Category: Sermon Supplements

All the Bible is God shouting to us, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”   Unfortunately we like the disciples want to build altars to Moses and Elijah.  Judah impresses us here, but don’t settle for second hand glory.  Let his moonlight excite you to discover the source.

One image Scripture uses to speak of Christ is that He is our True Elder Brother.  He is the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29).  We are fellow heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).  As we survey Genesis brotherly love is profoundly absent.  The first brotherly relationship ends in fratricide.  This last section is titled “the generations of Jacob” (Genesis 37:2).  It is about these brothers, the nation of Israel in embryo.  In the ESV “brother” occurs ninety-nine times in this last section.  As we come to the close of this book brotherly love is restored.  And oh how gloriously God does it.

Instead of taking life, a brother will give up his life.  He will pay the penalty for the “guilty” and suffer the consequences.  He will suffer bondage that the “thief” may go free (Genesis 44:32-33).  Which brother does this?  The brother who previously pragmatically suggested they fully benefit from Joseph plight.  He wanted to keep their wallets fat and their consciences light (Genesis 37:26-27).  Now his conscience is stricken, out of love for his father (Genesis 44:34).  Likely having lost two sons of his own has put his heart in tune with his father’s.  Who is this brother?  Judah, who is to become the kingly tribe (Genesis 49:10), the tribe of David, from which the Messiah will come, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

God, to magnify His Son, “exorcises” the “spirit of Cain” from the brothers and fills them with the Spirit of Christ.  He not only is relocating them from Canaan to Egypt, but from Enoch (the city built by Cain in Genesis 4:17) to Philadelphia.

We are not types of Christ as Judah was, but God’s providence is nonetheless at work to conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).  He disciplines us as sons to make us look like the Son.

Sometimes there can be right in your wrongness.  We are frail sinful creatures.  All our good is mixed with evil.  When I was a high school student I overheard a struggling pastor say he didn’t know if he could bring his teenagers to church camp.  I anonymously sent him some money to be used for this purpose.  I’m sure there was some initial pride involved in the deed.  Within the last couple of years I was speaking with my mom about this pastor and she reminded me of the act.  It took a while for her to remind me, I had nearly forgotten the deed.  But now every time I read Matthew 6:3-4, I think, “I did that once.”  In our right there is always some wrong mingled in.  But have you ever considered that by God’s grace in your wrong, there can be right?

God uses the brother’s wrong conceptions of what God is doing, to bring about the actions God desires.  The brothers seem to think God is exacting payment for their sins (Genesis 42:21-22, 28).   God is working to bring about their repentance, by their wrong conception of Him.  These brothers are not experiencing God’s wrath for sins, but His covenant faithfulness.  God is not exacting payment from them.  They couldn’t foot the bill.  The wages of sin is death.  There are only two sufficient payments for sin, eternity in hell, and the cross.  Jesus paid for all their sins.  God’s chastisement is not an exacting of payment, but a mark of love.

This is not to say our wrong perceptions of God are ok.  They are not, they are sin.  Sin is not legitimized, but God grace is glorified.  Tozer was absolutely right when he wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”  Yet God graciously leads us to repentance of our sins and to a true knowledge of Him.  Oh matchless grace greater than all our sin.

God uses their sinful perceptions of His providence to bring about repentance.  God uses Joseph to unify, sanctify, and preserver the covenant family.  He uses a famine to provide the world with the Bread of Life.  This should not surprise us.  He used the cross to break that Bread, and extract the wine that we might partake and have eternal life.  God ordained the greatest sin ever as the act whereby our sins were washed away.

ADDENDUM:

As soon as I posted this I read this J.I. Packer Quote on Justin Taylor’s blog.

It is certain that God blesses believers precisely and invariably by blessing to them something of his truth and that misbelief as such is in its own nature spiritually barren and destructive.

Yet anyone who deals with souls will again and again be amazed at the gracious generosity with which God blesses to needy ones what looks to us like a very tiny needle of truth hidden amid whole haystacks of mental error. . . .

Every Christian without exception experiences far more in the way of mercy and help than the quality of his notions warrants

God’s transcendence and immanence are related.  Because His holy glory is so transcendent, it is immanent (Isaiah 6:3).  God’s glory cannot be contained, it is infinite, immeasurable, vast; it is even right here.  In our text we see God’s transcendent sovereignty mingled beautifully with His immanent mercy.  In fact we learn that they are never separated.  His immanent mercy is a transcendent sovereign mercy.  You cannot dissect God and His attributes.  Consider what we learn of God here.

