Evil Repurposed for Good

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, our sermon text is from Genesis 37. It's the beginning of the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph is quite long. We won't be able to read all of it. Victoria gave us a great outline of it. I think that's exactly right. And we want to pay attention to that part at the end where he says, what you did, which was meant for evil, God was able to use for good. But I want to talk about this is the idea behind the beginning of this sermon series is that the Old Testament is always pointing forward to the New Testament, right? Jesus, his name isn't in the Old Testament, but there's all these sort of signposts to them. And so you would say, this is a good reason to study the Old Testament. Sometimes the Old Testament is like this book that we kind of ignore. We just kind of turn the pages past it and you get to the New Testament. And growing up, going to church, when there were sermons, there were not many sermons about the Old Testament in the Lutheran church that I grew up in. Sometimes there were, but not often. In fact, the lectionary... They're kind of commanded in a way that the sermon always be preached pretty much from one of the gospels. So that's just how the lectionary was designed. So a pastor kind of had to take some liberties if they were going to actually preach on a

[1:12] text of the Old Testament. The Old Testament texts were there to kind of contribute, but it's okay to preach just on an Old Testament text like we're going to today. And I would say as a church, we are often preaching in the Old Testament. I think that's a good thing. We're trying to balance it out. Okay. But it's more work. Honestly, I'll be honest with you. It's more work because I know a lot more about the New Testament than I do about the Old Testament. That's just how my education was done when I went to seminary. That's just how I think a lot of us are. So when I study the Old Testament to preach on it, it's like unpacking a treasure. It's really wonderful. There's a lot there to find. And one of the great things you find is that the Old Testament is always pointing forward to the New Testament. And God shows his faithfulness throughout the Old Testament. And it comes to its culmination in the New Testament. It's really exciting.

[2:00] So I want to give you just a quick list before I start reading, and it's not even an exhaustive list of people in the Old Testament who point forward to Jesus. And Joseph is going to be one of them. So you're probably familiar with David. David's a man after God's own heart, but he was anointed by the prophet Samuel, and that word anointed. Anointed is the word mashal, which is where we get the word Messiah. And so David was kind of like the first Messiah in that sense. He was anointed. Well, actually Saul was anointed too, but David was anointed second, and God chose David. So David was the Lord's Messiah. And there's all sorts of ways in which David is sort of a type or a prototype of Jesus, pointing forward to Jesus. And Jesus is in the family tree of David, right? Think about, but let's go back closer to the beginning. Enoch. We don't hear about Enoch much. One day he was walking along and he was taken up to heaven.

[3:01] He didn't die. Nobody could find him, right? He was just taken up to heaven. This idea of being like Jesus, like being ascending to heaven, just what happened to Enoch. It also happened to Elijah. Yeah, Elijah just went up. You know that song, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot? That's about Elijah. The chariot of fire comes, grabs Elijah and takes him up into the sky. And Elisha's like, wow. Wow. That was pretty good. And then it turns out Elisha does more miracles than Elijah. Pretty good. Okay. Noah.

[3:35] Noah, who was appointed as a steward, a new creation, right? And this idea that God saved a remnant of the world in this little ship, right? So that's kind of pointing forward to Jesus. Here's one by, almost by negative example. Jonah points forward to Jesus. How? He spends three days in the deep and comes up again. As if to new life. Now he makes a lot of mistakes, so he's not like Jesus in that way. But Jonah is kind of a sign or pointing forward to Jesus. And for today. Now I'll stop there because I could go on and on and on. But today we'll just say Joseph, who was sold into slavery and left for dead, who rescued his own family who betrayed him, and he rescued them from famine and death. Do you get the idea? So there's always these things that are happening that God is doing in the Old Testament that are pointing forward to the New Testament and to Jesus. So with that in mind, let's go to our next topic. Our reading is Genesis 37, starting with verse 2.

[4:28] This is the account of Jacob and his family. When Joseph was 17 years old, he often tended his father's flocks. He worked for his half-brothers, the sons of his father's wives, Bilhah and Zilpah. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing. He's really popular. Little brother. Young man. Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his brothers. He loved many of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age. So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph, a beautiful robe. But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them. They couldn't say a kind word to him. One night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever. Listen to this dream. He said, we were out in the field tying up bundles of grain. Suddenly my bundle stood up and your bundles all gathered around. Then he bowed low before mine. His brother responded, so you think you will be our king? Right?

