The Brother’s Keepers // Genesis 37:12-36

Let us ask the Holy Spirit's grace on the reading of God's word.

O Lord our God, your word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

Give us grace to receive your truth in faith and love, and help us to live always for your glory.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

A reading from Genesis 37:12-36.

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 A 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 the 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.

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 20 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 ornate robe back to their father and said, 'We found this.

Examine it to see whether it's 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.

officials, the captain of the guard.

This is the word of the Lord.

If history teaches us one thing, a single truth, if we were to look over all of the course of human history, and it's this:

we fail to take care of one one another.

We fail to care for and keep the welfare of our brothers and sisters.

A couple of statistics: there are 1.25 million people in prison in our own country

according to the latest studies.

That's about the same population as the country of Estonia.

In the last study taken by the FBI, You know why?

For every 100,000 people, there are 360 violent crimes committed against others

and 1,700 property crimes committed.

Those are the hard numbers, but you didn't need any convincing because you and I know the soft numbers when we look at our own hearts.

How often is it that we are involved in gossip against someone who is not in the room?

How often do we think that the most convenient way to solve an issue issue is to just remove a person from our life.

How often have we held a grudge towards someone simply because they were treated better than us, and out of a sense of jealousy,

we've hated them in our hearts?

Have we ever made a friend with someone by belittling a common enemy of the two of us?

And what if someone opened the history of my brain my brain and wrote a book with all of the things that I've thought about other people.

That would be a bestseller, along with all of the tabloids.

When it comes to taking care of others, even the most virtuous among us have shameful memories.

The book of Genesis reveals this truth over and over in a constant cycle.

When humanity was placed in the garden, though, they were given an explicit command to do two things: 2 things by God: to work the

garden and keep the garden.

And the New International Version gives us a great translation and a helpful translation.

In Genesis 2:15, it simply says this: The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

The word to keep can simply be translated to take care of.

And this is important to take note of because because just one generation after this command is given, what happens to Adam and

Eve's kids?

Cain and Abel show the very first instance of jealous anger and a failure to take care of one another.

Cain is envious of his little brother, so he finds him in a field with no one looking and he murders him.

His blood is covered with the ground.

And when God finds Cain, God simply asks, "Where is your brother?"

And Cain asks, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Or you can translate that, "Am I supposed to take care of my brother?"

And the implicit answer is yes.

That's exactly what we were commanded to do as humanity.

We are to be caretakers and keepers of one another.

So when someone is in trouble, you go after them.

When someone is being bullied, you defend them.

When someone is broken, you bind them up.

When someone is naked, you clothe them.

When they are thirsty, you give them drink.

But as we read the chapters of Genesis, what is unfolded is one brotherly conflict after another, one failure

of one brother to take care of his other brother.

Over and over again.

Cain kills Abel.

Shem and Japheth are at odds with their brother Ham.

Abraham and Lot quarrel.

Jacob and Esau have not even come out of the womb yet, and they're fighting with one another.

And now Joseph.

It's like this lesson is cranked to 11.

The scene is set and there is dramatic tension between 12 brothers.

12 brothers from 4 different mothers.

The father has chosen one to be the favorite and passed over all the other ones, and the symbol of that favoritism is an ornate,

colorful robe.

Not only that, but that favored son starts talking about the daydreams he's had, how his brothers and his mother

and father will bow down to him.

Oh, so the question lingers as we come to today's story: What are the 10 brothers going to do with their hatred of that

younger one?

How will they respond?

How will they act?

And will this cycle continue?

What happens when they, like Cain,

find their brother alone in a field with no one around?

The scene is The sun has set.

All of the brothers except for Joseph and his little brother Benjamin have gone far north to an area called Shechem.

And Jacob calls Joseph and says, "Aren't your brothers shepherding up in Shechem?

Go, I'll send you, and I want you to bring a good word back to me."

And you go, "Oh, man, Jacob, you are so clueless."

Do you have no idea what's going on with all of your sons?

Do you understand what they're saying about your favorite son?

You're going to send Joseph to go see how these brothers are doing and you want a word of peace, a word of shalom, to

come back?

That's precisely what earlier in the chapter we were told the brothers couldn't speak about Joseph.

There was no good word that they could give about him.

But suddenly we're met by a different character, aren't we?

Because as Joseph starts moving towards Shechem, he becomes lost in a field

and he's encountered by a man.

