[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I want you to imagine with me a family looking for a home to buy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been shopping for months trying to find the right house for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They really need an upgrade and finally they found it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the perfect home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has everything they need.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a mansion.
[SPEAKER_00]: but it's their home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got a big oak tree in the backyard, perfect for a swing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got a cute kitchen that's got lots of sun in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe most importantly, it has three bedrooms, which means the kids don't have to share a room anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first few months are pure joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have so much fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: They paint the walls, they're favorite colors.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have family movie nights in the living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dad spent Saturdays mowing the lawn, and it's not a chore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a joy for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a deep sense of pride about their new home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom plans a small garden which she loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their son now has his own room, so he can actually put his toys in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A big hot wheel set that he didn't have room for before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their daughter has enough room to have a doll house and a chair and a shelf next to it with books.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this family is overwhelmed with gratitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their house is a blessing, and they know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few more months pass, and they notice, the neighbors next door having some work done in their backyard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a new patio with an outdoor built-in kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as Dad's in the backyard glancing over it, he looks at his old charcoal grill and his metal ring fire pit and things boy, it would be nice to be able to afford that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That looks really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the neighbors across the street have a new kitchen put in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they invite everybody over to look at their chef's kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And mom thinks back to her kitchen with it scratched and dented appliances and thinks man, this makes my kitchen look pretty sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: So dad starts watching videos of backyard makeovers, and mom starts browsing Pinterest for kitchens they can't afford.
[SPEAKER_00]: And little comments start to slip out at the dinner table like my goodness, I wonder how they could afford that makeover like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're never gonna get their money back on that thing in this neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And dad goes, how could they afford such a nice backyard?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought they were still paying off student loans.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this envy starts to trickle down to the kids, the boy next door gets a new video game console with lots of new games.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girl across the street gets a new bike, hers has more than one speed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this family starts to have an atmosphere of envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: the trickles down from the parents to the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were so happy just a few months ago, but now their games don't have the best graphics and their bikes are a little scuffed and rusting and before long, the whole house has changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gone are the days of thankfulness and joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now every day, there's something new to compare.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sure, this house is nicer than the last one, but they could barely afford this and they can't afford all the cool upgrades that their neighbors seem to get so easily.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see the Jones or getting a new pool?
[SPEAKER_00]: he must have got another promotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Dad starts working over time to try to keep up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom is talking about getting a credit card so that they can get more home upgrades and she makes herself feel better by talking out all the debt her neighbors must be going into to make all these things happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Joy has been replaced with resentments.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cutting remarks in the house translate into action outside the home as they actually start to avoid their neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: because they really don't like them now.
[SPEAKER_00]: When a neighbor's package of decorations shows up at the door, instead of walking it across the street, mom just returns it to sender.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their house hasn't changed much in the last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still got the cool oak tree out back.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kitchen is still sunny, but the family has changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're different now.
[SPEAKER_00]: They took a trip down the ladder of envy into the pit of bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: and their momentary contentment has been replaced by a deep sense of lack and want.
[SPEAKER_00]: This story, as modern as it may sound, is an ancient one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the story we're going to see and the different form today in Genesis chapter 37.
[SPEAKER_00]: So open your Bibles to Genesis 37 if you haven't already.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are gonna read the story of Joseph and learn about the latter of envy and the pit of bitterness and what we can do to stay out of it or get out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis chapter 37 verse one starts like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jacob settled again in the land of Tainin, where his father had lived as a foreigner.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the account of Jacob and his family.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Joseph was 17 years old, he often tended to his father's flocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He worked for his half-brothers, the sons of his father's wives, Billha and Zilpa.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob loved Joseph, more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph, a beautiful robe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't say a kind word to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we should pause for a minute and remember how we got to this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen the fall of humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen the formation of the nations by God, and then we've seen the nations abandon him.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've seen God choose a special person to make a nation for himself out of, we've seen covenant promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we've seen the false and flaws of those men, those patriots, those founders of the faith and God, as we see it, they were flawed people.
