We're gonna be in Genesis chapter
37 this morning. Genesis 37, we're coming back
to Joseph again here. Last week we were, or the last
time, a couple weeks ago, we were focused on the sending of
Joseph to seek the welfare of his brethren. Out of concern
of the father, out of his concern and love, he sent his well-beloved
son to seek the welfare of his brethren, and the son willingly
went out in obedience to the father. And we saw how this pictures,
it reveals Christ to us and what he did out of the love and concern
of the Father for his people. He had given us into the hand
of the well-beloved Son to provide for us, and the Son obediently
came in the fullness of time to redeem his people, to provide
for his bride all that she needs. And so picking up where we left
off in chapter 37, we want to take notice this morning of how
Joseph bears the suffering, how he begins to bear the suffering
of his brethren, of the insults and the injury of his brethren.
He bears it for them in order to suffer for them and provide
salvation for them. We're not going to look at all
that towards the end there when he's in Egypt, but that's what
Joseph is doing. He's going there and bearing
his brethren's suffering in order to provide for them and to give
them life, which is a picture of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ and what he did for us. So let's begin with a view of
Joseph's brethren conspiring against him. In verse 18, when
they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they
conspired against him to slay him. They were going to put him
To death, here he is coming on an errand of the Father, seeking
the welfare of his brethren, but all they feel towards Joseph
is enmity. They despise him. They hate him. And there's something about this
that reminds us of the parable which our Lord spake. When he
was talking to the Pharisees, he said, when the husbandmen
saw the son, They said among themselves, this is the heir. Here comes that well-beloved
one. They could see his coat of many colors from a mile away. They saw him coming, and they
hated him. And they said, come, this is
the heir. Let's put him to death, and the inheritance will be ours.
We'll just cut him out, and we'll take it. And so here comes Joseph, and
their hatred toward him is a picture of the hatred that was directed
toward our Savior. Even when he was an infant, even
before the ministry began, man hated Christ and sought to destroy
him. We're told that Herod, Even before
he came near, that Herod, knowing of the Son, having heard from
the wise men that the Christ was born, that the King of all
was in the earth, he said, well, tell me where He is when you
find Him so that I can go and worship Him. Liar. That man's
a liar. He's of his father, the devil. A liar from the beginning. He
wanted to murder him. He wanted to destroy him. And when he saw that he was mocked
of the wise men, was exceeding wrath, and sent forth and slew
all the children that were in Jerusalem from two years old
and younger. Because at this time, by the
time the wise men got there, he would have been probably about
two years old, based on the time that they had given him. And
so even when he was yet far off before his earthly ministry had
begun, he was already hated and sought to be put to death. Our
Lord said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings? And ye would not. Man doesn't
want that. Man isn't looking for the Lord's
salvation. And when they saw his miracles
and how it condemned them, how it spoke against them, the Pharisees
went out and they held a council against him, how they might destroy
him. They wanted to put him to death.
They hated him. Next we're told in verse 19. They said one to another, behold,
this dreamer cometh. They called him a dreamer, and
it was in reference to what he revealed to them in his dreams,
what he had spoken to them. Come now, therefore, let us slay
him and cast him into some pit, and we will say, some evil beast
hath devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams. They were mocking him for his
dreams. They mocked him and despised him for the things that he said. Now, we didn't take notice of
this before. We didn't look at Joseph's dream. But go back to
verse 5. Look at verse 5 here. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and
he told it to his brethren. and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Here,
I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed. I suspect that
Joseph had interpreted other dreams for them, and that they
saw these things come to pass, because they hear this thing
not just as some fancy thing, but they're moved by it, as though
he's speaking prophetically. They had heard his dreams before.
For behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf
arose, and also stood upright. His was exalted above theirs.
