GENESIS 37:1-38 - Joseph and the Gospel of Many Colors

Introduction

I may be dating myself with this reference, but how many of you remember the comedy duo from the 1960’s, the Smothers Brothers? Tom and Dick Smothers had a popular and controversial TV variety show in the 1960’s, and a long career on stage as comedic folk-singers. One of the linchpins of their comedy routine was Tom’s constant accusation against Dick that… “Mom always liked you best!”

Tom and Dick Smothers may have played that sibling rivalry off for comedy--but as we open our study of the life of Joseph this morning, we find that the sibling rivalry between Joseph and his brothers was no joke--in fact, it was the source of a murderous hatred for Joseph on the part of his siblings.

But if we look at the account of Joseph’s life here at the end of Genesis merely as a morality tale of the dangers of envy and jealousy or the importance of standing strong in the face of persecution, or simply tally up all the ways Joseph’s life matches up with Jesus’ life and ministry, we will risk missing out on what Moses is actually doing in the way he unfolds this man’s life story.

I have a book in my study called “The History of Joseph”, written by George Lawson back in 1802. My Uncle John (who was a pastor in New England for about 60 years) gave it to me over a decade ago with an inscription that says, “Tharren - Heard you were covering Daniel. Here’s a new project for you—have much joy in reading about our sovereign God in the life of Joseph! (Uncle John, 2014).

I think Uncle John was onto something there—the story of Joseph is not the story of a godly man in an ungodly world; it is not the story of the rewards of perseverance in the face of unfair treatment. The story of Joseph is about the unfolding of God’s plan of redemption for the world through the line of Jacob! If we are going to understand the story of Joseph rightly, we need to understand how it fits into the bigger story that God is telling here in Genesis.

At the beginning of the book, YHWH has established His people—Adam and Eve—in the land called Eden. He makes a covenant with them there in that Garden—keep the land, cultivate it, and live in right relationship with Him through the covenant He made with them:

Genesis 2:15–17 LSB

Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

But then Adam and Eve broke that covenant with God, and as a result they were cast out of that land—and from that day on, the land would never cooperate with Adam’s attempts to subdue and cultivate it. But before He cast them out of the land of Eden, YHWH made them a promise—that there would be a coming Seed that would someday crush the head of the Serpent that had tempted them and bring redemption to the world.

The entire flow of the Book of Genesis from that point on is the story of those three elements—land, seed and covenant. It doesn’t take much to see how all three of these elements interplay throughout the book—the wickedness of the land leads God to destroy it through the Flood—yet He preserves His promise by protecting the seed of the promised one in the Ark. Then God calls Abram out of his land to go to the Land that he promises to him, and makes a covenant with him that it will be His seed that will bless all nations.

Then we move through the life of Abram and his family, seeing those three elements interweaving through the lives of his descendants Isaac and Jacob and down to Joseph. But consider for a moment—Genesis ends with the covenant people of YHWH not only out of the Land, but in Egypt, the opposite of the Land of the Promise. The promised seed is traced to Judah, but the blessing given to him in Genesis 49 makes it clear that the ultimate Promised Seed is still to come. The people are out of the land, and the covenant cannot come to pass without the land and the seed.

Start there and you can see, can’t you, how the story of Joseph is far more than just a morality tale about integrity; it is far higher than “stick with it through the bad times and someday you’ll get to be the king of Egypt!” The entire weight of God’s plan of redemptive history hangs on what He will do with this one man!

So as we launch into our study of this exceptional son of Jacob, we want to see him not through the lens of his own remarkable character, but see the glory of God revealed through His sovereign work in his life. And here in the first chapter of Joseph’s life we are meant to see that

God works REDEMPTION for sinners through SACRIFICIAL OBEDIENCE

Now we need to say something at the outset about the way Joseph is portrayed here in this account. He is one of only three biblical characters in whom no sin is revealed—the other two are Jesus and Daniel(in fact, that may have been the reason Uncle John suggested preaching through Joseph’s life after Daniel...)