[SPEAKER_00]: who often deceived and manipulated it and did all sorts of bad things and did not have good character in many instances with Jacob and particularly watched as he made many mistakes as a husband and as a father we talked about that last week lying, showing favoritism, not teaching good character to his sons and yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: with all of their faults and flaws of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others, God will keep his promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has made a covenant with this family and he is going to keep it and he is going to see them through and he is going to be faithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will accomplish his mission and he will work through flawed people to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good news for you and me, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that God works through flawed people is really good news for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well in our story today, we're going to see how all those faults and flaws get passed down to the children and they continue where their father left off, making mistakes, causing problems, and how God works through it any way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts with this idea of envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The jealousy that the brothers feel toward Joseph and it wasn't just about the robe.
[SPEAKER_00]: The robe is a big part of it, but the robe is the tipping point.
[SPEAKER_00]: The robe is a symbol meant to represent all of the other favoritism and all of the other things that we're going on to make them envious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we're going to do is we're going to look at the five steps down the ladder of envy into the pit of despair.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're going to look at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and put that on the screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five steps down the ladder of envy into the pit, not of despair, bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pit of despair is a different thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: with a pit of bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to see how we can work our way down those steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes without even realizing it, to the point of being willing to do things we never thought we would do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some pretty awful things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first step down the ladder is when you can probably already guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of comparison going on between the brothers, verse three tells us that Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and he wasn't afraid to show it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was okay with bragging about it and giving him this expensive robe so he could march around showing that he was the favorite one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Moses actually, Moses wrote Genesis, Moses actually gives us other clues to the comparison of these brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at verse two in your Bibles, tell me, who did Joseph work for?
[SPEAKER_00]: His brothers, which brothers?
[SPEAKER_00]: the sons of Bill Huh and Zilpa, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's who he worked for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who were Bill Huh and Zilpa?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the servant wives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So not the sons of Leah, and certainly not sons of Rachel.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point, on the Joseph is the only son of Rachel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's working for the sons of the servant wives, the servant wives who were pushed onto Jacob, if you remember, by Rachel and Leah, because they were comparing themselves with each other and how much offspring they were producing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Rachel felt bad because she hadn't produced any yet and Leah had produced a few.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Rachel pushed her servant onto Jacob and said, here, take her as a wife as well and have some sons with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Leah is not to be outdone, did the same thing with her servant, and so now there's two wives and two servant wives, and this whole messed up family dynamic came from comparison with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, do you remember when Jacob was about to face Esauh?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he lined his family up because he thought Esauh might attack and kill them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who did he put at the front of the line to
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the ones that were considered disposable.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the ones that had to be at the front and who went to the back, Rachel and Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Rachel and Joseph are in the safest spot.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this time, Benjamin is not born yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was actually born in the land of Canaan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph was born up north where they live with Uncle Laban and her on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, Joseph at the time of the encounter with ESA is about six years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other brothers are between seven and 13 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those brothers, the sons of Bill Hunsupah, are put at the front in the spot where they are going to be killed first if something goes down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that made a core memory?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that left a lasting impression on those boys?
[SPEAKER_00]: The comparison had been going on for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was years in the making.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that sticks with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you've got this brother who's so obviously the favorite, the youngest brother, he's baby, he's coddled, he gets everything he wants.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now he gets this expensive new robe.
[SPEAKER_00]: This elaborate, decorative, colorful thing that was meant to set him apart and show he is a special one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And clothes were the status symbol of choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't have phones, watches, or cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your clothes and your tent, those are probably two of your biggest status symbols.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can't carry your tent around with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Joseph has this amazing cloak, robe that he carries around with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if Joseph was smart,
[SPEAKER_00]: When Dad gave him this amazing present, what would he have done?
