This is an important day for us as a nation. I hope that you will do your duty as a Christian citizen, go to vote, and vote your conscience, vote your values. Tonight at 6 o'clock we're going to have an impromptu poll meeting regarding our nation, and I invite you to come. I know we have elections going on, and if you're involved in those, that's fine. But there may be of us not involved in elections, and tonight we're going to get in here and have a time poll for our nation.
I don't think the IRS has outlawed our having poll meetings yet as churches on behalf of our country. I haven't heard about that one yet. We're planning to do that, whether they like it or not anyway, tonight at 6 o'clock. And I hope that you will come. We're going to turn our Bibles to Genesis chapter 37. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2 of Genesis chapter 37.
Now, the Bible says that Jesus, a young man of 17, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bila and the sons of Zippor, his father's wives, and he brought to his father a bad report about them. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any of his sons because he had been born to him at his old age, and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Joseph had a dream, and he told his brothers they hated him all the more. He said to them, listen to the dream I had. With the binding shades of green out in the field, when suddenly my sheep rose and stood upright, my sheep gathered around mine and bowed down to it. His brothers said to him, do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us? And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers.
Listen, he said, I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and stars were bowing down to me. When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, what is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Now his brothers began to graze their father's flock near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph, as you hear your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem, come, I'm going to send you to them. He said to him, very well, he replied. And he said to him, go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks and bring word back to me. Then he sent him off from the valley of Hebron.
When Joseph arrived at Shechem, that's 50 miles to the north by the road, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, what are you looking for? And he replied, I'm looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they're grazing their flocks? They have moved from here, the man answered. I heard them say, let's go to the basin. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near the basin, another 10 miles to the north and west of Shechem.
But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. Where comes that dreamer they saw to each other? Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of those cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams. When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. Reuben's not taking his life, he said. Don't shed any blood. Throw him into the cistern here in the desert, but don't lay a hand on him.
Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his word, the richly ornamented robe he was wearing, and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty, there was no water in it. As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.
Their camels were loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. Reuben said to his brothers, what will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let's slay him with the Ishmaelites. And not lay our hands on him. After all, he is our brother. I won't flesh and blood. The devil agreed.
So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and told him to 20 shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites who took him to Egypt. When Reuben returned to the cistern and told that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brothers and said, the day isn't yet there. Where can I turn now? When they got Joseph's robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood.
They took the animated robe back to their father and said, we found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son's robe. He recognized it and said, it is my son's robe. Son of Colossus, any mother has desired him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces. Then Jacob tore his clothes, tore his sock cloth and mourned for his son many days. And then I add to that one verse from Genesis chapter 50. It is the 20th verse.
For Joseph said to his brothers, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Life, like a good novel, I suppose, seems to unfold line after line and paragraph after paragraph, putting in routine, everyday, ordinary details. The narrative seems to go on and on without change. And then, then suddenly with one word or one sentence, the story changes forever. Life is that way.
That one sentence that changes life may be the death of someone very significant to us. It could be the last of the job, who would labor for decades of our lives. It might be an illness that's been diagnosed in us that will change our lifestyle forever. As a result of that one event, no matter how you look at life, it can never be the same again. Now, it is one thing to experience these kinds of changes as a member of the human family and to recognize that these things happen to all people.
They're inevitable, even if shocking. But it's another to experience traumatic change as the victim of a crime. A young woman is raped. A child is sexually abused and murdered. A teen is hit by a drunk driver and crippled for life. A businessman trusts his financial affairs to an employee only to be cheated, causing him to lose his business. When change crashes into our lives because of criminal activity, it is especially difficult to handle.
Joseph not only experienced the change in life's circumstances, he was the victim of crime, a terrible crime, and that by the hand of his own brothers. Perhaps you have experienced this kind of change in your circumstances. And perhaps you, as Joseph may have, cried out, who is God? Why did God permit this? We ask those kinds of questions because we mistakenly think, somehow, that God wants us to be happy every day of our lives. And nowhere does the Word of God promise that.
