Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

True And Better (3 min)

Tension

Joseph is a perfect example, picture of Christ.

More on Joseph than any other Biblical Character than Jesus

Author Pink said there are 101 different correlations between Joseph and Jesus

Story has been told in many colorful but wrong ways?

Technicolor dream coat

Ever wonder what

Tension

Good Morning, How are we doing this morning?

I wanted to reintroduce you to the truths found in that video because we are returning to our initiative called the Gospel Project.

The Gospel Project is an initiative where we are looking at everything in the Bible through the lens of the Gospel.

Do you know what the Gospel is?

It is a title that has been thrown around a lot but at it’s core the Gospel is

“The Good News of Jesus the Christ and what He has done for us.”

or maybe many of you remember a definition that I liked to use when we were studying Galatians.

It is from author and pastor Tim Keller and he says it in a way that is helpful for those of us who have become maybe a little too comfortable with the term.

He says that...

“The Gospel is the message that we are more evil than we ever dared imagined, but at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Christ then we ever dared to hope.” - Tim Keller

So when looking to endeavor into something called “The Gospel Project” you would think that we would primarily be looking at the story of Jesus when he was here on earth.

In fact the four accounts that we have on Jesus’ life, Matthew Mark, Luke and John are collectively called “The Gospels”.

But what we have been learning is that the message of the Gospel is not in any way limited to those books of the Bible.

In fact, the message of the Gospel is not even limited to the New Testament.

Over the past several months we have been uncovering the message of the Gospel as it is laid out for us all the way at the beginning of the Bible.

We have been finding it in the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis.

So we have been experiencing exactly what that video was talking about.

And haven’t we found this to be true, from Adam on we keep hitting on this truth that we, mankind, are more evil than we than we ever dared imagine and in the midst of all of our discoveries of the depravity of our species we find a God that loves us more than we could ever dare hope.

So I thought that the video would help to set back on the path of the Gospel Project as we pick up today in Genesis with the story of a man named Joseph.

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Tension

Of course we are talking about the Joseph of Genesis here not the Joseph of the Gospels who was Jesus’ earthly father.

This Joseph was one of the sons of Jacob.

Jacob’s name was changed to “Israel” and his 12 sons became the 12 tribes of Israel.

So this Joseph is a pretty important character in the history of God’s people.

In fact, one of the commentators that I read said that with the exception of Jesus, there is more written of the story of Joseph than any other person in the Bible.

The entire rest of the book of Genesis is focused in on his life and story and it ends with his death.

And what is so incredible is that in all of these narratives about Joseph there is not a single mention of him doing anything sinful.

That is not to say that we should think he was sinless - he certainly wasn’t.

But in contrast to the stories that we have been reading of his father, grandfather and great grandfather which are filled with epic flaws and horrible unfaithfulness, the vast Biblical record on the story of Joseph includes nothing where he was grossly out of line.

What the Biblical record does show on Joseph is a countless number of similarities between the story of Joseph and the story of Jesus.

Even as I say “countless” I am reminded of the many theologians that have set out to list out the many comparisons.

The most lengthy of these comparisons is from the 19th century author and Bible teacher Arthur Pink who used 68 pages of his work Gleanings in Genesis to lay out 101 comparitive points between Joseph and Jesus.

So I am not going to hand out score cards on this or anything, but as we study the life of Joseph over the next several weeks I invite you to be listening for any connections that you hear between what we discover about Joseph’s story and what we know about Jesus’ story.

So I am not going to hand out score cards on this or anything, but as we study the life of Joseph over the next several weeks I would like to just encourage you to on your own look for comparative points between what happens to Joseph and what happened in Jesus’ life.

The reason that I think this will be such a helpful thing for us is that I am certain that in our search for comparisons between Joseph and Jesus’ story, we will find areas of comparisons in our own stories.

There may be chapters in our stories that we believed no one else understands, but then we find that Joseph or Jesus himself experienced something similar and it can give us the hope that we have been aching for.

You see I believe when

Let’s open together to , (p. 31 in the Bibles in the chairs) I’ll pray and we will dive back into the Gospel Project together.