[SPEAKER_00]: If Joseph was smart, he would have said, thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is so meaningful to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love you too, and he would have left it in his tent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That would have been the smart thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted the comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: He invited the comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: He perrated around and the thing, he wore it out into the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wore it out as they were caring for the flocks in a place where you would think, well, you don't want to take that there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might get dirty, but he's not expecting to do the dirty work.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to wear this nice fancy expensive robe, and he's going to act like he's the boss, even though he's the youngest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Theodore Roosevelt once said that comparison is the thief of joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to our status and our possession, that's often the case when we compare ourselves with others is when we stop being content and happy with what we have and we start to resent them and be envious and jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all of these sons had it pretty good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plenty of food, plenty of resources, great places to stay, lots of wealth in the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there were no Joseph or there were no favoritism, they could have been perfectly happy and content,
[SPEAKER_00]: And that comparison led them to the next step down the ladder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's at the end of verse four.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, they couldn't say a kind word to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't say a kind word to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next step down the ladder is from comparison to coldness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like they immediately started to physically hurt him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like they were mistreating him in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: From the outside, in fact, it probably didn't look like they were treating him all that poorly.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, with Jacob's love of Joseph, would he have allowed him to work with these brothers if they were mistreating him?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and so all they did is they treated him coldly.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't say nice things to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't affirm him or encourage him, even when he did something good.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he walked over, they kind of turned away.
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably felt that before.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel like someone's just ignoring you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it's a misunderstanding, but sometimes there's actually a coldness that's there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that may be because of envy or jealousy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what the brothers are experiencing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would ignore him.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would turn away.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would treat him coldly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It probably bothered Joseph a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: He probably picked up on it because they were all doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it probably made it much easier to tattle on them and share some of the bad things they were doing with dad and get them into trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which of course, probably made them hate him even more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's what happens next in the story and how Joseph responds to it that really seals his fate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse five.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to this dream he said, we were out in the field tying up bundles of grain, suddenly my bundles stood up and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: His brothers responded, so you think you will be our king, do you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you actually think you will reign over us and they hated him all the more?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon, Joseph had another dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, he told his brothers about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I have had another dream.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, the sun moon in 11 stars bowed low before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This time, he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But his father scolded him.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of dream is that he asked?
[SPEAKER_00]: Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bowed to the ground before you?
[SPEAKER_00]: But well, his brothers were jealous of Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: His father wondered what the dreams meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's pause and talk about dreams for a little bit because a lot of people wonder about dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes God uses dreams to communicate with people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happens in Genesis multiple times.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how God warned King of Bimmelek that Sarah was Abraham's wife and not just his sister.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how he showed Jacob the latter and the portal to heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: earlier in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how he showed labor not to pass judgment on Jacob as he was running away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are many times in Genesis where God uses dreams to communicate in fact a few that are coming up with Pharaoh.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you think about the frequency of this, it's actually fairly rare.
[SPEAKER_00]: Less than ten people in the book of Genesis had some sort of dream that we know about from God out of the millions of people that were on earth at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is a very special thing, a very unique thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anytime there's something special and unique that happens, I always want to ask, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would God give Joseph these dreams?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the question that pops up as I read the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: knowing what's going to happen, knowing how it's going to tear apart the family, knowing the problems and the pain that it's going to cause, why would God go ahead and give Joseph this clue?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's already parading around in this cool coat, and now you're going to make him feel even more special.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would God do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the moment it's hard to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the text tells us Jacob wondered, what could this mean, what could this really be about, but looking back, we can see how God used the dreams to kick off
[SPEAKER_00]: his plan to save this family.
[SPEAKER_00]: The details of how he would save the family, you don't see until future chapters, but Joseph at the end of it all says, you meant this for evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: God meant it for good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph believed that God was working through the events and even the sins of people to bring about his mission to accomplish good things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the dreams that kicked that all off.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of the dreams as a little bit
[SPEAKER_00]: a test that he failed, a test that God knew he would fail, and God knew how the brothers would respond, and he knew that it would end up leading to Joseph going off to Egypt, and he knew that it would end up leading to the salvation of this family, and so Joseph confirms at the end, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good, God works through horrible things to accomplish his purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing wrong with the dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the dreams actually kicked off a reaction of pride and boasting for Joseph, a reaction of envy for the brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after this, they do some terrible things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the dreams helped lead to that and help accomplish the purposes of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, it's a story that Joseph can share with his children and gets passed on their descendants about how God worked through all of these events to orchestrate what he was trying to accomplish in a way that Joseph never could have imagined.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wondered what the dreams meant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph didn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob didn't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't understand until a long time later, how on earth God would accomplish his purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly how biblical prophecy works.