Joseph is just wandering around, he's gotten lost, and not only is he met by a man, the text tells us he is found by a man.

What are you looking for?

The man asks.

And Joseph replies, my brothers, please tell me where they are pasturing the flocks.

The man replies, they have gone away, for I heard them say, let us go to Dothan.

And so Joseph went away and he finds his brothers about 19 miles north.

Boy, he is really lost.

They are not in Shechem, they are in Dothan.

This is going to be quite a journey, but this stranger danger.

This man knows where they are.

What is going on, and is this important?

Now, if we were picking up a newspaper and we were reading this, we might say, oh, this is just kind of a passing detail.

And some commentators would say this has no relevance to the story at all.

It happened, and so they decided to include it.

Ah, but if you've been reading along in Genesis, have we ever encountered any other unnamed strangers,

just disclosed as a man, who appears to a central figure in Genesis and has some

important interaction with them.

And we think of Abraham sitting at the mouth of his tent while Sarah is inside, and suddenly 3 strangers appear, simply called

3 men.

And after spending some time with them and dining with them, 2 of them leave, but one stays.

And the next chapter, it's disclosed that that man is Yahweh, the Lord, appearing in an

undisclosed, strange, anonymous figure of just a human being.

Ah, and then we think of how Jacob's name was changed to Israel when he was about to meet

his brother.

He is suddenly encountered at night by a man out in the field who wrestles with him.

And it's only at dawn that Jacob asks the name of the man and he says, Elohim, God.

Only then does he realize that that man is God.

But there's an even closer contextual parallel between what we have in Joseph and those other two stories, and it is this.

All of these words pile up in Genesis chapter 21 in the story of Abraham's concubine,

Hagar.

Hagar has given birth to a son named Ishmael, and they are sent away.

And listen to verse 14.

How many of these words come back to us from the Joseph story?

So Abraham Abraham rose early in the morning, the Hebrew word for that is shechem, it's the Hebrew

verb for the name of this place where Joseph thinks his brothers are, and took the bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar,

putting it on her shoulder, also the word shechem, along with the child, Ishmael,

and sent her away, exactly what Jacob did.

what Jacob does to Joseph.

And she departed and wandered, exactly what Joseph is doing, in the wilderness, or the field, of

Beersheba.

A Hebrew reader would go, whoa, this Joseph story is reminding us of Hagar, who in the wilderness was in a

complete state of helplessness.

She was no longer in Egypt where she was from.

She was no longer with the people who had mistreated

instead she's cast out in the wilderness.

She's run out of water.

She has very little bread.

And she sets her child under a tree to watch him die.

And the text tells us at that moment in the field, God hears the cries of Ishmael.

And when he comes, he shows Hagar the source of water, the source of her sustenance, the source of life.

So here in a familiar episode, Joseph has been sent from Shechem and is now wandering in the field.

And what he doesn't realize is that his life and the life of everyone he knows is at stake because a famine is

coming.

And what the Lord does in this moment is he uses an anonymous figure, a stranger, a foreigner, a disguised way of

deliverance and salvation to send Joseph to his brothers, to connect the dots 19 miles away, in

order that Joseph eventually will get to Egypt where he has a dream, or I guess interprets a dream,

about a famine, and the whole ancient world is saved.

Now, unless this man meets him in the field, all is lost.

Joseph's life, his brothers, everyone.

The famine would have wrecked them all.

Listen to this, though.

In Genesis 45, Joseph is going to realize what God has done.

He looks back at that man in the field, and this is what he says in Genesis 45:7-8.

He said, God was the one who sent me before you, brothers, to preserve for you a remnant on earth.

'On earth.

It was not you who sent me here to Egypt, brothers of mine.

It was God.'

So imagine years later— by the way, spoiler— Joseph is going to survive.

He's going to save the whole family.

And one day he's going to sit down with his dad and tell him about the time he was wandering in the field and suddenly a

man met him and he realizes that was the moment that all All of my life pivoted from God showing up as a

stranger.

And Jacob says, ah, that man appeared to me as well and he changed my whole life.

Friends, there is a constant throughout the scriptures and especially in this story and it is this: God's guiding

hand in the events of humanity.

We call that prophecy.

providence.

If you have ever read the story of Esther, God's name is never mentioned.

And yet the story of Esther, if it teaches us one thing, it is that God is moving the events of human

history according to his will.

