When good things happen to us, we come to God with praises and thankfulness. We say, "God is good! Praise God!" But when bad things happen to us, many people come to God with a question mark: "Why? Where were you Lord? How could you let this happen? I cried out to you, why didn't you answer my prayer?" It’s as if we’re saying that God doesn't know what he’s doing or that God messed up. Today, we’ll be looking at the life of Joseph and if you're willing to let the narrative draw you in, I want to invite you to come in, and really get involved in the story, and really understand the narrative. Then when you go out, you’ll look at your own life differently. You’ll have a new perspective on your own life—a new understanding of your own life.
In this passage we will look at three things in Joseph's life:
1)THE HIDDEN DEPTH OF SIN
2)THE HIDDEN PURPOSES OF GOD
3)THE HIDDEN PATTERN OF GRACE
1st, THE HIDDEN DEPTH OF SIN
What do I mean by this? If you’ve ever seen a picture of Mount Saint Helens before May of 1980, it’s a beautiful snowcapped mountain! There's nothing that looks more permanent and more stable than a mountain. But after May 1980, that beautiful, snowcapped mountain top no longer exist. Because before May of 1980, inside there was brewing something that was about to blow the top off the mountain.
And it’s the same thing with this family, this family of Jacob was large, prosperous, and established. But there was something inside - that was about to blow the top off. Now what was it? The first thing we see is in verse 3: “Now Israel (that’s Jacob, the father of the family) Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons.” Now the story behind that is a bit complicated, and long. But here it is in a nutshell: Jacob grew up desperately lacking the love and affirmation of his father, because his father Isaac clearly preferred his brother Esau to him.
This resulted in his inner neediness and inner lack of affirmation, which drove Jacob in many ways. And one of the things that drove him to was to utterly fix his heart on Rachel. Rachel was a beautiful woman. And Jacob looked at Rachel and says something like this in his heart: “If I had her, then finally that would fix my life!” And he did marry her, and he did fix his heart on her, and she had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, and she died in giving birth to Benjamin. But what the narrator is telling us here, is that the oldest child of Rachel - Joseph - became the new emotional center of Jacob's life.
Look at verse 3 again. And Jacob gave him a richly ornamented robe. The King James version says this robe was “a coat of many colors.” It might mean “many colors”, or it might mean “richly ornamented.” But the key thing is the word “rich.” Jacob lavished money on Joseph in a way he didn't give any of his other children. And “where your treasure is there is your heart.” In other words, Joseph had become the idol of Jacob's life. This idol is a “god” with a small “g” in Jacob’s life—the source, the central source of joy and love in his life. And the result of that is that it poisoned his entire family system. How?
First, look what happened to Joseph. Verse 2 says, “He brought his father a bad report about them." The Hebrew word for bad report is a word that always means a “false report,” a lie, or at least a misrepresentation of some kind. So here you have a kid who is liar. Next, what about when he told his family his dreams? When he told his dreams to his brothers, they were furious! It says “they hated him!” Joseph saw the looks of their faces and they looked like they were ready to give him a beating (a can of whooping). But when he gets another dream, what did he do? He went right back and told his second dream. It means at the very least he's a sociopath, meaning that he has no sense about the impact of his own behavior on other people, even his loved ones. He’s becoming an arrogant person. He’s becoming a cruel person. And at the very worst is he's becoming an evil person. So that’s Joseph's life: He was spoiled, selfish, insensitive, arrogant, shallow, maybe even an evil person.
Then what about the brothers? Three times in verses 4, 5 and 8 what does it say? “Hate!” “Hate” is growing in them. And therefore that’s the lava that is going to blow the top off their lives, and the whole family. Underneath what looks like a really nice, big, prosperous family, there's hidden depth of brokenness and sins that are going to destroy the family. It needs to be dealt it. They need to be rescued.
2nd, THE HIDDEN PURPOSES OF GOD
The second thing you need to see in Joseph's life is to see the hidden purposes of God. Under the surface is not only sin, but under the surface is also God at work. How was God working? First let’s look at the dreams.
In those days, it was a male dominant society. And the younger always bows to the older. The older never bows to the younger. Children always bow to the parents. No matter how old you get, you always bow to your parents. And the younger children always bow of the older children. And especially to the oldest.
Now God gave Joseph dreams that says, “I'm going to bring into this family a salvation, that absolutely turns on its head the values of the world.” God had a dream for the salvation of his family from famine, and from sin but the dream was completely opposite from what the society believed was possible. This is one of the reasons why the brothers, and even his father Jacob was so outraged by Joseph’s dreams. In their minds, this could not happen—it’s ridiculous; it could never happen! But it begins to happen…through a series of accidents.
Now why do I call it “accidents”? This was a pretty long passage and so we didn’t read the middle of the chapter. So let me tell you what we didn’t read. The narrator shows us a series of coincidences. Jacob decided to send Joseph to see his brothers, who were grazing herds at Sechem. But the brothers just happened to decide not to stay in Sechem but to go to Dothan, which is a very remote place, where whatever happened there no one would know. Joseph just happened to come to a place where they had been, and just happened to run into a stranger, who happened to overhear a group of people saying they're going to Dothan. And then of course when Joseph came, and they grabbed hold of him, and Ruben happened to be there to save him from being killed, but happened not to be there to save him from being sold… So the whole series of things all happened in a certain way.