[SPEAKER_00]: biblical prophecy is never given to us so we can predict exactly what will happen and how it's given mostly so that afterward we can look back and realize that God had a plan all along and we had no idea how we would accomplish it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did it with the birth of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the the miracle of salvation and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people try to predict how exactly the Messiah would come about and who he would be and what he would do to rescue Israel from the occupiers and yet God says none of that is how I plan to do this at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gave you just enough so that looking back you could go, oh yeah that was what I meant but you could never have guessed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's often how biblical prophecy works.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Joseph has these dreams, and the brothers make their comparisons, and they treat him coldly, and it leads to something even worse in verse 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon after this, Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flocks at Sheckham.
[SPEAKER_00]: When they had been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shekham.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get ready, and I will send you to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready to go Joseph replied, like how we get the back and forth dialogue here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are getting along, Jacob said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then come back and bring me a report.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Jacob sent him on his way, and Joseph traveled to Shekham from their home in the valley of Hebron.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he arrived there, a man from the area noticed him wandering around the countryside.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you looking for?
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked, I'm looking for my brothers, Joseph replied, Do you know where they are pastoring their sheep?
[SPEAKER_00]: 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.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Joseph's brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance, as he approached, they made plans to kill him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here comes the dreamer, they said,
[SPEAKER_00]: We can tell our father a while the animal has eaten him, then we'll see what becomes of his dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the natural next step, down the ladder of envy and into the pit.
[SPEAKER_00]: From coldness, they move down to collusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Collusion is involving other people in your envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it might just be gossip.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gossip is collusion to ruin someone's reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sharing bad things about other people to hurt them and harm their reputation, it's a collusion about reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it can go further than that to colluding to actually harm or hurt the person in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, collusion is when envy becomes a group activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout the chapter, we've seen the brothers represented as a unified group.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of do everything together.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all in plurals.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were jealous together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They hated him together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They responded with accusations together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They heard and responded to his dreams together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They talked about him with each other and shared their hatred.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they made plans to kill him together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And envy is bad enough on its own.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is dangerous when you bring envy into a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it spreads around.
[SPEAKER_00]: James 3-5 says in the same way the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches, but a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our words are powerful, and when envy leads to gossip, things can quickly get out of control, because a group can end up doing things that those individuals would have never done on their own.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as you work your way down the ladder, and as more people join that cause,
[SPEAKER_00]: They can cause us to do things we never thought we would do before.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what happens with Joseph's brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now fortunately for Joseph, God was going to work to save him and protect him in the middle of all of that and get him to where he needed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when Rubin heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph's rescue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's not kill him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, why should we shed any blood?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness, then he'll die without our laying a hand on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rubin was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then they grabbed him and threw him into the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the system was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no water in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means he's not going to drown also means he's not going to have any water to drink.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a group of Ishmaelite traders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and then as they were sitting down to eat, they looked up and saw a caravan.
[SPEAKER_00]: of camels in the distance coming toward them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a group of Ishmaelite traders, taking a load of gum, ball, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Judas said to his brothers, what will we gain by killing our brother?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd have to cover up the crime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of hurting him, let's sell him to those Ishmaelite traders, after all he is our brother, our own flesh and blood, and his brothers agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the Ishmaelites who were midnight 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.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some time later, Rubin returned to get Joseph out of the Cistern, when he discovered that Joseph was missing, he tore his clothes and grief, then he went back to his brothers and lamented the boy is gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: What will I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Their cruelty was meant to be death for Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, it ended up only being sold into slavery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still a horrible thing for them to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it led to the next step down the ladder, which is from collusion to cruelty, from collusion to cruelty.
