“When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?” Then they took Joseph’s robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. And they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, “This we have found; please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not.” And he identified it and said, “It is my son’s robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.” Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.”
Genesis 37:29-36 ESV
A common complaint amongst critics of the church is that it’s full of hypocrites. This is undeniably true and the Bible never sugarcoats it. As is always the case, no one is more a realist than the Christian who takes his/her Bible seriously. This passage ends the first chapter of Joseph’s descent into slavery and in it we learn crucial, and humbling, lessons about ourselves and sin. That is, if we have the courage to listen.
Sin is always self-centered.
It was Rueben who had tried to keep his murderous and conniving brothers from killing Joseph (Genesis 37:21-22). Despite this, his first thought is for himself when he discovers that Joseph is gone. Though he wasn’t present for the sale, he then busies himself with the coverup because he’s more concerned with himself than with either his enslaved brother or his father.
The cruelty to their father is unfathomable…maybe just as bad as what they did to Joseph.
Many commentators are quick to point out that just as Jacob had once deceived his father, Isaac (Genesis 27:18-29), he is now likewise duped by his own sons’ lie. This is undeniably true and shows how God works in life. The punishment of sin is sometimes delayed decades. Nevertheless, the cruelty of this deception is mind-boggling. There’s such heartlessness involved in it that we ought to quiver in fear that we ever become so outside the will of the Lord that we become involved in such emotional barbarism. To take from their father his beloved son all because of their jealousy is a bitter irony. It shows that the very issue they sought, in sin, to ameliorate – which is to say, try to fix their lack of honor before Jacob – they exasperated. This is always the way of sin. It deceives us into making our alleged problem even worse.
1. It shows the reality that sin – in this case jealousy – always stems from ingratitude toward God.
When the prophet Nathan confronts King David over his sin, he says something peculiar to our ears. The Lord has Nathan enumerate a line of blessings given to David. Nathan says, “…and if that had been too little, I would have given you many more things like these! Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight (2 Samuel 12:24)?”
A common tactic of the enemy is to get us focused on what we don’t have rather than those many blessings we currently enjoy. Ingratitude toward God is a great and precarious slope upon which many men and women have slipped. For example, the name of Benedict Arnold is synonymous with traitor in American history. Arnold had been, before his treachery, perhaps the Continental Army’s best fighting general. But he was unable to let go of the fact that he was passed over for promotions that he was convinced he deserved. Such lack of contentment was the spark that fanned into the great flame of betrayal.
Because of such danger let us cultivate a spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving to God daily. Let our every complaint, if we must lodge one, be salted with praise to God for giving us even the slightest blessing.
2. It shows how dangerous such a “private” sin like jealousy is.
Make no mistake, covetousness is idolatry. It isn’t a benign sin…an add-on, an afterthought of the moral law. In fact, it’s the root of every sin we commit against our neighbor.
In this case, Joseph’s brothers envy his status as their father’s beloved son. It’s not as though Rueben and Judah and the rest are devoid of blessings. That’s the truly dangerous thing about envy…it’s a cancer in the spiritual heart. We see what it’s doing and has done through the putrid political/ethical philosophy of Marxism.
When the focus is on the “unfairness” of how others have things we don’t, in what ever fashion, we’re on treacherous ground and must flee to Christ!
There are symptoms, like with any serious illness, that show if we’re infected with envy. Do we spend time obsessing about what others possess? Do we gossip about others – that is talk with an obsession about their every flaw and assign to them the worst of motives? To speak of the motive of a brother or sister in such a way violates the law of love and is, in fact, to become the mouthpiece of Satan since he is, after all, the accuser. Will we bring a charge against God’s elect in contradiction to Romans 8:33? Will we join with Satan and think the worst of our neighbor (Job 1:9-11)? Make no mistake: we should never dare speak a word of gossip or slander against anyone! If we knew what it was we were truly doing when we speak thusly, if we weren’t blinded, we would recoil in horror immediately and run to Christ.
Tragically, this is a common sin in the body of Christ. We should all search our hearts and monitor our tongues and pray for deliverance from a critical spirit and wagging tongue. We must ask the Lord to forgive us, restore us, and produce in us a truly loving heart for all – one that if it sees sin in another will yearn to share Christ rather than condemn.
A common sign that covetousness has corroded our moral center is an unhealthy obsession in how “unfair” it is that we don’t have something owned by our neighbor. We here rumblings of this every time a politician says that “the rich” must pay “their fair share” of taxes and yet neither are clearly defined. Sin always cloaks itself in the coat of self-justification. Beware. Godliness without contentment is a contradiction in terms. Contentment in the Lord doesn’t mean we have everything we want. It means that when we have requests, frustrations, or despairs, we go to Him in prayer. Covetousness brings us to a place where we conspire against our neighbor.
3. It shows that unless checked and fenced in by God, sin causes all sorts of diverse suffering. Sin is never isolated. It kills the “whole” man not just spiritually but everything in his orbit.
Oh, how dreadful their home must have been! The ramifications – the continual lies in order to keep up the con – and the depression! Sin always hurts us in ways we hadn’t expected. It always costs us what we never thought we’d pay. It always touches those we never intended to hurt.
4. It shows the gross degrees we’ll go to in order to cover our sins rather than to go to Christ.
In this case a goat is slaughtered and the blood is sprinkled. On the cross the blood of Christ was shed for our sins. The Bible consistently tells us the truth of the matter, which is that unless we go to Him – go there in humility and with a heart broken by its sin – and go for forgiveness, not self-justification, we’ll invariably shed blood, directly or in principle, of others for the myth of self-justification. The reality of sin is that it does and must lead to death since it’s a negation of all the principles of life.
5. It shows that even God’s people are capable of the most vile things.
The reality of sin’s deceptiveness and destructive power, when more clearly understood, awakens us to the inability of man to save himself through anything except the cross. In a way of seeing sin’s deceptiveness it’s safe to say that all acts of sin are attempts by men to save themselves from its consequences. Refusing to worship and thank the Lord leads to consequences that we try and sin our way out of. This is another sad tale of that in a world full of such woeful history. Man wants a crown without the cross and that’s not possible or else Jesus died in vain.
The way of life is, therefore, the way of humble gratitude for the very fact that we’re saved at all! Oh, how that our lives and puts every single detail of in perspective. To understand this chapter of Genesis rightly will cause us to flee from worldly ways of pursuing happiness (to use the American slang for it). It will convince us of the great truth that the good life is the life of faithful service to the Lord regardless of the circumstances. It will show us the deception of trying to get our way in a wild world full of too many variables for us to count and cause us to sharpen our focus on Him, the true vine. It will cause us to trust the Vinedresser when He prunes us (John 15:2) rather than grumble, complain and look for scapegoats. And it will bring us to deeper dependence on Him rather than jealousy and bitterness.
To misunderstand it is to see it merely as an example of how sinful “other” people can be. The trick is to see ourselves as the kidnappers, not as Joseph. Unless and until we do, we won’t understand the power and beauty of grace.
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