The Story of Joseph - When Life Takes a Sudden Turn - Genesis 37:12–36

You know, a few minutes ago as Daniel was praying over the offering and the ushers, the deacons were were picking it up. It reminded me how generous you are. And so, let me just ask your pastor just say thank you for your generosity. Many of your generosity allows us to do this. Your generosity helps us pay for a vacation bible school where over 100 kids can come in here and know Jes and hear about Jesus. So, just thank you. Thank you for just being so faithful in your generosity. And I started thinking about the the food collection. We do that two or three times a year and that table gets full and full and full. So, thank you. So many ways that you're generous. Many of you have given time this past week decorating not just this. Take a tour of the whole entire church upstairs and downstairs. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I do want to give you a little warning though on our food collection. You always do so well. The children this week will be also be collecting canned goods. So, let's let not let's not let the kids show us up. Okay? So, go ahead and head to the grocery store this week and we will make sure we will double whatever they're doing because I know they're going to bring a lot. You know, several years ago when Denise, my wife, and I moved to Denver, people said there are several things that we can just always expect. I'm like, like sure, like what? And they said, well, you can always expect that the mountains will be to the west most of the time. So, yeah, if you get lost, just look to the west, find the mountains, and then you're going west. So, they said, you can always expect that. I I was told you can always expect the weather not to be the same tomorrow as it is today. If you get used to something, you like it. Don't worry about it because it will change. So, I've learned after three years that indeed will happen. And there's something else they said. You can always expect for roads to be under construction. Like it seems like Denver has this goal that we will never finish a road project. We will just make it an eternal project going on. And so several months ago, Denise and I in our community, there's water tomb which is on the outside and they decided to put in a traffic circle. I don't know if you've ever lived in a community where they decide to put a traffic circle in. It's not an overnight thing. They had to tear one side completely up which meant all the lanes were converter put to this side and worked on that for who seems like years and years and years and then got that one done. Then had to move all the traffic to the other side. It was a detour that can I just be honest with you? I thought your pastor was going to lose his Christianity every time I had to drive on that thing. Like it would send me into just frustration and it would send me into just like, "Oh my goodness, this is driving me crazy." Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced a detour like that. Maybe it's traffic. Maybe it's a life detour, right? Maybe there's something going on in relationships in your life and something happened and it felt like it it took your relationships from moving fast forward this way to another direction. Or maybe you've all hit a snag in your finances. You've got everything planned out for the goals that you want to achieve and you have some kind of expense that comes in and it makes your finances take a detour. Maybe it's your career, maybe it's your education. There's all kinds of areas of our life way beyond traffic that we hit detours and we've got to figure out how are we going to respond to that detour. Well, today as we continue our study in the about the life of Joseph, we're going to learn today that he took a really big detour. If you're just now joining us, we began last week the study of this Old Testament patriarch. And and what we're going to discover as we study him all summer long is really his life was a life of ups and downs and ups and downs. It is moving straight, take a right, take a left, take an S-turn. It was full of all these detours. And here's what we're going to find as we wrap up here shortly as we jump into it. That Joseph was able to handle the detours in his life because he always made sure God I was starting to say in the passenger seat. There's probably a better way to put that. He always made sure God was in the driver's seat as he journeyed through life in these detours. So, if you have your Bibles, you can look with me to um Genesis 37 and we'll start in verse 12. And here's what it says. If you don't have your Bibles, we'll have it up here on the screen. But here's what the scripture says soon after this in verse 12. Soon after this, now if you missed last week, let me tell you soon after this what was happening. It was the beginning, the introduction of Joseph. We learned last week that he's from a messed up family. His father Jacob didn't just have one wife. He had two wives. and two concubines, which were really just kind of invited live-in mistresses. Now, when I say he had these four, it's not like he had one, divorced her, took another one, got rid of her, took the other one. He invited them all in at the