[SPEAKER_00]: When envy leads to gossip, things get out of control,
[SPEAKER_00]: A group does things they never imagined they would do as individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get swept up in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it leads down to actually being willing to do something terrible to hurt another person, being willing to kill him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But thankfully, Rubin and Judah saved his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so do we have that graphic, guys?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we put that up there from collusion to cruelty?
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see it show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one more step down the ladder of envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in verse 31, read along with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the brothers killed a young goat and dipped Joseph's robe in its blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: They sent the beautiful robe to their father with this message, look at what we found.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't this robe belong to your son?
[SPEAKER_00]: Their father recognized it immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he said, it's my son's robe, a wild animal must have eaten him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph has clearly been torn to pieces.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Jacob tore his clothes and dressed himself in burlap.
[SPEAKER_00]: He mourned deeply for his son for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: His family all tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will go to my grave, morning for my son, he would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he would weep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the Mid-E night traders arrived in Egypt where they sold Joseph to Potafir an officer of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Potafir was captain of the palace guard.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we've done something awful
[SPEAKER_00]: our instinct is to cover it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now we have worked our way all the way down the ladder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we might have missed, do we miss the cruelty graphic?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll have to make sure we get that in there for the next serve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone nod, yes or no, do we miss the graphic?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I thought so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that threw me off for a minute, because I'm like, I know there was something else in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made our way down from collusion to cruelty where we actually take action against another person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then from cruelty, the next step is to cover it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: To try to hide our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We double down on the lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might even tell more people and spread more to try to justify what we did and make it clear that they deserved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God sees all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sees through the lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: but it takes us down to the bottom of that pit of bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: That place where we're willing to do terrible things we never thought we would do because we gradually worked our way down the ladder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the good thing about ladders, though, is that they work both ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go down into the pit of bitterness, but you can also go back up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can stay out of it, which is the best solution, but let's be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've all been somewhere on that ladder, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you think about your past and your life and times where you've been on different step of that ladder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where you've been cold to other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you've been cruel to other people you've colluded, you brought other people into your envy, you've compared yourself with other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you even got all the way down to the bottom and you did something bad and then you tried to hide it and you tried to cover it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's work our way back up the ladder now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's think about what the Bible says about how to resolve each of these five stages of envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the antidotes?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the antidote to cover up is confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: The antidote to cover up his confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: First John one nine says, if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and it cleans us from all wickedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our response when we do something wrong should not be to try to hide it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be to own up to it and admit that we were wrong in doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the beauty of first John one nine is that we don't then try to fix ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: The text says, he will be just, he will be faithful, he will forgive our sins and he will cleanse us from all wickedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't actually do the cleansing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't pull yourself up out of the pit.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've gotten to that point where you're on that level of cruelty and you've harmed someone else in some way, instead of covering up or even if you have, confess it and allow God to start to lift you up out of that wickedness, the antidote to cover up is confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: The antidote to cruelty is kindness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The antidote to cruel to His kindness, Ephesians 432 says instead be kind to each other, tenderhearted for giving one another, just as God through crisis for giving you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, you may think someone has genuinely harmed you in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may think they have done something wrong to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible tells us to make allowance for each other's faults.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here in Ephesians Paul says, forgive one another, be kind to each other and tenderhearted.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea here is even if you think someone's wrong, wronged you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be kind to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so how much more, if it's just something that you're envious of, where you find yourself going, I don't like that person because of what they have, and I resent them because they have more of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't actually think they deserve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible tells us to be kind to that person, instead of being cruel to that person, and you will find that being intentionally kind is the antidote for the cruelty that you might feel in your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's especially powerful in a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as envy becomes more powerful in a group and can lead the group to do things that individuals would never have done as kindness takes hold and spreads, it can turn the group and change the group from being envious to being kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: The antidote for collusion is blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: antidote for collusion is blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: First Peter 39 says, don't repay evil for evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't retaliate with insults when people insult you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, pay them back with a blessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this passage for so many reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, Peter is saying, even if someone has actively harmed you in some way with their words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if they've insulted you, you don't react by insulting them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even in that case, you react by blessing them, but it comes with a promise.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you bless other people, God will bless you.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you have found that to be true in your life?