But it is important that we don’t go farther than the Scriptures do in this—the Bible may not record any examples of Joseph’s sin—but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sinner! When we say that God works redemption for sinners through the sacrificial obedience of Joseph here in this passage, we are certainly not saying that Joseph accomplished redemption for anyone. Moses is not writing Joseph’s biography this way in order to glorify him—he is aiming to display the glory of YHWH through His providential work in Joseph’s life. And in order to do this, he needs to put side by side in this account the best of Joseph with the worst of his brothers.

So let’s look together at Verses 2-4 as we are introduced to

I. The FAVORITE son (Genesis 37:2-11; cp. John 4:5)

Genesis 37:2–4 LSB

These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back an evil report about them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and so they hated him and could not speak to him in peace.

When we first meet Joseph, we learn three things about him: His age (seventeen), his family line (he is not born from one of Jacob’s concubines Bilhah or Zilpah), and that he is a shepherd in the fields with his brothers. Then the very next thing we learn is that Joseph brought

A bad REPORT (v. 2)

about his brothers. Right away the other eleven sons of Jacob are set up as the “bad guys” i this account. They are sinners whose evil is going to lash out at Joseph to destroy him unless YHWH acts on his behalf to save him.

It’s common for people to accuse Joseph of being some kind of snitch or tattletale in these verses; that he was constantly running to Daddy to get them into trouble. But God’s Word doesn’t say that Joseph was wrong or inappropriate in bringing this report; as we see in the following verses Jacob trusted Joseph to tell him the truth—he knew what kind of scoundrels his sons were (read the story of his son Reuben having an affair with his brothers’ mother Bilhah in Chapter 35, or Simeon and Levi slaughtering and plundering an entire city because their sister’s honor had been defiled in Chapter 34).

So Jacob knew what kind of sons he had raised; he knew he couldn’t trust them. And this highlights another element in this account—that Jacob is

A bad PARENT (v. 3)

YHWH was going to bring all of His promises about the Seed of Abraham blessing the world to pass, but it was certainly not because Jacob was a wonderful man or devoted father. He did not raise faithful sons; they will be shown in this entire narrative to be wicked, scheming, bloodthirsty thugs. Not only so, but Jacob continues the terrible parenting style from his father Isaac that made so much of his life a miserable existence: He played favorites among his sons:

Genesis 37:3 LSB

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic.

A couple of things to note here: First of all, there is evidence that Jacob took the birthright from his firstborn son Reuben after his affair with Bilhah and gave it to Joseph. In John 4, where Jesus is meeting with the Samaritan woman in Sychar, we are told that the well where they met was “near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph”. Since the only land that we ever hear of Jacob owning was near that place, it would seem that Jacob formalized his intent to give Joseph his inheritance by deeding over to him the only portion of the Promised Land that he ever owned.

The other thing to consider here was that Jacob demonstrated his approval of Joseph by giving him what the LSB calls a “varicolored tunic” (v. 3.) The word here (that was translated “coat of many colors” in the King James) actually is better translated as “a full-length robe” or “a tunic of long sleeves”. Most tunics that were worn by common men had short sleeves (or no sleeves at all), since they would get in the way of manual labor. But a long-sleeved tunic was a sign that its wearer wasn’t a laborer but an overseer (kind of like a white hard hat today).

So Joseph wasn’t “tattling” on his brothers when he brought a bad report to Jacob; he was giving him their performance evaluation; he was keeping his aged father, the patriarch of the clan, informed on how the flocks were faring, what kind of money they were making, and so on.

Joseph was not in the wrong to be given the responsibility to look after his worthless brothers; he wasn’t guilty of manipulating or flattering his father in order to be given that role—nevertheless, it resulted in

A bad FEELING (v. 4)

between him and his brothers:

Genesis 37:4 LSB

And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and so they hated him and could not speak to him in peace.

The faithful son was hated by the faithless sons. The son loved by Jacob was hated by his brothers—we’ll see shortly that this hatred led them to seriously consider murdering Joseph in cold blood. Here in the first four verses of this chapter we are given the stark contrast between Joseph’s faithfulness and his family’s faithless hatred and scheming and favoritism.

