“Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.” So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” “I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.”
Genesis 37:12–17 ESV
This whole passage puts on full display the problem that sin causes households and workplaces when trust vanishes.
It’s been said that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is the best selling book of all time outside of the Bible. I’m not sure if that’s true but, whatever the case, it’s a highly popular novel…as well it should be. I liked it. It’s a great story about the economic ravages of Marxist philosophy and how it (Marxism/socialism) elevates liars and players over producers. Ms. Rand’s hero, John Galt, is a messianic pure and simple – a man of great and enterprising talent who stands against a world of socialistic graft and corruption. He “delivers” the productive people from the tyranny of covetousness and slavery to a bureaucratic system that intends to “make the rich pay their fair share” (to bring that old horror of an idea up to date).
But Ms. Rand, for all her literary and philosophic power, and it was considerable, operating from a purely rationalistic/humanist premise, couldn’t see that the battle she was waging with her magnum opus was one only settled at the cross. John Galt, nor any other worldly leader, will ever deliver us from the the root of the problem, which is sin. And sin is only vanquished by Christ at the cross – not in Galt’s Gulch or any other thing.
So, in our case today, Jacob has a labor problem as we call it. The family business was being run by his violent and conniving sons. Outside of Christ we see the curse of the crown of thorns writ large on the world. Work is hard in the fallen world. Socialists and Bernie Bros struggle with this truth. They want the alleviation of one of the consequences of sin without going through Calvary.
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:17–19 ESV
The fact of living in a sin-sick world is that all of us will encounter this curse as we try and make a living. Whether in education or vocation, we’re all hemmed in…fences and limits crowd us. There are uncertainties. Sore feet. Blistered hands. Weary eyes and stiff backs. Monotony. And those are even in the best of jobs. But to all of this we must see Christ!
“and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.” Matthew 27:29–31 ESV
Jesus Christ didn’t just die a death by crucifixion so that we would be spiritually saved. There’s more to it. As you can see, the Father saw to it that the thorns, that mark of labor’s frustration, would also be vanquished. Death is defeated and the world is renewed. We look forward to the new day when there are no more thorns at all. This allows the Christian to deal with the struggles of labor without bitterness, grumbling and complaining, or poor work. Also, it keeps us safe from running off after the idolatry of state and its false prophets like Bernie Sanders and AOC who promise deliverance from economic frustrations. And make no mistake, they are false prophets who promise a form of salvation. But the Christian knows better because they know that their security is in Christ alone and that the frustrations of living in a fallen world, caused by sin, can’t be ameliorated by more sin.
So, Joseph is sent by his father to check on the work of his older brothers. They’re supposed to be in Shechem but they’ve gone to Dothan. We aren’t told why they moved but we know that Jacob has ample reason to not trust Reuben, Simeon and Levi. And Joseph had previously confirmed suspicions about Gad, Asher, Dan, and also Naphthali. Benjamin is still very young at this point so all we have left are Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun who haven’t been, to our knowledge, proven to be untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the fruit of all of Jacob’s labor – those years of indentured servitude – and all the toil for the hand of Rachel, are now in the hands of men he doesn’t trust. Is it impossible to imagine that men who would lie in order to slaughter their rivals in cold blood might also have turned their father’s enterprise into their own side-hustle? Were they double-dealing? Were they selling dad’s livestock without his knowledge? We don’t know but we do know that Joseph had earlier brought to his father a report of their evil.
The point is clear: unless we’re under God’s grace and law, we will never be able to work together. Joseph being sent to check on his brothers is precisely because they’re doing the wrong thing. A sign of a collapsing society is more and more law meant to restrain the outbreaks of sin. But no law can contain man’s covetousness and greed. He will kill before he will repent. Is this not the American system at present? Class warfare, abortion, greed, rapaciousness, envy, entitlement, gross manipulation rather than true service, and rampant inflation. The issue is that Jacob sent a lamb to wolves. The fact that he didn’t suspect a plot against his beloved son shows sin’s ability to deceive us. The fact that they were supposed to be in Schechem is a reminder of the previous chapter and the murder orchestrated by Joseph’s brothers. The thing is: sin loves company; it recruits. As David resorted to murder to cover up his sin, Joseph’s brothers plan to murder him for the same reason.
Sin hates accountability.
The reason for politics and violence in our fallen world is precisely because men are fleeing judgment. No law or regulation will ever be able to defeat what it took Christ dying on the cross to accomplish. To break the power of sin is beyond the work of man. Only God, by sending His own Son, can defeat sin.
And this is how we can make sense of so much we see around us…the warfare, the politics, the regulation, the strife. Instead of repentance and faith, we’re like men with spoons and buckets trying to bail out the Titanic.
In a land where judges and lawyers don’t fear God and see law rightly – as from God – law will be used to cover up sin. There is never, nor can there be, true justice in a place where men are unrepentant. What Jacob should have done was call for prayer and supplication. He needed to call his family together and confront sin when it was small.
A Christian leader, understanding the enormity of sin’s power to destroy and alienate, must stay in the word of God and prayer. Jacob, like so many of us, tried to manage on his own power rather than bring his wayward workers/sons to God. Another unfortunate sign of a sin-sick home, business, or country is that men of God fear upsetting sinners more than they love God. Sin makes cowards of leaders, grumblers and complainers out of workers, and killers and enslavers of the mob.
The great drama that’s about to play out was made possible (speaking in terms of secondary causation, of course) because Jacob sent the boy to do the man’s job. If there is sin in our midst, we must confront it with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must not “hope for the best” because sin is always capable of bringing the worst. Only in Christ is their freedom, peace and salvation. Jacob knew his sons were cheating him but instead of confronting them himself, he had Joseph send reports. We wonder if he had gone himself what would have happened.
Guard against envy and bitterness through prayer and study of the word. We shouldn’t read this and pridefully assume we’re all Joseph. Are we grumbling and complaining over some circumstance? Let us remember how critical it is that we stay in the word and under faithful teaching at a local church.
And let us remember as parents to, as Rick Phillips wrote, have our fingers dirty with the soil of the hearts of our children. More than anything we must want godliness for our family. The default setting is to say, “I just want them to be happy.” But outside the principles of holiness that’s nothing less than hedonism. Hedonism is the pursuit of contentment on one’s own terms, which is a recipe for envy because this is a world of sunsets and shadows. There are times and seasons for all of us and if we aren’t anchored to Him, bitterness and envy will take root at some point. We’ve already seen that when the sons of Jacob couldn’t get their way on their own terms that they resorted to evil. Their situation is a grand one but the lesson is that we have lesser dramas according to the same principle.
“Better to have little, with godliness, than to be rich and dishonest.” Proverbs 16:8 NLT
The law of the Lord is indeed perfect…and much more to be desired than all else under the sun.
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 ESV
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