These are the generations of Esau, that is, Edom. Esau took his wives from the Canaanites, Ada, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, Ahol-Abama, the daughter of Ena, the daughter of Zibion, the Hivite, and Bazimath, Ishmael's daughter, the sister of Nabeoth. And Ada bore to Esau Eliphaz, Bazimath bore Rul, and Ahol-Abama bore Jeush, Jelum, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan. He went into a land away from his brother Jacob, for their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. Land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir. Esau is Edom. These are the generations of Esau, the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir. These are the names of Esau's sons. Eliphaz, the son of Ada, the wife of Esau. Rul, the son of Bezimath, the wife of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Getem, and Kinez. Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son. She bore Amalek to Eliphaz. These are the sons of Ada, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Reuel, Nahath, Zerah, Shema, and Mizah. These are the sons of Bazimath, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Holabamah, the daughter of Anah, the daughter of Zibion, Esau's wife. She bore to Esau, Jeush, Jelum, and Korah. These are the chiefs of the sons of Esau, the sons of Eliphaz, the firstborn of Esau, The chiefs Timon, Omar, Zepho, Kinaz, Korah, Getum, and Amalek. These are the chiefs of Eliphaz in the land of Edom. These are the sons of Ada. These are the sons of Rul, Esau's son. The chiefs Nahath, Zerah, Shema, and Mizah. These are the chiefs of Rul in the land of Edom. These are the sons of Bezimath, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Aholabamah, Esau's wife. The chiefs Jeush, Jalem, and Korah. These are the chiefs born of Aholabamah, the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, that is, Edom, and these are their chiefs. These are their sons of Seir, the Horite, the inhabitants of the land, Lotan, Shobal, Zibion, Aenah, Dishan, Eser, and Dishan. These are the chiefs of the Horites, the sons of Seir in the land of Edom. The sons of Lotan were Hori and Hemam, and Lotan's sister was Timnah. These are the sons of Shobal, Alvan, Menahath, Ebal, Shefo, and Onam. These are the sons of Zibion, Aiya, and Aina. He is the Aina who found the hot springs in the wilderness as he pastured the donkeys of Zibion, his father. These are the children of Aina, Daishan, and Aholabama, and the daughter of Aina. These are the sons of Daishan, Hemdan, Eshban, Ithran, and Cheran. These are the sons of Ezer, Bilhan, Zeavan, and Akhan. These are the sons of Daishan, Uz and Aran, these are the chiefs of the Horites, the chiefs Lotan, Shobal, Zibion, Anah, Dishon, Ezer, and Dishan. These are the chiefs of the Horites, chief by chief, in the land of Seir. These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites. Bela, the son of Beor, reigned in Edom, the name of his city being Dinhabah. Bela died, and Jobab, the son of Zerah of Bozrah, reigned in his place. Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned in his place. Husham died, and Hadad, the son of Bedad, who defeated Midian in the country of Moab, reigned in his place, the name of his city being Aveth. Hadad died, and Samlah of Massareca reigned in his place. Samlah died, and Shaul of Rehoboth of the Euphrates reigned in his place. Shaul died, and Baal-Hanan, the son of Akbor, reigned in his place. Baal-Hanan, the son of Akbor, died, and Hadar reigned in his place. The name of his city being Pa'u, his wife's name was Mehetabal, the daughter of Metrid, daughter of Mezahab. These are the names of the chiefs of Esau according to their clans and their dwelling places by their names. The chiefs Timna, Alva, Jetha, Aholabama, Elah, Penan, Kenaz, Timan, Mibzar, Magdiel, and Iram. These are the chiefs of Edom, that is, Esau, the father of Edom, according to their dwelling places in the land of their possession. Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan. 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 have 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? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have 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 have 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. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Please be seated. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit guide us, lead us into all truth, that we might better understand this, better take application in our own lives from the principles and the truths and connect it all in such a way that we are changed for your glory. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, first off, I appreciate Pastor Pete, covering that long generational section there in 36, you did an excellent job. I could never have gotten through it the way you did, so God bless you for that. Brother, I appreciate it. When you end, when you have, in Hebrew it's called a teledoth. And when it says generation, these are the generations. In Genesis in particular, in narrative, They will close a chapter on a character by giving you all of their generations, all of their lineage, and it's an indication we're moving on to a new character in the grander scheme of the narrative. So you see the value there. Now, we'll come back to that because you don't want to, and I certainly don't want to give you the idea that, oh, those aren't valuable, you just kind of read them, kind of try and not get tongue-tied along the way and move along. No, there's value in there. Verse 12 we'll probably come back to because it explains the Amalekites, who were the dreaded enemy of the Israelites. And it even shows you that the Amalekites came from a concubine of the son of Esau. So you get a little bit of an idea of there's some distancing and whatnot there. So we'll be back in that. I also want to know, when we take on this note, when we take on big chapters of verses like this, actually a whole chapter plus a little bit more, we start a little later. So don't be looking at your watch. We're going to be okay. We are going to be, today is a passage that I have read over and over again, and I thought that I knew who the good guys were, and I thought I knew who the bad guys. And if you'll notice the message title, it says, a robe not fit to be worn. So I'm allowing you a little up front here to get an idea that this may not be how you have always read this passage. Maybe you have. I certainly had not. You know, another thing Pastor Pete and I enjoy, and we like being transparent about this, we're not the ones that know it all and then come to you and then, you know, there's no ability to grow. I don't know if grow is the right word. What I'm trying to say