Genesis 50

a comparison.

so his descendants actually became two different tribes of Israel.

We will dive into that later, but we are going to meet Joseph today as a teenage boy who was also the “little brother” Joseph.

Jesus

I wanted us to all Reintroduction to the Gospel Project - story of Jesus throughout the BIble

Joseph is a perfect example, picture of Christ.

More on Joseph than any other Biblical Character than Jesus

Author Pink said there are 101 different correlations between Joseph and Jesus

Story has been told in many colorful but wrong ways?

Technicolor dream coat

Truth

Truth

:

An unjust cry of “Favoritism”

(they thought they were better than Joseph so they were angry at him - contempt)

(they thought they were better than Joseph so they were angry at him - contempt)

2.These are the generations of Jacob...

The land of Canaan is the promised land, the land that God promised to give to the descendants of Jacob’s grandfather Abraham.

God’s people do not reign over this land yet however, Jacob and his sons are just living there on the outskirts of a city called Hebron.

Eventually all of Canaan will become the land of Jacob, or the land and nation of Israel, but for now they are nomads, dwelling in tents and grazing their flocks wherever they are allowed.

And then Verse 2 start out with “These are the generations of Jacob” and a little bell should probably go off in your head on this as this marks the beginning of a new and final division in the book of Genesis.

The word translated Generations here in the ESV is the word “tol- e-dote” and there are 11 different “tol-e-dotes” in Genesis all marking the beginning of the story, account or family activity of a certain major character.

As is the case with several others, the “tol-e-dote” of Jacob is the story of the son that will one day become leader of the family.

What is unique about Joseph’s story is that he is appointed this leader even though he is not the first born son of Jacob.

This is where the tension in his story is introduced.

I watned to again point out the “Generations” is tol e dote

Joseph brought a bad report of his brothers to his father.

This changes the story for me!

So here in Joseph’s story the tension is introduced not because of something that Joseph did, but because Joseph was the favored son of Jacob.

When it came to the power, authority and blessings of the father it usually went primarily to the oldest first and then down the line.

As the younger brother, Joseph should have been at the end of the line.

He should have been given the least recognition, but instead he was the most favored, the most loved.

The text here says that he was favored because he was born to Jacob in his old age, but probably even more so because he was the son of Rachel, the wife that Jacob loved the most.

It would just make sense that he would most love the son of the wife he loved most, but this caused a great amount of Jealousy from his other brothers, and jealousy like this leads to Contempt.

1. Jealousy leads to Contempt (1-11)

We all know what Jealousy is right?

It’s believing that someone else has something that we think we should have.

We could also use the word “envy”.

But the word “Contempt” is not as common.

Contempt is a form of anger or bitterness directed at a certain kind of person.

Professor Robert C. Solomon a philosopy professor at the University of Texas places contempt on the same continuum as resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between the three are that “resentment” is anger directed toward a higher-status individual; “anger” is directed toward an equal-status individual; and “contempt” is anger directed toward someone you fee is a lower-status individual

I gotta tell you that as many times as I have heard the story of Joseph, growing up in the Church as I did, I never remember being impacted by this phrase: “Joseph brought a bad report” like I was this past week.

This seemed to flavor this story for me in a new way.

I had heard this story many times with inferences that Joseph was out “flaunting” his favor with his father - but there is no Biblical backing for that view.

And as we look at the character of Joseph in the rest of his story it seems very inconsistent.

This was not an incident where the “little brother” was just trying to get his big brothers in trouble, but more that Joseph did the right thing in bringing the report, and that caused his brothers to be angry with him.

This is closer to a case of “No good deed goes unpunished” or as Jesus called it in the beatitudes:

Matthew

Joseph was not in the wrong here, but still his brothers hated him.

Why?

Because from their perspective of jealousy and contempt he didn’t have the right to say anything.

He was the younger brother, his place was at the back of the line, so if he is going to come out to the fields with the big boys then he should just keep his mouth shut and the big boys handle the big boy issues.