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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton Matthew 14:22-33, Genesis 37:1-4, 22-28 Jacob
settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of
Canaan. This is the story of the family of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen
years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to
the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a
bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any
other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had
made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their
father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not
speak peaceably to him. Once
Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him
even more. He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream that I dreamed. There
we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood
upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my
sheaf.’ His brothers said to him, ‘Are you indeed to reign over us?
Are you indeed to have dominion over us?’ So they hated him even more
because of his dreams and his words. He had another dream, and told it to
his brothers, saying, ‘Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the
moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’ But when he told it to
his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him,
‘What kind of dream is this that you have had? Shall we indeed come, I
and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?’ So
his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Now
his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And
Israel said to Joseph, ‘Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at
Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.’ He answered, ‘Here I am.’
So he said to him, ‘Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and
with the flock; and bring word back to me.’ So he sent him from the
valley of Hebron. He came to Shechem, and a man found him wandering in the
fields; the man asked him, ‘What are you seeking?’ ‘I am seeking my
brothers,’ he said; ‘tell me, please, where they are pasturing the
flock.’ The man said, ‘They have gone away, for I heard them say,
“Let us go to Dothan.”‘ So Joseph went after his brothers, and found
them at Dothan. They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to
them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, ‘Here comes
this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the
pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall
see what will become of his dreams.’ But when Reuben heard it, he
delivered him out of their hands, saying, ‘Let us not take his life.’
Reuben said to them, ‘Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the
wilderness, but lay no hand on him’ —that he might rescue him out of
their hand and restore him to his father. So
when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long
robe with sleeves that he wore; and they took him and threw him into a
pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it. Then they sat down to
eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead,
with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it
down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, ‘What profit is it if we
kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the
Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own
flesh.’ And his brothers agreed. When some Midianite traders passed by,
they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the
Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. I
don’t know what you think of Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, but I
personally find him to be a cad, as did his brothers.
He is a good looking, preening, and obnoxious teenager who flaunted
his special relationship with his father and rubbed it in the noses of his
older brothers. And then to
tell his brothers of the special dream that he had where someday all the
people of the world, including his own family and the entire universe
itself would bow down to him: How
Dare he! Is it any wonder
that Joseph’s brothers treated him with contempt?
What
is it about Joseph’s dream that moves his 11 brothers to want to kill
Joseph and thereby nullify the dream?
Maybe it was just the very idea of bowing down to their brother and
worshipping him that sent them into a collective rage of hate and murder.
Their hatred toward Joseph grew over time.
It is one thing to see your father treating the 11th son
as his favorite, but when the child becomes a man and the father is still
showing favoritism, you start to become jealous.
You work hard everyday, and here is a younger brother who has been
caudled by your father from birth. Would
Jacob decide at some point to leave his wealth to Joseph instead of the
others? We know that Jacob
himself stole his older brother’s inheritance.
It
had gotten to the point where the brothers could no longer speak peaceably
to Joseph; no shalom, no time of day.
One day when Joseph’s 11 brothers were out working (but not
Joseph, he didn’t dare get his fingernails dirty or soil his coat of
many colors), Jacob sent Joseph out to check on his brothers to make sure
they were working and not sloughing off.
The brothers decide to kill Joseph and be rid of him, but his
brother Reuben intervenes. Finally,
they decide to sell Joseph into slavery for 20 pieces of silver, and they
tell their father Jacob that he had been eaten by wild animals. Eventually
Joseph ends up in the hands of Pharaoh’s officer, Potiphor in Egypt, and
the storyteller says that God was with Joseph.
Why on God’s good earth is God with the slave Joseph?
Later, we are told, that the handsome and charming Joseph becomes
head of Potiphor’s house. However,
his masculine charm gets him in trouble with Potiphor’s leering wife,
who has Joseph thrown in prison for rejecting her adulterous offer.
Again, we are told, God was with Joseph. And again we must ask, why is God with Joseph?
He certainly has done nothing to deserve God’s favor, has he?
Is God protecting him because of Joseph’s good looks?
God doesn’t show favoritism, does she?
Pharaoh catches word that
in prison there is a dreamer, and Pharaoh summons the dreamer.
Eventually Joseph becomes Pharaoh's prime minister and he
instigates a seven~year economic plan which so built Egypt's international
credit and balance of payments that when hard days came Egypt was able to
go into a foreign aid program rarely equaled until modern times.
You all know the outcome of the-story, how Israel's sons made the
two trips to Egypt to fetch supplies of grain from this stranger, their
brother now grown, this prime minister of the Pharaoh, and how Joseph
tested their honesty and sincerity, and then how Jacob finally went down
with them on their third trip. And you remember that very moving scene
when Joseph's love for his brothers caused him to burst into tears with
the cry, "I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into slavery. And
now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me
here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. . . So it was not you
who sent me here, but God. . ." How
odd it is that the very dream of Joseph, which caused such animosity in
the hearts of his brothers, has now come to fruition.
It was God all along, working behind the scenes, who saw to it that
Israel would be saved from starvation, and God used the obnoxious Joseph
to fulfill God’s dream. How
is it that God takes such hatred and evil turns it into a blessing?
The
funny part is, God is always there, working behind the scenes, to bring
about God’s dream. When all
of Israel was enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, God was there.
God would use an unlikely hero named Moses, an Israelite baby
rescued from the murderous Pharaoh. God was with Israel as they escaped
through the Red Sea. Throughout
all of Israel’s dark hours, God was there. And
God was there when Herod decided to kill all of the newborns under age 2
because he dreamed that a new ruler would supplant him.
God got in a cradle and became one of us.
And when Jesus became popular and people wanted to make him into a
king, they tried to destroy God’s dream by nailing him to a cross.
And God was there in the grave, and Christ arose.
Ultimately,
there is no evil that humans can commit that will thwart God’s dream for
creation. Not the Holocaust, nor the atomic bomb, nor September 11.
God is with all of us, working behind the scenes, and no evil will
prevail over God, not the evil in our hearts or the evil in the hearts of
those of wish to kill us or enslave us.
God will ultimately prevail. God’s
dream for us will come to fruition within us and in spite of us.
Thanks be to God. Michael Malone
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