CASCADING SIN

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Now his brothers had gone to graze their father's flocks near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph, "As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them."

"Very well," he replied.

So he said to him, "Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me."

Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron.

When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, "What are you looking for?"

He replied, "I'm looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?"

"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."

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 desert, 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 richly ornamented robe he was wearing-and they took him and threw him into the cistern.

Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it. 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.

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 ornamented 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, "in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son."

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.

Genesis 37:12-36

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As we continue our study of Genesis, Chapter 37, we find the animosity within the hearts of Joseph’s brothers boiling over as their bitterness takes them well beyond the limits of mere detestation and into the frightening realm of murderous hostility. And in what could be considered a sequel to the Cain and Abel story, the eleven brothers plot Joseph’s demise as they see him approaching them in the distance, dispatched by Jacob to see how they were doing.

In a twisted way, we see how the brothers began to see that there was no better way to regain their father’s favor than to get rid of his favorite son and the progression of their scheme serves as a warning to all of us. For when sin is crouching at our door, to borrow a saying used by God earlier in this book (Genesis 4:7), reprehensible behavior will follow if we open the door for Satan to enter in and exploit our sinful attitudes.

In the case of the eleven brothers, we know they were selfish, jealous, coveting, and overall hateful. We also know that the Lord was not involved in any of this because if He was then the sinfulness we read of wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

With this and in the spirit of avoiding the mistakes of the eleven brothers in the future, let’s carefully examine how sin cascaded and spiraled out of control:

First, the brothers hated Joseph and that’s where the problem started.

It’s common knowledge that doctors who diagnose illnesses try and get to the root cause.

If we’re going to properly address the sin in our lives, we need to do the same, to get to the bottom of what leads to our transgression and in the case of Joseph’s brothers, this was hatred. In fact, every other iniquity they committed poured out of the hatred and associated jealousy they had for their favored brother, a hatred and jealousy that had them desiring his death.

Of course, the chief instigator of all this was none other than Satan himself and the cure for the sin ailment was right there for the brothers if they had only awakened from the wrong of their ways and turned to the Lord before it was too late. Indeed, God would have led them out of the darkness of hatred and into the light of love but they never gave Him the opportunity to do that. we know happen. And so instead of sin stopping at hatred, it reproduced upon itself exponentially, giving birth to other negative, sinful emotions, emotions that led to them wanting to murder their own sibling.

Before we move on, a quick question:

Do you harbor hatred in your heart for someone and have you allowed it to spread within you, infecting your heart and soul to where you are malicious, hostile, bitter, or resenting?

If so, I would encourage you to turn to Jesus, the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) and His first formal teaching, often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. There, we find Him declaring that if any person is angry with another, they will face the same justice and judgment as if they had murdered that person. Here’s exactly what He said:

"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” Matt 5:21-22

The bottom line here is that anger and hatred are not of God, His Son Jesus, or His Holy Spirit and so if you are harboring these emotions inside, please repent now and ask the God of light and love to enter in so that He can heal you from the inside out.

Here are the other cascading, sinful actions we find within Joseph’s brothers:

1. The brothers plotted to kill Joseph, throw him into a cistern, and claim he was attacked by a wild animal.

Unwilling to be honest about their sinful murdering of Joseph, the brothers decided to make up a story to tell their father and what makes this so fascinating is that Jacob had a reputation of being a deceiver himself.

For example, you may remember Jacob tricking his father, Isaac, into giving him Esau’s blessing, and duping his also deceitful uncle, Laban, to steal away his flocks and power. Now, we find Jacob’s offspring repeating his sins of the past with him now the target of their deceit.

At the end of our passage, we see where the lie worked to perfection but thankfully Joseph was very much alive thanks to the oldest brother, Reuben, who interceded for his brother before he was killed. Indeed, had it not been for Reuben convincing the other ten brothers to take a different course of action, Joseph would have been dead before he went into the cistern.

2. The brothers plotted to throw Joseph into the cistern and let him die naturally.

Rather than kill Joseph themselves, shedding his blood in the process, the brothers decided to throw Joseph into the cistern and let him die inside it. Thankfully, we read where there was no water in the cistern or Joseph could have possibly drowned but still, without food and water, surely he wouldn’t last long before dying from starvation or dehydration. In fact, one might say that this was even more cruel than just killing him and getting it over with.

And so with their new plan in place, the brothers stripped Joseph of the special, colored robe Jacob had given him and then threw their despised brother into the cistern before sitting down to eat, seemingly unfazed by the potentially deadly act they had just committed.

3. The eleven brothers sold their brother into slavery for 20 pieces of silver.

In what could be viewed as a prelude to Judas betraying Jesus for 30 silver coins, the brothers, feeling guilty about wanting to kill Joseph, decide instead to sell him to the Ishmaelites. In doing this, perhaps the brothers tried to resolve the guilt they felt by feeling they were somehow doing something noble by not killing Joseph but rather sending him off into slavery and an unknown fate.

To them, their end objective had been accomplished. They wanted to be rid of Joseph and now had happened.

4. They deceived their father into believing Joseph was dead.

The eleven brothers had succeeded in dispatching Joseph from their lives but there was still a matter of going back to their father and dealing with him. And so they came up with yet another sinful plan, taking Joseph’s robe of many colors and using it as an instrument of their deception.

The scriptures tell us that they “slaughtered a goat” before dipping the robe in its blood. They then took the robe to their father and Jacob’s response was as you would expect. In that moment, he truly believed that he had lost his beloved son, and not long after he had lost his beloved wife, Rachel.

You know, we can almost picture the other eleven sons gathering around their mourning father and seeking to comfort him, all the while knowing in their hearts what really happened. Surely with Joseph now out of the way, they had to believe that they could now regain Jacob’s favor, even if they had to do it under-handedly.

As this chapter ends, the eleven brothers think they had succeeded with through dishonesty. They had to feel very clever to have pulled everything off the way they did, sensing they were in control of things but it wouldn’t take long for God to show them otherwise. For as we will see, everything happens in the Joseph story in accordance with God’s plan. The eleven brothers weren’t in control at all but rather unwary participants in God placing Joseph right where He wanted him to be to accomplish just what He wanted him to do.

We’ll pick up with the Joseph storyline as he begins to serve Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, in Egypt after being sold off by the Midianites but before I close today, a quick summation of what the Lord is teaching us today.

For through His Word and the sinful behavior of Joseph’s eleven brothers, our Lord wants us to seek out, find, and eradicate the roots of sin that are within us, and to do it quickly before they grow up and take us over. He wants us to turn away from the enemy and toward Him before wickedness overcomes and overruns us, allowing Him to enter in and lead us to the righteousness and right living He desires.

Friends, the Lord God Almighty is the only cure for the common sin, the antidote that keeps it from cascading and leading us down the road of destruction. It’s no wonder why He is often referred to as the Great Physician.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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