[5:40] Right? Right? Right? well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him. What kind of dream is that? He asked. Will your mother and I bow and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you? But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant. Soon after this, Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flock at Shechem. When they had been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shechem. Get ready and I will send you to them. I'm ready to go, Joseph replied. Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are getting along, Jacob said. Then come back and bring me a report. So Jacob sent him on his way and Joseph traveled to Shechem from their home in the valley of Hebron. When he arrived there, a man from the area noticed him wandering around the countryside. What are you looking for, he asked. I'm looking for my brothers, Joseph replied. Do you know where they are pasturing their sheep? Yes, the man told him. They have moved on from here, but I heard them say, let's go on to Dothan. So Joseph followed his brothers to Dothan and found them there. When Joseph's brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance.

[7:02] As he approached, they made plans to kill him. Here comes the dreamer, they said. Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. We can tell our father a wild animal has eaten him. Then we'll see what becomes of his dreams. But when Reuben heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph's rescue. Let's not kill him, he said. Why should we shed any blood? Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness. Then he'll die without our laying a hand on him. Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father. So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing. Then they grabbed him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty. There was no water in it. Then just as they were sitting down to eat, they looked up and saw a caravan of camels in the distance coming towards them. It was a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, what will we gain by killing our brother? We'd have to cover up the crime. Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.

[8:19] And his brothers agreed. So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph's brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for 20 pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen.

[8:43] Well, that's a tough story, isn't it? Because some of them actually wanted to kill their brother. So you get a sense of how angry they were at him. And I mean, just a note, don't play favorites with your kids because look what happens. I mean, just don't play favorites with your kids. That's not the gospel. That's just advice. Take it or leave it. But I think it's decent advice, okay? But they were mad. Some of them wanted to kill him. Reuben was one of the oldest and wisest. He's like, well, no, no, let's just let them blow off some steam. I'll rescue him later and bring him home. You know, we'll all talk about this. And then Judah, Judah actually talks some sense into them. He's our own flesh and blood.

[9:26] So let's sell him into slavery. I think that's just such a contradiction. Like he's our own flesh and blood. So let's sell him as a slave. I don't make heads or tails of that sentence, but they were mad and they didn't want him around anymore. So this is what they did to their brother, right? And they got a little bit of money out of it. And then the story goes on, as you know, they take his coat, they cover it with blood, they bring it home and they convince their father that, he's dead. And Joseph never, Jacob never forgets. Jacob never stops mourning for Joseph really. So, cause, and that to me is a really hard part of the story because every time those brothers see their father mourning, they must think to themselves, oh, what have we done? And maybe they're tempted to come clean, but they're like, how are we going to go find him now? He is as good as dead. He's gone. There's no way we're going to get him back. We have no idea where he is in Egypt. It's a mystery. And so they're like, well, we're going to go find him now. And so they're like, well, we're going to go find him now. And so they're like, well, we're going to go to the big country, right? So that must've been a lot of weird dynamics in that family after this

[10:25] sort of sin, actually really a sin in the family. So I'm going to go back to a little bit more about talking about God and the Old Testament. And one of the things that sometimes we hear, and there's kind of a conversation I had with somebody yesterday after our session was, gosh, it sometimes seems like the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. Do you guys ever think that? It's okay if you do. I'm not going to run you out or anything like that. But it actually is a heresy called Martianism. And the church did kick people out for that a long time ago in the 200s or so. But there was a sort of a church leader named Marcius, Martian, Marcion. It sounds like a girl's name, but it's a man.