same time. So, it was one of the most dysfunctional families, tensionfilled families that you can ever imagine. There were 12 sons in this family and one daughter. And to make it even more complicated, the Bible lets us know, as we studied last week, that Jacob, the father of Joseph, loved one of the kids more than anybody else, and it was Joseph. Do you remember the big part of the story last week? He presented Joseph with what? The coat of many colors. It wasn't just a nice gift. It was a gift that showed all the other kids, I love him more than I love all of you. And so when we pick up the story right now, it is after all this, it is after the dysfunction of the family has settled in and created serious relationship problems between everyone. And so soon after this, Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flock at Sheckchum. Now, that sounds like an ordinary verse, right? Look what the next one says. And when they had been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, "Your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Sheckchham. Get ready and I will send you to them. And Joseph said, I'm ready to go. You have to ask yourself the question at this point. If there were 12 brothers, the youngest brother, Benjamin, didn't go because he was probably only six or seven or eight years old at this time. The Bible let us know last last week when we studied it that J Joseph was about 17 years old. The other brothers ranged anywhere from 17 years of age all the way to 24 years of age. So here's the question you have to ask yourself. Why didn't Joseph go with them? Like if the boys were taking the sheeps out to pasture, if they were doing all the hard work and Joseph was the same age as all the other brothers, shouldn't he had to go outside? Shouldn't if he had done done the long hard days and do the long hard work. Why do you think he didn't go? Because daddy had somebody favorite. Dad liked keeping Joseph close to him. But on this particular day, he said, 'Joseph, I need you to do me a favor. I need to go have you check on your brothers. And in verse 14, go, he said, and see how your brothers and the flocks are getting along, Jacob said, and then come back and bring me a report. So Jacob sent him on his way. And Joseph traveled from Sheckchham from their home in the valley um traveled to Sheckchham from their home in the valley of Hebrin. And just to give you an idea, that was about 50 miles from where they lived to where the brothers were pastoring the sheep. He sent Joseph on this 50-mi track. And it probably took him 3 to four days to get there. Now, what happened next? I just want to storytell it to you. Okay? Now, I story tell it to you so you can catch all the details of it, but I will probably miss some. So, I want you to go home and read it yourself this week. But here's what happened. So, Joseph goes on his trip, but before he left, he made sure he put on what? The nice colorful jacket, the robe, the the the the shaw, the the the outer garment that the father had given him. And he goes strolling down the road. And he walks and he walks and he walks and he walks until he finally gets to Sheckchham. Like I said, about 50 miles. Took him three to four days to get there. And when he got there, he starts looking around for his brothers, for the sheep. I mean, it couldn't have been hard to miss, right? There's nine brothers he's looking for, or actually 10 brothers that he's looking for. He's looking for the big herd of sheep, but he can't find them anywhere. And the Bible says that obviously he was lost or looking for something because a man walked up to him and said, "Son, you look like you're looking for something. Can I help you?" So, Joseph explained, "Yeah, I'm looking for my brothers. There should be 10 of them, and I'm looking for all of our sheep that my father sent here for us to pasture." And he goes, "Oh." The man said, "I know where they are." He said, "They left here several days ago and they went on up about 15 miles to a place called Doran. You can find them there." And so Jacob or Joseph being the good son said, "Okay." And he takes another day to two-day journey to go find his brothers and all the sheep like his father had asked him. And the Bible goes on to say as he's walking up to them, his brother his brothers see him. Now, let me pause there for a second. This is what the Bible doesn't say, but I've always wondered what was Joseph thinking when he saw his brothers. Did he look going, "Oh, there they are. This is so good. I've been traveling for four or five days trying to find them. This is so great. I've missed my brothers. They're like just such great older brothers to me. I can't wait to see them." I don't know what he was thinking. We do get a sense as you read the scripture that Joseph is a little clueless to the problems going on in his family. Remember last week we learned he had the dreams and he shared them with his brothers and couldn't understand why they were upset about them bowing down to him in his dreams. And so I have this idea he's going, "Hey brothers, I'm so glad to see you." But the Bible is very specific on what the brothers thought about Joseph as he's walking up. In fact, as he was walking up, the brothers got