The Pit Was Not The Destination
This sermon was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, May 31. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Paul McCartney of the Beatles woke up one morning sometime around 1964 with a complete, fully formed melody playing in his head. I mean he had the whole thing complete with chords, progression, structure all before he was fully awake.
He stumbled over to the piano to play and write it out before he could forget it. And then he spent months going around to other musicians asking, "Have you heard this before?"
He was so sure the song already existed that he almost didn't claim it as his own. He even called it "Scrambled Eggs" as a placeholder for over a year before the real lyrics came because he couldn't believe something that complete just arrived like this while he slept. It turned out to be entirely original and his song "Yesterday" went on to become one of the most covered songs in recorded history.
How many of you have ever had a dream so vivid, so real, that when you woke up you genuinely didn't know for a moment whether you were still in it?
How many of you actually remember your dreams? Like, you wake up and you could tell someone the whole thing: the people, the place, the feeling of it?
In the ancient world, they took dreams seriously as a primary way the divine spoke. Of course I don’t think they thought God was speaking to them when they had the one where you show up to work naked or you fly through the aisles of the grocery store. Hmmm… or maybe I’m the only one.
The ancients would have nodded at McCartney’s song dream because in the Biblical story, dreams are considered something arriving from outside of you, carrying weight and meaning and purpose that you couldn't have generated on your own.
Today, as we open the pages of the Biblical text to Genesis chapters 37-41, we’ll be introduced to a dreamer— a young man in Genesis whose dreams are about to set the entire trajectory of his life, his family’s life, and the lives of millions of people he would never meet, in a nation that doesn't yet exist.
His name is Joseph.
Would you like to hear about his dreams?
Before we do, pray with me.
WHERE WE ARE IN THE STORY
If you're new today or have missed any weeks in our series, welcome and we're glad you're here!
We're in a series called GENESIS: The Promise walking through the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and specifically looking at chapters 12 to 50.
The story opens as God calls one man out of obscurity — Abraham — to leave all that was familiar and comfortable, and makes a three-part covenant promise with him: I'll give you land, family, and blessing. God promised that through Abraham's offspring, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
God gave Abraham a child he thought he would never be able to have and then his loyalty was put to the test.
God carried the covenant through Abraham's son Isaac and then through Isaac's son Jacob.
Jacob schemed and stole his father’s patriarchal blessing from his older brother which gave him full authority over Isaac’s entire family and estate.
He then spent the next twenty years astranged from his family working at his Uncle Laban's house where he married two women, Leah and Rachel who bore him 12 sons (who later became the 12 tribes of Israel), and Jacob watched God bless him through all of his schemes and struggles to carry the covenant through.
Today, the God-Cam pans from Jacob's story to zoom inside the story of his 12 sons.
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin
GENESIS 37: THE COAT, THE DREAMS, AND THE PIT
Let’s look at Genesis chapter 37 together.
Genesis 37 CSB
V2 “At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father.”
Bilhah and Zilpah were originally servants for Jacob's wives, Leah and Rachel. At some point, Leah and Rachel stopped being able to conceive, so they each gave their servant to Jacob as a surrogate. They each bore Jacob two sons. Bilhah’s sons were Dan and Naphtali and Zilpah’s were Gad and Asher.
So Joseph is out there tending sheep with Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. For some reason, whatever they were doing was bad and Joseph was the tattletale to their father Jacob.
V3 “Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long-sleeved robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.”
Joseph was his father's favorite because he was the youngest and he was Rachel's son. Jacob loved Rachel more than his other wives because she’s who he worked seven years for at his uncle Laban’s house to marry before Laban pulled a fast one on him and slid Rachel's older sister Leah into the wedding tent. Jacob loved Rachel so much he committed to work for Laban for seven more years just so he can marry Rachel. He was head over heels in love with Rachel. She was his soulmate. And her son was Joseph.
It seems that Jacob didn't conceal how much he cherished Joseph because he gave him an ornate long sleeve robe. There's no indication here this was a multicolored robe like in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. None of that. That’s Hollywood taking some liberties, and we’ve never heard of them doing that before have we?
This long sleeved robe was cultural for someone who does not need to work with their hands. Someone with that sort of robe was a person of privilege.