1. God is sovereign. He raises up kings and brings them down (Daniel 2:21).  Their hearts are in his hand (Proverbs 21:1).  He uses them as his tools (Isaiah 10:5-7).  God gives Pharaoh this dream and is Lord over feast and famine (Psalm 105:16; Genesis 41:25, 28).

2.  Not only is God sovereign, but He also has a plan. Strength without wisdom is a dangerous thing.  In God infinite power meets infinite wisdom.  All His sovereign power is moving all things to His purpose (Isaiah 46:8-10).  It was God’s plan for Joseph to go to Egypt (Genesis 45:5-8).  God desired for the chief cupbearer to forget for two more years.  God wants to relocate His people to Egypt for a time, and He is orchestrating all of this, exercising His sovereignty to achieve His plan (Genesis 15:13-16).

Too many are sloppy theologians, they compartmentalize and rarely harmonize.  For instance, I think few connect the doctrine of God’s omniscience with the doctrine of God’s omnipotence.  Why is it that God knows the future?  Because He has a plan and nothing can thwart it.  He knows the future because he does the future (Proverbs 19:21, Job 23:13, Isaiah 14:27, Psalm 115:3).

3. Not only Is God sovereign, not only does He have a plan, but He also discloses His plan to His people. Two generations before Joseph God told Abraham of these things (Genesis 15:13-16).  Joseph as a young boy was given a dream that is controlling this final narrative of Genesis (Genesis 37:5-11).  Now God is revealing to Joseph what He is about to do.  God does nothing without revealing His secret to the prophets (Amos 3:7).  We are not prophets as Amos speaks of, but we have the word of the prophets.  Jesus makes known to His own His plan (John 15:15; 1 Corinthians 2:6-16).

4. Not only is God sovereign, not only does He have a plan, not only does He disclose His plan to His people, but He also graciously uses us to accomplish His plan. Joseph becomes the means God uses to preserve, unify, and sanctify the covenant family.  Joseph is the means God uses to disperse the bread of life.  In a greater way, not lesser, God catches us up into His plan, to proclaim the Bread of Life that has been broken.

Oh what transcendence!  Oh what immanence!

Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples. (Psalm 77:13-14)

When things are difficult are you the realist, “things could be worse?” Or the pessimist, “things will get worse?”  Or the optimist, “things will get better?”  As Christians we are not to be sanctified versions of our pre-conversion personalities, be they optimistic, pessimistic, or realistic.  We are not to interpret events according to worldly wisdom or subjective feelings.  We are to conform our minds, hearts, and wills to the Word of God.  The Word of God informs us what to be optimistic about, and what to be pessimistic about.  Ultimately I would argue that pessimism and optimism are identical with the Biblical categories of good and evil, though much contemporary preaching makes them out to be.  They are attitudes that can be either good or evil.  Faith and unbelief should replace being an optimist or a pessimist.  If we are faithful, there are things about which we will be adamantly pessimistic, such as the plight of sinful man and his ability to save himself; and, if we are faithful, there are things in which we are ardently optimistic, such as the saving work of Christ.

Some may read this chapter thinking Joseph’s hopes have been shattered.  No doubt Joseph is disappointed that the cupbearer did not immediately remember him, but the point of this chapter is not to utterly devastate us or Joseph’s before his being lifted up, but for us to eagerly anticipate his being lifted up.  No doubt Joseph being frail flesh cried out, “How long O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1), but I am sure he ended upbraiding himself, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love” (Psalm 13:5).

What is here to build Joseph’s hope and ours?  The Word of the Lord (Romans 10:17).  The interpretations Joseph gives come not by his own wisdom, investigation, or skill; the interpretation is from the Lord.  Joseph is donning the mantle of a prophet.  And everything happens in this chapter exactly according to the prophetic word of God delivered through Joseph (Genesis 40:22).

Each of these officers has one dream, two dreams altogether.  Pharaoh will have two dreams in the next chapter.  When we first meet Joseph in chapter 37 he has two dreams.  The symmetry shouts divine causality.  Joseph tells Pharaoh that the two dreams mean that the thing the Lord will do is certain.  Joseph’s two dreams that begin this last section of Genesis tell us what God is up to throughout the whole narrative.  If these single dreams come to pass, what of the double dream?

As for us, what of the Word of God that shouts to us all that is ours in Christ from Genesis to Revelation?

After all the shady cats we have dealt with so far in Genesis, Joseph is a welcome breath of fresh air.  Joseph is a hero, he is exemplary, we can learn many moral lessons from him, but do not turn this text into a breadless sandwich. 