together and said, "There's that sorry, no good forno brother of ours." Now, you may not see those exact words when you read it today, but that's kind of the gist of it. Because as they gathered together, they said, "We ought to kill him. We're so distraught with him. We're so frustrated with him. He's daddy's favorite. We can't stand him. Let's just kill him. In fact, we're so far from home. We could kill him and take off that colorful robe of his. We could put some animals blood on there and take it back to dad and just say, "Dad, we don't know what happened to him. We just found this robe. Maybe some wild animal killed him." And so, as Joseph is getting closer and closer and closer, the brothers come up with this horrible plan. And as he approaches them, the Bible says they grabbed him and they stuck him in a sistern, kind of like an empty well, and they put him in there until they could come up with their final plans. Now, one of the brothers saw this and he's thinking, "Okay, this is not good, but I don't want to be fighting against the other brothers. So, I'll just wait till they're not around and I'll let him loose and we'll all live happily ever after." But that never happened. Because as the brothers are sitting around talking about killing him and how they're going to work out the plan, exactly what they're going to tell dad, one of them said, "Here's the deal, guys. If we kill our brother, his blood will be on our hands for the rest of our lives. We don't want that. We've got to figure out another plan. And as they're talking this, there's a gang gang, a traveling group of men that are tra they're salesmen. They are traders. And they are traveling from from where they were in Israel all the way up to Egypt. And one of the brothers said, "Here's what we'll do. Let's take Joseph out of the well and let's sell him to those men and they can take him off to Egypt and we'll never have to see him again. We'll be clear of killing him. We don't have to keep that on our conscience. But they can take Joseph and they can sell him. And here's what the Bible says. The brothers, this shows you how much hatred, how much bitterness was in their soul. They sold their brother Joseph to this traveling group of sales, guys. This traveling group of traders. They sold him to those men for 20 pieces of silver. Can you imagine what those last moments of the interchange was? They pulled Joseph out of the well. They probably have to tie ropes around his hands. They tie a long rope, maybe tie it to the to the end of the wagon of these men. And as he's walking off, they're going, "See you. Wouldn't want to be you." Because remember, they have so much jealousy. They have so much animosity that they would stoop to the very depths of selling their brother with the hopes and the plan to never have to see him again. Now, I don't know about the detours that you have in your life. That's a pretty big detour, isn't it? That's a very big obstacle to overcome. I guarantee you that was never in Job's plans. And if you think back to last week, God had given him some big dreams that his life would turn into. This doesn't look like they're going to get there this way. Yet, these were the detours that God put in his life. Now, I I could stand up here and go, "Okay, so tell me about your detour. Is it that bad? I mean, it may be bad about your health, or it could be bad about your finances, or maybe your job is not going the way you want it to, but is it that bad? Has someone sold you?" But here's what the reality is when it comes to detours in life. It's not a game of comparison. Your detour is your detour. Your detour is your detour. And regardless of what they might look like next to each other, when they're your own detour in life, they are painful and they are hurtful and they are difficult. And so today's sermon is not about trying to figure out who's got the worst detour. Today's sermon is trying to figure out what happens when we have a detour in life. And I think there are some really life application things that we can pull from this story. And if you're taking notes, here's the first one that I want to share with you. The first one, just as we look at the life of Joseph and the detours that he was going through, here's the first life application principle that we can take. Bitterness takes you further than you ever intend to go. Bitterness takes you further than you ever intended to go. Let's go back to the brothers for just a second. No doubt they were jealous. I don't even think we'd fault them for being jealous, right? But I mean, if you've got your kids lined up and you give one a really nice present, you don't give the other kids a present, you're stirring up jealousy. Joseph or Jacob wasn't really thinking when he gave that robe to Joseph in front of everybody else. They had probably right to be jealous. But their jealousy didn't stop there. They went from jealousy to probably having self-con conversations. Do you know what I mean when I say self- conversations? Has anybody ever made you mad or done something to you and you just replay in your mind over and over and over what you could have sh said, what you would have said or what you will say in the future? I want you to know when I have