As we move on through verses 5-11, that contrast is sharpened even further by the dreams that YHWH gave to Joseph—throughout this account, God is the giver of dreams, and He does so in order that His people would obey Him. And so when Joseph tells his brothers that he dreamed that their sheaves of wheat bowed down to him (vv. 6-8) or that the sun, moon and eleven stars bowed down to him (vv. 9-10), he wasn’t being arrogant or naive; he wasn’t trying to exalt himself over them. Joseph was faithfully declaring to them what God had revealed to him about their future—and his brothers demonstrated that they hated his dreams as much as they hated him:

Genesis 37:8 LSB

Then his brothers said to him, “Are you really going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

The fact that they would get so worked up about a dream means that they knew it was saying something true. The thought that God might actually exalt Joseph over them someday made them hate him and hate God as well.

This is the family of Jacob—hateful, spiteful, unjust and bloodthirsty. And as the narrative continues we see that this favorite son was also

II. The OBEDIENT son (Genesis 37:12-17)

It is not enough to recognize the flaws of Joseph’s brothers (and father, for that matter.) Joseph was not just better in comparison with them; Moses wants us to know that Joseph himself was of excellent character. We see this in the way he reacted when his father Jacob entrusted him with

A TOUGH mission

Look with me at verses 12-13:

Genesis 37:12–13 LSB

Then his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock in Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them”…

Shechem was about fifty miles from where Jacob was dwelling in Hebron. (For comparison, that’s about the distance from Sykesville to Kittanning). Imagine sending your seventeen-year-old son, on foot (or possibly on a mule or donkey), alone on a trip there and back—and sending him to face men who hated him. But Jacob knew that he could trust Joseph to go.

Consider also the character of Joseph in the way he responded to that mission with

A WILLING answer

Genesis 37:13 LSB

And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “I will go.”

No questions, no hesitation, no questions asked. Just “Here I am, and here I go!” The Hebrew form of the statement is “Here I am”—a response that is recorded several times in Genesis from a son responding to a patriarch. The point is clear—Joseph is an obedient and willing son.

As the account goes on, we see Joseph’s willingness to obey his father with

A COMMITMENT to FULL obedience

Over the years Dad had a lot of young men that would come out to work on the farm. And he was pretty good at figuring out who would work and who wouldn’t. He used to say that his favorite test was to send a new hand down to the barn to do a chore (clean the stalls, for instance.) When Dad went to check on him, if the kid had done the stalls and was out sitting in the shade, he was probably not going to get called back to work the next day. But if he went down to the barn and the kid had finished the stalls and then decided to find another chore to do on his own by stacking some haybales or straightening up the tack room—that kid was getting called back the next day.

This is what we see here in Joseph, isn’t it? When he gets to Shechem he finds his brothers had moved on. But does Joseph just turn around and head home? “Sorry, Dad, they weren’t where you said they’d be...”

Genesis 37:17 LSB

Then the man said, “They have journeyed from here; for I heard them saying, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

Joseph was committed to obeying his father—his father who had put him into a difficult (and as it proved, dangerous situation)—Joseph honored his father and was committed to full obedience, no matter the cost to himself.

And as it turns out, that cost was terrible. Joseph’s faithfulness and integrity and obedience all led him to this moment—the moment when he became

III. The SUFFERING son (Genesis 37:18-36)

Look with me at Verses 18-24:

Genesis 37:18–20 LSB

And they saw him from a distance, and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. Then they said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer! “So now, come and let us kill him and cast him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘A wild beast devoured him.’ Then let us see what will become of his dreams!”

His brothers knew how much their father loved Joseph; they knew that Joseph was coming to them as a representation of their father, but instead of receiving him with the respect that they knew he deserved, they decided to kill him.

His LOVE was rewarded with HATRED

In Verse 21, Reuben—the oldest—speaks up and tells his brothers not to kill Joseph.

Genesis 37:21 LSB

But Reuben heard this and delivered him out of their hands and said, “Let us not strike down his life.”

Now, while we may be tempted to think that Reuben is having a moment of moral clarity here, stopping his brothers from committing fratricide, consider the next verse:

Genesis 37:22 LSB

Reuben further said to them, “Shed no blood. Cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, but do not put forth your hands against him”—that he might deliver him out of their hands to return him to his father.

See there at the end of Verse 22, Reuben wanted to “deliver Joseph out of their hands to return him to his father”.

