We pick up our reading at Genesis chapter 37. Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan. And these are the generations of Jacob. Joseph being 17 years old was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with 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 sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, hear this dream that I've dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf. His brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us? or are you indeed to rule over us? And so they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream. He told it to his brothers and he said, behold, I've dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and 11 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 is this dream that you've dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. Now the 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'll send you to them. And he said to him, here I am. So he said to him, go now and see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word. So he sent him from the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem, and a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, what are you seeking? I'm seeking my brothers, he said. Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock. The man said, well, they've gone away for I've heard them say, let's go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from afar. And before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, here comes this dreamer. Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of the pits. And then we'll say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we'll see what will become of his dreams. But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands saying, let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, shed no blood, throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore. And they took him and they threw him into a pit The pit was empty, there was no water in it. And then they sat down to eat. Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh 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? Let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand be upon him for he is our brother, our own flesh. And his brothers listened to him. And then Midianite traders passed by and they drew Joseph up, lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt. When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and he returned to his brothers and said, the boy's gone and I, where shall I go? And then they took Joseph's robe, slaughtered a goat, dipped the robe in blood and they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, this we have found, please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. And he identified it and said, it is my son's robe. Fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces. Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days and all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, no, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. And then his father wept for him. And meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and he turned aside to a certain Adulamite whose name was Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went into her and she conceived and bore a son and he called his name Er. She conceived again and bore a son and she called his name Onan. And yet again, she bore a son. She called his name Shelah. Judah was in Kezib when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Er, his firstborn and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn was wicked in the sight of the Lord and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her and raise up offspring for your brother. But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would not waste the semen on the ground. He would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother. What he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord. He put him to death also. And then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, remain a widow in your father's house till Shelah, my son, grows up. For he feared that he would die like his brothers, so Tamar went and remained in her father's house. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shewa's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Temna to his sheep shearers, he and his friend Herod, the Adulamite. And when Tamar was told your father-in-law is going up to Temna to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's garments and she covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up. And she sat at the entrance to Anaim, which is on the road to Temna, for she saw that Sheolah was grown up and she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and he said, come, let me come into you. He didn't know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, what will you give me that you may come into me? He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock. And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it. He said, what pledge shall I give you? She replied, your signet, your cord and your staff that's in your hand. So he gave them to her and he went into her and she conceived by him and then she arose and went away and taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood. When Judah sent the young goat by his friend, the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, he didn't find her. He asked the men of the place, where's the cult prostitute who was at Anahim at the roadside? They said, no cult prostitutes been here. And so he returned to Judah and he said, I've not found her. Also the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here. And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat and you didn't find her. About three months later, Judah was told, Tamar, your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she's pregnant by immorality. Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, by the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant. And she said, please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff. Judah identified them. And he said, she is more righteous than I since I did not give her to my son Shalom. And he did not know her again. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb. When she was in labor, one put out a hand and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand saying this one came out first. But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. and therefore his name was called Perez. And afterwards, his brother came out with the scarlet thread on his hand and his name was called Zerah. This section of Genesis is one of those that children's Sunday school teachers hate to come across. These are not the kind of stories you like to have to deal with in the presence of the little people of God. But the fact is they're in the Bible and they are in the Bible because God himself inspired these stories by his Holy Spirit. And God inspired the stories for our prophet, the apostle Paul tells us. He tells us we need stories like this for teaching, but also for rebuking and for correcting and for training in righteousness so that we will be mature people of God. The Bible is quite clear that sin is real and sin affects everybody and sin affects every aspect of our being. And we are all very capable of doing terrible things, even those of us who name the name of Christ. Frequently, unbelievers say, I don't want to go to church because the church is full of hypocrites. And, The charge is legitimate. The church is full of hypocrites. Let's just go ahead and admit that right off. None of us live up to our profession of obedience and faith and trust in the Lord. We all sin, even Christians, and come short of the glory of God. But we're not hypocrites if we admit that we're sinners. And we're not hypocrites if we declare that our hope is not in our performance, but in God's mercy and in the righteousness of Christ applied to us. There's no hypocrisy if we admit that of all people, we are among the chief of sinners and that we are saved not by our righteousness, but by God's love and compassion. And when the Bible talks about God's people in the Old Testament and the New, it's a very honest and sometimes disturbing book. It tells us things that we really don't want to hear. And it has ghastly stories that just kind of take our breath away. And we say, these are God's people? And then we realize that the whole history of the church has been filled with this kind of thing as well. Nameless Christians fall into sin. Very prominent Christians fall into sin. What we might refer to as celebrity Christians fall into sin. It is a very real matter. And I think one reason that the Bible gives us stories, particularly like the one of Judah and Tamar, is to remind us that our God knows that we are sinful and he doesn't excuse the sin he doesn't try to hide it from us or from the world but instead he tells us very plainly and sometimes in very stark language that sin is a terrible thing. It devastates, it maims, it kills, it corrupts, it ruins families, it ruins nations, it ruins congregations. And we should never ever take sin lightly. Just that you shouldn't play with fire. Those of us who know the Lord should never play with sin. But we do. One of the things you learn quickly if you ever spend time with youth, whether it's in a youth group in church or teaching young people in school, is that young people, whom I am told, have completely undeveloped brains at the age of 15 and 16. Maybe that explains a lot. But young people have, a certain idea about sin that says, I want to see how close I can get to sin without really falling into it. You know, if you've ever counseled folks who are going out on dates for the first time and they're looking for some kind of advice, the advice generally runs around the question, how far can we go and still come out okay? I mean, you know, how close to the edge can one get and not commit sin? That's the big question that teenagers tend to have. And you counsel them and say, you just don't understand how this works. Sin is not something that you want to walk up to as if it's a big fierce line inside a cage at the zoo. And you think, how close can I put my hand to the bars and the teeth of the line not get to it? what you realize is that when you are out there in the world that line is roaming loose like in one of those wild game parks and what you better do is keep your windows rolled up and the air conditioner turned on and the doors locked lest that line find some way to get into you and when you see him making quick progress towards you it is time to go. You need to flee from sin. or as the apostle puts it in the New Testament, you flee from youthful lusts. Sin is not something to be toyed with. It's far too big, far too dangerous, far too powerful for that, especially when we have a tendency to sin. I guess most everyone in this room was familiar with the little dust up a couple of weeks ago about Vice President Pence and his following the Billy Graham rule. The Billy Graham rule was you never find yourself alone at a table or dinner or room with a woman who is not your wife. You always have somebody with you. There always needs to be some kind of third party. And all the New York and Chicago and Los Angeles newspapers and all the celebrities in Hollywood all said, oh, that's so old fashioned and provincial. How can women get ahead in the business world if they can't have just a private dinner with a businessman? Why do they need that? And the vice president's response was, If you understand how easy it is for people to fall into sin in spite of their best intentions, then you'll realize that this is a wise rule. I guess if you don't believe in sin, he said, and you don't believe that people have a kind of inner urging at times to commit sin, then you wouldn't understand the rule. But if you