And the same thing is happening here in the story of Joseph where God is not so much in the foreground the way that he was appearing to Adam, appearing to

appearing to Jacob.

Now he is in the background, but this story is here, the man in the field, to give us some measure of confidence that God,

although appearing as a stranger, is in control of all of the designs of what is happening in history.

And this should come as a great assurance to us, friends.

When God has removed himself from the foreground of our lives, our lives and we feel like we are wandering, we are wandering about,

we are aimless, we don't know what God is doing in the face of all of the strange events in our lives,

if you feel like you are without a purpose or a compass, if you feel like you are somewhere in life and you don't know how you got there and you

don't know how to retrace your steps, that is exactly where Joseph is in this this moment.

And the Bible describes every one of us as wandering sheep.

We all have strayed.

And yet, even in our helplessness and without hope in the world, as we were spiritually starving like Hagar,

as we had no idea of the fate that awaited us as Joseph, God sometimes in mysterious is the

man in the field who points the directions to us.

See, sometimes God's guidance is disguised.

Sometimes God looks like a stranger in a field, and we cannot know where God redirected our steps in an

everyday casual encounter, but he is faithful to bring about his goodwill.

The fact, though, that God directs us with strange means does not mean that we should go looking for God's

guidance in strange places.

God tells us that by reading and meditating on his word, by being in the fellowship and accountability of the church, this is where

his will is normally disclosed to us.

But this story simply reminds us that when we're not we are not expecting God to redirect us.

He is doing so faithfully and sometimes without our knowledge.

This means that God

is keeping us when we failed to keep others.

He is looking after us when we fail to look after others.

So how do we respond to this, this providence of God?

Well, first of all, at the very least, we just can respond by saying, "Isn't God amazing?

Isn't God incredible that only he can take these terrible things happening in the world or these aimless things happening in my life

and he's bringing them to perfect completion by his plan, his invisible hand?"

But more personally, we ought to be encouraged when we read this to look back over the course of our lives and to say, our lives and say,

where were the turning points where God appeared to me in a field and I didn't even really realize it?

A friend of mine who served in the Navy now for years was telling me about when he was a young

naval person,

sailor.

And when he was in Pensacola, he was taking an eye exam with an optometrist.

Optometrist there, and he really wanted to be a naval aviator.

And the optometrist that he would normally see was out on medical leave, so he saw a different optometrist that day.

And the optometrist went over the scores with my friend, and he said, "Well, you don't qualify to fly the aircraft that you want to fly.

Your scores for your eyes are not that good, so you can do these things."

And so my friend went into that line of work.

He's been very successful with it.

He's an executive.

executive officer on a carrier.

It's pretty amazing.

He told me that recently he was at his optometrist here in San Diego, and his optometrist said, "You know what?

I was serving in Pensacola at the time that you had those exams done.

I was out on medical leave at that time."

He said, "If I was in the office and I saw these scores, I would have passed you."

Now, that moment changed the course of my friend's life.

And I said, "What did you think about that?"

And he said, "You know what, Jeff?

I wouldn't have changed a thing because I wouldn't have met my wife, wouldn't have had my daughter."

Ah, sometimes God works through a strange anonymous optometrist.

How often do we stop and look back over the course of our lives and say, "Wow, God, look how faithful you were even though you were disguised."

Now this is of key importance that God is taking care God is keeping us because the next scene shows the failure

of Joseph's brothers to take care of him, the utter failure.

Joseph's brothers failed to look after their brother as his keeper.

Two of his brothers especially come to the foreground here, Reuben and Judah.

And Reuben is going to be sympathetic but weak.

He is feckless.

he doesn't have any effectiveness, although he shows himself to be sort of sympathetic.

Whereas Judah, he's cruel and he's strong.

So we get a weak and sympathetic brother and we get a strong but cruel brother.

The brothers see Joseph coming from a long way off, and as he's coming, they're plotting.

Verse 18, there's one thing on their minds: Joseph's dream.

Here comes that dreamer.

No one's around.

You and I have been there.

We're gossiping about someone because they've said or done something.

Can you believe them?

Where does she get off talking like that?

Can you believe the nerve of that guy?

And then before you know it, your conversation has bubbled over so you're at the point of taking action with that hatred.

"Let's kill him and we'll blame it on a ferocious animal.

Then we'll see what's happened to his dreams."