In Joseph's life, there was terrible change. And God was there. God was there. Others may affect your circumstances, but God's providence will ultimately administer the outcome. I want you to remember that statement. Others may affect your circumstances, but God's providence will ultimately administer the outcome. Just think about this as we examine the biblical account of Joseph's experience. The first thing I want to talk about this morning is the account itself.
As we do that, there's one word that seems to summarize this 37th chapter of Genesis, and that's the word conflict. Joseph's circumstances were surrounded with conflict. The conflict arises from Jacob's preferential treatment of Joseph. The evidence of which is this finely ornamented robe that is mentioned several times in this chapter. That's not an accident. As Joseph lights this chapter, he wants us to notice this robe and what it represents.
This robe seems to have been a long-distance clinic that went down to the hands, which is literally what the word means. The word, in that family, is the symbol of favoritism. Joseph's brothers keenly felt that favoritism, and they deeply resented it. This conflict, created by parental favoritism, was exacerbated by Joseph's telling his dreams. These dreams were understood, rightly, by his brothers and his father as denoting his eventual superiority over them. The conflict increased.
Their jealousy devised a scheme then to kill Joseph. No conflict. Orban, who was the firstborn of Jacob, persuaded his brothers to do other than to kill Joseph, with the intent in his heart to eventually rescue the young man. In his absence from the rest of them, the leader offered another idea. He did not know what Orban was thinking. Instead of perhaps rescue Joseph from death, he suggested that the brothers sell him to the Ishmaelites as a slave. And that's what they did.
Orban was distressed when he found out what had happened. Together, the brothers concocted a lie to tell their father and to return the body coat. We notice the human and the sinful elements in this account. We have an indulgent father who shows favoritism that is always destructive in a family. We have what may be a baseless son who has pathetic dreams and then shares them with his brothers with some insensitivity as to how they were feeling regarding him.
We have a divided family, one father but several mothers, leading to jealousy and then a plan for murder. We see lying and deception, with which, by the way, Jacob was well acquainted from his own life. We look at this account from Joseph's perspective. We see that he was betrayed by his brother. We see him abducted and sold into solitude in a foreign land. And we see a dramatic change in his life from a favored son to an obscure servant. Can you imagine any change greater than that?
The pampered son of his father, the slave of a man in Egypt in the course of a few weeks. Others had affected the circumstances, but as we see, God's providence ultimately administers them. Having looked briefly at this account, I wanted to think about an analogy, secondly, because this is part of Joseph's experience. And it's good for us to remember this. And the analogy with Jesus Christ, because the Lord Jesus Christ also experienced dramatic change in his life.
Dramatic change from one week being proclaimed the King of the Jews, being heard as the hero welcoming him into Jerusalem, and then a few days later being nailed to the cross. Dramatic change in circumstances. Others may affect your circumstances, but God, my friend, God is administering what's happening to you. Joseph is one of the most remarkable analogies of Christ in the Old Testament. Christ, like Joseph, suffered traumatically at the hands of his brothers at the end of his life.
And like Joseph, he too was cut off in his young adulthood. I think of Jesus in connection with Joseph because Jesus also knew what it was to suffer the pain of betrayal and loneliness and rejection. J. Bernard McGee, in thinking about this analogy between Jesus and Joseph, this analogy this way, he says the birth of Joseph was miraculous in that it was the intervention of God in the name of the prayer. The Lord Jesus was working more. His birth was certainly miraculous.
Joseph was loved by his father. The Lord Jesus was loved by his father. Joseph had the coat of many colors that set him apart. Christ was set apart in that he was separate from sinners. Joseph announced that he was to rule over his brethren. The Lord Jesus presented himself as the Messiah. The just as they would have killed Joseph's message, so they also would have killed Jesus. In fact, males to his cross were the words, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews.
Joseph was treated by his father to his brethren. Jesus was sent to his brethren. He came first to the last sheep of the house of Israel. Joseph was treated by his brethren without a cause, and the Lord Jesus was treated by his brethren without a cause. To these words in the Jews, and the author, on having been rejected by his brethren, each of them became a blessing to the Gentiles living among them and then calling from them a bride.