understand what sin is and what sin can do to people and families, then you'll understand why Billy Graham did this. And he said, and it's why I do it too. The Bible wants us to be very clear that sin is real. Sin is seductive. Sin is destructive. And sin can ruin not only individuals, but it can rule families. And it can even come very close to undoing the work of God in the world. And that's what we are to learn from these two chapters. Chapter 37 tells us that Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan. He was living where he was supposed to be. This is the land that God had promised to Abraham. and to Abraham's people. This was the land that the Lord had assigned. And so Jacob, as badly as he started out his life is now going to kind of finish up at least on a good note. He's going to walk in the ways of the Lord and in faith and in obedience. But when Joseph was 17, verse two, He was out pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy and the Hebrew text here wants us to understand that he's not yet got that fully developed mature brain yet. And he's not someone that you would look up to as a man wise beyond his years. He's not the picture of a great spiritual maturity. And maybe that explains why he kind of blurts out things that maybe he would have been better keeping to himself for a while. But he's out there with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and they do something that they're not supposed to do. We don't know exactly what it was, but Joseph goes and tells daddy. And Joseph telling daddy is not going to be a good thing because his first three reminds us Jacob or Israel loved Joseph more than any of the other sons because he was the son of his old age. He was the caboose and he was a good bit younger than these other brothers. And I'm sure he grew up listening to all the stories about how he was daddy's favorite and so forth. I sympathize with Joseph. I have nothing but older siblings. They're all a good bit older than I am. They were kind of moving out of the house when I was just starting into school. And for most of my growing up period, I was the only child at home and I have listened now for better than 60 years. As my brothers and sisters have talked about how, well, you know, he was the baby. He got everything. He was mom Monday's favorite, blah, blah, blah. And I would explain to them, there is no way that I was their favorite. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because by the time I came along, they were so old and tired, they didn't know how to play favorites anymore. They pretty much said, you go raise yourself and come back when you're grown. And I can sort of sympathize with Joseph because he's got these older brothers. They are experienced. He's got lots of brothers. There's 11 of them and they're there. Everything's kind of working fine. But in this case, he really was loved more than the other sons. And then Jacob makes things worse. The end of verse three, we're told that he made Joseph a robe of many colors. That's what we're used to hearing. The Hebrew text here is really unusual. It's hard to translate. You might find some versions translating this as, he gave Joseph a long coat with sleeves. You say, why? How do you come up with that? The fact is we've got words here we don't find anywhere else. If you ever hear of someone referring to a hapax legomenon, it simply means a word that's used once. And so you don't have any other way to kind of measure it. The coat of many colors actually comes not from the Hebrew text, but from the Septuagint. which was a Greek translation of the Old Testament that people commonly read in Jesus's day. By the time Jesus came along, Greek was the currency of communication throughout the known world. Just like if you fly an airplane, you've got to be able to speak English. It doesn't matter where you go. All the landing instructions and takeoff instructions are done in English, whether you're in Japan or China or wherever. Everybody spoke Greek and so the Bible, the Old Testament was translated into Greek for common people to read it, just like we translate the Bible into English today. And the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament is the one that says robe of many colors. I really don't know how they came up with that. It may be right, maybe they had some insight. So English translations have somewhat kind of followed that just because it's got age to it. but we really don't know what exactly was meant here. But the idea is certainly that Jacob loved Joseph more than all of his other sons and he gave him a sign of his favoritism. Joseph stood out as the one who had daddy's great attention. So this is a dangerous concoction that's being brewed here, isn't it? You've got older brothers who have been working hard and serving daddy, trying to build the family business. You got the little bitty boy out there who's now 17, but he's still the little brother. He'll always be the little brother as far as they're concerned, who gets special treatment from daddy. And then daddy gives him the robe that sets him apart as if he were some kind of prince or reign ruler that was to be listened to. And then on that, he becomes a tattletale and turns all of his brothers in to Israel or Jacob. And the brothers hated him, we're told in verse four. Not only did they hate him, they would not speak peacefully to him. The idea here is that they would not speak the words of peace. Do you remember how often in the Bible people would greet one another with something like peace be with you and peace be with you? It was common in the ancient Near Eastern world to give a greeting or a salutation. And the greeting or salutation would have been shalom, peace. The idea is that may God be with you and bless you and give you everything you need. May God put you in a place where you are not lacking or wanting anything. And so you wished people well when you saw them and you wished them