But get this everybody: Unless everything happened exactly the way it happened, just in that order, everybody dies. Because the famine is going to come, and Joseph is got to get himself to a place… a place where he has power. The point is that every single little tiny detail; every one of these coincidences couldn't have been a coincidence. Because if any one of them didn't happen, not only the whole family dies, but thousands of people, including the entire messianic line would die too.
What's the title of this message? "The Hiddenness of God." When we look carefully, there’s no mention of God anywhere here. God doesn’t do anything. God’s never even referred to. God seems to be utterly, absolutely, completely absent. But that's the artistry of the author. Because though God seems to be completely absent on the surface, He must've been managing down to every little thing that happened: all the chaotic things, all the awful things, all the terrible things, all the things that seems to make no sense. But every single one of them had to happen. God was arranging things for the salvation of Joseph's family…and even for our salvation today.
Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Do you believe that?
God's wise redeeming love is completely compatible with the terrible things happening in the lives of those He loves. Verses 23 and 24 tells us the brutal thing that happened to Joseph: They seized him; they stripped him; they throw him in naked; they abandoned him to die. He cries out, he screams…but nothing happens. And if it didn’t happen just like this, everybody would’ve been lost. Not only would they’ve been lost physically because the famines. But they would’ve been lost spiritually. Only because Joseph was rejected, only because Joseph was sold in slavery, only because all these awful things happened: will Joseph himself be saved from his pride that was turning him into a wicked person; and only will the brothers be saved from the hate which was turning them into violent persons, and even Jacob. If all of these awful things hadn’t happened, there wouldn’t have been salvation for any of them.
Do you know that centuries later another remarkably similar thing happened in Dothan? Dothan at this time, when this happened, was a remote place. Centuries later in the time of the prophet Elisha, Dothan was a city. And Elisha the prophet and a servant were in the city, but the city was surrounded by an enemy army. And the army was going to come in and wipe out the city, and kill everyone. So Elisha and his servant were about to die. But Elisha called out. He cried out from the pit as it were. And he cried to God, and God sent chariots of fire – a heavenly angelic army - that came and smoked the offending army and everyone was saved.
Wow, that's the kind of answer I want! Now that's the power of prayer! That’s my idea of how prayer ought to work: You cry out from the pit: ‘please save me!’ BAM! chariots of fire, army of angels spring into immediate action!”
But wait a minute: same Bible, same God, same place, two people crying out “Save me!” In one case, Joseph’s case: nobody comes, no chariots of fire, nobody! In the other case: chariots of fire! What’s the matter here?
Here's the answer: Elisha’s salvation was a simple salvation. All Elisha needed was physical salvation. Joseph’s salvation was a complex salvation. If God had saved Joseph from the pit he wanted to be saved from, he would have been lost in a more profound way. So Joseph had to actually be lost in order to be saved. He had to go on a journey—according to the hidden purposes of God—in order to be saved.
God was caring as much for Joseph in His silence and hiddenness, as He was caring for Elisha with all that immediate dramatic action. Do you believe that God is still working in both kinds of situations? God was caring as much for Joseph; He was working as much in Joseph’s life. His love was active in Joseph's life - in His absence, and in His silence, as He was in Elisha's life of dramatic action. If you really knew that, think how strong you would be? If you believe that sometimes God doesn't seem to be answering your prayer, but He’s working out some other way, how strong you would be. Well someone says, “How can I know?” That leads us to part III.
3rd THE HIDDEN PATTERN OF GRACE
The third thing we see in Joseph's life is not just the hidden depths of sin and hidden purpose of God, but the hidden patterns of grace.
A brilliant Christian once applied the story of Joseph's coat to his own life practically. He is George Herbert. He was one of the great poets in the 17th century and he wrote a poem called “Joseph's Coat.” Let me tell you the essence of what he says in that poem, because it’s so relevant to us. In the poem he talks about suffering, and he says that he realizes that suffering can ruin his life. There’s a place in the poem where it says, “If but one grief, among my many, had its full career; it would carry with it, even my heart.” And what he means is that any suffering that comes to your life, any disappointment, any trouble, can really destroy you spiritually. It can turn you bitter, untrusting, and kill your joy. It can really make you a very bad person. So he says "almost every grief, every suffering that comes in my heart has the potential to completely ruin me, and completely ruin my heart."
