Now today, Friends, we come to the 37th Chapter of the Book of Genesis and, when we do, we resume the story of the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and now we come to the fourth one, Joseph.  And from here all the way through the Book of Genesis we’ll be centered upon Joseph.  Now it is true, we’re dealing with the family of Jacob, and that’s what’s resumed in this chapter, but the story of Joseph is begun here.  

And somebody might say, “Well, there’s more attention given here to Joseph than to Abraham or Isaac or to anything else.  There is certainly more of this than is even given to the first 11 chapters in Genesis.  How do you explain that?”   Well, I think there are several reasons.  I would suggest two.  One is the life of Joseph is a good and honorable life.  We’re told in Scripture, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”  (Philippians 4:8)  Now God wants us to have this that is good and virtuous and great before us.  And Joseph’s life is just that.

Then there’s a second reason here, and this is a great reason.  Nowhere in the New Testament is Joseph given to us as a type of Christ, yet no one is more like Christ in his person and experiences than Joseph.  All of this cannot be accidental.  Now we’re going to see that as we go through his life, and I think that I’ve got listed in a book somewhere—fact of the matter is it is in our Book on Genesis—at least 20-some-odd parallels, and there’s more than 20.  I suspect there must be around 30, and we’ll mention that later on when we get farther into his story.  

But now you will recall that last time we almost got a laugh.  And there are a lot of laughs in the Bible, by the way.  It depicts human life.  And there’s a lot of humor.  God has a sense of humor.  And we met all the dukes and kings, all the royalty in the family of Esau and where in the world did they come from?  Well, they took these titles, and men have been going for titles and that sort of thing from that day to this.  Every now and then I get a letter from some brother—I always feel like he’s way out in left field—that rebukes me for having a Doctor’s Degree.  Well, I earned mine.  I don’t mind having it, but I’ll be honest with you, I sweat blood and tears to get the degrees that I have hanging in my study, but I wouldn’t give you five cents for ‘em if I didn’t have ‘em.  The thing is that it’s what they represent.  

And titles today are quite meaningless really.  They are.  And it’s not the office; it’s the individual that makes it.  A great many people say they respect the office of President, but not the President.  Well, God have mercy on America if we’ve come to that—because it’s the person who makes the office.  And if we don’t have a man in there that makes it in a way that we can respect him, and, frankly, it’s been difficult for the past decades and maybe a little longer than that–in fact, three decades to have men in the office that you can respect.  And the office has certainly suffered.  But the man makes the office.  And so these fellows all had to get them a title, and if you belong to the family of Esau, you’d need a title because of the type of folk that they really were.  

CHAPTER 37

RESUMING JACOB’S FAMILY STORY

We’re going to pick up now the family of Jacob again.  And there were several things that we did not call attention to that were in this Chapter 35.  One is this place of Bethlehem, first time it’s mentioned, and here’s where Rachel died.  And we sing “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem”.  Well, if Jacob was here to sing it with us, I can assure you of several things.  One thing is he’d never think of a birth there; he’d think of a death.  He’d think of beautiful Rachel died there.  Then after that, he would remember this is where Benjamin was born.  

You see, Benjamin was born in the same place as Jesus was born.  That brings this place of Bethlehem now onto the page of Scripture, and the amazing thing is not that Bethlehem was picked as the birthplace of the Messiah.  The thing that’s amazing is that how could it ever have been fulfill?  And that’s the wonder of it all. 

We didn’t call any attention to the sin of Reuben that’s mentioned here because that’ll come before us again, and we need to keep that in mind.   And we recognize now that we have left the family of Esau; now we’re going to follow on through in the family of Jacob.  That is the one, and Joseph now becomes all prominent here before us, and we’re going to follow his story.

So, let’s pick up now.  Chapter 37 and this is the method of the Spirit of God, that when the rejected line is given, then He returns to take the line that’s going to lead to Christ, and that story is resumed.  And so we have here this story of Jacob.  And I begin reading in Chapter 37, Verse 1.

And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.

Now he’s moved down, apparently, south of Bethlehem, and he’s come down to Hebron.  That’s where you’ll recall that Abraham had made his home.  And so he comes to this place of fellowship-communion with God.  And Verse 2:

These are the generations of Jacob…

Now we had the generations of Esau.  These are the generations of Jacob, but we only have this boy Joseph mentioned.

…Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. (Genesis 37:1-2)

And I want to tell you, that bunch of boys that Jacob had, they were problem children, every one of them with the exception of Joseph and Benjamin.  And it took these men a long time to really learn anything at all.  And the emphasis now, you see, is going to be switched from, actually, Jacob to Joseph.  We’ll follow him down to the land of Egypt.  He was 17 years old when this incident took place that’s recorded here.  Just a teenage boy who was one of the youngest, you see, out there feeding the flock.  Benjamin is too young to be out there.  And this boy, he came home and told his father their evil report.  And the boys didn’t like it!  Of course, they didn’t like it.  They, I’m sure, called him a tattletale.  Verse 3.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colors.

Now Jacob should have learned the lesson in his own home that to play a favorite will cause trouble in a family.  His own father had favored the elder brother and this boy knew what it was to be discriminated against, and now he practices the very same thing.  And, of course, we begin to excuse it because we say, “Well, after all, it was Rachel who really was his wife, who really was the one he loved, one fine thing in his life, and this boy is a fine boy as well as Benjamin, and he loved this boy.”  Well, that’s all true by the way, but he shouldn’t have bought him that coat of many colors.  

Now the “coat of many colors” that may not be the accurate translation.  There are those that translate this “coat with sleeves in it”.  You see, in that day, putting sleeves in coats just wasn’t the popular thing to do.  It wasn’t the latest style.  Hart, Schaffner, and Marx’s were not making coats like that then with sleeves in them.  And it was difficult.  After all, the thing they did was to take a long strip of goods and the middle waves in it.  They’d take about 12 feet or maybe 10 feet, and they would put a hole right in the middle of it, stick their head through it, half of it dropped down in front and half in the back, and then they just tied it together or they’d sew it together.  And that was the clothes of the day.  They didn’t have sleeves.  Apparently, this was a garment that had sleeves in it.  That, of course, set him apart, but maybe not quite as much as if it had many colors.  

And Verse 4.

And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

And they certainly did hate him.  “They could not speak peaceably unto him.”  Now we look into this family again, and you’ll notice the strife that’s been in all of these families.  I tell you I don’t care what family it is, sin today, Friends, not only ruins lives, it ruins families.  It not only ruins families, it will ruin a community.  It will ruin a city.  It’s ruining our cities today; they say this thing and that thing and another thing is ruining our cities.  Just one thing—God calls it sin—S-I-N, sin.  And it ruins nations.  

And so this boy Joseph, he’s being discriminated by both the father and now the brethren.  The father loves him; the brethren hate him.  

JOSEPH’S DREAM

And Verse 5.

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.

Anything that Joseph did certainly didn’t bring the love of his brethren for him.

And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed.  (Genesis 37:6)

Now I have a feeling that this 17-year-old boy at this time, who has been kept, I’m sure as long as Rachel lived, on her apron string, very much like Jacob had been reared at first.  Generally, when a fellow like this, whose been raised tied to his mama’s apron strings, does finally break loose from the apron strings, he’s apt to go any direction.  In fact, he’s apt to go every direction.  Jacob did.  But Joseph won’t.  Joseph is a remarkable individual.  

Now how do you explain, though, this conduct here?  Why would he go and tattle on his brethren when he knew it would incur their hatred, and why would he tell them this dream?  Well, I think that there’s one explanation for it.  He’s been tied to his mama’s apron strings so long, he doesn’t know how bad this world can be, and he doesn’t know how bad his brothers can be.  I’m of the opinion he’s a rather gullible boy at this time.  And you’ll find out that it took him a long time to find out about the ways of the world.  And when he did, he probably knew as much about the ways of the world as anyone later on.  But not at this time.  He’s a 17-year-old boy raised as he was raised in that day, and a favorite of his father.  His father now centers all of the affection that he had for Rachel—and you can understand there’s a tremendous background here and how human we all are.  Old Jacob as a young man went out there and saw Rachel.  Boy, he fell in love with her—love at first sight.  She was a beautiful thing!  He had to work 14 years for her, and then it was several years before a child was born, and finally Joseph is born, and, My, Rachel’s gone now.  So what does he do?  He just centers all of his affection in his boys.  He shouldn’t have done it.  He’s got 11 more of them around there, but he centers his affection in this boy here.