Last year when I was in Greece, we had a special Afghan dinner served by a few Afghan refugees. Not only was the food spectacular, but they also shared their story of loss, trauma, grief, and redemption because they were able to settle in Greece and surrendered to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. They had some Afghan garments there and let us try them on. One of them was a long sleeved robe. Here's what it looks like.
The longer the sleeves means the greater your status in society because if you have long sleeves then you don’t get your hands dirty. You don’t do manual labor. This sort of robe is still worn by people in their culture today.
Joseph’s coat seems to be something similar as it indicates status in the family above his other brothers. And they were livid! The text says “they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.”
V5 “Then Joseph had a dream. [Here we go!] When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had:
There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”
“Are you really going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him. “Are you really going to rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said.
Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
He told his father and brothers, and his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.”
Okay so remember, dreams in the ancient world were links to the divine world as God was potentially speaking to the dreamer, but they also believed repeated dreams had confirmed meaning from God. Also any dreams experienced by kings or royalty were definitely from God. God was communicating in a way that made sense to people in that world.
Joseph’s dreams seemed to make sense to his family, even though they certainly didn’t approve of it. Both Joseph’s dreams seemed to signal he would be elevated to an esteemed rank within his family although giving no hint of any broader authority beyond the family.
His dreams may have been from God, but they served to increase conflict within the family. It’s important to realize this wasn’t to put God’s covenant itself in jeopardy, but simply a family conflict that posed another obstacle for the covenant. Let’s keep reading.
V12 “His brothers had gone to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem. Israel said to Joseph, “Your brothers, you know, are pasturing the flocks at Shechem. Get ready. I’m sending you to them.”
“I’m ready,” Joseph replied.
Then Israel said to him, “Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are doing, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the Hebron Valley, and he went to Shechem.”
We already know that previously, Joseph was out watching four of his brothers tend sheep and that didn't seem to work out well for his approval rating.
Joseph, on foot, travels to Shechem which is 50 miles from Hebron, where his family was living, to try to find his brothers. They weren’t there. Some guy tells him they might be in Dothan and so he continues on foot 14 more miles to Dothan to find them.
V18 “They saw him in the distance, and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him. They said to one another, “Oh, look, here comes that dream expert! So now, come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of the pits. We can say that a vicious animal ate him. Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!”
When Reuben heard this, he tried to save him from them. He said, “Let’s not take his life.” Reuben also said to them, “Don’t shed blood. Throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him”—intending to rescue him from them and return him to his father.
When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped off Joseph’s robe, the long-sleeved robe that he had on. Then they took him and threw him into the pit. The pit was empty, without water.”
So here comes Joseph wearing his long sleeved ornate robe skipping into the pasturelands to observe what his brothers were doing. He probably thought he was untouchable because he had his father's approval. Apparently his brothers thought he had something else coming to him.
V28 “When Midianite traders passed by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took Joseph to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy is gone! What am I going to do?” So they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a male goat, and dipped the robe in its blood. They sent the long-sleeved robe to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it. Is it your son’s robe or not?”
His father recognized it. “It is my son’s robe,” he said. “A vicious animal has devoured him. Joseph has been torn to pieces!” Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said. “I will go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” And his father wept for him.
Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards.”
Joseph’s brothers hate Joseph because his father favors him above and beyond all the other brothers. When they see Joseph prancing over the horizon in his long sleeved robe, they think they’ll rough him up and scare him a bit to teach him a lesson. The lesson goes south and they find themselves in a predicament because they know what they did to Joseph wouldn’t remain a secret from their father.
Judah suggests what if, instead of killing him they sold him to one of the passing trade groups as a slave. Their plan seemed to work, but their father, Jacob, was out of his mind in grief over his cherished son of Rachel.
As tragic as this is at this point in the story, it is a piece of the whole for how God would bring about his covenant blessing.
GENESIS 39–41: THE LORD WAS WITH JOSEPH
For this next part, we’re skipping past chapter 38 for now, but we’ll come back to it, I promise. It’s a slight detour from Joseph’s story so I want us to see where he ends up, as we swiftly unpack chapters 39 through 41 which are the theological engine of this whole story arc.