Imagine trying to eat a breadless sandwich.  It’s so messy if makes a Carl’s Jr. commercial look polite.  How do we make this text breadless?  We turn it into a fable, and when we do, it gets messy.  Sadly I wonder how much daily Bible reading is nothing more than going to the text to glean a few moral maxims and life principles.  Our daily Bread ironically becomes breadless.  Simply, many go to the Bible just to know what to do.  Surely the Bible contains commands, and we should desire to obey and follow God, but when you read the Bible seeking only law, you lose the Bread of life.  When this story is read as a fable the meaning is no more than, “Keep your clothes on, and if you lose them, lose them running away from sex and not toward it.”  What I am proposing is not that we make less of the text but more.

So where is the bread?  Look at the phrase repeated twice for emphasis at the beginning and the end, “The LORD was with Joseph” (Genesis 39:2, 3, 21, 23).  These are the loaves that hold the meat of this sandwich together making it edible.  We have seen this kind of language before in Genesis at “Jacob’s Ladder” (Genesis 28:13-15).  What is the context there?  It is God renewing with Jacob the covenant made with Abraham and Isaac.  God is sovereignly orchestrating the events of the Patriarch’s lives in faithfulness to His covenant.

Now we see Joseph as only a hero, but God as the hero.  God is not blessing Joseph because of his moral superiority, but in faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham.  John Sailhammer put it this way, “This is not a story of the success of Joseph; rather it is a story of God’s faithfulness to his promises.”

Here is the Bread of Life.  It is not about what we do, it is about what He has done, is doing, and will do.  The Bible is a story more about God’s action throughout history than how we are to act.  Our acting is and effect of His action in Christ.  The Bible becomes breadless when we read it void of its redemptive story.  Let me close with an example from Deuteronomy.  In Deuteronomy 30:11-13 God tells His people,

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’  But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

What?  The law is not too hard for you?  This sounds nothing like Paul.  Are Paul and Moses in opposition?  Not at all.  Why is it that the law is not too hard for them?  Because it is in their hearts.  How did it get there?

And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.  – Deuteronomy 30:6

Put the law in its proper context, God’s redemption of a people onto Himself.  They were not redeemed because they kept the law.  They received the law because they were redeemed.  Put the Bread back on the sandwich and know life instead of death.

Oh the tension between the tender and the terrifying that is this passage.

This is not a flannel graph friendly passage.  Sister Sue never taught this in children’s chapel.  If your pastor preaches expository messages and is going through Genesis this might be the only time you hear him say “semen” in the pulpit.  But beware, Moses is not trying to titillate your senses.  Do not use this text as a basis for explicit material as the subject of art.  One could use Moses as a proof for realism, but not sensualism.  Sin is not romanticized here.

So one could misread this text by handling it wrong, treating it more like a romance novel, or a racy drama; or one could misread it by making light of the sins presented here.  Yes, here God’s providence works such that from all this sin comes the Savior.  God’s plan is not thwarted to work all things together for good, not even by the saints own sins.  Yet there is a tension here.  We may not presume upon God’s grace.  Some sinners die, some live.  We are not even clued into the wickedness that was Er’s, God need not give any justification to us.  He would be just to condemn us all to such a sentence for any one minute of our lives.

It is precisely this tension that makes God’s gracious providence so astounding, so outrageous.  God loves and works things, all things, for the good and salvation of such despicable depraved souls.  His providence seems promiscuous.  But alas, these are the only kind of humans for God to love, darkness loving, sin wrecked, cursed, and depraved enemies.  Yet God’s love toward them is holy, for the Son of Perez, our Lord Jesus, would bear the wrath for our sins. 

Here at the cross tension between the terrifying and the tender is revealed most powerfully.  Concerning those crucified beside Christ, one was saved that all may have hope, but only one that none might presume.  It is only in this tension that God’s love truly floors us.  If we lose sight of His terrifying Holiness we may no longer sing that God’s grace is amazing.

We have now entered into the last section of Genesis (37:2-50:26). This book ends the way it began, leaving us in awe of God. The Joseph stories are not primarily written for us to glean trite moral lessons from, they are there to teach us about God. Really this whole section has one unified majestic point – the providence of God. Genesis begins by stunning us with God’s creative power, it concludes stunning us with His power. God not only calls all things into being, He sustains His creation, guides it, and governs it towards His ends. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith says the following of God’s providence:

God the good Creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, to the end for the which they were created, according unto his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will; to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness, and mercy.

