in the city of eyes and he’s going to see the eyes of a woman who ends up with everything veiled except her eyes. The eyes is a focus here that Judah is blinded. He can’t see what is going on. He doesn’t see the suffering of his own brother. If you’re an Israelite, you would say, “Wait a second. The reason why we ended up in slavery in Egypt is because of Judah.” You might think this guy is the worst. Yet somehow God is going to make it clear that through Judah, something special is going to happen. You can’t see it here because what Judah sees here is the convenience of sin.

All these guys are just working, whether Reuben or Judah or the others, just positioning for what they want. It all seems to come so easy. It seems so good. It seems like a great solution. It’s so convenient how it works out. There are so many parts of life where sin draws us and the temptation, the bait is right there. It just seems like this is so convenient. It’s so easy to walk this path. This solves all my problems. But sin never follows through on what it promises. It will break your heart. Here we see the way that it breaks this family.

And his brothers listened to him. 28 Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.

What seems like a great solution is so evil and twisted. You can almost see them getting rid of Joseph. “Peace out, Dream Master!” You see the coldness of this family. If ever there was a broken family, if ever there was something that just made it seem like God couldn’t keep His promise, this would be it. This is terrible! This is irredeemable. These people, Judah, that guy, they’re the worst. There is no way God could work through him. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

But even the so-called solutions and conveniences of sin that seem so broken, they cannot stop the promises of God, whether it’s a brother who is sold for silver or whether it’s one who will come far later who also will be conveniently sold through a perfect scheme. There is someone who will be given over. He is an innocent man who is betrayed by those close to Him. He is sold for money, numbered with transgressors, cut off from fellowship with His Father. Mankind hasn’t learned very much. That’s the human heart.

We get what we want out of people, including God. We use Him for our own advantage and then take the convenient path, the shortcuts of sin. We try to deal with problems our way, but we find out that it never turns out to give the answer that we hope. I don’t know what convenient sin seems in front of you, but do not believe the lie that this will solve your problems. It absolutely will not. It will break your heart and that’s exactly what we see happen here in this family.

#3 Broken Hearts: As Much As Sin Breaks Our Hearts, It Cannot Break God’s Promises (30-36)

There are broken hearts in more ways than we can count, but we’ll just look at a couple, here. There are broken hearts in this family. This kind of thing where it just actually gets deep in the emotions, when the relationship and all of the feelings come out, that’s where it just seems totally broken. When a heart is broken, how do you fix that? Here is where we see this unfold with broken hearts. First, there is a fainthearted firstborn.

29 When Reuben returned to the pit

He had this plan and he was going to fix things with his dad and he was going to protect Joseph. Maybe he had said, “Let’s throw him in the pit” and then he had feigned that he was going to go watch the flock and just wait until everybody is gone. He walked back ready to do his thing.

and saw that Joseph was not in the pit,

Oh no! He boarded this train thinking I can kind of redirect, but then he found out this was actually going to a destination I never wanted to go to. He lacked the bravery and the courage to do what was right in the moment. He was fainthearted. Now here, he actually has an opportunity to do the right thing and he decides not to.

he tore his clothes 30 and returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is gone,

But his focus turns to himself.

and I, where shall I go?”

“Oh no! What about me and my plan?” We’re to see more from Reuben struggling, trying to redeem that relationship with his father later on in the story. But he struggles to move beyond the faintheartedness that he suffers from here. We see a fainthearted firstborn, but not only that, we see these coldhearted brothers.

31 Then they took Joseph’s robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood.

Can you imagine them kind of rolling the robe in the blood? Make it look real. Jacob knows how to lie. He’s pretty sneaky. They had to make it really look real. They were coldhearted.

32 And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, “This we have found; please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not.” 33 And he identified it and said, “It is my son’s robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.” 34 Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. 35 All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted

He is devastated! They have this one sin that leads to another. We see the cold-heartedness with which they devastate their father. Then we see a heavy-hearted father, here.

and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him.

This is a heavy-hearted father who takes the grief seriously, but it seems like he doesn’t respond rightly in everything. It’s interesting that this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a father in his old age tricked by the skin of a goat. It seems Jacob is getting a taste of his own medicine. He gets into grief and he feels like everything is working against him. What he doesn’t realize is what God is doing is actually working everything for him. He just can’t see it yet. But here is this heavy-hearted father and here are these brothers who are looking to him. They wanted to kind of solve the problem and here they’re realizing it’s worse now.

Here is Jacob. He didn’t even get a burial for his son. He is in deep grief. It’s like Jacob had pondered these dreams and maybe there was a promise. Maybe God is working and now it’s just gone. He was devoured. I have no hope. There is nothing left. You can see the brothers saying, “Hey dad, you still have us.” They’re trying to comfort him. The daughters come and they comfort him. He gives stinging words. He is inconsolable. He says my son. There is nothing left to be happy for in this life without Joseph. The cold-heartedness of the brothers in the midst of the heaviness of their father is that they didn’t achieve his love. In fact, they solidified everything that they had suffered before. But at any time, day after day, week after week, month after month, they could have relieved him of that pain. They knew what the truth was and they chose to say nothing.
What we don’t see here is ultimately just the brokenhearted sufferer.

36 Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.

This is not the only time that Joseph’s own garment is going to be used deceptively against him. But here he is suffering. The broken-heartedness of Joseph is something that is going to be clear in a number of chapters later. But it seems like everyone is blind to it. It’s almost passed over. Does anyone care about Joseph and about his suffering? Did no one see? Did no one hear? Ultimately we realize that the most brokenhearted here is God. He sees all. He hears everything that Joseph said. He is aware of all of it.

Sin impacts this family in so many ways. There is the faintheartedness of Reuben, the cold-heartedness of the brothers, the heavyheartedness of the father and the broken-heartedness of the sufferer. But as much as it breaks the heart of Joseph and breaks the heart of God, we realize that it doesn’t cause God to break His promise. He will still long suffer with His broken and sinful people generation after generation after generation. He is still at work despite the sin going on. He will always keep His promise because He is the promise.

There is a true Messiah who is the Seed who will come. He was truly disowned by His brothers, deceitfully sold for silver, and eventually left for dead. He was totally innocent, yet this one won’t come, just like Joseph is going to model for us, to bring vengeful judgment on these sinners. But He will come to bring a gracious forgiveness and rescue. He will fulfill God’s promise to save in a manner almost unimaginable. Here in this story, we see God speaking both to sinners and sufferers, which we both need at times. We need awareness of how our sin has broken the hearts of others and God. But we need to also understand that the heartbreak that we have suffered because of other’s sin is not unseen. It’s not unnoticed by God and it won’t go to waste. God can work in this world even in its brokenness.

When Corrie and Betsie were in the midst of that labor camp right before she died, in the midst of her lowest point of suffering and sickness, she told Corrie something that Corrie would never forget. Betsie said “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.” God took Betsie home. Then through a random clerical error days before all the women in Corrie’s group were sent to the gas chambers, she was released. Her story would not end there. You can read about how God took the strands of pain and suffering in her life and wove it into this beautiful tapestry of His faithfulness to save.

It’s a reminder to us of how God can use moments that feel impossibly broken to keep His promise. It’s a promise that He kept through sending His own Son to come and to take on flesh and then to be broken for us. The chosen Seed, the great Passover Lamb came to save and rescue not merely from Egypt, but from sin and death and judgment all together.