well when they left you. And that was just common courtesy. But the brothers wouldn't speak the words of peace to Joseph. They would defy all convention. They felt no compulsion to pray for Joseph's well-being. They weren't willing to send best wishes to him on his birthday. They weren't even willing to greet him with a nice hello, it's good to see you. They hated him and longed to be rid of him. And so when Joseph has this dream in verse five, we're not surprised when he has it and tells it to his brothers. And that makes them hate him even more. The dream obviously is from God. This isn't the first time we've seen dreams introducing a new story. For example, you remember back in Genesis 12 when we were beginning the story of Abraham, Abraham has a dream and it's kind of a prelude from God of I'm going to do something great among you and your people. And you need to pay attention that this is part of my plan. This is my working. So when we see this. We kind of say, well, God's getting ready to do something when he sets Joseph apart as the recipient of dreams. And the dream goes like this. We were binding sheaves in the field, all of us brothers together, we're all out there working and everybody's doing his or her part and we're all like equals. And then as we bind up our sheaves and we put them on the ground, my sheave stands straight up all by itself and then when your sheaves see it they all come and gather before it and they bow down to my sheaf. Well the brothers didn't have any problem figuring out what Joseph was trying to get across to them. They said Are you really telling us? Are you indeed saying that you're going to reign over us? The language is very similar to what the serpent says in the garden. Did God really say that? Are you indeed really telling us that this is what's going to happen, that you're going to reign over us, that you're going to rule over us? You don't know how the system works, do you? Here's Reuben over here, he's the firstborn. He's the one who's going to become CEO of Jacob Incorporated when daddy dies. and he's going to be chairman of the board. And then others are going to get things, but you are way down the list, Joseph. You don't understand. You don't get anything. You're always going to be our servant. That's just the way things are. You're always going to be little brother. You're never going to grow up. My brother, Jimmy, loved to play a game with me when I was growing up. He, you have to understand that he was a rather healthy fellow. He was a defensive end in college and he had, he was all shoulders and all thighs and not much in between except muscle. And he was, you know, one little brother would always look up to us, you know, the great athlete. I'd always say things, we'd play basketball in the backyard or whatever. I'd say, you know, one day I'm going to grow up and I'm going to beat you on the basketball court. Then we'd go to the golf course. Now, one day I'm going to grow up and I'm going to beat you on the golf course. I knew I'd never whip him on the football field. That just wasn't going to happen. So he picks other sports. And so he would tease me. And one of his favorite ways to tease me was he'd take a quarter. And he put it in his hand, he'd kind of grab it like this. He says, I'll treat you as my equal and not as my little brother on the day that you can pull this quarter out of my hand. Well, that's just taunting to a little boy, you know. So he'd sit there and I'd pry and pry and pull. I never did get it done. It was frustrating. I didn't realize until later when Cindy and I were married. We had a baby of our own. You know, even a baby, when they get something little and they clutch it in a fist, it can be pretty hard to pry it out when they don't want to let it go. You know, it is, you pull the thumb back and the little fingers tighten, and then they start working on the little fingers and the thumb pops back down. I mean, even a small child can grab something really small and clutch it in their hand in a way that you can't get it out. I've always thought of this whenever I hear Jesus talking about how we are in his hand and in the father's hand and no one can pluck you from my father's hand. My father's greater than all. I think of Jimmy holding that quarter in his, in his palm, but Gibson, one day you'll grow up. And I eventually realized it didn't matter how big I got or how strong I got, I was never, ever going to be his equal. I was never going to be able to pluck a quarter out of his hand. It just wasn't going to happen. And Joseph's older brothers are saying to Joseph, You're never going to be our equal. We're never going to like you. We're never going to accept you. We're certainly never going to bow down and be ruled by you. It just isn't going to operate that way. And if you look at life purely from a family dynamics perspective, or from the perspective of ancient culture, or even just the way physical well-being takes place and growth takes place over a period of time, they were right. But what they don't remember is that God, in his sovereign purposes, can raise up anybody to be a ruler. And surely Joseph's brothers should have understood this because they're the sons of Jacob, who wasn't the firstborn, but who was given the rights of the firstborn and who was chosen by God to be the one through whom the covenant would be kept in defiance of all the normal ways of doing things. God says, when I want to bless someone and when I want to work, I am free to work however I want to, whenever I want to, with whom I want to. The brothers should have known that if God had given this vision to Joseph, God was certainly capable of fulfilling his word. But we're learning something about the brothers here, aren't we? Just as we're learning that Joseph is the immature little brother who kind of blurts things out maybe in a way that could have been said a little more tactfully, we're seeing that the older brothers really