[11:12] And he taught that the God of the Old Testament was sort of vindictive and evil, and he was a different God than the God of the New Testament. They were different gods, two different gods. And thus the Old Testament to him was then was really not a very reliable revelation of what God is like. And it was a very oversimplification of what the Old Testament was like and the New Testament was like. And you do read in the Old Testament, there's a lot of killing. Let's be honest. There's a lot of selling your brother into slavery, and there's even some glorification of killing, right? So there's some challenges. There's some challenges in the Old Testament. But you have to kind of look at it that way. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think in the view of sometimes this is in contrast to God's holiness, that some people are judged by God and they die. There's a time when some people say some bad things around Moses and the ground opens up and swallows them whole. Moses didn't do that. God did that. And it's tough. It's tough stuff. So there's definitely some work we can do to try to understand that. But on closer study, we find that God is... It's consistent between the two Testaments. The major apparent difference is that in the Old

[12:24] Testament, God appeals more to the law to call people to holiness, right? And in the New Testament, it's really like God realizes that didn't work. And it's not God's fault. It's our fault that it didn't work. We cannot follow the law. Paul talks about this in great detail, right? We are unable to keep the law. So God says, okay, they can't keep the law. I'm going to send my son who will keep the law. them. And so then the New Testament would more emphasize faith in the Son to rescue us from sin and make us whole. Do you get the idea? So there was a sense that, and this was always the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and the religious leaders, was they were still in Old Testament mode saying, we're going to keep the law, we're going to keep the Sabbath, that's going to make us holy. And Jesus would say things like, it's not what goes into you that makes you unholy, it's what comes out of you that makes you unholy. Sort of this idea of cleanliness getting turned on its head. And then ultimately Paul reveals to us, Jesus and Paul reveal to us, that it's faith in the Son that creates our righteousness and our holiness, not keeping the law. But here's the interesting thing. There are many places in the Old Testament where God values faith over works

[13:35] of the law. So Abraham believes God's promises about the future and God credits to him as righteousness. So God gives righteousness in exchange for faith in the Old Testament. And as our speaker talked about the other day, when Samuel confronts King Saul about having kept too many spoils of war, and Saul says, well, we were going to sacrifice them now that you ask. Before that, we weren't going to do it. We were going to keep them all for now that you ask, we're going to sacrifice them. And God said, you know, I don't want that external work of the law. I don't want that sacrifice, right? So it's, it's, it's, it's more, it's where the heart is. It's really where the heart is. So there's, there's places.

[14:24] And there's many, so there's places in the Old Testament where God values faith over works of the law. And guess what? There's many places in the New Testament where the law is elevated and intensified. Look at the Sermon on the Mount among other places, right? The law is important. The law continues to be important. But the Old Testament to the New Testament more is that God says the Son will keep the law. For my broken people and they will have faith in him. And so there is consistency between them, but to a casual observer or to a new learner, they do, they look like very different books and they are very different, but God is consistent in them if we understand it properly. Okay. So the story of Joseph is a really a good opportunity to examine how God is consistent between the Testaments and how the Old Testament points forward to the New Testament and it lays the foundations for the New Testament. So I want to list a few themes here that, You could take notes on these because it's a bit of a list, but they're all in and of themselves. They're very interesting and they're worth a sermon on their own, but we're not going to do it that way. There's about four or five themes here in the Old Testament that we find in the New Testament.

[15:30] So these are themes that get developed in the Old Testament and they come to fruition in the New Testament or they're repeated in the New Testament. So one theme in the Old Testament that God says directly to Abraham is that he wants to bless all the nations through Abraham's descendants. He says, I'm going to give you many descendants and I'm going to bless the nations through your descendants. And so we find that almost right away, Joseph, one of Abraham's descendants, Abraham's great grandson, blesses Egypt, which is a foreign country. Joseph blesses Egypt because he helps guide them through a famine and they become very wealthy for it too, actually, as it turns out. And in the same way, Jesus instructs his disciples to go into all the world. With the gospel. So there's, even though you have you reading the New Testament, you're reading the book of Acts, you see that it really does seem like Jesus is there just for Jewish people to help them come to faith. But Jesus is doing things for Gentiles all the time. There's many very important interaction between Jesus and Gentiles. And then, of course, Paul becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. So Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy that Abraham's descendants.

[16:45] Would bless all the nations. He does it through Jesus. So another theme is that, and this is my favorite because I'm the youngest child in my family. Who's the youngest here? Yesterday, everybody, the oldest had to raise their hands, but now the youngest. Yay!