But listen to the dream that Joseph had, and he just tells it right out.  I’m reading Verse 7 now.  He says:

For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.  And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.  (Genesis 37:7-8)

They asked probably in a sneering, cynical way, “You really think that you’re going to reign over us?”  And they hated him, though, because he had this dream.  But that doesn’t end the dreams.  He has another one.  He dreamed—he had another dream—

And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?  (Genesis 37:9-10)

And he told this dream.  They understood what he was talking about then.  Those who study the Book of Revelation today don’t seem to know when they find a woman mentioned in the 12th Chapter of Revelation with the sun, moon, and stars under her feet that that means the nation Israel.  These brethren understood that it’s the sons of Israel that we’re talking about, and it’s the nation Israel as it was there at the beginning.  You see, what’s given in Genesis is like a bud to a flower, and that opens up as you go through Scripture.  Now here’s one that’s not going to open up until you get to the Book of Revelation.  It’s a late bloomer by the way!  But it’s going to open up there.  And we ought to understand what is being said there and not attempt to guess.  We don’t need to guess when it’s made this clear here.  Old Jacob understood it exactly.  He said, “Why does this mean that your father, your mother, your brethren are going to bow down to you?”  Well, this boy all he could say, “Well, this is what I dreamed.  And this is it.”

Verse 11.

And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

The brethren just dismissed it.  They paid no attention to it.  They thought this was certainly in the realm of impossibility.  As far as those 10 brethren were concerned, not one of them was going to bow down to him.  

And his brethren went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem.  (Genesis 37:12)

Now you see, Jacob has moved way down around Hebron, and these boys are keeping the sheep.  Now they’ve gone way north.  They’re up about as far north of Jerusalem as they lived at Hebron south of Jerusalem.  I don’t know how far it’d be.  Thirty or forty miles each way, so that you’ve got about 80 miles…and they probably got as far as 100 miles from home.  So you can see that they graze their sheep over that entire area.  And they took the flock way up to Shechem.    

JACOB SENDS JOSEPH TO HIS BRETHREN

And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, Here am I.  (Genesis 37:13)

Joseph said, “Yes, I’ll go.”  He’s very obedient to his father, you’ll notice.  

And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.  (Genesis 37:14)

You see, all the way from Hebron up to Shechem.

And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field…

When he got up by Shechem, he began to look around everywhere.  That’s rugged terrain up there, by the way.  And this boy Joseph, he couldn’t find them.

…and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou?  (Genesis 37:15)

I think the man said, “Well, you passed my tent here a half dozen times.  Who you looking for?”

And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks.  And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.  (Genesis 37:16-17)

Now Dothan is a long ways north of Shechem, by the way.  Dothan is right near the Valley of Esdraelon.  This is where they’d gone, and so Joseph went up there, and he found them.  

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.  (Genesis 37:18)

Now they certainly hated him.  And they say, “Now, we’re going to get rid of him.”  After all they’re probably 100 miles from home, and they say, “we’re going to get rid of him now.”  

And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.  (Genesis 37:19)

“Well, here comes the Dreamer!  And we’re going to see about those dreams, whether they’ll come to pass or not.”

We’re going to leave off our story at that particular place, but let me begin even here to call your attention to the comparison of this boy to the Lord Jesus.  The analogy, you just can’t miss it.  

• To begin with, the birth of this boy Joseph, you see, was practically miraculous; in fact, it was miraculous in his case!  And the Lord Jesus is virgin born.  His is miraculous.  
• Joseph was loved by his father; the Lord Jesus was loved His Father.  He said, “This is my Beloved Son!”
• And Joseph had the coat of many colors that set him apart.  And Christ was separate from sinners.
• Joseph announced that he was to rule over his brethren.  The Lord Jesus presented himself as the Messiah.  And you remember they ridiculed Him.  In fact, that was put in ridicule on His cross.  “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”.  Notice the analogy.
• And Joseph was sent to his brethren, and Jesus came to His brethren, first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
• Joseph was hated by his brethren without a cause; the Lord Jesus was hated by His brethren without a cause.  

Tremendous parallels you see, Friends!  We’ll follow that on down as we follow the story now of Joseph.