This wasn’t some noble attempt to protect his younger brother—remember that Reuben had fallen out of his father’s favor by carrying on with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine. Reuben was planning to use Joseph to throw his brothers under the bus, and get back in his father’s good graces: “Father, they all hated Joseph so much they tried to kill him! But I stopped them, because I knew how much he meant to you!” Not exactly a selfless act of heroism on Reuben’s part!

The moment Joseph steps foot into their camp, his brothers put their plan into motion:

Genesis 37:23–24 LSB

Now it happened, when Joseph reached his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the varicolored tunic that was on him; and they took him and cast him into the pit. Now the pit was empty, without any water in it.

Joseph’s faithful service to his father and honorable conduct as an overseer is rewarded by a beating and being thrown into a dry well.

His OBEDIENCE was rewarded with LOSS

Not only does he lose his place in Jacob’s family, Joseph gets cast out the line of Promise altogether! When his brothers sit down to eat a meal—probably listening to Joseph’s cries for help as they eat—they look up and see a caravan of Ishmaelite traders heading south to Egypt (v. 25). So they decide to sell Joseph to them as a slave:

Genesis 37:28 LSB

Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt.

Think for a moment who these Midianites are—descended from Ishmael, the illegitimate son of Abraham who did not inherit the promise of the covenant; Ishmael’s descendents were not the ones who would bring the promised Seed into the world for the blessing of the nations. Joseph’s father Jacob was dwelling in the Land, under the covenant made with Abraham, and was the one through whom the promised Seed would come.

In Verses 29-36, Reuben comes back to the pit and finds that his scheme to get back into his father’s good graces has been thwarted; Joseph is gone. His brothers take Joseph’s tunic and tear it up to look like a wild animal had attacked him during his 50-mile trek from Hebron and show it to Jacob, who is inconsolable:

Genesis 37:35 LSB

Then all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, “Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him.

And the chapter ends with Joseph’s final removal from the Land of the Covenant into the land of captivity:

Genesis 37:36 LSB

Meanwhile, the Midianites sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s officer, the captain of the bodyguard.

Reuben’s attempt to be restored as the head of the family is thwarted. The beloved coat of many colors is destroyed. The father who picked favorites has had his favorite taken away, and Joseph has moved progressively further away—cut off from the Family of the Seed, out of the Land of the Covenant, and into the land that will come to represent oppression and bondage and captivity throughout the rest of redemptive history. (Baucham, V., Jr. (2013). Joseph and the Gospel of Many Colors: Reading an Old Story in a New Way. Crossway.)

There is a lot in this chapter about jealousy, favoritism, hatred, envy and bitterness and the destruction those sins wreak on a family. But Moses is not including the details of this story in order to teach a morality tale about being an honorable person in the midst of a wicked world or unbelieving family. The point of this chapter is not that Jacob played favorites or that Joseph’s brothers had murder in their hearts. This chapter is about what YHWH was doing in the lives of Jacob, Joseph and his brothers as He carried out His promises to save them in spite of themselves!

In the flow of the story of redemption that began in the first chapters of Genesis, Genesis 37 is showing us how God is faithfully carrying out His plan to bring salvation to the world through the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And one of the themes that we will see over and over again in this account is that God works redemption for sinners through sacrificial obedience. This account is constructed in such a way as to demonstrate that God was going to use Joseph to save not only his family but the entire line of the Seed of Promise.

Joseph brought redemption to his family because of his obedient suffering, his sacrificial obedience. One of the clearest truths we find here in this account (and we will see it again later) is that

OBEDIENCE does not guarantee SUCCESS

We are so quick to compress the entire story of Joseph down to his glorious reign as second-in-command of Egypt that we completely gloss over how much suffering Joseph went through for his obedience. Over and over again, Joseph paid a steep price for his faithfulness. He winds up in a pit, then sold to slavers, and finally in Egypt, hundreds of miles from the Land of Promise. Do you realize that when Joseph left that morning on a simple trip to Dothan to check on his brothers, he didn’t realize that he would never come home again? Joseph came home to Shechem four centuries later when Joshua buried him next to his mother and father. (Joshua 24:32)

We are so quick to accuse God of being unfair when hardship or difficulties come our way: “I have been so faithful to you, God! I come to worship faithfully, I read the Scriptures and pray, I have taught my children to follow you, I love you with all my heart and soul and mind and strength—I shouldn’t be suffering right now!”