Picking up in chapter 39 where 37 left off, Joseph arrives in Egypt as a slave and lands in the household of a man named Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's military officers who discovers Joseph was wise beyond his years and decides to make him his household manager. And right there, in the middle of one of the worst seasons of his young life, the text quietly whispers something intentional: “The Lord was with Joseph (Genesis 39:2).”
His situation slightly improves, but he’s still a slave.
Because God was with him, the text says, Joseph had success in everything he did.
Then the story turns for the worse when Potiphar's wife falsely accused him of propositioning her for sex, which is something he absolutely did not do. There was no innocent until proven guilty trial or even an acknowledgment of the reputation of Joseph being an upright man. Potiphar believed his wife and that was the end of it. Joseph went from overseer of a household to a prison cell for a crime he didn't commit.
And quietly, the text whispers again: "The Lord was with Joseph (Genesis 39:21,23)."
Notice the text never says "The Lord was with Joseph" only when things were going well. God was with him in the middle of his suffering. God's presence was with him no matter if he was on a hill or in a valley.
Even in prison, God was redeeming his suffering in captivity and using it for his glory by positioning Joseph to serve his Kingdom. God used Joseph's administration and leadership skills to be seen and needed by the warden and his staff. This reminds me a little of Andy Dufresne in the movie Shawshank Redemption, who too was wrongly convicted and imprisoned, found favor with the warden enough to manage his finances. Joseph had the same favor.
Then two of Pharaoh's officials, his cupbearer and his baker, ended up in the same prison as Joseph and each had a dream. He interpreted the cupbearer would be restored in three days and in three days the baker— off with his head! Yikes! He asked the cupbearer to remember and mention him to Pharaoh.
The cupbearer was restored, but forgot all about Joseph, stuck in a prison cell for a crime he didn't commit and forgotten by the one person who could help him.
But he was not forgotten by God.
Two years later, Pharaoh himself had a couple dreams on the same night. He dreamt about seven fat cows swallowed by seven starving cows and seven plump heads of grain consumed by seven withered ones. Remember, in the ancient world, a repeated dream carried more weight and was considered confirmed. But Pharaoh's wisest men couldn't interpret it. At last, the cupbearer remembered the Hebrew prisoner who had interpreted his dream.
Joseph was brought out of the pit, cleaned up, and stood before Pharaoh. His first words were, "It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer (Genesis 41:16)." His heart was to credit God to a man who thought himself to be a god. He interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and God also gave him a plan: There would be seven years of agricultural abundance, but then a severe seven year famine immediately following.
Pharaoh looked at his advisors: "Can we find anyone like this man in whom the Spirit of God lives (Genesis 41:38)?" Joseph was thirty years old when he stood there. Thirteen years after his brothers threw him in a pit, he went from the lowest position of a prisoner slave to being elevated by Pharaoh to the second highest position in all of Egypt as reward for interpreting his dreams.
Remember Joseph’s own dreams? They seem to be coming true.
During the seven years of abundance, Joseph had two sons. He named the firstborn Manasseh, meaning: "God has made me forget all my hardship." He named the second Ephraim, meaning: "God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." The names reveal his heart.
In the land of his affliction, the very place he was brought against his will, God gave him family. The covenant promise: land, family, blessing is still alive and moving because the pit was not the destination. It was the road to move God’s covenant promise forward.
GENESIS 38: JUDAH’S TRANSFORMATION
Now, let’s rewind back to chapter 38 because for some reason in the Biblical story, the author takes a sharp pause in Joseph's story to pan and zoom the God-Cam into his brother Judah's story that takes place at some point during the time when Joseph was in Egypt. Before we read it, I want to give you a warning about this due to sensitive themes with adult content of sexuality and abuse. This is where it gets PG-13.
Let’s look at chapter 38 together.
Genesis 38 CSB
V2 “Judah saw the daughter of a Canaanite named Shua; he took her as a wife and slept with her. She conceived and gave birth to a son, and he named him Er. She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and named him Onan. She gave birth to another son and named him Shelah. It was at Chezib that she gave birth to him.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. Now Er, Judah’s firstborn, was evil in the Lord’s sight, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife. Perform your duty as her brother-in-law and produce offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he released his semen on the ground so that he would not produce offspring for his brother. What he did was evil in the Lord’s sight, so he put him to death also.
Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Remain a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He might die too, like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s house.
After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers. Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep.” So she took off her widow’s clothes, veiled her face, covered herself, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face.
He went over to her and said, “Come, let me sleep with you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.
She said, “What will you give me for sleeping with me?”
“I will send you a young goat from my flock,” he replied.
But she said, “Only if you leave something with me until you send it.”
“What should I give you?” he asked.
She answered, “Your signet ring, your cord, and the staff in your hand.” So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. She got up and left, then removed her veil and put her widow’s clothes back on.
When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite in order to get back the items he had left with the woman, he could not find her. He asked the men of the place, “Where is the cult prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?”
“There has been no cult prostitute here,” they answered.
So the Adullamite returned to Judah, saying, “I couldn’t find her, and besides, the men of the place said, ‘There has been no cult prostitute here.’”
Judah replied, “Let her keep the items for herself; otherwise we will become a laughingstock. After all, I did send this young goat, but you couldn’t find her.”
About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law, Tamar, has been acting like a prostitute, and now she is pregnant.”
“Bring her out,” Judah said, “and let her be burned to death!”
As she was being brought out, she sent her father-in-law this message: “I am pregnant by the man to whom these items belong.” And she added, “Examine them. Whose signet ring, cord, and staff are these?”
Judah recognized them and said, “She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not know her intimately again.
When the time came for her to give birth, there were twins in her womb. As she was giving birth, one of them put out his hand, and the midwife took it and tied a scarlet thread around it, announcing, “This one came out first.” But then he pulled his hand back, out came his brother, and she said, “What a breakout you have made for yourself!” So he was named Perez. Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread tied to his hand, came out, and was named Zerah.”
So… yeah… that happened.
The Genesis author stops the Joseph narrative cold and drops us into this scene with Judah. Why?
It feels like a total interruption doesn’t it? And it kind of is— but intentionally.
Judah is about to become real important later in the story. And before he does, we need to see what sort of man he is.
First, Tamar looks like she’s caught in the middle of something scandalous, but in the ancient Near East, there was a legal custom called levirate marriage. If a woman's husband died before she had a son, her husband's brother, or next in line, was obligated to marry her and produce an heir to preserve the family name and provide for her. It was his known legal obligation.
But Judah’s son Onan didn’t want to play house so God put him to death. To understand why we need to pan the God-Cam back in time to zoom into the Garden of Eden.
All the way back in Genesis chapter 1, God's command to his newly created image-bearing humans was to be fruitful and multiply. He said it again to Noah when he left the ark. The covenant blessing to Abraham included family with his descendants as numerous as the stars. Replication of life, being fruitful and multiplying, was central to God’s covenant (and still is). Onan knew exactly what he was doing. He chose to defy God's covenant design with full awareness of what it meant. And God took it seriously to the point of death.
Judah now had one son left, Shelah. He was legally required to give Shelah to Tamar. He didn't and this was most likely because he was still a young child. Er was probably in his late teens when he married Tamar, Onan probably a middle teenager. We know this because both Onan and Shelah were still living in their father's house. Older teenage sons would start getting married and were responsible for their own lives.
Even as Shelah grew up, Judah kept stalling, protecting his remaining son, leaving Tamar with nothing. No husband, no heir, no security, no future. Tamar took drastic action because Judah had denied her what was legally and culturally hers.
And then Judah, the same man who was ready to have her burned to death for immorality, after being caught with scrambled eggs on his face, had to humbly say the words: “She is more in the right than I.”
Now here's where this gets canonically significant. The son born from this, Perez, is in the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew 1:3 and Tamar is also named there. The Messianic line runs from Genesis chapter 38.
And notice the tiniest detail at the end. Baby Zerah puts his hand out first so the midwife ties a scarlet thread around his wrist to mark him as the firstborn. And then he pulls his hand back and his brother Perez breaks through ahead of him. Perez’s name literally means "one who breaks through." The one still in—who wasn't supposed to come first— did.