How do we know that this is the point of the story? Our initial clue are the prophetic dreams given to Joseph by God. They function as an interpretive gird in this section the same way that Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:10-22) did for the eighth section (25:19-35:29). But this is not the only interpretive key we are given. The theological climax of what this section is to teach us is not explicitly stated until the end. The primary cause in sending Jacob to Egypt was not his brothers; it was God (Genesis 45:5-8). What God does is not simply turn his brother’s evil for good, but plan and will his brother’s evil for good (Genesis 50:20).

The great puritan John Flavel said, “The providence of God is like Hebrew words – it can only be read backwards.” The story of Joseph is a story of God’s providence, it must be read backwards. In fact all of the Old Testament is a story of God’s providence, it must be read backwards. Or as Sinclair Ferguson wrote, “…the events, imagery, and language of the Old Testament are like a shadow cast backward into history by Christ, the light of the world.” Later in the same great book, In Christ Alone, he goes on to write:

The invisible is more substantial than the visible;
The future shapes the past;
The new is more fundamental than the past.

What does all this mean?

Simply put, it means that the story of the Lord Jesus, his person and work, is not a divine afterthought, a heavenly plan B hurriedly scrambles together when plan A went horribly wrong. No, the coming of Christ was in the plan before the fall. Everything that preceded it chronologically actually follows it logically.

Jesus is the true and better Joseph. He is the righteous, elect, and anointed Son, lifted up by His Father and hated by men, for He exposes our disobedience. He is sent as a lamb to the slaughter, not ignorantly, but knowingly by His Father. He is handed over to the Gentiles, suffering for our salvation. After going to the lowest depths bearing the wrath of God, His Father raises Him up, sets Him in the position of supreme ruler, and then using this new power Jesus saves those who have so horribly sinned against Him.

This is the supreme story of God’s providence (Acts 4:27-28). All of history centers around it.

If you were to randomly pick this chapter, “the pagan phonebook”, for study I doubt you would receive much nourishment from it.  Not that there isn’t much nourishment to be gained, but it is like handing a whole crab to a child who has never learned how to penetrate the shell.  There is succulent meat for the feasting, how do we extract it?

I think genealogies like this are a great argument for closely studying a book of the Bible and for expositional preaching.  Expositional preaching should teach you how to read your Bible.  If you come to this text in isolation you come to it without the combination to unlock its treasures.  If you come to it having noticed the themes that are developing throughout the book however, its meaning begins to slowly unfold.

Thus far we have seen that it was Jacob who received the blessing not Esau.  Yet Esau is blessed with wives, children, and great possessions.  Edom seemingly becomes a mighty nation much more easily than Israel, driving out the original inhabitants of their land, the Horites (Genesis 36:20-30), well before Israel drives out the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 2:12).  They progress as a nation much more quickly, having kings before Israel does (Genesis 36:31-43).

The pagans often progress more quickly than the saints.  This is nothing new.  In Cain’s genealogy (Genesis 4:17-26) great cultural progress is made in herding, musical instruments, and metal working.  It is the descendents of Cain who are first mentioned as building a city.  What cultural advancements and contributions come from the line of Seth?  None from a secular vantage point are mentioned.  But it is with Seth’s birth that people begin to call upon the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:2).  It is in Seth’s line that the rhythm of death is thrown off (Genesis 5:24).  It is in Seth’s line that a man finds favor in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8).

Esau seemingly has none of the pain that Jacob had to endure, yet all of the gain.  But notice what is lacking.  There is not a hint of the spiritual blessing.

Esau may be blessed in the lesser sense, but he is cursed in the greatest sense.

We need not envy this passing world that we are just passing through.

You know you’re getting old when your generation gets its own radio station.  Yes, Tulsa now has a Gen X radio station, 106.1, and yes I listen to it being reminded of some of  the music I unfortunately liked, some which I still do, and some why I wonder why it still exists in any format.  So I am driving to church listening to aforementioned radio station and hear “One Week” by… um… I hesitate, The Barenaked Ladies.  It’s a fun, up tempo little ditty, of which the chorus makes sense to me but the verses seem to be a discombobulation full of pop-culture references.

Some critics think this chapter to be something like “One Week”.  Little more than slightly organized chaos.  They use it to question the inspiration of Genesis, or at least to argue for different authors contributing to the whole over a period covering up to the deportation to Babylon.  After all, Jacob’s life has consisted of meal size portions so far, why did we go bite size all of the sudden?

I rather think this is some excellent story telling on Moses’ part, weaving together all the motifs that have appeared throughout Jacob’s life bringing this section (25:19-35:29) to a close.  They are the themes of the sojourner’s life.  They are the themes that will unite all of Abraham’s offspring together as we traverse this world.  What are they?

1.   God’s initiating grace (Genesis 35:1).  Yes, repentance once again is called for in Jacob’s life but it is preceded by God’s speaking and commanding.

