Hello and welcome to our second broadcast concerning the life of Joseph. Joseph was with his brother. Number two, have your Bible ready if you can. We read in Genesis chapter 37 that Jacob dwelt in the land where in his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph being 17 years old was feeding the flock with his brethren. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilphah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought unto his father, their evil report. Now we're going to be looking for a while now in this series and the life of Joseph takes much of the rest of the book of Genesis here, but we want to fast forward a little bit here into Genesis chapter number 49. In it we read, and Jacob called unto his sons, and said, gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourselves together, and hear ye sons of Jacob, and hark up unto Israel, or Jacob as he was called, your father. Now in verse four, he speaks to Reuben. In verse 5, he speaks to Simeon and Levi. In verse 8, he addresses Judah, and then down in 13, Zebulun, and in 14, Ishakar. He talks to Dan in verse 16, and then in 19, to Gad. and verse 21, Naphtali, and down in verse 27, Benjamin. But back here in verse 22, he talks to Joseph, and he says, Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him and shot at him and hated him, but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong. by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel, even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee, and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above." And then in the next couple of verses, he speaks of five other special blessings that Joseph will have. And then he ends it in verse number 26 by saying, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brother, and he was separate from his brother, and he was different than all the rest of them. You'll notice in verse 22 that it says that he was a fruitful bough. That is a branch that is bearing fruit. And he says it's by the wall. Yeah, there's going to be some obstruction, but his branches went right on over the wall, it says here. And then we see he had opposition, which helped him grow. There was the archers in verse 23, who sorely grieved him and shot at him and hated him. that was his own brothers but we have that word but in verse number 24 by the hand of all the almighty god of israel by the god of thy father he says in verse 25 by the almighty who shall bless thee he said it regardless of all of the opposition in fact the opposition helped him turn to god by all of that he says He turned out to have all of these blessings from God. Now, keep in mind that Joseph starts out here. He is only 17 years old. And we have a tremendous story here of the victorious Christian life of a young teenage boy who decided that he was going to be what God wanted him to be and do what God wanted him to do in spite of the environment in which he was living. Well, it's interesting when you go back to the place where Joseph was born in Genesis chapter 30 and verse number 24, when Rachel conceived, she called his name Joseph and said, the Lord shall add to me another son, Genesis 30 and 24. This is the first time that we read the word add. in the Bible. And she said that God, the Lord, will add to me another son. Now, Joseph actually means Jehovah has added. Now, if you want to see the secret of this young man's life, it is found way back in 1 Peter 1. Go there with me if you would. In verse 5 of 1 Peter 1, The Lord says here, or Peter says, and besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. If these things, he said, for if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful." Joseph was not unfruitful. His branches reached over the walls of opposition. And so we need to understand that if we want to have the victorious Christian life that Joseph had, we need to apply these things right here. We can see virtue. Well, Joseph had that as a young fellow when Potiphar's wife was trying to seduce him. Knowledge! He knew how to interpret dreams as he was in the prison there, and unjustly so. But he had learned what he needed to learn, like David, who was out in the wilderness as a young teenager. looking after a few sheep, and he learned the things at that time that God wanted him to learn. And then the next thing they add to your faith virtue and to your virtue knowledge, and to your knowledge temperance. Temperance speaks of self-control, and you'll see as we go through the story, of Joseph, he had that. And then patience, add patience. He was years and years before he saw what God was trying to do in his life, and he was patient through all of that. And then number five, add godliness. Well, Potiphar says when he met Joseph, is there anyone that has a spirit like this man has? And then finally, add brotherly kindness and charity or love. And that's exactly what he did with his brothers. not only kindness, but charity here. That's the word agape. It's been translated love most of the time. Sometimes it's charity, and when God had it put in that way, He had put in for a reason. Charity is an undeserved love. You know, you can have the love of a husband and wife, and love will be returned one to the other. but this word charity when you send charity off to someone you may be sending somebody some money to help them over in africa where they're starving to death you're getting nothing in return and that's what charity is talking about here so keep in mind we have a 17 year