Greatness through Suffering
Genesis: Foundations of Our Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Chris Hemsworth documentary, “Limitless”: humans were made to thrive in hardship and struggle. Exposure to cold temperatures, fasting for four days or more, and being put under stress, can all have positive health benefits and slow the advance of aging. When we try to minimize discomfort in our lives, we aren’t doing ourselves any favors. But this is simply a lesson God has woven into our physical lives of a more significant eternal truth.
In the kingdom of God, greatness comes through suffering. The Messiah Himself suffered for our sin, and has all authority in heaven and on earth, and we will share in His glory if we share in His sufferings.
Genesis 36 begins a new section of the book. It introduces a drama that will take the rest of the book to unfold, but chapters 36-38 are the introduction. In chapter 35, God promised Jacob that a kingdom was going to come from his descendants. Who will the king be?
Right away, Benjamin is born. Could it be him? Maybe, but he’s the youngest. The authority usually goes to the firstborn son. That would be Reuben. And as Benjamin is being born, his mother Rachel, the favorite wife, dies. And Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, takes that moment to stage a coup. He takes his father’s concubine Bilhah as his own wife as a sign of his overthrow of his father’s authority. We see Reuben, just like his father, grasping at the blessing for himself. Could Reuben be the promised king? But by the end of chapter 35, there is no succession plan.
Instead, we get chapter 36, which is a long chapter about the sons of Esau and the many kings that come in their line to rule the land of Edom. Long before Israel was even a nation, Edom had already been a sovereign kingdom with great kings. What will come of God’s promise to Israel? Chapter 37 begins with Jacob still living as a foreigner, with no kingdom to claim, and his sons still fighting as rivals.
Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan.
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.
This contrast between the kingdom of Esau and the not-yet-formed kingdom of Jacob reminds us of the opening chapters of Genesis. After Adam and Eve rebel against the kingdom of God in the Garden, we are waiting for the seed of the woman will end the curse and restore God’s kingdom. But, as in a garden in which the weeds grow more quickly than the good crop, it is the kingdoms of men emerge more quickly than the kingdom of God. The kingdom of men are easily established. All you need is a lot of money, power, and fame. The kingdom of God grows from humility and love, through suffering and sacrifice. These come more slowly because they are not in our human nature. For the kingdom of God to grow, human nature must die and a new creation must emerge out of death.
The Messiah, the seed of the woman who ends the curse, will bring about new creation. To get the full picture of that Messiah, it will take telling the story of two brothers in the family of Jacob in parallel.
Genesis 37 starts with Joseph. He is the beloved son of his father. Jacob gives Joseph a “robe of many colors”.
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.
We instantly have images of this robe. An ornate robe that was woven of different materials with long sleeves would have been very costly. What is looked like is not as important as what it stood for. The robe is a symbol that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. He loves him more than the others. Verse 4 tells us as much as their father loved him, his brothers hated him. They could not speak peacefully, literally, they could not say “shalom” to him. Shalom is just the every day greeting in their language. There’s nothing worse than being ignored. When your brothers hate you so much they won’t even speak to you, you’ve reached a real low.
And to make matters worse, Joseph has dreams. The first dream is about a fruitful harvest of wheat. Except the dream is really about Joseph’s greatness. The brothers’ sheaves of wheat bow to his sheaf of wheat. The dream needs no interpretation.
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.
And Joseph picks up on the social cues, so he shares another dream. In this one, the sun, moon, and eleven stars bow to him. And this time, it’s even too much for his father who loves him.
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?”
These dreams could be about family dynamics. But since this is really about restoring the kingdom of God in the world through this family, we could summarize the dreams by saying that the beloved son of the father will have authority over everything in heaven and on earth.
How will Joseph rise to these great heights? If this is from God, it probably won’t be what we expect. God doesn’t do things the way we do them. Men love status. God is interested more in our character. In God’s kingdom, the way up is down.
But before we get down, let’s notice a couple of helpful details int he narrative. Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers who are miles away tending the flocks. It just so happens that a man finds Joseph in the fields and directs him to his brothers who have moved on to a place that just so happens to be a major trade route from Mesopotamia to Egypt.
When Joseph finally finds his brothers, they see him coming and hatch a plan. At first they want to kill him. Then Reuben convinces them to just throw him in a pit. Which they are happy to do. But it just so happens that some Ishmaelites are traveling by on the highway with embalming materials, going down to Egypt. And it just so happens that the Midianites and the Medanites show up at the same time. It just so happens that these are all descendants of Abraham by his other wives. And Judah says, “we could make a profit if we sell Joseph to these guys. And the Ishmaelites and Midianites and Medanites take Joseph to Egypt. All the children of Abraham sell the beloved son of the father for the price of a slave.
There’s a lot of coincidental details here. As the narrative will unfold in the next chapters, there are too many to be a coincidence. If it wasn’t for the random man in the field and the perfect timing of the caravan of all the children of Abraham converging on just the right place to intersect this conspiracy against Joseph, he would never have gone to Egypt, where, spoiler alert, he will save the world.
God has a sovereign plan to save the world. What may seem like a chance encounter may be divine planning. And what may seem like the evil schemes of jealous, hateful people, may actually be God’s eternal purpose. I bring this up by way of encouragement. If we see our lives primarily as determined by the choices of other people or the random events of our world, we will be resentful, fearful people. If we can learn to see that there is nothing that happens, good or bad, outside of God’s will for us, we will be able to rise above our afflictions in peace and hope.