in the positive is when we do our studies each week, we are learning as we watch the languages tell the truth. So it's a wonderful journey to take with you all. So with this, I want to pose a question. I've used this analogy before, but I've used it differently. So track with me on this analogy. The question is, what would you do if you were given a 1,000-piece puzzle, but I didn't permit you to see the picture on the box? You were sitting at a desk. I come over. I dump the 1,000 pieces right in front of you and say, it's yours. Figure it out. So you've got to use some methodology to work through this. Well, what are you going to do? And if you're a puzzle person, you may be racing and go, oh, I know exactly what I do. I do boom, boom, boom. And if you're not, you're going, OK, I'll try. I'm not really a puzzle person. The point is, most of us would default to using types. And what I mean by that, we're going to default into separating the pieces into types. We might start off by separating them. into male and female. We know these pieces are going to connect together. Maybe we put the female pieces over here and the male pieces over there. Maybe it's by color. Okay, I see some light blue. I see a lot of light blue. Maybe this is a scene of a sky. I'll put these pieces over here. Or I see a lot of dark blue. Maybe this is a stormy sea kind of a setting. I'll put these pieces over here. And so we start to possibly categorize them by type with color. Now, for me, my go-to is the edge of it. I'm starting with the edge. I want to get the outline. It gives me a little bit of an idea of what's going on. And then I work my way into whatever works best for the puzzle and the individual puzzle. So you get an idea of, OK, all right, yeah, that makes sense. Now, let me flip it. Let me make you the authors. You're not the student that just gets the puzzles there. You're the author of a grand novel, of a piece of narrative. Pick your narrative that you want to write about. and you're going to choose to hold off on revealing the main character until much later in the story. Can you see where types might help you get the audience to understand, know something about the end picture without giving away the identity? It's a way of giving character before the character is unveiled. And that's what we find in the Bible, and that's what is happening with a lot of the Bible scholars call it typology. Let me give you this definition from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. I know we've heard it before, but let's get it again so we're all on the same page. A typology or type is a hermeneutical concept. It just means a means by way we understand. We use a system. It's a hermeneutical concept in which a biblical place, like Jerusalem or Zion, And all these are actually types in the Bible. So listen to these, and you may not realize, oh, this isn't just a name. This has greater, fuller meaning, and it's actually fulfilled, its meaning is fulfilled in the person of Christ himself. So listen to this. So biblical places like Jerusalem or Zion, a person like Adam or Melchizedek, an event like the flood or the brazen serpent that was raised by Moses, an institution like feasts and covenants, Offices like prophet, priest, and king. Objects like the tabernacle, the altar, or even incense. All of these can become a pattern by which later persons or places are interpreted due to the unity of all of the events and all the people and all the things in the Bible. So we get this understanding, oh, there's an interconnectedness when we have puzzles. We understand the types come together. Well, that's what happens in the Bible. So we are constantly looking at typology. Well, we're going to see that now, particularly with the person of Joseph. Joseph is a type. He's a type of, and some people, I certainly didn't see this, and some of you may have been exposed to this, Joseph is not only a type of Christ, you probably thought I was going there right away, but he's also first a type of the nation of Israel. As Jacob goes, the nation goes, we see happening or occurring in the person of Christ. You go, oh wow, that's a twofer kind of a type that's going on here. So let me give you an idea. as it relates to Joseph as a type of the nation of Israel. Joseph lived in bondage in Egypt before his deliverance and supremacy over Egypt. Likewise, the nation of Israel would go into bondage, be delivered, and demonstrate supremacy over Egypt. We know the story. We know that happens. Here's another one. This is one that pertains particularly to us today that we probably, well, I got to be careful. You may not. I certainly didn't see. Suffering and bondage were a means of sanctification for Joseph in preparation for his role. Likewise, suffering and bondage prepared the nation of Israel for its future responsibilities as the means by which Yahweh would bless all the other nations. Remember, that's the covenant that he makes with Abraham. I'm gonna use you as a people to bless all the other nations. One nation to bless them all, but they need to be brought through, they need to be prepared, they need to work through an aspect of suffering, of sanctification, so they do in fact become this beautiful picture of who their God is. Okay, so now today, let's go ahead and look at how this kind of unfolds in our story. So if you'll turn with me in Genesis 37, one through 11, we'll take chunks at a time. It's fascinating to see what the Hebrew is doing behind the scenes here, and I'm hopeful that the time will, you'll get to the end of this and you'll go, wow, that didn't feel like we went long at all. Maybe I'm dreaming. Okay, so with that in mind, it's Nick's dream. Genesis 37 verse 1, we start off here. Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojourner, journey, excuse me, in the land of Canaan. In other words, he's making sure you understand we are in the promised land. He's no longer out for our narrative until he leaves Egypt. He's in the land, at least for Egypt. And it continues. These are the generations of Jacob. Okay, who are we gonna read? We're gonna start off with Reuben as oldest? No, we go right to Joseph. And it's the unfolding, ah, new main character on scene. And that's what we see. