The Christ Church Wednesday Bible Study Group is studying God's providence or divine providence in the lives of David and Joseph and how we can apply His providence in their lives to our lives today.
The providence of God or divine providence is the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe. Divine providence asserts that God is in complete control of all things. He is sovereign over the universe. He is in control of the physical world. He is in control of the affairs of nations. He is in control of human destiny. He is in control of human successes and failures. He protects His people.
We have finished our study of God's providence through the life of David and today we start our study of God's providence in the life of Joseph.
Today we will start looking at and God’s providence and how it worked in the life of Joseph. We are going to do this through a study of a book written by Chuck Swindall, the same guy wrote the book for of study of God’s providence through the life of David. The David book was titled David a Man of Passion and Destiney and this one is Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness.
Now we all know the story of Joseph, how he was the favorite son out of 13 children who because the father showed favoritism and was hated by his brothers who sold him as a slave to some folk the Midinettes, who took him to Egypt, he got thrown into prison for something he didn’t do. Eventually because God had given him the ability to interpret dreams and had given him extreme wisdom, he became a leader in Egypt. He was eventually reunited with his family, saved them, forgave his brothers, and died a happy man with two sons who eventually inherited land and Cannan.
In this session we look at Joseph's family so that we see how and why it was so dysfunctional it resulted in his being sold into slavery at the age of 17 to start his providential journey.
For our study we are using Great Lives: David: A Man of Passion and Destiny, and Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness by Charles R. Swindoll. To study along with us you can purchase the books by clicking the Links here or the images after the notes.
The providence of God or divine providence is the governance of God by which He, with wisdom and love, cares for and directs all things in the universe. Divine providence asserts that God is in complete control of all things. He is sovereign over the universe as a whole, He is in control of the physical world, He is in control of the affairs of nations, He’s in control of human destiny, He’s in control of human successes and failures, He protects His people. Through divine providence God accomplishes His will.
Today we will start looking at and God’s providence and how it worked in the life of Joseph. We are going to do this through a study of a book written by Chuck Swindall, the same guy wrote the book for of study of God’s providence through the life of David. The David book was titled David a Man of Passion and Destiney and this one is Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness.
Now we all know the story of Joseph, how he was the favorite son out of 13 children who because the father showed favoritism was hated by his brothers who sold in as a slave to some folk the Midinettes who took him to Egypt, he got thrown into prison for something he didn’t do, eventually because God had given him the ability to interpret dreams and extreme wisdom, he became a leader in Egypt. He was eventually reunited with his family, saved them, forgave his brothers, and died a happy may with two sons who eventually inherited land and Cannan.
That the story but what we want to look at is the details of this story in light of God’s purpose which was to save a people from which would come the Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let’s first look at how we get to Joseph being so hated by his brothers that they sold him as a slave. To get there we must go way back and look at this family. Because this is a very dysfunctional family and it starts with the birth of Joseph’s father, Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel.
The name Jacob itself gives a little insight.
Genesis 27:36 NIV Esau said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? This is the second time he has taken advantage of me: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” Then he asked, “Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?”
Let’s go back even further
Genesis 25:19-28 NIV This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
You know the story Rebekah conspires with Jacob to fool Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing Esau should have gotten because he was the first born. He threatens to kill Jacob and Rebekah and Isaac send him off to Rebekah’s brother for safety. So, we have parents playing favorites with two sons one of whose name is supplanter.
Jacob himself gets conned by his uncle Laban who reneges on a deal with Jacob who agrees to work for seven years Laban for his daughter Rachel and after the seven years Laban slips in his oldest daughter Leah. Jacob agrees to work another seven years for Rachel. Leah has seven children, six boys and one girl.
Genesis 29:31-35 NIV When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon. Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi. She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.
Genesis 30:17-20 NIV God listened to Leah, and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. Then Leah said, “God has rewarded me for giving my servant to my husband.” So she named him Issachar. Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun.
Genesis 30:19-21 NIV Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun. Some time later she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.
Then because of the rivalry between the two wives they each give their handmaidens to Jacob so that they could be surrogate mothers, and four more sons were born.
Then Rachel, the one that Jacob really loved, had a son and this one was the hero in our study Joseph.
Genesis 30:22-24 NIV Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” She named him Joseph, and said, “May the Lord add to me another son.”
Now Jacob has 11 sons and on daughter and decides it is time for him to take his family and go back home to Cannan, that God had told Abraham and Jacob’s father, and Jacob also that this would eventually be their land.
Genesis 17:8 NIV The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
Genesis 26:2-3 NIV The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.
Genesis 28:11-15 NIV When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Now on the way back to Cannan a couple of tragic things happen to this family, one of which is a precursor of how violent these sons of Jacob could be.
On the way to Cannan they stopped a place called Shechem and Jacob’s daughter Dinah was raped.