[SPEAKER_00]: That when you've been a blessing to others, you haven't found it, it got you into a hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you've been a blessing to others, you haven't found that it ultimately hurt you in some way, but you actually received more blessing from God as a result of blessing others.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's been my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a promise of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: that Peter gives to us right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so how much more, if we're supposed to bless people that insult us, should we be willing to bless people who were simply envisaged of?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they haven't actually done anything to harm us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't like them because they maybe have more than us or have a gift that we don't have that we wish we could have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or an abiliger, they seem to be favored by someone or favored at work or favored at school or favored in our neighborhood or favored by the HOA.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is,
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can be envious of those people and it can cause us to have cruel thoughts toward them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to gossip about them and collude with us against them, but the antidote to collusion is to bless them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The antidote to coldness is celebration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Philippians 2-3 says, don't be selfish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't try to impress others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't look out only for your own interest, but take an interest in others too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Envy is thinking we deserve something more than other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it leads to that coldness inclusion and cruelty and cover of all those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Paul says here, we should think of others as better than ourselves and we should care about their interests.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, don't just think about your own interests, but take an interest in others too, or show interest in their interests.
[SPEAKER_00]: When something good happens for them, even if we don't care for them,
[SPEAKER_00]: We should still rejoice with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Paul says that in Romans, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should care about the interests of others, even if we are envious toward them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when something bad happens to someone you don't like, instead of rejoicing about it, we show empathy and care we mourn with those who mourn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if there's someone that we are struggling with envy toward.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one more step out of the pit of bitterness,
[SPEAKER_00]: And the antidote to comparison is gratitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Proverbs 1430, beautiful proverb.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says a peaceful heart leads to a healthy body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jellacy is like cancer in the bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: A peaceful heart is a contented heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: A peaceful heart is someone who has learned to be content and grateful for what they have
[SPEAKER_00]: and a peaceful heart, the Bible says leads to a healthy body.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of studies have backed that up in the last few decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of research has been done on the impact of your mind and your emotions and your contentment and your gratitude and what that actually does to your physical health.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look this up and hear some of the things that I found.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you hold on to envy, it's like a cancer that texts as the spreads.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that can lead to a weakened immune system, increased inflammation, cardiovascular strain, and mental health issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you hold on to envy studies, show you have a higher risk of those negative outcomes, but if you have a contented and grateful heart, a peaceful heart, here's what that can lead to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Improved heart health, lower stress hormones, reduced inflammation, and better immune function.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is people who said that they had higher levels of contentment and gratitude in their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so not that we needed scientific studies to back up what scripture says, but it's nice to see when they correlate, and it's nice to see that there are practical physical implications of this for us, that when we have that peaceful, contented heart that Proverbs talks about, it actually does lead to a healthier body, just like the Bible says, but envy and jealousy, it's like cancer in the bones.
[SPEAKER_00]: It spreads, and it not only causes problems with our relationships, it even causes problems with our bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't follow the latter of envy down into the pit of bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Use the five antidotes from God's Word to get you up out of that pit, confession instead of cover, kindness instead of cruelty, blessing instead of collusion, celebration instead of coldness and gratitude instead of comparison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we wrap up and go to our final song, there's one other thing I want to point out about this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of you know that one of my favorite passages of Scripture happens on Resurrection Day when Jesus is walking with a two men on the road to a mess.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an unnamed disciple and there's cleapace.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the only one who's named.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you remember what happens, because I've mentioned it several times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure you've read it many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is walking along, they don't know who he is, and he opens up the Old Testament scriptures and explains how everything that Moses wrote about in the prophets wrote about points to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suspect that this story about Joseph is one of those stories that Jesus showed them, look at all the connection points here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at how God orchestrated this to be a foreshadowing of what just happened with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The men say on that road, we thought the Messiah was gonna be here to free us from Rome and was gonna be the one that would release us from the occupiers, but that didn't happen because he died.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus said, you foolish people, that's not what this was about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show you from all of the writings of the Old Testament and what Moses said, what was going to happen with me and how everything back there points to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think based on the connections we see here in the story of Joseph, that this is probably one of the things he talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to point that out to you as we close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph is a living story and foreshadowing of what would happen with God and Jesus and the people that he would save.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph was a favored son.