Now, what the brothers don't know right now is that there's a cruel irony happening.

We're going to blame it on a ferocious animal.

When God talks to another brother who's failed to take care of his brother, Cain, he says, "You must beware of the enemy."

Beware of sin because it is like a ferocious animal.

It is crouching ready to pounce at you.

And these brothers don't realize it, but they are becoming that ferocious animal by pouncing on their brother.

But Reuben speaks up.

And here is what we need to remember about Reuben.

What we have just learned is that Reuben is the firstborn of Jacob's children, which means he is ordinarily entitled to the blessing.

entitled to a double portion of the inheritance, but he's shown himself to be foolish because in

some ridiculous action he decided it was a good idea to sleep with one of his father's wives, his father's concubine,

Bilhah.

And this was likely not simply an act of passionate lust.

Perhaps it was a power play, a sort of "Who's your daddy?"

move.

By sleeping with his stepbrother's mom, he would exert some leadership over the next generation.

But the whole plan backfires.

Reuben is not the favored son.

Clearly he's lost favor in his father's eyes.

And he says to himself, maybe if I can rescue him from this empty well and take him back to his father, I can be seen with favor in

my father's eyes again.

Let's not take his life.

Shed no blood.

Instead, throw him into this empty well, this cistern here.

But Reuben's plan will not work.

He will come back later.

Even though he was sympathetic in this regard, he is ineffective.

He fails to take care of his brother.

So Joseph, who has been trekking through the fields this whole time, he finally arrives.

And he's jumped.

As he's coming to check on their welfare, his 10 brothers give no word of peace.

Instead, they ambush him, and he's stripped from his robe, the special gift that was made by his own father to show

his favor.

He hears the mocking.

Let's see what becomes of your dreams now.

Will we bow down to you now?

Will you really tell us your dream?

Please reign over us now that you are in this dry well beneath our feet.

And after he is thrown into the cistern, his brothers in a cruel display of sick irony sit down

to enjoy a meal of bread together.

What are they thinking?

Well, except for Reuben, they are all in the act of committing murder.

Their intention is to leave Joseph there until he dies of dehydration.

It's exaggeration.

As a group, they are becoming Cain once again.

Their brother's blood will cry out from the ground.

And they're now mutually complicit.

If one exposes the crime, they will all fall for it.

And so what would they say to each other to make sure that nothing is exposed?

Come on, Joseph got himself into this mess.

He was the one separating and dividing our family.

family, talking about lording over us.

We're not our brother's keeper.

But God will not let the crime go forward.

Remember, he is orchestrating the events of all of human history.

And so suddenly they hear the sound of a caravan of merchants.

See, their plan

was to leave their brother in the well, but God is going to act through a different brother,

even more cruel.

Judas speaks up,

"Hey, what do we gain in killing our brother?

What profit is there for us?

What benefit?

Ah, I say, rather than killing him and concealing our blood, we sell him to these Ishmaelites."

to the Ishmaelites.

And then he ends it this way: "After all, he is our own blood, our own flesh."

There is no compassion here.

The merchants are carrying gum and myrrh and balm, and soon they are going to be carrying a living being, just

that has become another product in their inventory.

Joseph's brothers agree to sell to the Ishmaelites, Who is Ishmael?

Ah, son of Abraham.

Hmm.

And a little later in the chapter, these Ishmaelites are called Midianites.

And in fact, at the end of the chapter, depending on your translation, it calls them Midianites.

Are they Ishmaelites or Midianites or Midian?

Midianites.

Well, the purpose here is to show the children of Israel, Midian and Medan were also children of Abraham,

children by another wife named Keturah.

See, these are not strange people with a strange language.

These are like third and fourth cousins of Joseph's brothers.

See, we don't hear a word from Joseph in this entire story, but he is about to be trafficked by his own flesh and blood.

When the merchants arrive in Egypt, he's sold to an officer of Pharaoh,

and most translations render his title the captain of the guard, but his title literally means the chief executioner

or the head of the slaughterers.

Joseph silently goes from being a wandering sheep to a silent lamb led to the slaughter.

And the brothers come back home and they stand before their father holding out a robe stained with the blood of a goat.

And they don't make up a story.

They let their father draw his own conclusions.

"Examine this robe," they say.

"Is it your son's?"

They don't call him "our brother."

They call him "your son."