Genesis 34:1-2 NIV Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her.
After raping her he wants to marry her and her brother hatch up a plan for revenge where they killed all the men of that city and took all the spoils.
Genesis 34:24-29 NIV All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised. Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left. The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.
Rather than being upset at what these guys did by murdering all the men and taking their stuff Joseph was concerned with the PR.
Genesis 34:30 NIV Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”
Then Rachel dies in childbirth.
Genesis 35:16-20 NIV Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb.
On top of all this one of his sons sleeps with one of his baby mommas, Leah’s handmaid Bilhah
Genesis 35:21-22 NIV Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder. While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it. Jacob had twelve sons:
He heard about it but apparently didn’t do anything about it. He mentioned it when he was blessing his sons before his death but that didn’t help the family dysfunction.
Genesis 49:3-4 NIV “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, the first sign of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. Turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel, for you went up onto your father’s bed, onto my couch and defiled it.
A little late, don’t you think?
So, this is the family Joseph grows up in. It is a highly dysfunctional family with a lot of dynamics going on. Two wives, two concubines, a lot of children, a father who for whatever reason never takes control. In addition to that he favors one of the sons and shows it to the other kids.
The home in which Joseph was raised was comprised of a family filled with angry, jealous, and deceitful people.
Genesis 37:2-4 NIV This is the account of Jacob’s family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Now Joseph, who was a dreamer of better said, as we will see, God speaks to in dreams, is himself a little foolish and maybe arrogant because he tell his brother and parents that he has dreams that show he is going to rule over them.
Genesis 37:5-11 NIV Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
If he hadn’t had strained relations before, the dreams alone would have done the trick. Even considering the dream that shows Jacob and his mother bowing to Joseph Jacob doesn’t do or say anything.
Remember Joseph is 17 now and his brothers hate him and now they get a chance to get rid of him. The brothers are out with Jacob’s flocks and the dad sends Joseph to check on them. Now’s their chance.
Genesis 37:17-20 NIV “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’ ” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
Ruben the oldest talks them out of killing him. His plan is really to come back later and rescue him but circumstances don’t allow it.
Genesis 37:21-24 NIV When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
Now Judah the fourth son of Leah apparently agrees with Reuben that they shouldn’t kill Joseph but he still thinks they should get rid of him because he suggests that they sell him.
Genesis 37:25-28 NIV As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed. So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
Now that they have sold their brother for 20 shekels, which is the price they would have paid for a handicapped slave in those days. They had to come up with a story for Jacob as to why Joseph didn’t come back home.
Genesis 37:29-36 NIV When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?” Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.” He recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.” Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him. Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.
So how did we get here where a 17-year-old boy was sold by his brothers?
Just one more deception, one more act of hatred in a family filled with both. What a harsh reality! What tragic consequences. Jacob, an aging father, had sowed the wind and was now reaping the whirlwind.
What can we learn today from this mess:
No enemy is more subtle than passivity.
Where there is no discipline disaster is usually the result.
The top disciplinary problems of 1990 with those of 1940, based on the testimony of public school teachers.
No response is crueler than jealousy.
Solomon was right when he said, “Jealousy is cruel as the grave” (Song of Solomon 8:6, rsv). Jealousy, if allowed to grow and fester, leads to devastating consequences.
Song of Solomon 8:6 AMP Put me like a seal on your heart, Like a seal on your arm; For love is as strong as death, Jealousy is as severe and cruel as Sheol (the place of the dead). Its flashes are flashes of fire, [A most vehement flame] the very flame of the Lord!
No action is more powerful than prayer.
We have now scriptural evidence that anybody prayed during the times we talked about today but the fact that Joseph was able to go on with his life as we will see is evidence that he had some kind of relationship with God. We do know that he knew God because with all his faults Jacob did know God because God often says in scripture that He is the the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God would have been his only source of hope. Prayer brings power to endure.
Joseph has only begun to experience life’s “dark and mysterious events.” But through all of them the hand of God will hold him close and ultimately trace His sovereign plan.
By the time we finish we will look at three distinct segments of Joseph’s life.
Today we looked at the first segment
Birth to Seventeen Years (Genesis 30:24–37:2) During this time Joseph’s family was in transition—everyone was unsettled, on the move. A low-level antagonism was brewing as his family clashed and argued in jealousy and hatred.
The next segment is Seventeen to Thirty Years (Genesis 37:2–41:46) This second segment occurs as Joseph reaches young manhood. It appears his life becomes out of control. Enslavement, unfair accusation, imprisonment assault him.
The last segment takes us from Thirty Years to Death (Genesis 41:46–50:26) Joseph’s last eighty years are years of prosperity and reward under God’s blessing. He had the classic opportunity to get even with his brothers, to ruin them forever, but he refused. Instead, he blessed, protected, and forgave.
Bible Study Audio
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