Joseph’s rise is still far off by the end of our chapter. Everything that happens to Joseph here is in the downward direction. He is thrown into a pit. He is drawn out, only to be sold into slavery to a band of Ishmaelite, Midianite, Medanite traders who are going “down” to Egypt. Not only are they going down to Egypt,
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.
They are carrying the materials the Egyptians would use to embalm the dead. Joseph is going down into death. Joesph’s brothers make up a lie to tell Jacob about Joseph being killed by a wild beast. They dip his beautiful robe in blood and show it to Jacob. He jumps to the very conclusion they were hoping he would and assumes Joseph has been killed by an animal. And Jacob says,
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.
Now Jacob is going down to meet Joseph in the grave. And meanwhile,
Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.
“captain of the guard” is a euphemism. The words literally are the “head butcher”. This is Pharaoh’s executioner, the chief hitman. Joseph has gone down to be enslaved by death.
Joseph’s path to greatness had to go through the pit and slavery. Because his story is not about him. It’s really about someone that will come 1800 years later who will relive Joseph’s story in a way that saves the world. Joseph is what Bible nerds call a “type”. That means he is like a portrait that is not yet complete. The full picture is yet to come.
The person the whole world is waiting for in Genesis is the seed of a woman who will be born in the family of Abraham who will bless the world by overcoming the curse of sin and death. The writers of the Hebrew Bible called this person the Messiah, the anointed one. He would be anointed by God as priest and king. He would restore the kingdom of God among humans. He would establish peace, shalom, wholeness and fruitfulness in the earth. God the Father would send the Messiah to His brothers, the people of God, and He would overthrow all their enemies and bring God’s righteous people back from their exile in slavery and establish them in the promised land. And to get the full picture of this person it would take the portrait of not one, but two of Jacob’s sons.
The Jews believe that if God sends Messiah, and He finds His brothers unrepentant of their sins (a bad report, v. 2), He will die for them to pave the way for their final salvation. This, then would be Messiah ben (son of) Joseph. But if Messiah comes and finds God’s people repentant and righteous, the Messiah will redeem God’s people and restore the kingdom of David. This would be the Messiah ben David. We’ll find out more about that part of the portrait next week.
Messiah ben Joseph becomes the subject of a significant portion of the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 53 is a portrait of the servant of the Lord who shall be
Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
but his exaltation will be his suffering to make atonement for the sins of God’s people. The people who witness this misunderstand his mission and think God has rejected him.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
That beautiful robe dipped in blood is a portrait of atonement. The brothers did not intend that. By dipping the robe in the blood of a goat, they repeat the deceptive act of their own father, who had killed two goats to wear their skins and his brother’s garment to deceive their father Isaac into giving him the blessing. But they also advanced the story and provided an unfinished portrait of the day of atonement, when two goats would be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of Israel. And of course, the portrait is complete in Jesus Christ, who completed the portrait of the suffering servant by giving His life as an atonement for all unrighteous, unworthy brothers and enemies alike.
So, what if these are one and the same person, but His mission has two parts? Part one is to suffer for the sins of the unrighteous to make them righteous and establish God’s kingdom in their hearts. Part two would be the conquering of all enemies and restoring the peace of God’s kingdom to usher in the new heavens and the new earth. What if the Messiah really did come and found his brothers unrighteous and they rejected him and mistreated him and covered his clothes in blood and put him in the ground and he went down to death? But what if this sacrifice was also the will of the Lord prospering in his hand? What if his suffering conquered sin and death, the enemies of all humans?
And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Jesus’ glory was to die and be buried in the ground. But because He was willing to walk the path of suffering, He would be exalted to glory. After His crucifixion and resurrection, He says, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” And when we look even farther forward, Jesus the crucified, Messiah ben Joseph, will return in victory as the conquering king, Messiah ben David. And He will be wearing a robe dipped in blood.
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.
His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.
He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.
And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.
From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.
He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
The robe dipped in the blood of His sacrifice is His robe of glory. Who would be the king of Israel? Never mind that. Jesus is king of the world.
This is the way God works. It looks upside down from our perspective. The way up is down. Joseph one day would rule over his brothers and they would bow to him. The same brothers that had mistreated him and lied about him to their father would come in need and he would take care of them. But his path to greatness goes through suffering. The suffering of the righteous would provide life for the unrighteous.
What lessons can we learn for our own lives? The path to greatness is no different.
But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
If you want to be great in the kingdom of God, in the Jesus movement, serve others. Our fruitfulness, our ability to nurture life in others, can be measured according to our humility and willingness to serve them in Jesus’ name.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Who is someone that is hard for me to consider better than myself? Start with that person. Is there a way you can serve them? That is the path to humility. And humility and loving service is the definition of greatness with God.
If God is a God of love, why does He require suffering as the means to achieve greatness? This seems cruel. And it would be, if God was not Himself willing to walk the same path. Jesus, God in the flesh, has gone before us. Our greatness can be measured according to our closeness to Jesus. He is on the path of humiliation, rejection and mistreatment so that He can save the world.
Communion
Questions for Discussion
What is a high from this week, and what was heavy this week?
Is there something from last week’s passage you were able to apply, and what did you learn?
What do we learn about God in Genesis 37? Does He show up anywhere in the text?
Have you ever experienced seeming coincidences that you realized were God’s work in your life? How did that shape your faith?
What do we learn about people in our passage?
Why is the path to greatness in God’s kingdom the path of suffering? What is God’s purpose in that?
How does the life of Joseph so far begin a portrait of Jesus Christ? How does that help us understand the gospel?
How will you respond to this passage this week?
With whom can you share this passage this week?