But, he says, when suffering comes into my life, I get something else. He says, “but God has spoiled suffering, and given to my anguish a joyous coat enticing it with relief.” In other words he says, “I'm suffering and it could make me a really bad person, but along with it God has given me a coat.” Here he’s referring to Joseph's coat being a token of how much his father loved him. Joseph's coat was proof that his father adored him. And Herbert says, “in the midst of my suffering God gave me a coat, a coat of His love. God gave me a token assurance of certainty, that he utterly loves me. And what was the result? If you read the whole poem he says, “Grief can ruin me but I got this coat! God gave me this coat—His assurance of love.” And the result is, “Wounded I sing, tormented I write.” Now what he sang was that when you mix one part suffering with one part deep assurance of the Father's love, you get a wiser, deeper, happier person. You get a person who understands life, understands people better, who can help people better, and who understands their own hearts better.
Suffering all by itself can ruin you, but suffering plus an absolute assurance of God's love can turn you into something great, absolutely great. But you say, “That's easy for you to say.” However, when suffering come into your life, you have less assurance that God loves you. You feel like "God has abandoned me," so how the heck is this going to work? It doesn’t make sense.
If George Herbert is right in saying, "If I had the coat of the Father on me, then suffering I can handle," yet how do I get it? Here’s how you get it. To Joseph's family, and the world, the pattern of salvation in Joseph's life is weird. It didn't make sense. But it points to the ultimate pattern of salvation.
Because centuries later another one came. And he was despised and rejected. He was sold for silver, and betrayed by the people closest to him. He was stripped naked, and abandoned to die, and who cried out in the dark, “Why? My God, my God, why?” And nobody came to rescue him. Nobody came. Nobody answered. That was Jesus.
Joseph was turned into a savior, the only way God’s salvation would have worked; Jesus was being turned into a savior through weakness in suffering and rejection. Joseph can only save the community because unless he was rejected by the community, he could never be their savior; unless he was first lost, unless he was humbled, unless he was rejected, unless he was sold. Joseph was being turned involuntarily into the savior for one human family.
But Jesus voluntarily came, and the pit he fell into was vastly deeper. And his cry was vastly greater. And his nakedness and his sense of abandonment was infinitely beyond anything that Joseph went through. Jesus came to be the Savior of us all, because when Jesus was on the cross, he wasn't just physically naked. He was stripped of his Father's love. Why? He was being punished for our sin.
When suffering hits you, remember what Jesus did on the cross. He lost the Father's coat, so you can be assured that you have it. Jesus lost the Father's love, paying our penalty so we could know - in spite of our imperfect life - that God loves us. When I believe in my heart Jesus died on the cross because God loves me, I get the coat. I know He loves me. And if you know that, that means if right now today you're in the pit and you're crying out "Why am I completely alone?", you're not. God is with you. God suffered with you and God suffered for you.
You cry out "Lord, answer me!" But honestly, you don't need answers. There was a pastor who just got out of seminary and began a new ministry. He started visiting sick people, those who had just lost loved ones, and who were facing death. And what he did was just like all good seminarians, he gave them answers. And there was a pastor in town, who was a little older and wiser than him who said, "What you say will not amount to anything, unless they know you love them. They don't need your answers. They need you. What they really need is your presence at times of tragedy."
Do you really need answers from God? Answers? It would be pretty tough to even know why things were happening in your life. Let's say God tells Joseph exactly in detail how he was to going to be a prince, do you think he'll be excited about becoming a prince, especially while he was being thrown into a pit of darkness?
You don't need to know an answer. You need to know God’s presence. We just need to know God is with us. And he is with us. God is with you. Jesus said, “I will be with you to the very end of the age.” He is with us in good times and especially, mostly in tragedy, in times of sorrow, and pain. Because he knows how we react to these situations. He is like a father who says to us, “It’s OK, I’m here, I’m right here.” Remember Abraham, with his no son problem, when he was depressed because of Lot who ran off. What did God say, "Don’t be afraid, I am your shield, your very great reward." He’s saying to Abraham. "You’re not alone. I’m right here. I will not leave you. I know it will be hard, it’ll take a while for me to give you a son. But I’ll be with you."
By the grace of God, God made me into a father—a father of two kids, so that I may understand his heart. To know how to raise children, the joy (and the headaches). Especially when our kids are in need, the first thing we need to do is let them know you are there for them. Your presence is very important to them. If you want to know more about God’s heart, establish a family. (Kids, I’m talking to grownups only. To those under 20s or who are still in college, just focus on loving God and school.) The point is that you need to know that God is with you. And the cross proves that He is. He's The One. He is the ultimate Joseph. I'd like to end with three things:
#1. Know, and not know what God is doing. If you think you know what God is doing in your life, just put it on hold - because as soon as you say, "I think He's doing this, so that eventually I will be able to do this, and eventually I will do this." And when that scenario falls apart, then you would say God is not working. Know that He is working - just don't think you know exactly what is He up to. Know, and not know. Do you see what I mean? Know that He is working. Know that He is there. Know that his arms are under you. But don't jump to conclusions about exactly what He's doing. Know, and not know.
#2. Go get the coat. It takes Bible study; it takes prayer; it takes a decent discipline life - life of prayer; life of contemplation.
#3. God’s silence is not absence. If you know - through the cross - that he is beside you, and he suffered with you, and for you, then you will be singing praises to God in good times and bad times.