And behold, your sheaves stood round about it, and made obeisance. They bowed, they worshipped my
sheaf." My sheaf. And his brethren said unto him,
Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or Shalt thou indeed have
dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more
for his dreams and for his words. They hated the things that he
said. And he dreamed yet another dream
and told it his brethren and said, behold, I have dreamed
a dream more. And behold, the sun and the moon
and the 11 stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his
father and to his brethren. And his father rebuked him and
said unto him, what is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall
I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves
to thee to the earth? and his brethren envied him,
but his father observed the same." What is the Lord teaching us
here in these dreams? What is he revealing to us of
Christ in these dreams of Joseph? We're told that they hated him
yet the more for his dreams and for his words. They hated him
for the words that he spoke. The gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ stirs up the enmity in man. The natural man hates the
gospel. It's not good news to man, to
the natural man. It's not good news. It's good
news to the weary sinner, to the troubled sinner, but it is
not good news to the self-righteous. It's not good news to the natural
carnal man. The gospel stirs up enmity in
man. because it despises man. It puts man in the dirt. It puts
man in the dust. It doesn't glory in man's works. It doesn't look to man's sacrifice
and what he brings to God. It puts that down in the dirt
and it looks to Christ and gives him all the glory. Do you recall
in Nazareth, when our Lord's ministry had just begun, And
he had done a few miracles, and now he's coming back to Nazareth,
which is his hometown, where he was raised as a boy. They
knew Mary, and they knew Joseph, and here comes their hometown
boy. This boy of fame now. He's getting
famous, and they're excited. He's coming home. This is our
boy. This is our famous son. This is one of us. And they rejoicing
in pride. They were glad to see him. And
they're falling all over him. And he begins to speak. And they're
hearing his grace words, his gracious words. And they're all
amazed. And he could have had them eating
out of his hand. But then he declared the grace
of God, the sovereign grace of God, to save whom he would. If he had just tickled their
ears, They would have loved him, but he preached grace. declaring how that God has a
people and that God saves whom he will apart from the works
of man, apart from what man does under the law. And he told them
how that by the prophets, there were many widows in Israel, many
widows that God could have displayed his grace and power to. But he
sent the prophet to none of them, and that prophet went out to
the Gentiles and helped that one Gentile widow. And then he
said there were many lepers in Israel, many lepers that God
could have healed. But he healed none of them and
sent him a Gentile leper, and that's who was healed. And that
angered them when he declared that God saves whom he will. that as God said, I will have
mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. I will save and bless that one
whom I will save and bless, apart from your works. Apart from your
sacrifices, apart from your slaying of animals and sacrificing them
to me, apart from your spending, your laboring, your giving up,
your doing this and not doing that, apart from all the things
that you do, I will bless whom I will bless. As he blessed Jacob
and not Esau. Esau was a better boy. He was
a nicer boy. He was a good guy. And yet God
hated him and loved Esau. He blessed Isaac, and not Ishmael. He chose whom he would bless
and have mercy on. And when they heard that, all
in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with
wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led
him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built. That is, all their hope and all
their confidence was in their works and who they were and what
they did. And they were going to thrust
him down. They were going to throw him over the hill, down
the hill, to kill him. But he, passing through the midst
of them, went his way. Because he's sovereign God, able
to do as he pleases. And so because he spake these
truths, they hated him. This is why we preach sovereign
grace. The reason why I preach sovereign
grace, as our Lord preached sovereign grace, it is one of the most
surest, quickest ways to reveal the heart of man. It actually
exposes the heart of man because as soon as they hear, all the
glory is his and not mine. If you're not the Lord's, you
hate it. Because you're thinking, what
about all my works? What about all my sacrifices? What about
everything I did? Don't those count for something?
You mean he gets all the glory? He's the well-beloved son? He
wears the coat of many colors? What about my glory? What about
what I did? How come I don't get this? It
exposes what we are by nature. Either we're trusting Christ,
for His grace and mercy, or we're actually trusting our own works,
which cannot save. Either we're glorying in Christ,
or we're glorying in ourselves. And when we preach grace, it
exposes that, what we're trusting in. It actually uncovers that
very, very quickly, just as it did to those in Nazareth. He
could have had them if he just steered clear of that and spoke
nice things to them and just tickled their itching ears. But
he didn't. He declared the truth because
we've got to hear the truth. We've got to know it. So listen
to these other words at how they hated our Lord. These are all
from John. The world cannot hate you, he
said, but me it hateth because I testify of it. Because I testify of it, that
the works thereof are evil. Because I'm speaking and my words
are shining a light on the evil works of man, they hate it. The
Jews sought the Moor to kill him because he not only had broken
the Sabbath, but said, He spoke. He said, God was his father,
making himself equal with God. Another time, the Jews murmured
at him because he said, I am the bread which came down from
heaven. My feet on you? Gain all our
nourishment and strength from you? What about what I do? I
can go out into the field and get my own strength and provide
for myself. Why do I need you? They hated
him. But now ye seek to kill me, a
man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God. They
hated him and sought to kill him for his words, just like
Joseph. His words are light, and the
light of Christ reproves us. Every one of us, even we that
believe, have all been reproved of Christ. It's not because any
of us that believe are better. No, we all have been humbled
and brought low, and this flesh was put down because we're trusting
in ourselves by nature, and we glory in ourselves, and that's
not whom the Father receives. He receives those that come through
the Son. All we like sheep have gone astray. He was talking to Pharisees.