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pastoring, or pasturing, excuse me, 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. Okay, let's back up to the second part of verse two there. Josephine, and it's two times it's gonna reference his age. It's going to give 17 years old, and it's going to give boy. And if you see that, you see a duplication, it means heads up, you need to use this as a filter by which you understand everything that Joseph is going to be doing. The filter is, as he gives us the age, he's naive. He's immature. He's going to do some dumb, bad things. But you have to understand his age has an influence on him. So now we move forward. He was pasturing. Some of your versions may say he was feeding, or if you have the NIV, I believe it says he was tending. There's, I believe, a better word to use in that same range because of the totality of the story. Rather than get down into the weeds and say, which the word there in Hebrew allows a very specific act, I think the more appropriate word there is he was shepherding. because the whole story of Joseph is his role as a shepherd and how it connects to Christ as the shepherd, the overseer who is in authority and cares for his loved ones. So let's read it this way. So Joseph, being 17 years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers. Interestingly enough, there's a wordplay there. That can actually be taken grammatically, and I have to think that The Hebrews are listening to this, and they're kind of smiling because they recognize this. This could actually be read, Joseph being 17 years old was shepherding his brothers with the flock. Grammatically, you go there. And there is something to that. I'm going to show you that because there's a word play going on. In the word shepherding, there are three letters. We know that the Hebrew language is based on a three-letter system. Those are the primaries. Sometimes nouns, verbs, adjectives, come in two letters, but a vast majority come in three. And then your conjunctions or your articles, they all just have one letter. So it's considered a three-letter language. Everything hangs on those three letters. They put dots and symbols on top, or they put dots and symbols on the bottom, or they add things to the front of it, or they add things to the back of it. But there's that core. The less you see added to a word, the more it's an indication that this word, if you see that same word somewhere else, There is a play by the author. He's saying, stop. I'm allowing these two words to interact. And the Hebrews, which is a very, Hebrew is a very colorful, imaginative, that uses a lot of imagery. You would go back and go, oh. And you'd look back and seek fuller understanding. So right now, we just understand that word to be shepherding. We go, OK, no big deal. It's coming. There's a word that uses those exact same three letters. So let's continue on. He was a boy, in other words, naive and immature, with the sons of Bilhah, which would have been Dan and Naphtali, and Zilpah, which would have been Gad and Asher, his father's wives. Yeah, but we probably read too fast or could have read too fast. The Hebrews would have guessed those are concubine wives. Those are the lesser status wives. Joseph the favored is hanging out with the four brothers who are the less in status. They know it. All their brothers know it. It's just what happens in a family when you bring in a concubine that is not the same status as the mother, the one that was married to the man. So there's a reason why he's building this up like this. He's making sure we get this. And Joseph brought a bad." There's the word that goes with shepherd. One reads, let me see if I can find it, ra-eh, and the other one reads ra-ah. Same three letters, different vowels used, little bitty tiny subscript syllables underneath it. It's the same word, so you go, ah, these two words are interacting. They are, it's going both directions here. So it tells you, as a reader, shepherding, there's something different about the word shepherding here, and that shepherding going the other direction has effect on the word for bad right there. So I'm gonna suggest to you, out of the gate, and I'm gonna hopefully prove it to you, it means possibly inaccurate, exaggerated, or even half-truths, that's the bad report. Joseph is bringing to his father a bad report, not bad because of the conduct of his brothers, his four brothers, bad because he's twisted it for his benefit. So let's continue on. So knowing that bad has a wordplay with shepherding, bad's an adjective. And I'm getting a little geeky here because I'm getting excited about the language stuff. That means it is modifying, it's describing, it's doing something to another word. The word is report. The word is dibba. So you've got to look at this and go, okay, Nick, you're onto something maybe here, but you may be dead wrong here. Maybe that's the wrong wordplay. So you look up dibba in The Old Testament, nine times it's used, four of the nine times Moses uses it. Those are the most important uses because that's the author. But you can use the other five to get an understanding of what the author is doing, kind of. They're of lesser value. You want to stay with words that the author is describing as your primary emphasis. So let's take a look at this. Numbers 13-32, you guys are not going to be able to keep up. God bless you. If you've got a phone, maybe you can. But we're going to move some scripture here. If you just write it down and come back to it later, you might be better off, otherwise you might miss it. Numbers 13, 32. Moses is writing this. So they, he's speaking of the spies, brought to the people of Israel a bad report. Same word, same English translation. Of the land that they had spied out, saying, now I want you to hear the bad report. I'm gonna do a little bit of voice inflection to help us out. My wife laughs at me when I re-text, know what the text, proper voice inflection is, and she laughs, you don't know what they're actually saying. Chill out on the voice inflection. Okay, so here we have, the land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants. That's a little over the top. And all the people which we saw in it are of great height. We're going to see from the next sentence, yeah, there's some people that are great height, they're called giants, but they're the minority, the vast minority. It's not all the people. There's an overstatement, an exaggeration going on here. And there we saw the Nephilim, the giants, those that were the product of the sons of God who came down to the daughters of man. And he refers to them, the sons of Anak, who came from Nephilim. So we understand. And to get an idea of the giants, so you have it in your mind, they were typically seven to nine feet in height. So that's a giant. But watch what happens to how they describe them. And we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers. Really? An insect? That's how small you see? I mean, I stand six foot two. I don't think I would say I was a grasshopper. I'd go, oh, that's a whole lot of man if I got to fight him. But I'm not saying I'm a grasshopper. And they're going to be smaller because of the way genetics is moving backwards. But there is an over-the-top