[SPEAKER_00]: the brothers as they worked, but he was mistreated.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was abused.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was sold for pieces of silver.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was sent away for a while to Egypt, but that was actually that act of evil led to a good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: A great thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would eventually save his family through that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he was essentially sacrificed by his brothers on that day, he was later able to save his whole family from starvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And later on, he tells his brothers, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it seems to me that God actually orchestrated all of these events surrounding Joseph, not only to bring about the salvation of the people that would one day lead to the Savior, but also as a picture of what would happen with the Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was God's one and only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: sent to be with us on earth for a while, but he was mistreated, he was abused, he was sold for pieces of silver, Joseph was sold for 20, Jesus was sold for 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was sacrificed and an act that many people and the devil meant for evil, but God used it for good.
[SPEAKER_00]: God was playing chess not checkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he turned around what the devil and some evil people intended to be a very bad thing and he used it for good.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it was that very evil thing that led to the salvation of anyone who believes in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as it was the evil thing the brothers did that ended up leading to the salvation of his entire family.
[SPEAKER_00]: People thought the prophecies about the Messiah meant he would conquer enemies on earth but the real enemy was spiritual and when that enemy thought
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jesus is the better Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sacrifice of Joseph ended up saving his family, the sacrifice of Jesus, bring salvation to the world for anyone that believes in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we can't end this section of the story of Joseph without talking about the parallels of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's fascinating to learn about Joseph's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's wonderful to see the faithfulness of God and how he works through even the bad things that happen and the bad things people do, but it's even more important to understand how Jesus came to this earth as the Son of God, died on a cross to pay our penalty for our sins so that if we trust in His payment and His sacrifice for us, we can be forgiven from our sins and be a part of God's family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, my guess is that probably most people here, and maybe most of you watching online, have done that before, but if not, you need to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to know that that is the only way to be free from your sin, forgiven, and made right with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says that if you confess with your heart, with your mouth, that Jesus's Lord and believe in Him that you will be saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: and so you confess your sins to God and you confess that Jesus is Lord and you trust in the payment his sacrifice for you and God makes you a part of his family so that you become one of his children and then you can experience salvation far greater than what Joseph's family experienced.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suspect that's what Jesus shared with a two-minute on the road to a man's.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll find out in eternity if that was one of the things that he shared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I certainly hope that everyone here will place their trust in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: and will rely on him and his strengths to keep you out of the pit of bitterness, or if you find yourself on one of those steps today, work your way out through those five antidotes we talked about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's bow our heads, close and prayer, and then we're gonna sing one more song together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus,
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for these stories that were preserved for us so that we can learn about our past, learn about your work with people, and learn about how we can live better lives in response to who you are and who you made us to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I'm sure that many of us find ourselves in one of those places today, struggling with comparison, struggling with spreading that around with other people, struggling with gossip, struggling perhaps with cruelty,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even feeling like we've covered some things up because of some wrong that we've done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God, I pray that you would help us to use the principles in your word and the guidance of your Holy Spirit to bring us up out of that pit, to help us live lives that don't have regret slives that we're totally focused on you and not on what other people have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to be content and peaceful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to spend our energy and time focused on things that will make you proud and honor you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not things that will make us somehow greater by comparison with others Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we thank you for these lessons that you teach us from your word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to live them out today as we follow you are Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's in Jesus' name, we pray, amen.