good law-keeping Pharisees, and they hated and despised him. And we've all gone astray like
sheep and turned to our own ways. And he's making us to know this
truth that we would hear the gospel. That's why he tells us
this. He tells us this so that we would
just stop our boasting and hear him. that we would be humbled
and come to him, that we would hear, and the Lord, which is
the rest of that verse, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all, that we would hear the good news and rejoice in
the good news and come to him, believing him through the righteousness
of Christ. And then second, Joseph's dreams
revealed a glorious future for him. He spoke of his future exaltation,
of his, it was a prophetic nature of what he would do, of what
the Lord would do for him. And though they hated him for
it, we're told that his father observed the saying, Jacob observed
that saying, much like when Mary was told by the angel of her
son. that she would bear, that he
would be great, that he would be called the son of the highest,
and the Lord God would give unto him the throne of his father
David, and he'd rule over that kingdom forever and ever. And
so whenever she saw things that reminded her of that word, that
testimony of the angel, she kept all these things and pondered
them in her heart. Just like, just like Jacob. Third,
Joseph's dreams revealed the sovereign rule of our Lord over
heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is Lord and King
over heaven and earth right now, over heaven and earth. And that's
what this speaks of. The first dream where they were binding
sheaves in the field, it speaks to his sovereign power and authority
over all the earth. And then the next part, the sun
and the moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to Joseph. That
seems to speak of heavenly things, of heavenly things. Brethren,
the father gave all into the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the exalted one. He's our
elder brother. He's our husband. All things
are his and in his hand. And we look to him to provide
all that we need. And he did, he's faithful, a
faithful husband, a faithful friend. He came and just as he
promised to provide all that we need, he laid down his life
for us and gives us all that we need. He's Lord of all, it's
all his. It's all his, heaven and earth,
it's all his. He is Lord of all. And when our
Lord spake of his exaltation, they hated him for that too.
They charged him with blasphemy. When he said, you're going to
see me, seated on the throne of power, on the right hand of
power, coming in the clouds. And they said, that's blasphemy.
Impossible. And yet he is. He's Lord of all. And so the hatred of Joseph's
brothers, it foretells of the hatred that our Lord would bear
for his people from the scribes and Pharisees and the religious
world that loved their own religion, loved what they did, but hated
the truth of God and the sacrifice of God whom he provided, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And when he hung on that cross,
they mocked him. They jeered him. They said, what's
going to come of your dreams now? What's going to come of
all you said would come to pass? What's going to happen now? They
passed by him, they reviled, they wagged their heads, it says,
they were shaking their heads saying, thou that destroyest
the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself, thou
be the son of God, come down from the cross. All they understood
was fleshly things. They didn't hear the spirit.
They didn't hear the words of the spirit. All they could hear
is carnal, fleshly, physical things that they could see with
their eyes and understood not. And the chief priests, they mocked
him too. And the scribes and elders saying
he saved others, himself he cannot save. And if he saved himself,
they said, come down from that cross and we'll believe on you.