don't have a spiritual bone in them. They're not committed to the Lord. They're not walking with the Lord. They're not subject by faith to God being able to accomplish what he chooses. But it's not just the brothers. Even Jacob. is kind of spiritually dull at this point. Verse 9 tells us that there was another dream. And so Joseph shares it, just like he did the first one. And he said, in this one, there's a sun and there's a moon, there's 11 stars, and they're all bowing down to me. Well, the brothers knew who the 11 stars were. That was them. The sun and the moon, well, oh, who could that be? So Joseph tells the dream to his father and his brothers, and the father rebukes him, and Jacob says, what is this dream that you've dreamed? Shall I and your mother, and mother here is obviously stepmother because you remember Joseph's mother died early, so, I and your mother and your brothers are indeed going to bow ourselves down to the ground before you. Are you saying that even I am going to be your worshiper? And the brothers were jealous of him. But the father, well, he was a little different response. We're told in verse 11 that he just kept the saying in mind. He mulled it over and contemplated it, I guess very much like We're told that Mary treasured up all these things in her heart, the things that she learned at Jesus's birth. So the scene is set. Joseph, his little brother, bratty little brother, big mouth little brother, Mr. Goody-two-shoes brother, who's daddy's favorite, and the time has come for something to be done. And so it takes place at a place called Dothan. Now remember that while Jacob had large herds, he was a wealthy man, plenty of flocks. When you live in the Near East, you kind of have to drive your flocks to wherever there's pasture land, and that's going to be at different places at different times of the year. You can go up in the mountains part of the year, and then you have to kind of go back down to the rivers and other places. So the shepherd's life was a kind of nomadic life. And when you've got lots of sheep, you certainly had to take them all over the place. So the 11 older brothers have been sent out to pasture the sheep up toward the north. They've left Hebron. They've made their way up toward Bethel. And then they've come to Shechem. Joseph expects to find them at Shechem. but when he gets there, he learns they're no longer there. There's a man who says, you need to go farther up the road north to Dothan. And when you get there, you should find him. And so Jacob, excuse me, Joseph makes his way on up and he learns that they are indeed near Dothan. The brothers see Joseph before he arrives. According to verse 18, they see him from afar. They recognize him. And I guess if it is a coat of many colors, it kind of stood out. And no one else would have had coats like that or been with the same animals that they recognized or the same servants that would have been sent by Jacob. But when they saw that Joseph is coming, they conspired against him to kill him. They said, here's the dreamer. Here's the one who keeps telling us that he's going to rule over us. You know how to stop that? Let's kill him. He can't rule over us if he's dead. He can tell us that this dream is from God, but if we kill him, even God's word can't come to pass. It's kind of the epitome of rebellion against God. It's the kind of earthly wisdom that we hear so much today. Who cares what God thinks? We'll do what we want to do. We're smarter than God. We can out-think God. We can out-do God. Certainly, in the end, he'll come around to our side. So let's, tell you what, let's just kill him. We'll throw him into one of these pits that are out here. We're not sure exactly what kind of pits they were. Sometimes they were pits for animals to be kept. Sometimes they were traps that were used to get wild beasts and get them chasing you and root them around so they run into the pit and fall into. Sometimes they were used like cisterns to collect water during the rainy season. But there were all kinds of holes or pits. We'll throw him in one of the pits after we kill him. And then we'll just go back and tell Daddy that a wild animal has devoured him. Sounds like a pretty good plan, they all said, except for one, Reuben. And Reuben is not necessarily more spiritual than the others. Please don't think that Reuben is the righteous man in this picture. Reuben is looking out for one person. Who? Reuben. He's the oldest brother. He's the one who's going to be held responsible for what happens to the rest of them. When he goes back to the farm, Daddy's going to say, what happened? Where's the money? What'd y'all do? How are the sheep? Reuben's going to be the one who's accountable. So Reuben says, I don't want to answer to Daddy for what y'all are doing here. I'm not going back and telling him that we killed our brother, the one that Daddy loves, the one that's so special in Daddy's eyes. No, not me. Tell you what, we can't kill him. But while we think about what we're going to do, there is a pit. Go ahead and put him in the pit. It's dry. He's not going to drown there or anything. And we'll think about how we can solve this problem. And we'll leave him there. So they put him in the pit. They sit down to eat. And as they're sitting down to eat the meal, they look and there's a caravan traveling down one of the major highways going toward Egypt. and they're foreigners, they're pagans. And so Joseph's brothers say, we don't have to kill him. I mean, if we kill him, what have we got? A dead brother that we have to answer for. But you know, if we just happen to mention that he's in a pit, the stranger, the traitors will perhaps take him off our hands. Maybe they'll even pay us for him. And we get rid of him. And if he dies down there, his blood's on their hands and not ours. And so they decide that they will sell him to the traders. And they do, they sell him for 20 shekels or pieces of silver. And Joseph is