self- conversations, they're good because I'm always right, right? I mean, there's nobody disagreeing with me. They're just going, "Yeah, get it, get it, get it." But self- conversations have this tendency to make the whatever the problem is, whatever the stress is, whatever the frustration is, or in this case, whatever the jealousy was, and it makes it bigger and bigger and bigger. And many times our self-con conversations move to echochamber conversations. Have you heard that term echochamber? An echochamber says when I want to someone to agree with me, I go talk to somebody who will agree with me. There's very few times when you and I are going through a problem that we go to somebody to tell us different than what we're thinking. Like if I'm mad at somebody, I'm going to somebody that will tell me how right I am to be mad at that person. So my self-con conversations get to be emphasized and okayed by the conversation of the people I have around each around me. And that's what was going on with brothers when they huddled together and said, "Let's kill him. Yeah, let's kill him." It was an echo chamber of saying, "Yes, yes, yes, let's do it." Regardless if it was good or bad, let's do it. It went from jealousy to self- conversations to echo chamber conversations. It moved to hatred. It then went to violence. And watch this. It eventually moved to si uh to to the first case that we have in the scripture of human trafficking. Think about that for a second. What do you call it when somebody is sold to somebody else for the goods that that person can give them through themselves? Human trafficking. That's exactly what happened in this case. The brothers human traffked Joseph to the traveling sales guys, the traders that are passing through. Now, now watch this. Do you think that day that Jacob presented the robe to Joseph and all the brothers are sitting around like, "Well, that's not fair. Why does he get it? Why don't we get it?" And the jealousy began. Do you think that day that jealousy began right there, do you think they ever thought that one day they would human traffic their brother? No. But that jealousy created bitterness. And that bitterness grew and grew and grew and grew. That's what bitterness does to us. It takes us places that we don't ever want to go. Several weeks ago, I realized that I was really bitter at my wife Denise. And here's why. And please don't judge me when I share this story with you because it's worth judging. We've had a deal in our lives, in our married lives, since the day we got married. Whoever gets out of bed first is supposed to make the bed. Now, one of us loves the bed to be made. I don't like to go to bed at night if the bed's not been made because the sheets aren't the right temperature. The sheets aren't tight. Like, God says somewhere in the Bible, "Thou shalt make your bed every single day." That's what I believe. Denise doesn't believe as strongly about that spiritual principle that I do. But yet we agreed many years ago, whoever gets up last makes the bed. So several weeks ago, I got up or she got up first and I made the bed as always. And that went on for several days because she was working early and then she was off work straight for like four or five straight days. So guess who got up last? She did. Guess who didn't make the bed? She didn't make the bed. The first day, no big deal. Second day like third day I don't want to cause any fight but I'm like and I'm harboring this on the inside. Now again you can judge me because it's worth judging. After about two weeks of this I I would go home and I was just like angry. You ever just go home and you don't even know why you're just angry and you start shutting down? I found myself emotionally just like not like fighting with her but just going yeah okay and not really engaging emotionally. And finally I realized why she didn't make the bed. Now watch some something as silly as not making the bed. I let it harbor and bitterness and and it took me someplace where I didn't want to go. Do you know how I finally realized what was going on? I went to my prayer closet one day and I'm like, "God, what is inside of me? What is why am I just feeling such angst and angry?" And he said, "You're mad because Denise is not making the bed." I'm like, "Well, God, what are you going to do to her about it? His response was, "No, here's the deal, Keith. You need to get over yourself." Okay, that was as clear as I'm speaking to you right now. The Holy Spirit said, "Keith, you're going to need to get over yourself." Okay, this is not that big a deal. Now, here's why I sell that. Share that silly illustration to you. Put up anything in the blank that you want to. How many times have you let something so small, whether it's relational, whether it's just work situation and it grows and it grows and it grows and it takes over. Here's what we can understand from Joseph. That bitterness will take you further than you ever ever intend to go. That's the reason the last series we talked about reconciliation. It's like you got to nip those at the bud before they ever begin to take over. Here's the second thing. The second truth that we can learn from Joseph is this. Obedience doesn't guarantee easy circumstances.