old boy who is given all diligence that means diligence is earnest care it is a careful persistent effort to add virtue and knowledge and temperance and patience and godliness and brotherly love to his faith now as we come back to chapter number 37 in the book of genesis it begins in verse 1 of chapter 37 we read and jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan. He was a stranger. Now, we saw in our last broadcast how Esau and Jacob were of the same family, but they certainly were not on the same page. And we saw that it was necessary for Jacob to separate from his brother Esau, for his brother would end up, his descendants would bring in the Edomites and the Amalekites and and those that were enemies of God. And God says to Jacob, I don't want you to go on that trail. You need to be separate from your brother here. We read back in Genesis 36 and verse number 6 that Esau went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob, and they went their separate ways, and that was absolutely necessary. And so when we speak here of Jacob in verse number one of chapter 37, it says that he was a stranger in the land. A stranger is a person to whom one is not familiar, to whom you have no close associations with, a stranger, and that's what Jacob was. Now you saw Esau, he just went on with the party life, He went on and he made decisions in light of what would be monetarily good for him. And you read down through chapter 36 about all the dukes. They all had their titles. Everybody was going the way of the world. There was no dukes out here in the wilderness. Jacob was a stranger. He was a person to whom one was not familiar. Nobody in that other section of Esau's family had anything to do with Jacob. They considered him a stranger. So in verse number two, we read that Joseph was 17. That is an amazing thing. He is in an environment that isn't good. His dad has had four wives and 12 sons by those four wives. His mom was stealing idols from her father, Laban, and the brothers were immoral. They were guilty of incest and murder. They hated everybody. They had envy. They were liars. And all of this, by the way, in that lifetime, at that time, was totally acceptable. That's just the way of life for everybody, but not for Joseph and not for Jacob. Jacob made a decision which would determine how things would turn out for Joseph. Well, while things in society were very acceptable for all of that trash, and it's very much like that today as well, however, the difference is those of us who know Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, unlike Joseph, we have the Holy Spirit living within us, We have local churches, and we have pastors, and we have parents that would help us along the way. Joseph had none of these things. He was living in a very sick society, and he was living in a completely dysfunctional family. However, he determined by the grace of God he was going to live for God, and he did this at the age of 17. Well, we see in verse number two, he was feeding the flock, he was a shepherd, with his brethren. Now, Jacob had put him out there with these four boys, which basically, who he was with was the best of the worst. The whole group was a motley group, we've said, except for for Joseph and Benjamin. This group was, as I said, immoral, guilty of incest, murder, and all the rest of it. But Dan and Naphtali and Gad and Asher were the four boys that he was with out there taking care of these sheep, which was far better than putting them with Simeon or Levi, who were the murderers who went in because you remember dinah was raped and so they went in and killed a lot of innocent men because of that that's well he didn't put him out there in a field with those boys he put him out with these others who weren't much better i mean they were they were just a bad lot well we go down through this chapter and we see a lot about love and we see a lot about hatred uh we saw that uh jacob loved rachel and here we see that jacob loved joseph verse number three now Israel or Jacob as he has been called loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age and he made him a coat of many colors now this coat here was one of the reasons why they hated him And it wasn't just that, well, he's got a nicer coat than I have. This coat represented something that was a coat that was special for a chieftain or the head of a clan that wore this kind of a coat. It was worn by an heir. Now, Reuben was the oldest of all of these boys, and he was firstborn, but he was disqualified from being the next one in charge because of the fact in Genesis 35 and 22 he had gone in unto Jacob's concubine. Well, what is happening here is Joseph, who is the eldest son of Rachel, has been chosen by Jacob to be the next one to be in charge, and that's what this quote was all about, and that was one of the reasons why we read in verse number four, and when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren. They hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him. They hated him because they knew that this young upstart was going to be a head in charge over them. He was going to be the head of the clan once Jacob was off the scene. And that was one of the reasons why they wanted to kill him. They wanted to get rid of him. Well, we're out of time again. You can tell by that music in the background we gotta go. Well, we'll try to carry it on from here in our next broadcast. Be sure to tune in. We'll try to make it plain, and we'll try to make it simple.