description there. And so we seem to them. Oh, really? You know the mind of these giants that you look like grasshoppers to them? Do you see the embellishing that is going on here? Let's continue on. Moses is going to use that word two more times in Numbers, Numbers 14, 36 and 37. He says this, and the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land. Oh, there's their agenda. The 10 spies brought back a report that would do away with Moses as leadership. They've long wanted to go back. We can dump this guy. So you can see the agenda behind them. In fact, if you think, Nick, you're writing into this, you're reading into this, let's go to verse 37. The men who brought up a bad report of the land. died by the plague before the Lord." That's the way of saying the Lord says, uh-uh, bad report. In fact, later on, he's going to say, you caused the people to stumble and lose faith in me. And so the whole generation was wiped out from 20 years and up. that were part of that group that grumbled against Moses. Now we're gonna leave that, and it's gonna get even more egregious. We're gonna move from words like bad report into some of these other words. These are the other five uses of it in the other books of the Bible. Jeremiah 20, verse 10, just the first half of it, I'll call it 10a. For I hear many whispering. Whispering's our word for bad report now. Terror is on every side, denounce him, let us denounce him. Say all my close, say all my close friends, watching for my fall. So this whispering is designed to bring down the one they're whispering about. And then Psalm 31, 13 is a play on that same verse, only he gives us a little more context. In Psalm 31, 13 it says, for I hear the whispering of many, terror on every side as they scheme. together against me, as they plot to take my life." So we have an understanding of, oh, this word is not good, this bad report, this dibba. Proverbs 10, 18, the one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters, slander is our word, is a fool. It's not getting any better. Let's keep going. Proverbs 25, 10, lest he who hears you bring shame upon you and your ill repute. have no end. And lastly, Ezekiel 36.3, therefore prophesy and say, thus says the Lord God, precisely because they made you desolate and crushed you from all sides so that you became the possession of the rest of the nations and you became the talk, and here's our word, evil gossip of the people. So I'm hoping you're convinced that And Joseph's report is a report that has been distorted by Joseph. We might say it this way if we use the same understanding of what the spies did. We could probably safely, conservatively land this way and say, Joseph brought a bad report that most likely made Jacob grumble against the conduct of the four sons who were the slaves, excuse me, the children of the two slave wives. So we have an idea. He brought a report back with the agenda to make them, to make his dad grumble, raise him in his eyes of his dad to make the sons look worse in the eyes of his dad, just like we saw the spies do in their report. So one commentator translated it this way. This was pretty strong, that's why I'm referencing an actual commentator on this one. He says this, so instead of reading, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father, he says it should read, for its greatest understanding, Joseph maligned. In other words, he intended evil towards them, he maligned them to their father. So we have an idea, oh wow, this isn't the story. I always thought Joseph was this almost sinless guy, and because of his character, he's raised up, and God sees the kind of man he is, and that's why God raises him up, and some bad things happen to him, but he had no involvement in those bad things. He wasn't a provoking agent in what came against him, and that's not what this is portraying here. So we look and we see that Joseph took advantage of the influence and power that his father had given him and used it for his own gain against his brothers, and it gave his brothers a disadvantage. They already were of lower status, and now you bring this report? Yeah, that would hurt. That one would sting a whole bunch. I got no chance in dad's eyes. Dad even thinks worse of me now. is that you could imagine the feeling that would be exuding from these four brothers. At this time in Joseph's life, he is not a man of integrity. Joseph is not even fit, and this is where I think the wordplay comes back on the original passage, he's not even fit to shepherd the lowest of his brothers. He will one day shepherd the nation. But this day, he's not even fit to shepherd the lowest status brothers. Let's continue on. Later in Joseph's life, through God's sovereign hand, after a period of deep humbling, think of the pit or the cistern he's gonna get put into, as well as the pit or the prison he's gonna be thrown into, Joseph will be given the ear, later on, not the ear of the leader of his family, i.e. his dad, Not the ear of the one that takes care of the prison or Potiphar. No, he's going to get a chance to have the ear of the leader of the country, Pharaoh himself. And so the drama starts to build in us. We're realizing, will he be transformed enough to be a man of God when that takes place in his life, when he's given that position in life? So what's the application for us? What are you and I struggling right now with in our life as it relates to character flaws? I'm being pretty generous here. I could call it sin, but sometimes people turn off when I use the word sin. It's our natural, oh, maybe someone else, but not us. What sins do we recognize that are our character flaws in our life that might in fact be causing the trial that we are actually in. They are the ones that have brought about the trial. That was the case with Joseph himself. And is it possible that this is a God-ordained trial? We're going to see Joseph's trial get bad, but we know it's a God-ordained trial that brings about a character change that is so radical that Joseph becomes this image that is a, although him, it is a beautiful image. It's a type of the coming one who is Christ himself, who rules and reigns over all. So maybe we're going through something for the purpose of us recognizing this is actually on me. This is happening because of my character flaws. Maybe not. I don't know what situation you're in. As I was prepping for this, I'm thinking, right in my list of, oh, these are the areas I got to work on. I just need to go back seven days and look at every argument I had with my wife. Because they were typically started by me. So I can, okay, that's a good starting place to find out my character flaws. Okay. Let's continue on. Why did Jacob put Joseph in this shepherding or supervisory role where he reports back to dad what is going on with the brothers? Let's see if we can figure it out. We're in verse 3. Now Israel loved Joseph more. We know Israel is Jacob. It's another name for him. It's kind of a transition name where they start to refer to him and the nation, and pretty soon it's only going to refer to the nation. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any, not just the sons of the slave wives, more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. Now, we know the whole story. It's not just his old age. It's what wife produced the son in his old age. It's Rachel. He has been waiting for God to take away her infertility, to take away, to open up her womb, and she produced Joseph. He was late in the history of the sons. This is the idea that gets brought in here. We saw this dynamic back and forth with he loved Rachel more. Well, now we see him loving Joseph more, and we have to go back and race back and go, well, what did that kind of love look like when it was loving Rachel more than he loved Leah? It was destructive love. It was a love that pit the two sisters against each other. It was a love that when Rachel gives Bilhah, her maidservant, to Jacob, and he produces two sons after the second son, she says, ha, I finally prevailed over wrestling with my sister. Oh. We see what kind of love it turned out to be. It turned out to be a love that pitted the sisters so that they were in a wrestling match, desperately trying to get the love of their husband to one up and say, no, I've got the love now, no, I've got the love now, as well as the status as the wife of the family, the matriarch, so to speak. So we know what happened there. Would you think what happened as Jacob? Now he does the same mistake. He's gonna sow the seeds of discord? He's gonna sow the seeds of envy, of strife, of chaos? What does he think is gonna happen? And yet, we do the same things. We have sins that we are blinded to, we're blind to what we're blind to, and we do it over and over again. And you have to sit back and say, praise God for his steadfast, long-suffering, and if you have anyone close to you, praise God for his steadfast and long-suffering that is being manifest in the people that are close to me that I keep sinning all over. And they keep feeling the pain of these character flaws. He not only is patient with me, but he gives them the mercy to live with me, or at least in close proximity with me. And so we hopefully cherish these people more so. If you've got a spouse, that one's the first place you look at. You spend a lot of time with them. They know your weaknesses, your character flaws. Okay, let's look at, we know that Jacob was, excuse me, Joseph was promoted because he was loved more. But there's another thing going on here. He was also promoted as a response to Reuben's sin. Reuben was last time, he was in chapter 35. And so let me ask the question, What did Jacob do to distinguish Joseph as now being the firstborn status, or having the firstborn status? Remember, Reuben took Bilhah, violated her, and so the firstborn status was taken away from him. We saw that in 1 Chronicles 5.1. Clearly, explicitly, it says that. We saw that in Genesis 48, that when it comes time for Jacob to bless all the sons, when it gets to Reuben, we can't call it a blessing, it's a curse. You went to my couch? You did this on my couch? So it's clear, Reuben's out, Joseph's in. Isn't that interesting? He didn't follow which son is next in age. He said, wife that I was tricked into marrying on the night I was married, who I don't love because she participated in the trickery, wife I always intended to love on the night of my marriage but was deprived of that son, Joseph. The firstborn is going to move from that wife to this wife, and the first child, the firstborn there. And so we have Joseph. So what do we see here? Now we understand where this robe comes from. This robe isn't just a robe of favoritism. This robe is showing This is my firstborn. If any of you brothers or your sister Dinah have any confusion about this, this one wearing the robe, the robe of many colors, is what our Bibles say. Interestingly enough, that is a valid option based on what we know in the ancient Near East of what royalty wore. They would wear robes of many colors. But that's not what the Hebrew actually says. It's a robe of pasim. Im, we know, is always plural. Pas is the palm of your hand or the sole of your foot. It can be two palms, plural, or two feet, or it can be palm and foot or sole. The idea is that it's a robe that goes to the end of your wrists. It has long sleeves, which was not worn by the commoner, and it went below the knee because all commoners wore robes that were knee-length, and it went down to your ankles. And in fact, the reason we know that is because there's only one other place that this word is used in the Old Testament. And it speaks of the robe that Tamar, Princess Tamar, the king's daughter, David's daughter wore. It's what she tore when she was violated by Amnon. It says there, it uses the word, and when describing the robe, it says, a long robe with sleeves. So whether this robe is a robe of many colors, which I put one cool little drawing for your little ones if you wanted something to look at or whatever. Whether it's a robe of many colors, as listed in that little drawing in the insert, or it's a long sleeve robe that goes all the way down to the ankles. The idea is, it's a robe to distinguish him as a royal position within the family. He is the highest esteemed person in the family, the highest esteemed child. Now, there's some sad irony in this. When you think about Dinah, Dinah's the only sister on scene right here. Dinah's violated and dad will not even do anything to get back her honor. by way of Shechem, the prince of Shechem that stole it from her. The sons take action, they take too much action, they murder all the male men, but he does nothing. And yet now, dad esteems one son over the rest, and he gives him the robe that shows that he is the firstborn, he is the one that is above all the brothers. Do you think that all the brothers and sisters, including Dinah, kinda knew that they were less, oh yeah. I can't help but think of poor Dinah. She gets nothing, and one of the brothers gets absolutely raised up. Let's continue on. Now let's take a look at What will this promote as an emotion? And I hope you're seeing there's a logical progression that is demonstrating the brothers aren't the bad guys you and I may have thought they were in the past. The dirt, the bad guy in this right now is Joseph as well as his father Jacob. In verse four, 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. That means they couldn't even greet him and say, hello brother. They were just disgusted in his presence. Think about this. This is the one that is the backstabber to the lowest status brothers who give a report that even lower their status further at their expense so that Joseph can be raised up. They can't even look at him There's no conversation here. It's the idea of them looking away. But wait, there's more insult to injury. If it wasn't hard enough to stomach this understanding of Joseph, it gets worse. Let's look at verse number five. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. In fact, at the end, you're going to see it's going to reference At the very end, it's gonna say the dream and the words. The idea that he even had a dream, and then what the dream means as a reference to two things going on here, but we'll get to that in a minute. Again, where am I? Verse five. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, here, hear this dream that I have dreamed. It's this idea of immaturity, timing. Have you ever been blessed in the middle of somebody's not being blessed? You don't go into their presence and say, hey, you know what happened to me? I know what you guys are going through. Your life is tough. You got nothing. You're falling down. Everybody hates you, but I want you to hear what I got going on. And oh, by the way, it puts me above you. Hey, could you hold on to this one for a little bit? Timing might be a little bit wrong here. But the maturity isn't there. He's naive. He almost feels like he's compelled to get it out. Let me explain to you before we get into what he says, what dreams are according to, this is from the IVP Bible background commentary. I thought they gave a really wonderful description of dreams. Dreams in the ancient world were thought to offer information from the divine realm and were therefore taken very seriously. Some dreams given to prophets and kings were considered a means of divine revelation. That's important for us. Most dreams, however, even the ordinary dreams of common people, were believed to contain omens that communicated information about what the gods were doing. We're going to get dreams that are going to tell us what the gods are doing, not the gods, excuse me, not little g, the god, Yahweh, is doing in the life and the history of this nation, in particular, this family. Let me continue on. The dreams that were omens usually made no reference to the deity. We're not gonna see any reference to a deity. Dreams were often filled with symbolism, we're gonna see that, necessitating an interpreter. That's where Joseph is gonna play a major role later on. Though at times the symbols were reasonably self-evident. We're gonna see some reasonably self-evident symbols today, and we're gonna see some that maybe we haven't noticed before. So let's take a look. Let's get into the dream itself. And then we have, again, the introduction of God, now into the story by way of it being a dream. And we have, unfortunately, a logical, I didn't say acceptable, I said logical hatred of the brothers towards their brother, Joseph. We understand why or how they got to this place of hatred. So let's read dream number one, verse seven. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And behold, my sheave arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheave. His brother said to him, are you indeed to reign over us? Interesting enough. There's a word, another word play. It's not really a word play, it's an emphasis. It's a play on words that when they do this in Hebrew, there's an emphasis going on. It's when you use two verbs next to each other and that both verbs have the same three letters used in it. So in the Hebrew, it says this, ha-ma, ha-ma, excuse me, ha-ma-mo-lech and ti-mo-lech. The ha just means it's a question. And what it's saying there is emphasize this. There is disgust that is being emphasized. In fact, the English translation catches it out. We use a word called indeed. That's what the word is doing there. It's doing it because the Hebrew said, put it in there. They are saying, like in a voice inflection of disgust, are you indeed to reign over us? Same thing happens in this part. Or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dream, the dream itself, and for the words, in other words, the content of the dream, what the dream is saying is going to happen. Let's continue on, dream number two, and we're going to go back and explain both these dreams, but let's keep going. Dream number two, then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, you know, I got to say something here. Really? One wasn't enough? You didn't catch that they were a little upset when they said, really? You're going to do this over us? He just, boom, we got another one going. We don't know that there might be some time. in between these dreams, but the point is, didn't you see what it did to your brothers before? Really, you're gonna throw out another provoking statement here? Okay, let's continue on. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have 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 have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers come to bow down ourselves to the ground before you?" And his brothers were jealous of him. And something very important for our passage is when we get into the New Testament, his father kept this saying in mind. Now, what's interesting in this, if you'll look at verse 10 here, you'll see the word indeed there. I have never read this verse right. until this week. And you know why I didn't? Because I allowed my emotions or my thinking of what the narrative was to drive that was going on in verse 11. I read over this verse wrong every single time until this week. And what I mean by this? It's very important where the indeed is. The indeed is an emphasis. There's two verbs in there. What's being emphasizing? To come or to bow? And the answer is to come. I always assumed it was a bow. I took my understanding of, I'm not gonna bow to one of my brothers. I've got nine other siblings. You think I'm gonna bow to one of them? Uh-uh, I'm number six. I have a hard enough time in number six getting any respect. I'm not bowing to any one of my siblings. So I imposed, I did some, instead of exegetical, I was doing some eisegesis and imposing it on here, thinking bowing was the greater, the more no way kind of thing I was gonna do, or Joseph was doing. It's not. It's coming. So you've got to sit there and go, why is coming such a big deal? Because we understand we have to go back to what we've seen so far in Genesis. It's coming into the presence. The lower comes into the presence of the greater. The lower comes into the presence of the greater. And what we're going to see here, distance is going to signify the value of the