Obedience doesn't guarantee easy circumstances. Let me go back and explain this walk. Remember he lived Joseph lived in Hebrin and he had to go to Sheckchham to check on his brothers. It's about a 50-mi walk. It would have taken three to four days to walk these 50 miles. It wasn't an easy walk. They didn't live in the great plains of Kansas. They lived in the mountains of Colorado. So, imagine this. If I'm like, "Hey, I have this package I need you to take to to a friend of mine in Fairfield. Would you mind delivering this package?" And you're like, "Sure, I'll be happy to." But I look at you going, "But you can't drive. You can't you can't take the bus. You can't even take your ebike. You got to walk. And by the way, 285 is totally under construction. So, you're going to have to walk the entire way on a little animal trail that goes all the way up to Fairfield. You have an idea what that animal trail is going to be like right from here to Fair Fairfield. It is going to be elevated the whole way. You're going to have rocks to climb over. You may have some mountains you kind of got to easily scale and get past. It'd be a tough walk. That is the walk. When Jacob sent Joseph to go find his brothers, that is the walk that he had to go on. But the Bible says this, "But Joseph said, "Yes, Dad. If you want me to go, yes, Dad, I'll go." And then Joseph gets all the way to Sheckchham, and what the stranger say? Oh, your brothers have gone on further. They're 15 or 20 miles further. I want you to know, if I was Jacob, or I'm sorry, if I was Joseph, I'd have stopped right there. I'd have just turned back home going, "Hey, daddy, I couldn't find them." Okay, I know you sent me after them, but they you said to go to Sheckchum. They're not in Sheckchum. But what did Joseph do? He went another 15 or 20 miles until he found his his brothers. Now, watch this church. Forget about sheep. Forget about finding brothers who are shepherds. The content, the conversation is about obedience. How many times has God asked you or I to do something and we follow through fully, completely in obedience? Or how many times have we made it in somewhat obedience and made it to Sheckchum, but it's going, "I'm done here, God." Like, I can't go any further. I can't do anymore. And we push it back to God and we begin to try to negotiate with God with the obedience that he wants from us. Why? because it's hard. It's difficult to be obedient to God. That's not the way the world is going. We're swimming upstream when we're going obedient with God because the world says do something else. Yet, here's what we have to understand that when it comes to obedience, it does not guarantee easy circumstances. Yet, God calls us to fully obey just like Joseph did. Too many people buy into what I call the A plus B equals C spirituality. Here's what the A plus B equals C spirituality philosophy says. A I obey God. A plus B and B is. And God does what he's supposed to back to me. Equals C and C is. And we all live happily ever after. But here's what happens. I'll put my A in. God, I'm doing what you tell me to. The B, God, you didn't quite do what I thought you would do, and we never get to see because we bail out. Had a young man visit the church several weeks ago. He's about 27 years old, and he and I met up for coffee the next week, and I said, "Tell me your story." And he said, "Well, I'm I'm I'm trying to get back to God." It's like, "Well, why do you mean back to God? What happened that you left God?" And he said, "Well, I'm 27 years old." And he said, "I really at this point in my life, I was wanting to be married." He said, "But I've just not really had a good girlfriend, bad relationship the last few years." He said, "I'm just kind of mad at God right now because he didn't give me the wife that I wanted. He hasn't given me the relationship I'm looking for." You see where he's at? I did my A, God didn't do his B, and so I'm bailing on God, and I never figure out C. And here's what we have to understand. whether it's chasing a spouse or whatever else in our life that our obedience to God is not always easy. And that's exactly what Joseph learned here. Let me give you a third one. Third point, practical practical thing that we can learn from this. See, if you're writing down, you can write this note down. The deepest wounds often come from the choices of others.