But look at Joseph and what he suffered from his family, from the Ishmaelites, from the Egyptians. Was it because he was unfaithful, or because God was disappointed in him or chastising him? No—Joseph’s suffering obedience was the means by which YHWH was working out his people’s salvation! The story of Genesis 37 is not “Hang in there and someday you too will be Pharoah!” The story is a story of redemption in which Joseph pays a terrible price for a purpose that even he cannot fully comprehend.

Another theme that we see here (and Lord willing will examine more closely next week) is that

God’s ELECTING work is not based on man’s PERFORMANCE

This account may be about Joseph, but it is not Joseph who will bring the promised Seed into the world! God was pleased to choose the younger brother Jacob instead of the older brother Esau for the birthright and blessing. Not because either one of them was morally superior (they both had their sins and failures!), but on God Who made the decision.

In the same way, Joseph will give way to his older brother Judah—the Messiah will come through one of the brothers who was ready to kill him on sight—in fact, it was Judah’s idea to sell his own brother into slavery in order to get him off their hands and make twenty shekels while they were at it! But God did not choose the ancestors of the Messiah based on their works of righteousness. As the Apostle Paul would write centuries later about this very family:

Romans 9:16 LSB

So then it does not depend on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who has mercy.

There is no one on earth—not Jacob, not Joseph, not Judah, not you, not me—no one—who has had the favor of God fall on them because of their own works of goodness or righteousness. You did not arrange with God for your own salvation; you did not impress Him with your desire for righteousness—He went to work to save you not because of who you were, but despite who you were!

Joseph is not depicted as committing any sinful acts in this chapter. And on the other hand, his brothers are not depicted as having any virtuous tendencies! They are full of envious hatred for his position in the family, for his relationship with their father, for his authority over them, and for the way God revealed His purposes to exalt Joseph for the sake of their deliverance someday. But they couldn’t see that—all they knew was they hated him. This is another theme that we see running through this account:

Sin will BLIND you to your only HOPE

When Joseph’s brothers saw the young man God had chosen to save their lives walking toward them in obedience to his father, all they wanted to do was kill him! Commentators differ as to whether Joseph is meant to be presented as a “type” of Christ—as character that foreshadows the coming of the Messiah with specific qualities or deeds. But one thing is for sure—Joseph’s brothers’ reaction to him was the same as our reaction to Him when He came to us as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29):

John 19:15 LSB

So they cried out, “Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Joseph at least had a brother who suggested they not kill him; Jesus had no one to deliver Him from the hatred of the crowds who crucified Him. God worked His greatest redemption—the redemption of the whole world—through the sacrificial obedience of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

Reading this account of Joseph’s life here in Genesis 37 reminds us that the same God Who authored Joseph’s life is writing the stories we live in. When the story of your life is read someday, what kind of character will you be found to be? As God rewards your faithfulness with hardship, will you turn on Him, accusing Him of dealing treacherously with you? Or will you be like Joseph—the character that trusts Him no matter what, that continues to act with integrity and faithfulness toward Him, that pays a steep price for holding fast to His promises no matter how much you suffer as a result?

Will someone reading the story of your life someday read about you and see a character like one of Joseph’s brothers—so blinded by envy and hatred that you could not (or would not) see the salvation that is being offered to you right before your eyes? Will you be so entrenched in your own self-righteousness and so convinced of your own goodness that when real Righteousness is presented to you in the form of Jacob’s greater Son that, instead of turning away from your wickedness you just double-down, hating and despising His gracious offer of redemption from your sin if you would repent and trust His death, burial and resurrection to wipe out the death-penalty you are under before His Father?

This is the choice before you today—which character will you be? The faithful son who trusts his Father no matter how steep the price, or the faithless son that hates the thought of bowing the knee before the Righteous Son Who was sent to save you? Don’t let your pride keep you away from the promise that He is making you today:

John 6:37 LSB

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.

John 6:40 LSB

“For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

From all of your hatred, all of your bitterness, all of your envy and pride and malice—He has promised to raise you up out of all of it, give you a new heart to love and serve and obey Him, and never turn you away from Him. So leave behind all of that sin and shame, turn to the One Who promises to hear your plea and make you His own. Come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Jude 24–25 LSB

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

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