Then there was the subsequent rescue of Joseph's brethren when he was in Egypt. One day there will be the rescue of Jesus' brethren when he comes again. There is a wonderful analogy between Jesus Christ and Joseph. We see in the lives of both of these men the same truth, that others may affect the circumstances of their lives, that God is working in them all, administering the outcome to his purpose.
That brings me finally to the application, which I want to summarize in one word, and that is the word certainty. And that you and I can be sure that whatever changes take place in our circumstances, God will miraculously, providentially work in through them. He will not permit change in circumstances to permanently harm us or to fool his purpose in our lives. God's purpose is that I terrifically conform to Jesus Christ.
That is his ultimate purpose, and we will allow nothing in our lives to force that ultimate purpose. Regarding Joseph in this regard, Warren Hughes denotes, regarding the special tunic, Warren Hughes, he had wanted to make Joseph a ruler before he had really learned how to be a servant. And so God allowed these circumstances to come into Joseph's life as a peaceful and traumatic, but even now God was teaching this young man how to rule, giving him the character of a ruler.
And so as they're not the same in our lives, in Romans chapter 8 verse 28, the New Testament equivalent, in Genesis 60 verse 20, we know that all things work together for good, to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. And what is that purpose? The pride of the minister. That we might be conformed to the image of Christ. And so he goes on to say, who can be against it? Who can know anything to the charge of God's elect?
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? And the Apostle Paul reads some of the traumatic circumstances that can come into your life and mine. He says, no, and all of these things who are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Others may affect your circumstances. They can make decisions that harm you. Inadvertently, but purposefully. Others may affect your circumstances. You can't stop them sometimes. Others may affect your circumstances.
But remember, God is administering the outcome. God has providence at work in your life and mine. God is administering the outcome and delivers it for good. And so my bottom line for you this morning in closing is this. I want to encourage you to see change in your circumstances as God at work. Will you? I want you to see change in your circumstances as God at work doing something that is new and exciting. Because that's what it's about.
Dr. Alan Ross in commenting on the article writes, The Bible's wisdom literature assures the faithful that God brings good out of evil and suffering. Though the wicked may prosper for a time, the righteous hold fast to their integrity because there is a higher, more enduring principle of life. The wise recognize that the Lord God will sovereign over nature and the nations. And that he will righteously order the author of his people. At times, God's ways seem unfair and paradoxical.
But if endured by faith, they bring blessings to the righteous. That's what God is doing this morning in your circumstance. And we now have a Savior who understands change in circumstances, who understands the trauma that it brings, who understands the human emotions, who is human as well as God. And who suffered like none of us has suffered in change. And that's what we remember when we come to the Lord's table this morning. Where our Savior has suffered, being one of us.
And who has suffered for us on the cross. And we remember his death as we celebrate his resurrection and his intercession in heaven on our behalf. And as a wise and sovereign ruler, who is providently working in your life and mine. Working out his purposes. But ministering to outcome of the affairs of our lives in such a way that good will be accomplished. And blessing will come to others. What a wonderful state that looks like. I don't know what the change may be in your circumstances.
I don't know the change that God does. And I hope this brief look in the life of Joseph this morning will assure you that even though others may have reflected your circumstances for ill, and placed you into shock or into trauma, God is at work. And he's doing something new and exciting in your life. I hope as we come to this table this morning, you'll come with an attitude of faith. Believing that the Lord Jesus is at work.
And thanking him for what he is doing even though you may not understand it today. And partake of these elements being reminded that he suffered. And he understands your suffering. Lord Jesus, we prepare our hearts as we come to the table. We confess our sins. And some of us this morning acknowledge to you the pain and the uncertainty that we're tempted with inside. Our lives have been uprooted by others.
But as we partake of this table, we are reminded that not only did you experience change, traumatic change, but all of that was superintended by God for the salvation of sinners, including us. To help us to believe. Help us to be strong. As we partake Lord Jesus of this bread we do it mindful that it represents your body broken for us.