The deepest wounds often come from the choices of others. Some of you here are out of family's divorce and you know some of that pain. You know some of the wounds. Some of you here are no longer married because the person who said I do at one point said I don't at another point. And you have felt the pain. You have felt the struggle. You have deep wounds because the choices of somebody else. When I started ministry years ago, a little youth group I was a youth pastor of, we had about 20 people. And this little girl named Carrie wandered in one day. And Carrie was in middle school. And Carrie must have been one of the meanest, ugliest acting people I've ever met in my life. But we soon soon soon learned that her meanness and ugliness came from the choices around her. That Carrie probably experienced every kind of abuse that you could ever imagine. Yet she would come to church and one moment she had the face of an angel, the next moment she could cuss you out in a heartbeat like a sailor. And I never could figure out the the the the dichotomy that what was going on. And I finally understood that she had deep, deep wounds that came from others. And so when the ugliness would come out, it was coming out from the wounds that she experienced from them. Think about Joseph for a second. Think about some of the wounds that he carried from others choices. Like we never talk about his mom, but here was his mom. Remember the story last week? She couldn't conceive a child, so she enlisted her servant girl to sleep with her husband to give her a child. And so she brought another woman into the marriage. Some of this jealousy came from the choices of of adults above him that led to this point. Think think about the wounds that he felt from the jealousy the brothers went after him to the point they wanted to kill him. Jacob, his father, maybe one of the most passive examples of parenting that we can read about. And Joseph carried some of those wounds from that. Yet, as he carried these wounds, here's what he had to understand. That those wounds of the choices of others could not determine who he was as he followed God. In fact, somebody said this that our faith is forged through someone else's choices. Our faith is often forged through others choices. I'm going to add something to that. I'll put it this way. Our faith is forged through our response to others choices. You see, if I live by the motto that my faith is forged by others choices, then when I don't have good faith, I can blame it on someone else. But reality, my faith is forged by my response to others choices. The reason I'm looking so forward to this whole summer series of looking at Joseph, it's ugly. It's it's just yuck. Why would you even want to read this story while we're reading so far? But Joseph takes the choices of others and we will see that he gives them to the hands of God and says, "God, make me into something different. Don't let my life be determined by his choice. Don't let my life be determined by her choice. God, I am in your hands and allow my life to be forged, to be molded by you, oh God.

And so those are some life lessons that we can take from Joseph's story. Now, here's what we're going to understand about Joseph. There's some life lessons that we can learn every single week. I I think they're good. They're just good practical everyday living. Whether you believe in God or not, there's just every all three of those are just good everyday living practical thoughts. But here's what we have to understand about the life of Joseph. There's something bigger going on than just his story. Because in the life of Joseph, God is writing a story that Joseph is not the main character. He's just one of the role players in the story. And what we're going to discover, and I don't want to give away and do a spoiler alert here, but what we're going to discover as we keep walking through it week after week after week, God is going to use the life of Joseph to save and rescue his entire family's life. And the reason that is so important is because Jesus Christ, our savior, will come from the very lineage of Joseph's family. And so what's at stake here is not Joseph the star of the story. Joseph is just a role player and Jesus is the star of the story. And so if you're writing things down, you can write this last principle here. And here's what it says. God is present even when life takes a detour. God is present even when life takes a detour. Here's a crazy thing. Go back and read all of chapter 37 today. It's the story we've talked about last week and this week, but guess what's not mentioned in chapter 37. God is never mentioned in all of chapter 37. Does that mean God wasn't present? No. God is right there the whole time. God is there in the beginning, the middle, and the end. And you may be going through some detours. Have you gone through some detours in your life? And some of these principles like that's making sense. And sometimes we can just get frustrated like the young man I talked about that just wants to like, okay, I just I'm going to give up on God. Here's what we need to know. God is always there. He is there in the middle of whatever is going on in our life. And here's the last truth I live leave with you. You ready for this, church? If the person next to you is falling asleep, this is the time to wake them up. You ready? You're not the star of the story. See, the reason we get so frustrated with detours is because we want to make ourselves the star of the story. And when the star is inconvenience, then we have reason to be upset. In my little detour my neighborhood when they were putting that traffic circle in, do you know why I got upset every single day? because I wanted to be the star. It's inconveniencing me. It's frustrating to me. Do you know why the traffic circles put in? To keep every single person that ever drives that road again safe. But I was so f focused on my story that I couldn't see the bigger story of what was going on. God is writing a bigger story and you are a part of it. You're just not the star.

But God is with you all the time. We're going to take communion here in just a second. The story of Joseph, the star, is the one that we're going to serve and think about during communion, and that's Jesus. Joseph was simply to set up for the star. And so, I'm going to ask our elders to come forward now, and they're going to lead us in communion. But just here's what I would remind you as you're taking communion today. the death and the burial and the resurrection. It's not about us. It's about him. And that's why we take it to be reminded