loaded up and hauled off to Egypt. Reuben comes back to the pit, sees Joseph isn't there. Oh, he goes berserk. I'm going to get in trouble. Where shall I go? That's the big question. What am I going to do? I can't go home. But the brothers say, well, I'll tell you what, let's just tell daddy that something happened to him. And so they take Joseph's robe that they had kept and they slaughter a goat and they dip the robe in the blood and they send the coat home to their father. And they say, look, we found this. Did you send Joseph out to look for us? It looks like a wild animal got him. And the father says, yes. That's it. He's dead. And he goes into deep and traumatic mourning. His favorite son is dead. And the brothers don't let on to what's really happening. They see that their father is going to die in grief, but nobody tries to tell him, you know, your son's really not dead. He's just in Egypt. And when we come to this part of the story, you just have to, Note that this is a terrible situation. This is a family that's divided, that they would even seek to kill their brother. This is a family that's ruled by jealousy. This is a family that is just overcome by grief. But what you also have to remember is that this is the family that God has promised to work in and work through. These are terrible, terrible days. They look like godless people and it's getting ready to look worse than the next chapter, I promise you. But how many times have you sung in church growing up? Marvelous grace, marvelous grace, grace that is greater than all our sins. And this is gonna be a story of God's grace. that's greater than a multitude of sins. In the next chapter, we're going to find Judah marrying Canaanite women, the one thing God told them not to do. These marriages between believers and unbelievers are gonna get them involved in all kinds of immoral things. They're going to begin to go to the cultic shrines of the Canaanite gods. And it was common in those Canaanite religions to use cult prostitutes as a way of raising money for the local temple. And so they're participating in these kinds of things. And there's no commitment to the Leverett Law. We're not going to go into all that tonight. That's the law where if a brother dies and he has no children, his brother's supposed to take the wife and have children. But the children that are born to that union are the children of the dead brother. They will receive the inheritance that the dead brother would have had so that his wife and children won't be left penniless when the next generation comes around. They'll still have a home, still have other things. But in this case, nobody's interested in doing that. He says, if I have children, they won't be mine. And so I'm not going to give her any children. I don't want to have to look after somebody else's family. It's just a whole story of selfishness and degeneracy and immorality. And when things keep coming about, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And so let me close with this. Tonight, when you go home, I want you to thank God that the Bible is not just 38 chapters long. I want you to remember that the story doesn't end here. It ends on a bad note for us in the passage we're looking at tonight. It looks like things can't get any worse. But I want you to see that there's grace in this story. Because while God's chosen man, Jacob, is going through a very difficult time, he's got terrible sons, and his family life is a complete and utter disaster. God's people sometimes do have families like that. Please remember that. What I want you to really remember is that God has already taken Joseph, the one who's going to be the child of promise, and he has gotten him out of this family. And he's gotten him away from these brothers. We say, yeah, but he sent him to Egypt. He sent him down there with the pagans. Yes, he did. But Joseph's going to be the one who's going to save them. Joseph is going to be the one who will deliver the family and reconcile them and bring them back together again. Joseph is going to be the agent of God and God is already working even by Joseph's slavery to get him out of the place of danger and put him in the place where he can be useful. You can't read these chapters without thinking that there was another well-beloved son who was rejected by his brothers, sold for silver, given up for dead, who would then declare that he was the savior and Lord of his people. and that the story of Joseph is in shadow or picture book form, really the story of Christ, isn't it? And that God sent his son, even sent him down into Egypt to protect him right after his birth. and then protected him when his own friends and family and relatives and cousins and everyone else turned against him. And when he went to the cross and it looked like the end of God's work, you know, if we kill this son of God, then he can't fulfill the promises and he can't do anything to us. And they forget that the same God who can work through a Joseph is the God who raises the dead and exalts his son and gives him the name that's above every name so that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. And so God is working, even in the cross, even when Jesus is buried and put in the tomb. And God is working by his grace, even when your children make you pull your hair out And God is working to preserve his people even when the economy goes south. God is working graciously to save his people. Even when we wonder how in the world the church could turn so worldly and how the people of God could sometimes be held captive by such strong and terrible sins. And we say, thank God. that the Bible does not end at Genesis 38. Thank God that it's going to go all the way through chapter 50 and the exaltation of Joseph. Even more, thank God that it goes all the way through the New Testament. And the reminder that God does in fact do everything he says he will do, even when it requires raising the dead. Let's pray.