greater. Joseph and his brothers and even his father and his mothers, his whole family, are going to go 200 miles to come into the presence of Joseph so that they can get food to sustain them. And you go, oh. And you're going to see this play out in the other nations as well. It's not just the brothers. So let's continue on and see if we can grasp what's going on here. First off, we know, it's not in our text here, but later on, when Joseph is interpreting Pharaoh's text, the last guy of authority he's gonna interpret his dream of, that he tells Pharaoh, look, you had two dreams. And if you've got two, a doubling of those dreams means for sure it's gonna happen. So there's no doubt that's happening exactly the way it says it's gonna happen. So we've got two dreams here. We take that hermeneutic and we apply it to two dreams by Joseph and go, oh, this is for sure gonna happen. So the question gets asked. So what's going on in these dreams and how is Joseph a type of Christ? Get there already, Nick. Explain it for me. Dream number one. Let's give some understanding and unpack it. First, there's the foretelling. You've got the brothers are going to recognize and acknowledge Joseph's authority and ruling and reigning over them. You can see that clearly. You can see it in the response of the brothers. It makes them mad. Very clear to see that. But there's also more going on. The sheaves. Why are sheaves bowing? What's the symbolism? What do they represent? The sheaves represent the brothers, yes, grant that, but they also represent, and you'll go, oh yeah, no duh, they also represent the means by which this bowing will come about. Food, or the lack of food. famine and we go oh yeah we can see that okay they wouldn't know it ahead of time they would have to live it and look back and go oh yeah now I know why it was sheaves but we can have that benefit all right we have that benefit now let's look at dream number two we have foretelling again The commentators, man, do they get wrapped up in the 11 sons. It's amazing, all the different things that people suggest here. And I'm gonna share with you, there's a very simple hermeneutic to demonstrate what this actually means. First, it says, I believe that the whole family, excuse me, the dream is talking about the whole family will come into Joseph's presence and recognize his rule and reign over them all. He is ruling and reigning over the whole family, not just brothers and sisters. Mom and dad, that's why Jacob pops up and goes, you think we're going to bow down to you? You're going to take a position of authority over me as a patriarch? What's going on? You're crazy. That's why you get the rebuke. But what is important here is the sun, moon, and stars. Yes, on the context of the immediate. It's talking about the whole family. Some commentators got lost in, is it Leah? Is it Rachel? Rachel's already dead. Could it be both? No, don't go there. It just represents the whole family. Father, son, excuse me, father, wife, all wives, and all of the brothers that we know. That's the picture. You think Dinah wasn't involved in it? She's not listed. It's giving a unit on understanding. So let's move forward. So while it represents the whole family, it also represents the celestial, and let me be more specific now, the angelic realm, the host of heaven. And I am not talking about planets that you look up at and you see a planet and you say, oh, that is an object and they're worshiping the planet because they're dumb and that's just stupid paganism. No, I'm talking about the God that that ball, that sphere, that whatever it is in the sky represents. Now let me explain. Let me back this up because I got some backing up to do. Deuteronomy 4, 19 to 20. If you want to go there, this one might be helpful. Deuteronomy 4, 19 to 20. We're going to use the author, Moses, and what he uses to describe these three items, and then take his definition and put it into ours. He has the greatest authority to do that. He wrote Deuteronomy. He wrote Genesis. He's our guy. So let's see what he calls the sun, moon, and stars. Deuteronomy 4, 19 and 20. And he's talking about, this is early on in Deuteronomy, when he's giving one of his speeches, he's telling them, look, new generation, old generation has all but died out. You're getting ready to go into Canaanite, to go conquer the Canaanites. Don't make these mistakes. And here he goes, he says, and beware, lest you raise your eyes to heaven. And when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, and here he qualifies all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them. He's speaking of the fallen angels. I'll get there in a minute. And serve them. You don't serve planets, you serve gods. This is what Celestial is talking about. This is what the host of heaven is. Do not fall to the trick that the other nations have fallen to in worshiping these false gods. And I want you to hear gods over and over again. Small g, he's going to explain it. Moses is going to explain what that is. Let's keep going. You be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them. things that, in other words, these things of this actions of serving these false gods, things that the Lord your God has allotted to the peoples under the whole of heaven. He said, the whole of heaven minus my nation, you got these gods. I'm the God of the heaven, excuse me, I'm the God of the nation of Israel. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this day. All right, so we gotta keep moving because certainly you are wise to be going, I don't know, Nick, I haven't heard this before, unless you've been in here for a while. If you're new to Redeemer, you've heard this. You heard this back in chapter 11 of Genesis. But if you haven't, this is new, so let's be Bereans and keep looking. So when did God allot the peoples under the whole of heaven to the hosts of heaven, which are the fallen angels? Which, by the way, didn't start as fallen angels, but they ended up as fallen angels. We'll read here. Now switch over, go all the way to Deuteronomy 32, seven through nine. Deuteronomy 32, seven to nine. We're gonna try and wrap this up in the next couple minutes here. Deuteronomy 32, 79, he's late. This is another speech he's getting ready. This is one of the, this is designed to be, hey, follow this before you go. I'm almost out of here. I'm almost taken away by God. Follow these rules. Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you your elders, and they will tell you when the most high, critical, most high is speaking of a comparison between other. gods, small g. When you see the name Most High written, I can tell you that almost always, well, I'll say it this way, always there's an understanding of a heavenly realm, and almost always you will actually see either implied or explicitly stated something to do with that other realm, that heavenly realm and the gods of that realm, the false gods. All right, let me continue on. Sorry, I've lost my place. Now there it is, verse eight. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, when he divided mankind, oh yeah, that's when he took the one tongue that they all had at the Tower of Babel, and he divided the tongues and gave them many tongues. And now they were divided peoples, a table of 70 nations. went out from the Tower of Babel. And that's what we know as the nations in that region at that time. That's when he divided mankind. That's how he did it. He took away their ability to communicate. And with a single tongue, he took away the unity of evil and spread it out so that they couldn't come up with the greatness of evil that a large mass could come up with. We might just think about the looting that we see going on. You put people together, you escalate violence and evil. If you give them the right or the wrong, however you want to look at it, emotional impetus, there we go, got it right. then it's amazing what people will do. Let's continue on. He fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number, and here's our word, sons of God. That's the angelic reign. Those are the top angels. Those are the angels of the divine counsel. If this is brand new to you, go back to our sermon series in the area of chapter 11. I take an entire sermon and explain the divine counsel. They're the ones that are referred to as the sons of God. They're the ones that God allows counsel to be engaging in. It's not like they tell you God what to do. God allows them to have input as they oversee that which he has made. We see the same thing with human beings. Why is this such a foreign idea? Like, oh God would never do that with angels. Really? They do a whole lot better being righteous than we do. Let's continue on. We read, so when were these dreams fulfilled? Now, Nick, take it home. Genesis 41, 56 to 57. Genesis 41, 56 to 57 says this, so when the famine has spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover, so we get the idea, all right, he's dealing with Egypt, geographically, and then the next verse, 57, he's gonna open it up to the whole earth. Moreover, all the earth came. Remember the prophecy? Remember the dream? They're all going to come underneath, and come underneath your authority. All the earth came into the presence, in other words, of Joseph, is what he's picturing there. All the earth came to Egypt, to Joseph, to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth. All right, you're a false god. You're one of the 70 gods, you've got the 70 nations, and your people are coming to you and saying, they're praying to you, they're giving you sacrifices, they're doing all sorts of terrible sacrificial yuck out there, trying to get you, elicit you to do something on their behalf. And nothing. The famine just stays. And finally you abandon your false god, and you say, I'm lowering myself, I'm going to Egypt. Egypt has food. And in that sense, All of the heavenly hosts, the fallen angels, in this sense, have now bowed. They have no authority, even in their own boundaries, to stop the famine. God brings all of their people to submit to him and to what he's doing through Joseph. And we will see that this is the story of Jesus in a larger sense of the two realms. Let's continue on. Joseph, at this time, I'm going back to our passage here again, in one through 11, is not worthy to wear the royal robe that his father gave him. It is painful for his brothers to see him wearing that. One day, Joseph will wear the royal robe of authority of an entire nation, and God will have made him worthy to wear that, as he rules and reigns in righteousness, not unrighteousness, like he was doing with his brothers. One day in the future, God will make Joseph a type, in other words, a dim example, a forerunner to the ruler over the earthly realm and the heavenly realm. We know him as Jesus Christ. Listen to Luke 1, 31 to 33. Don't turn there. I've just got to get us there quickly. And behold, this is Gabriel talking to Mary, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. We now know what Most High is supposed to bring in. We're bringing in that understanding. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. And he will, now listen to the words he uses here in Luke. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. That's what the dream was about. And we see the connection, the typology. Christ is the fulfillment of the dim picture of who Joseph was way back then. This is the beautiful, the glorious picture now of who Christ is. We continue on. And of his kingdom, there will be no end. Well, if there's no end to a kingdom, you're gonna have to remove all the evil. You're going to have to judge and remove evil. So keep that in mind. We continue on. Luke 2, 18 and 19. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds had told them. It's a little later in the story. Mary, just like Jacob. treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. Jacob and Mary know there's more to these dreams, there's more to this communication from these angels that is going on here as they try and understand it. Jesus Christ is the God-man. He is the king over the earthly realm and the heavenly realm. In defeating death, he has defeated Satan and the powers of darkness in the angelic realm. When Jesus returns again to judge every knee from both realms that has not already willfully bowed will bow. Both realms, rebellion, your knee bows in front of the king. We either demonstrate our allegiance and demonstrate us going down to one knee and bending and saying, you are definitely my God. Or we are forced to bend knee. Christ's return. All will acknowledge his rule over them, while we, the ones who have repented of our sins and trusted in his death and resurrection, will joyfully praise and exalt his name for eternity. Let's praise God. Oh Heavenly Father, thank you for the truths. Thank you that you use these truths to give us an idea of the fullness of your Son. I pray that in my life and in the lives of the holy ones here, that's what saints means. Those of us that are trying to be holy, that you have determined, and you said positionally, legally, we stand holy, and we look at ourselves and go, oh God, why do you wait on me? Why are you so patient with me? Lord Almighty, allow these kind of understandings to change us this week. that we, when we're tempted to sin, we are reminded of the beautiful glory, the power, and the authority of Christ to change our sinful patterns by the person of the Holy Spirit. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.