[17:01] You're the best. Did you know that? And you're my favorite. Woo! No, you're not. I guess Christa's grandma used to say, you're all my favorites. And that doesn't mean anything, actually, when you think about it. Or it means a lot. It just depends on how you take it. So one theme in the Old Testament that gets repeated in the New Testament is that God frequently chooses the youngest child to bring about his purposes. He kind of sticks it in the eye of culture and of family dynamics. And in that older culture, there was a lot of emphasis on the firstborn child. If he had three sons, the first one got a double share of the estate when it was time to share out the estate. And the other two got just single shares. Right? And the oldest son, you know, just was, it was like, oh, it's the oldest son. You know, he can walk on water. But over and over again in the Old Testament, it's the youngest son that God says, I'm going to choose this one to do what I want. So here's some examples. Isaac is the younger son.

[18:04] Jacob is the younger son. Joseph is the second youngest son. He has a younger brother, but he's basically the youngest son. Who else is the youngest son? I've got one on my list here. You've got to say it.

[18:15] David is the youngest son. He's so young, he's overlooked. He's like, he's not even in the room when Samuel comes to anoint a new king. They're like, he's like, do you have any other kids? Well, just the youngest son. I mean, he's nothing. He's out there watching the sheep. Bring him here. We're going to anoint him king right away. You know, the youngest son is. And so why? Why does God do this in the Old Testament? Same reason he does it in the New Testament. God is always wanting to demonstrate that it's through God's power. That all these great things happen. It's not the status of the person that he chooses. It's God's power. And he chooses the least person to do his things, which is great news for us. Because I feel like for us youngest kids, but not just us youngest kids, but all of us, we can be the least or we can feel like the least, but that doesn't mean God can't use us. Right? So, and God likes to upend the social order. He likes to get our attention. So in the New Testament, we find that Jesus is always elevating the poor and he's elevating sinners and tax collectors. And saying several times this famous phrase that you've heard many times, the first will be last and the last will be first. We call it the inverted kingdom.

[19:24] Where Jesus is saying, I'm going to turn everything upside down. I'm going to work through and bless the people that nobody else really cares about. So that could be the youngest child, or it could be the lowest person in the social order or the economic order. And I'm going to do, I'm going to bless them, or I'm going to do great things through them. And Jesus himself, even though he's a first child. He comes in. He comes in very humble circumstances. He's not born in the palace, right? So God wants to rescue the world, not with grand and powerful people, not with armies, not with political movements, not with power, but one person at a time in relationship and humility and in love. Right? So this is how God acts in the world. And this is all God always showing that he is for the little person by in the old Testament, choosing the youngest son to do all these things, or in some cases, a prostitute or a sinner or a woman. You know, who are not, don't get me wrong, but this is in that, in that culture that was considered very sort of counter-cultural, right?

[20:23] So another theme, God cares about those in bondage. He cares about, of course, the slaves who are in Egypt, but Joseph's brothers thought nothing about selling him into slavery. But God watched over Joseph and blessed him as a slave. And later as a prisoner, he was falsely accused, but God was faithful to him all along. He continued to give him this gift of entrustment. Right?

[21:02] Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? and the devil. And so God cares about the prisoners. God cares about those in bondage. You see that in the story of Joseph. You see that very much in the story of Exodus. And then that shows up very much as Jesus is the one who rescues and redeems us, right?

[21:24] And this is the final one, right? And this is where we come to the end of the Joseph story. God redeems us from our own personal bondage to sin, death, and the devil, but do you know what else he can do? He can redeem our mistakes and he can redeem the mistakes that other people have done to us. And this is really great. This is a really great outcome of this particular story of Joseph, but I think it's a really great outcome in life, okay?

[21:53] This dramatic ending of Joseph's story is where he confronts his brother. You cannot tell the Joseph story without telling this last part of it, right? He reveals himself to his brothers. They didn't recognize him, they didn't recognize him, they didn't recognize him, they didn't recognize him, but then in the event he can't help it anymore. He had kind of carried on a charade that he wasn't their brother and he was trying to kind of test them. But in the end he couldn't keep it up anymore and he started crying and he broke down and he revealed himself to them. And they fully expected to die at that moment because of what they did. They knew what they had done to him was wrong. And instead of taking revenge on them, he forgives them and he tells them that even though their treatment of him was meant for evil, God was able to bring something good out of it and that's how he saved his own family. So his own family was facing a famine and he was able to save the people of Egypt, he was able to save his own family, he was able to create a home for his family for many generations in the future. And that's this great kind of word about what God does, is he can take evil things that have happened to us and