We're reminded of when Adam was asked what he did in the garden, and he doesn't refer to Eve, but to his son, 'as bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh' anymore.

No, no, it's 'the woman, the woman you put here.'

Joseph has been hated by his brothers.

He's been gossiped about by his brothers.

He's been jumped and held prisoner by his own family.

He has had his life valued only as a profit that he would bring to others.

He has been trafficked by his own extended family and now he has been disassociated by his brothers.

And as readers of Genesis, we say, "This is not just a repeat of what has happened before, brothers hating brothers, family

being torn apart by jealousy.

This is the worst it's ever been."

What hope is there in this story?

And over the course of the world, we see that nothing has changed.

See, our own life and our own context is just as violent a place as it was in the days of Joseph.

It is just as common to see the same injustices done from one human to another in our age: ambushing,

discrediting, abusing, abandoning, disassociating, objectifying the human soul, trafficking,

murdering.

This very day, there are older siblings who will sell their younger brother or sister

This very day, the sinful heart still objectifies the soul of another and thinks, "Your life is worthless unless it is

of some advantage to me."

This very day, we find the easiest way to deal with people is to surgically remove them from our existence.

And if necessary, we will enlist a half a dozen others in doing that.

Doing so.

Every age it is like this, friends.

When will we ever learn to become our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper?

When?

What hope is there?

Ah.

Here's what we learned throughout the course of the Bible, and you're already seeing it here.

The brutality toward Joseph points to the brutality toward another.

The brutality toward Jesus.

Jesus was the favored son.

He rightfully was to have rule over all others, but his own family hated him.

They hated his authority and they hated his kingship, so they plotted against him.

They sold him for silver.

They stripped him of his garments.

They mocked him and his plans to rule over them.

He was condemned.

He was left for dead.

But unlike Joseph, Jesus did actually die.

And not just a physical death.

He descended into the pit of God's rejection, the dry cistern absent of God's grace and

life.

And every time we act in violence toward neighbor, every time we fail to be the keeper of another, brother, every time we

fail to seek their best interest, we're doing so toward God, or we're failing to do so toward God, because our brother and

sister is made in His image.

And Joseph's life is meant to point us to Jesus, but not only his brutality, not only the violence and his humiliation

and his suffering, but also his triumph.

His exaltation.

See, Joseph will succeed in Genesis where all of the other brothers have failed.

He will break the cycle of conflict.

How?

Not by taking vengeance, but by offering forgiveness.

He will declare, "What you meant for evil, brothers, God meant for good."

Jesus will say, "Forgive them, Father."

Father.

They don't know the evil that they're doing.

God has done the same thing through his favored Son, Jesus Christ.

His cross was so that God would not take revenge on all the brothers and sisters, but instead would issue forgiveness,

breaking the cycle.

And again, what humanity meant for evil, putting the Son of God to death on a cross,

God meant for good.

Do you want to change in order that from the heart you would truly take care of your neighbor, truly be the keeper of your brother and sister?

Not just play-acting, but really change.

Through trust in Jesus, we can finally have sincere love and brotherly affection for all people.

This is what Paul tells the Romans in Romans 12:9-10.

In Romans chapter 12, he explains what is possible through Jesus Christ.

He says this: Love must be sincere.

The word is anapokritis, hypocrisy, but it's got a negator at the front.

It says love should be unhypocritical, genuine, sincere.

It should issue from the very core of your being.

your being.

And through Jesus, you're able to do this.

You hate what is evil, you cling to what is good.

You are devoted to one another in love.

You honor one another above yourselves.

Christ's forgiveness so transforms your heart that you hold nothing back from truly taking care of others,

from truly devoting yourselves to their welfare, from truly being their keeper.

Brothers and sisters, this is God's will for your life, to be your brother and sister's keeper.

Amen.

O Lord, let it be so.

We entrust ourselves to you.

We confess ourselves as complicit in your death.

Lord, we love to cover up our sin, and yet Our guilt cries out from the ground.

We cannot keep it hidden.

So instead, Lord, we come to you and we receive your forgiveness.

And we pray, Lord, that you would give us hearts like Christ, hearts like Joseph,

that with sincerity would be our brother and sister's keeper.

Wow, Lord, you plan to do amazing things in the midst of this body of Christ and in the world.

world through that good news.

Thank you.

We give you praise and thanks in the name of Jesus.

Amen.