August 16, 2006

• It is a two for one day today. I had pushed “submit” in a hurry and left it public before I had edited the post, figure I will leave it up. Have a blessed day!

  
  

  Genesis 37 – Well we have met that 17 year old Joseph, the dreamer of dreams, who tattles on his brothers and is his father’s favorite. Joseph has been garbed in the coat of many colors, and now let’s see how he gets along with his siblings.

  
  

  Genesis 37:12 Then his brothers went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem.

  
  

  I never noticed this before!!!! Why are they going back there?  Shechem is where Dinah was raped, where they tricked the inhabitants to circumcise themselves and slaughtered them. It is right on the border of the promised land, and not where God wanted them in the first place. Isn’t that so like us, we get free from an area of sin in our lives, and then go back to pay a visit. Remember, God protected them from the hands of the neighboring tribes as they traveled toward Canaan, now they are going back. Not everyone can re-visit their past sinful areas and come out unscathed. None of these boys will be able to either.

  
  

  Genesis 37:13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers feeding the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” So he said to him, “Here I am.” I think of others in the Bible who have obeyed like that, “Here I am.” Samuel the prophet heard God and answered. Joseph obeyed His father. Jesus obeyed His Father.

  
  

  Jesus obeyed His Father even to the cross, He did everything His Father told Him to do. Joseph also obeys implicitly.

  
  

  What surprises me is that Israel/Jacob knew his sons were in Shechem. I think I would have told my kids to stay away from there. Dinah got hurt there, and the slaughter occurred there. But he sends his beloved son down to Shechem.

  
  

  God sent His Beloved Son down to earth (Shechem).

  
  

  So Israel tells Joseph to see if all is well with his brothers and the flocks and bring back word to him. And in verse 14 it says that Joseph went out of the valley of Hebron (which means fellowship), to Shechem (the world).

  
  

  I wonder who this next character is, Verse 15 “Now a certain man found him, and there he was, wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, “What are you seeking?”

  
  

  I wonder who the “certain man” was.

  
  

  Verse 16 “So he (Joseph) said, “I am seeking my brothers. Please tell me where they are feeding their flocks.”

  
  

  Reminds me of Jesus, the Son of Man seeking his brothers to save them.

  
  

  Verse 17 “And the man said, “They have departed from here, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan.

  
  

  Did you know that the word Dothan means double well, and it also means sickness.

  
  

  Jesus came down to earth, to go after us, His brothers, and help us escape from the sickness of sin. And we will see, that just like Joseph’s brothers, people on earth conspired after Jesus.

  
  

  Verse 18 Now when they (Joseph’s brothers) saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. Then they said to one another, “Look, this dreamer is coming! Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, ‘Some wild beast has devoured him.’ We shall see what will become of his dreams!”

  
  

  Didn’t Jesus face the same thing, with plots to kill Him, to prevent Him from ruling and reigning? The priests of Jesus’s day were afraid that Jesus would usurp their authority, they forgot from whence their authority came. And they knew Jesus from afar off, the prophesies in the Torah predicted to the day and the hour the coming of Jesus, there was no way the priests and Levites could say that they didn’t know. The miracles that Jesus did, his place of birth, anyone with an inquiring mind could see that Jesus was Messiah, and they chose instead to conspire to kill Him.

  
  

  Joseph’s brothers acted on their feelings of jealousy. This was not honoring their father, who had placed the coat of many colors, the mantle of authority on his back. So often, in our lives, we act this way, assuming that if we kill the messenger, if we ignore the message, if we put something out of our sight it will go away. The truth will stay, even when we try to kill it.

  
  

  Reuben heard their plan and tempered it, saying not to kill him. Reuben says in verse 22 And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him”—that he might deliver him out of their hands and bring him back to his father.

  
  

  This is very much like Pilate, who had Jesus beaten to try and pacify the Jews and prevent them from crucifying Jesus. Reuben wanted to rescue Joseph, but did not want to inflame his brothers against him. I feel that maybe Reuben feared that he, too, would be at the bottom of the pit with Joseph if he had spoken more forcibly. How often do we temper our words to the climate around us, say in the office or among friends, do we try not to stand out in our defense of Christ?

  
  

  Verses 23-24 So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it.

  
  

  Jesus was stripped of his garment, and cast into a pit (tomb). It was a dry and barren place – no water. No water of the Word, no water of the Spirit, it was a place of death. So often we dig ourselves into our own pits, into our own dry and barren places, and we keep digging deeper and deeper. We die. Joseph had the symbol of authority stripped off of him. Isn’t that what they tried to do with Jesus, strip Him of his life so that He would have no authority over them, but what satan meant for harm, God will turn to good. God will take this tough experience to grow up Joseph to be a leader of his people, and God will take this tough experience to play at the minds and hearts of his brothers to cause them to come to repentence. God will also take this experience of Joseph and bring him to a place where he also reaches and helps to feed the Egyptians.

  
  

  But imagine what Joseph must have felt, his dreams, his visions, and his possible death. Sometimes it takes something like this to cause us to grow and change. And, while going back to Shechem was not the ideal place for his brothers to be, it did allow for a chance encounter – a God moment, to preserve Joseph’s life. I love that God will come even when we are not where we are supposed to be, and that He pulls us out of the pit and rescues us. Sometimes our rescuers do not seem to be what we expected, but we learn from all.

  
  

  Beth Moore, in a video that complements the study of the Patriarchs stated that Jacob underestimated the ramifications of his partiality towards Joseph. Then Joseph met the certain man (a Shechemite) and Beth states, “Ironically, Joseph turned out to be safer with the Shechemite than with his own brothers.” and “In his lifetime Joseph will look for his brothers’ approval, respect, mercy, apology, possibly their appreciation and finally their welfare.” But the betrayal of Joseph at the hands of his brothers had to hurt very much, because betrayal implies a closeness.

  
  

  Verse 25 And they sat down to eat a meal. Then they lifted their eyes and looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing spices, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry them down to Egypt.

  
  

  Remember Ishmael? Abraham’s son born of Hagar, God will use him to rescue Joseph. In fact, since they were traveling, God had it all arranged – these started traveling long before Joseph was put into the pit. Notice what these Ishmaelites are carrying – sounds a bit like the three wise men.

  
  

  Beth states that “We must be very careful of what we plot at a distance, lest we follow through when close. Nothing is harmless about a grudge. The Greek word for “nursed a grudge against” means to be held in or by anything, to be entangled in something, be enmeshed, to be subject to.”

  
  

  This is what Pastor Don has been talking about – keeping our thought lives and our words in line with God’s Word. When we start thinking fleshly thoughts, harboring unforgiveness, anger, rage, and muttering about things, we put ourselves right into satan’s hands. The thoughts we think, the feelings we succumb to, will cause us to act. If we are nursing a grudge against someone, we really need to ask the Holy Spirit to make us aware of the ungodly thoughts, and ask God to forgive us and help us to turn from them. We need to repent before we act in ways we should not act.

  
  

  Hoping you have a blessed day!

  
  

  Heather

  • 4:59 pm
  • 7 Comments