[23:00] . . . and he can't make them not evil. They happen. They're evil. That's not going to change. It didn't change that Joseph was sold into slavery, and while he was in slavery, he was falsely accused and ended up in prison, which was probably far worse. None of that changed. None of that offense is gone. But what Joseph is able to see is that God was able to use that so that a greater good could come from it, and that may or may not always happen. So over and over again in the Gospels, we see just kind of the same thing, and I see it especially in the disciples. The disciples saying really dumb things or doing really dumb things, and Jesus is able to turn that into something. He's like, this is a teachable moment. You guys are doing something dumb. I'm going to teach you something, and this great thinking comes out of it. This great teaching comes out of it, right? And it highlights how he is doing a new thing in the world. The disciples, for example, just really want, you know, a town rejects them, and James and John are like, Jesus, should we call down fire from heaven to destroy that town as if they could? You know, like why would they think that they even could possibly command God to do such a thing? But they say this dumb thing to Jesus,

[24:13] and he's like, no. You know, from that we realize that Jesus does not want to bring the world to know him by power or by force or coercion or violence or anything, but by loving them and healing them, and by rescuing the world from sin, death, and the devil. So you get the sense that our mistakes continue to be opportunities for God to do something good in our lives if we let him, right?

[24:41] So just this alone, isn't this exciting? Just this alone can show us that the Old Testament has these great riches waiting for us to uncover, and it lays the foundation for the New Testament. And I would say you can't take the Old Testament apart from the New Testament. I really don't like, I hate to say this, every now and then you find a Bible that's just, you know, just the New Testament.

[25:00] I don't think they should publish those anymore. It's a mistake. You should have the whole Bible. It's not that hard. It's just a few extra, not just a few extra pages. Like, okay, it's like 800 extra pages, but still, you just don't publish them that way. It doesn't matter anymore with the internet and all that. But you don't take them apart. This one book, it belongs together. One points to the other, the other points back to the one. And often you'll read in the New Testament, especially Matthew's gospel, but elsewhere in Hebrews, this was done to fulfill prophecy. This was done to fulfill the words that were spoken. So the New Testament's always pointing back to the Old Testament. They cross over all the time. You can't take them apart. And so we do well to read it, the Old Testament. We do well to preach from it and to dig deeper into it so that we understand the words of Jesus even better. This is my journey through the Old Testament is when I read the Old Testament, I understand Jesus more than I did. That's the great riches that we find. So we're starting a six week small group to learn more about the Old Testament. And we're gonna use this walk through the Bible, Bible resources, and you can join. You don't have to have been at the thing yesterday

[26:02] and you don't have to do any hand motions either. The small group is separate from the hand motions. That's a different thing, I guess, but the hand motions are fun. So I wanna leave you with one thought. And I guess again, from the end of the Joseph story. And I was reminded this week that other people have harmed me in the past. Would you be surprised to hear that? Like I haven't gone through life with unscathed. Guess what? There have been people that have hurt me in the past. Oh, too bad. The details aren't important. And I'm fine now. And I'm really, when I say the details aren't important, doesn't mean that I'm not important. It's just that the details aren't important. Because why?

[26:37] Because God was able to use that hardship for my benefit. And in fact, I would even thank God for it. I would thank God that bad things had happened to me so that I could know God better. So I learned something about myself. I learned something about God. I was able to forgive and I experienced peace.

[26:56] That's not gonna happen for everybody and it's not gonna happen every time. But I encourage you that this is something that could happen for you. This is the great lesson from Joseph's story, right? I encourage you this week to give to God something that was meant to hurt you by another person and invite God to use it for your good. I don't know what that would look like. You might not either, you know, but God does. And I think he'll help you with it. So let's end with that idea. That's a challenge this week, to take something that somebody else has done to hurt you and ask God to turn it to your good. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for the Old Testament, for the story of Joseph, for all these great stories that we don't have time for, but we do in our own study. Thank you for pointing forward to Jesus all the time. And thank you for Jesus being the fulfillment of all these things. So Lord, we put into your hands our exercise for this week, that you would show us ways to turn bad things into things that can benefit us. And so we ask you to do that for us this week. In Jesus' name, amen.