After Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, he first prospers and then finds himself in more trouble. But through it all, he holds fast to his faith in God and holds true to his character, and God blesses him for it.

Transcript:

Good morning. The scripture reading today is Genesis 39, 1 through 5. Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt and Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man.

And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him, and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight, and became his personal servant. And he made him overseer of his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge.

It came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he owned The Lord blessed the Egyptians house on account of Joseph Thus the Lord's blessing was upon all that he owned in the house and in the field.

Most kids like Legos, some adults like Legos too. No glue is required, you just stick bricks together, and an endless variety of creations can be brought forth. While there are some true creatives out there who can imagine all the pieces required to bring a certain idea to life, most of us require instructions to bring anything very impressive to life.

Now, I have a creation here that my son built. He built this TIE fighter. Pretty, pretty cool, right? Um, it always impresses me when he puts together these things. I didn't have that kind of patience when I was a kid, to follow the instructions. I was too eager to get to the playing. Um, Now, I don't think it's any knock on him to say that he couldn't have done this without following the directions.

I think he would say the same thing himself. Um, and like I said, I, I know I certainly couldn't. Without following the instruction manual, he wouldn't have experienced the joy of creating a machine that looks just like the spacecraft on television. Without attending to each direction, he, and any of us, would only experience frustration if we tried to take shortcuts.

Now, thankfully, kids are sometimes blessed to have a father, grandfather, uncle, or maybe a mom or aunt as well, who will step in to set things right, ensuring he won't give up, ensuring the creation will, in fact, come to life. I think the process of putting together Lego creations captures some of the dynamics we see in the Old Testament.

Yes, there is a steady hand, the hand of God, working behind all things, so that even evil cannot help but work toward the good that God intends. Nothing stops his plan. Every blessing he promises is firm. But when human beings do walk in his ways, when they follow the instructions, we see that they are especially blessed, even as they walk through valleys. And we see this clearly in Joseph's story. But before we turn to him directly, Genesis gives us a bit of an interlude regarding Judah, who's one of Joseph's brothers, his half brother, and his family. A series of events transpires that will figure into God's redemptive work.

In the text, we find here striking contrasts with what we will see in Joseph's life. Now, there are some kind of like mature themes in this chapter. And so, because we are kind of focused on Joseph really this morning, kind of combined with those two considerations, I'm going to offer you a summary. But I do want to invite you to open up to Genesis 38, as we kind of summarize what transpires there.

So in Genesis 38, we'll look at first verses 1 through 12. We learn that Judah married a Canaanite woman. Now, not exactly great. Not because God is racist. God is not racist at all. But we must remember that God's intention is to form a distinct people. And we also must remember, at this time, ethnicity and religion are very tightly bound together. So by Judah marrying a Canaanite woman, he's inviting foreign religious influences into the life of the family. Now, it doesn't get into all of that in this chapter, but that's just something to keep in mind. Not great. He has three sons named Er, Onan, and Shelah.

Er marries a woman named Tamar, but he is struck dead because of his wickedness. And so the duty expected at this time was that a younger brother would marry the widow, so that the name of his older brother may be carried on into the future. This was the practice known as Levirate marriage. We see instructions about it in Deuteronomy 25.

And so it was just expected that this is what the brothers would do for each other should one of them pass before the other, and before a son could be born that would carry on his name. Now, Onan's not exactly thrilled about this duty. Because, again, it's strange to think about because it's just so foreign to the way that we think about things.

If he was to have a child with Tamar, that child, to their understanding, wouldn't be his. It would be his son's brother. His brother's son, rather. And that son would carry on his brother's name, not his own name. And so, Onan avoids completing his marital duties. Doing that which would be sufficient for Tamar to actually become pregnant. And so, God punishes him with death.

So now, Judah has lost his son, Er, and his son, Onan. And he only has one son left, Shelah. Now he tells Tamar, I will have Shelah marry you. Because this is, again, this is the expectation that this widow is supposed to be taken care of. And So that she would be able to bring forth these children for the older brother.

And this is something that Tamar's desiring for herself. It's not, again, such a foreign concept to us. We would kind of think like, well, you know, maybe she doesn't want to marry any of these brothers. But no, she really does desire a husband herself. And Judah tells her, no, you're, okay, you will wait for Shelah.

I will marry him to you. But instead of actually following through on his word, what Judah does instead is marry his son off to someone else. There's a little bit of fear operating in Judah's mind here, because he's like, Okay, my oldest has married this woman, my second has married her and died. And so he's like, well, I don't want my youngest marrying her.

Now, it had nothing to do with the woman. It had everything to do with the wickedness of these men. But that was Judah's thinking. Well, Tamar, as a result, takes matters into her own hands. And she deceives Judah into believing that she's a shrine prostitute. Now, an idea of shrine prostitute is just something that's also foreign to us.

This would have been a pagan practice where, in order to promote fertility in the land, women at temples would have offered themselves to men. Very wild, very out there, but the practice of that time, and she took advantage of that practice by presenting herself as a shrine prostitute and approaching Judah.

And Judah obliges, and he ends up, ends up that she becomes pregnant with his two sons, Perez and Zerah. Now this becomes significant much later on in the biblical narrative, because when we look at the genealogy of Jesus, we see that he's descendant from Perez so, you think about all the messiness of what's going on here.

Jesus bloodline runs through this, this messiness.

His family line runs through this messiness. Now, eventually, you know, she's, she's concealed her identity. Judah didn't know that this was his, his daughter in law. Um, but he had left with her his staff and also a seal, a kind of a seal that would have been functioning kind of as his signature. Now, when it became obvious that she was pregnant, they were prepared to stone her saying well, that's it, you were supposed to yeah, you you've you've been sleeping around that kind of thing, but then she produces his possessions and this leads Judah to admit in 38:26 that she, Tamar, is more righteous than I since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah.

Now, this is important because again, Judah is going to be a significant figure moving forward. He ends up becoming the leading, the leading brother. You think about the tribe of Judah from whom David comes from. And of course, Jesus. We have one last little note here in this, in this chapter where it's noted how Zerah initially was the one that was being born and then his, the other brother, the other twin brother, Perez, kind of like pulls him back in and he comes, he emerges first.

And, and so this is just kind of playing into a general theme that we're finding in these chapters of younger brothers emerging above older brothers. And that's relevant in the case of the story of Joseph, because remember, he's had these dreams. He's had these dreams where his brother's sheathes bow before his sheath.

Where the sun, moon, and stars all gather and worship him. Bow before him, that is. Not worship, bow. So now we turn from this troubling episode of Judah and look at what transpires in Joseph's life. Now remember, at this point we're in Egypt, so he's gone from all the way up here, now he finds himself in Egypt. And first, we, we look at verses 1 through 5, which Rena read fo...