Sound familiar? The underdog. The younger. The one who shouldn't be on top. This is Joseph’s story told in miniature, tucked neatly inside the whole of Joseph’s story as a hint for what’s to come. Watch for the breach! The one in the pit is about to break through!
Even in abuse and affliction, God’s covenant promise keeps moving forward. Let’s say Amen to that!
There’s no looking past it… Judah was a messed up man, as we all are, albeit he was extremely messed up, I mean what business did he have sleeping with a “cult prostitute” anyway even if it wouldn't have been Tamar— and yet God worked in him to bring about his transformation.
Let’s remember, just because God used Judah, doesn’t mean he approved of Judah’s behavior. God is a God of restoration and redemption so Judah was given the opportunity. Even in Judah’s messy middle, God’s covenant was still intact, and this gives us hope for what God is doing in the story.
In this story, we see the start, messy middle, and redeemed ending for Judah, but for many of us, we’re still sitting in the messy middle.
Maybe you feel like you’re a mess, maybe not as messy as Judah, but you feel far enough from God where you don’t sense him in your life.
Like Judah, you’re never too far gone— and don’t think you are. We see through the mess of Jacob, Joseph, and Judah’s family, God would bring Jesus into the picture so he could redeem us out of our mess.
If God did transformation in a messed up jerk like Judah, then he for sure is a God powerful enough to enter a relationship with us in our mess and carry us into our own transformation. Amen?!
That’s why Jesus came. He entered our mess and redeemed us from it to bring us to himself for transformation as we choose to walk with him.
I know… this is a difficult story, but this story is about redemption. Redemption is what Jesus came to give us when we “confess with our mouth, “[He] is Lord,” and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9 CSB).” Scripture says, that’s how we are saved.
CLOSING
Let’s look at the seven basic commands Jesus left his Church: repent, be baptized, break bread, love, pray, give, and go. The story of Joseph, Judah, and Tamar is calling us to the last one today.
Go.
Joseph spent years in a pit nobody came to get him out of. Tamar spent years isolated in a widow's house nobody came to rescue her from. The text records that with the full weight of tragedy. And that tragedy is still happening. Right now. Maybe in our lives, but surely in the lives of people around us.
There are people in your world who are in a pit. Maybe it's trauma from something done to them. Physical, sexual, emotional abuse and they've never told a soul. Betrayal by someone who was supposed to protect them. Forgotten by the one person who could have helped them, and yet remain sitting in silence for two years or twenty.
The “Go” command is simple, but not easy. Go toward the pain instead of away from it. Go host the presence of God in someone's dark place because that's exactly what God did for Joseph. The text never says God immediately extracted Joseph from his suffering. It says, the Lord was with Joseph. Present. Close. Not looking away. With him, in his suffering.
You can be that for someone this week by bringing God’s presence to them. Go find them. Go call them. Go text them. Go knock on their door. Go out of your way, if you must, to see them.
Think of someone, right now, who needs to be rescued by God’s presence and with the power of his grace and love. Can you think of someone? Don't leave them forgotten in the pit.
I had someone come for me when I was in the pit. I’m here right now because they came and they brought the presence and power of God’s grace and love. They sat with me. They walked with me, literally on sidewalks, talked with me, they listened, and they led me to know Christ. And I chose to surrender to him as Lord and Savior.
Go. Will you go?
PRAYER
Father- we close this morning holding a lot.
We've watched a seventeen-year-old boy stripped of his robe and thrown in a pit by his own brothers. We've watched a woman be denied her dignity, denied her rights, and left with no one to speak for her. And we know these aren't just ancient stories. They are happening. They have happened to people in this room and online listening today.
For every one of us who have been in a pit of betrayal, abuse, assault, abandonment— we pray for healing over all of us listening today.
Jesus, we remember, you were also betrayed. Falsely accused. Abused. Denied. Stripped, handed over, and placed in a tomb. And, we remember, you came out of that tomb. And because you came out, every person in a pit has a way out.
Give us the courage to go. Go to the forgotten ones. Go toward the pain instead of past or away from it. To bring your presence that says: I see you. I'm here. You are not alone. To bring your power of love and grace.
We trust you with everything we're carrying. In Jesus Name, Amen.
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