 

2.  Repentance and obedience(Genesis 35:2).  Purity is a prerequisite for worship.  This putting away of idols is a repeated event throughout Israel’s history.  It will be a recurring one in our lives as well for idols always creep in.  If God is to be our God, He will have all, no other gods allowed.

 

3.  Protection (Genesis 35:1)  As Robert Robinson wrote:

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;

Hither by Thy help I’m come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

 

4.  God reminding us who we are in Him (Genesis 35:9).  In Christ we are sons of God, children of Abraham, joint heirs with Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit, slaves of Christ, and saints.

 

5.   God reminding us of His promises (Genesis 35:11-12).  O, how easy we forget and distrust.

6.  Death and life, joy and sorrow, laughter and weeping (Genesis 35:18).  The Lord gives the Lord takes away.  God’s covenant presence does not mean the absence of distress (Genesis 35:3), but His presence in it, sustaining us through it, and hearing us when we cry.

This is the life of a sojourner.  The promises made to Jacob in Genesis 28:13-15 are the glue that binds all these vignettes together.  All these promises are at least partially fulfilled here.  As sojourners we taste of heave now, but we are not there yet.  The kingdom of God is in-breaking, but yet to come.  We live in the tension between the here now and the not yet.  And so we journey as these recurring motifs sound throughout our lives until one day, we too, fade from the narrative and are gathered with our people, like Isaac. And thus that biggest and greatest and eternal chapter will begin.

I think two truths are powerfully seen here; the need for God’s people to be distinct, and God’s protection of his promises.

As Israel wandered the desert, Moses, inspired by the Spirit of Yaweh, recorded the book of Genesis.  Here Israel could see the immorality and false promises that make up their historical dealings with the Canaanites, those whom God had called them to annihilate.  They were not to intermarry, why?  The issue was not racial, it was religious. 

Allow me an important tangent.  Interracial marriage is not forbidden by God, interfaith marriage is.  I agree with John Piper that, “interracial marriage is not only permitted by God but is a positive good in our day. That is, it is not just to be tolerated, but celebrated.”  Toward that end I highly recommend listening to the sermon, Racial Harmony and Interracial Marriage, from with the quote above comes.  If you have no desire to consider the beauty of interracial marriage might I remind you that only four women are mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of our Lord, and we are certain that three of those women were not Jews, and it is highly likely that Bathsheba (Uriah her husband was a Hittite, 2 Samuel 11:6) was not as well.

Now back to being distinct.  The covenant people’s distinction is threatened seemingly by everyone in this text.  One might argue that the sons of Jacob are opposed to blurring any lines, but their sacrilegious treatment of circumcision speaks otherwise.  They empty circumcision of all religious meaning.  On this John Sailhammer says,

Circumcision was not limited to Abraham’s descendants but was rather given as a sign of one’s joining in the hope of God’s promises to Abraham.  It was, in fact, a sign given of the covenant promise that Abraham would become the father of “many nations” (17:5).  But in the way the sons of Jacob carried out the request that these Canaanites be circumcised, it offers a curious reversal of God’s intention.  They offered circumcision as a means for the two families to become “one people”.  The Canaanites were not joining the offspring of Abraham; rather the descendants of Abraham were joining with the Canaanites.

The sons too were blurring the line.  What does it mean for us today to be distinct?  John MacArthur commenting on 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 gives us several helps as to what it is not.  Distinction does not mean:

1. Refusing to associate (we can work with, have business with, and friendships with unbelievers)
2. Refusing to cooperate (we can endeavor together in good that does not compromise the gospel)
3. Retreat from society (as the Amish)
4. Divorcing an unbelieving spouse (1 Corinthians 7:12-13)
5. It does not mean even refusing to associate with immoral unbelievers (1 Corinthians 5:9-10)

What does it mean?  It means we do not blur the lines of those who are in the covenant and who are out.  It means that we never associate or cooperate in such a way as to deny the gospel.  It means that we are not “bound together with unbelievers in any religious event, enterprise, or activity”.  MacArthur goes on to say that, “To be bound together with unbelievers in any spiritual effort is irrational, sacrilegious, disobedient, unprofitable, and ungrateful.”

Everyone party in this narrative threatens this distinction, and by implication the promises of God.  Dinah’s foolishness, Shechem’s lust, Jacob’s passivity, Hamor’s politics, the Hivite’s greed, and the son’s vengeance all threaten God’s covenant people and His promises.  But all they can do is threaten.  God often works through and in spite of the foolishness of man.  Rather than destroy distinction, they help preserve it.  His promises are invincible.