But if he did that, it would have done them no good because
had he not sacrificed himself for us, our sins would remain. And so for the love of his brethren,
for the love of his people, he stayed on that cross, did not
deliver himself in order to make a perfect atonement to cover
our sins and to give us life in himself. And so our Lord provided
everything. And as they're saying, what's
going to come of his dreams? They've even put soldiers there
to protect, to guard the tomb so that there was no way that
he was going to rise up and get out of there somehow. as they
didn't believe him. Then leading up to the cross,
the burden our Lord was to suffer for his people to obtain the
forgiveness of their sins. We see a few more pictures here. It says in verse 23 that they
stripped Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors that
was on him. Just as they did to our Lord,
they stripped him naked, they shamed him, they mocked him,
they beat him. And we see Joseph there, that
picture that he bore as our Lord would bear it. And they took
Joseph, verse 24, and they cast him into a pit. And the pit was
empty. There was no water in it. And that describes the awful
pit that our Lord went into. After he made atonement for his
people, he went into the pit wherein is no water, the grave. That's the grave, brethren. It
affirms that when our Lord came and offered himself to the Father
on the tray, that he really died. He truly died and was laid in
that tomb. His dead body was taken down
and he was laid in that tomb for three days and three nights. Our Lord telling us that as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth." And so he did that for us, brethren. And they
sat down, after they threw him in the pit where there was no
water, they sat down and ate bread. And just think about that. Joseph, who pictures the bread
of heaven, it shows, it speaks to the hypocrisy of man. It speaks of the hypocrisy of
the Pharisees, who for their religion would take the bread
of heaven and murder him, slay him, put him to death. and then
thinking that they had done some good deed. In fact, it was the
time of the Passover, and they would have gone and partaken. They were so careful when they
brought them to Pilate, they were so careful not to go too
far into the courtyard, lest they should be defiled. And they
were so careful to let Rome do it, do the dirty works, that
they wouldn't pollute their own hands. So you just see the hypocrisy
of the natural man in his religion. And so natural man despises the
bread of heaven, but he feeds on his own flesh. He feeds on
his own self-righteousness. He feeds on his own works, his
own blood. Like all those scriptures that
speak of man eating man, eating flesh, it's a picture of what
we do in self-righteous religion, dead religion. just feeding on
ourselves and not feeding on Christ. And so then we see in
verse 26 and 27, and Judah said unto his brethren, so the brother
Judah said to his brethren, what profit is it if we slay our brother
and conceal his blood? Come and let us sell him to the
Ishmaelites. It was Judah. And who was it
that betrayed the Lord? Judah. Right, Judas, it's the,
I guess, the Greek form of that name, Judah. Again, it just,
all these pictures showing that, of what our Lord would endure
for his people, what he would bear. He's the ransom that the
Lord has found to deliver his people, to let us go free. Then it says that they drew,
in verse 28, they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit. Brethren, that pictures, the
glorious resurrection that awaits us. He rose from the dead. He
rose from the dead. The first man ever to die, never
to die again. Who rose from the dead, never
to die again. The first one to ever do that. And brethren, we in him, that
resurrection awaits us. The grave has no power over us.
all authority and power is His, so that even the bands of death
cannot hold us, whom the Lord calls forth to raise from the
dead. We believe that Christ, in Christ
we shall never die, we shall be raised to newness of life.
And then lastly, When all this was done, they took Joseph's
blood-sprinkled coat and they brought it to the father. They
presented it to the father. Verse 31 and 32, and they took
Joseph's coat and killed a kid of the goats and dipped the coat
in the blood. And they sent the coat of many
colors, and they brought it to their father and said, this have
we found. Know now whether it be thy son's
coat or no. And the meaning of this type
in the goat's blood is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the scapegoat. The sins of his people were laid
on him, the scapegoat. He bore them and took them away
into the wilderness, never to be found again. removed from
the sight of the Father, and by His blood, by the sprinkling
of His blood, the shedding of His blood, that's how we come
to the Father without guilt, without shame. That's how we're
accepted of the Father. The Father received them in the
blood, in that blood. And that's how we come, brethren,
in the blood of the Lamb, without guilt and without shame. 1 Peter
2.24 says, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the
tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness
by whose stripes ye were healed. So we come to the Father in the
blood of Christ. His blood speaks better things
than that of Abel. It's not crying out for justice,
demanding justice upon us. It cries out peace. Peace for
all who come to the Father in the blood of Jesus Christ, the
well-beloved whom the Father sent to save his people from
their sins. Amen.