Hatred & Jealousy

So I told the staff that if the people clap after that video will know they’re excited about Genesis chapter five. I’m not completely convinced. Just so you know, last night we were having dinner together as a family, and my oldest son, who is 14 years old, he’s sitting right here in the front row, asked, he said, who’s preaching tomorrow? And I said, well, does that matter? He said, I just want to know who’s preaching. I said, I’m preaching. He said, okay. He said, what are you preaching on? I said, you’re not going to believe this. It’s so exciting. I’m probably not going to even sleep tonight. I can’t wait to get to church tomorrow, because we are going to start the fifth and final part of our Genesis series. And you know what he said to me? We’re still in Genesis. And I said this, Henry, I said, you are in for a treat because the final chapters of Genesis, it’s literally, you know, when you’re watching a TV show and it comes to an end and you have that just feeling of, oh, man, what am I going to do? Because I’m so conditioned and used to watching my favorite TV show, and then they tell you there’s going to be a spinoff and you get all super excited, because really, the last half of Genesis, the last portion of Genesis, is all about Joseph.

We talked about in the video. And so if this is your first time here and you’ve never been part of Genesis one one through four, and literally you could just take the end of Genesis and you can actually even be its own book of the Bible. It could be its own narrative, because of the way that it ends. And so I’m excited about it. I hope you’re excited about it as well. I also asked my son. I said, well, tell me this how much do you know about Joseph? Which I’m going to ask you, how many do you how much do you know about Joseph? And he said, is that that guy that got the red coat? And he goes to private school, folks. And this is why I said, this is why we do this. This is why we love going chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word. Because even those of us that maybe have been fortunate to grow up in the church and many of you, you’ve been in the church for decades. You have told us over and over again, wow, I didn’t know that detail. I didn’t know that was in there. I didn’t know that about that particular character of Scripture or person in the Bible. And so we’re super excited and I hope that you are it’s going to take us all the way up to the week right before Holy Week.

So this is the final installment. And when we get through all of this, we will have preached 60 messages out of the book of Genesis. And the cool part is, we’ve spent so much time putting the graphics and the videos and all of the messages together that we’re actually going to package them together and then give them to other churches for free in hopes that they would then use this stuff that we’ve been able to be blessed with here at Shepherds Gate. But this is why we do what we do. And if you’re new to Shepherds Gate and you’re looking and exploring and wondering if this may be the church that you would want to call home, it all goes back to this verse for us. Second, Timothy says these words, all Scripture beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation, are what they are. What that means is God wrote Scripture. And so sometimes we’ll say, well, Moses wrote this or Paul wrote this. Ultimately, God is the author of everything single word in Scripture. It is God breathed just as he breathed creation into existence, just as he breathed man into existence. And it’s not only God breathed, it’s actually useful for you. It’s for your good. It’s to teach you. I want you to know the characters. I want you to know Abraham and Sarah. I want you to know Isaac and Ishmael. I want you to know Jacob, and not just the Sunday school version of Jacob. I want you to know the real Jacob. I want you to know the real Joseph. I want you to know every single detail of Scripture, not only so that you have that knowledge, but this is what it does.

It rebukes and it corrects us. It challenges us to our very core in our being. Because if we’re left to our own devices, guess what? We will always go the point in the route of selfishness and sin and putting ourselves above other people. And Scripture has this incredible way of bringing us back to the will of God, to the very heartbeat of God, because he’s the one that wrote it. He’s the one that knew that we would be reading it now in our time, in our day, and realizing that this is how God actually speaks to us. It actually also trains us in righteousness. Now put a pin in that word righteousness, because we’re going to come back to that later. And the reason we’re trained is because we’re children of God. We’re servants of God, so that we can be equipped for what does it say at the end? So coming here on Sunday morning, receiving the message, going through a book of the Bible, hearing the word actually prepares you and helps you and equips you as you go back into your homes, which is your primary vocation. As you go back into your places of work, as you go into public places, wherever you’re at, it’s the Holy Spirit that’s preparing you through the pages of Scripture to will and to act according to God’s will for your life. And so as we look at these people, as we look at these characters, man, are they flawed. If there’s something that you’ve learned in Genesis one through four, those have been with us. Some of these people are messed up more than you realized. Some of you, let’s be honest, you feel better about yourself after reading Genesis one through four.

I know sometimes I beat myself up and I’m like, God, I’m not as bad as Jacob. 14 wives, 13 kids. Come on. I mean, that’s pretty messed up. And yet he’s in the pages of Scripture as a hero. He’s listed in Hebrew on the faith of heroes. Why? Because our God forgives us. Because we don’t realize the grace and the mercy that he offers each and every one of us. And when we confess our sins, he’s the one who’s faithful and just, and he forgives us of our sins, and he remembers them no more. And so when God sees us, he sees Jesus Christ. That’s why I’m super excited about these next 13 weeks. Think of it in view of this. You’re brand new here to appreciate. You never been part of a series like this before. To church, think about the hottest TV shows that are that are being streamed right now. I mean, it’s so incredible because no matter what service you use, whether it’s Hulu or Amazon Prime or you use Netflix, whatever it may be, they all tell you what everybody else is watching. It’s like positive peer pressure, isn’t it? Here are the top ten shows everybody else is watching. You don’t want to miss out. You should watch those shows. But the really, really, really good shows, they’ll only show you once a week. And some of you, you have timers on your phone, you have them in your calendar. You can’t wait for the next episode to come out. Some of you, you have shows that you’re going to be watching later today because the Lions aren’t playing and you’re not even sure what you’re going to do with yourself on a Sunday when the Lions are on a bye.

Why does Hollywood do that? Why do these streaming services do that? Because they recognize that this time of the year, people are more inclined to sit in to watch the television. You ever notice they never release new shows in the summer? If you try to watch TV in the summer, it’s all reruns. And I would say it’s no different than being in the church for the church. These next four months are some of the best weeks for discipling you, especially those of us, which is most of you unless some of you are streaming in online from a different state. Because we live in Michigan and for the next four months, here’s the good news it’s going to be cold and it’s going to be dark, and people are going to be cranky. And the best way to fight being cranky these next four months is to be in church, in the Word of God, being discipled by him. Amen, Amen. So just let you know there are a couple pg13 that go with this message series as well. Coming up the end of this month and then the 1st of February, I always like to say the Bible has so much more than any silly show you could watch on television. It’s crazy what God, gives us in Scripture and even some of the things that people have fallen into. So we want to remind you of that. We’ll push our kids to make sure they’re part of our SG kids program on those Sundays. But as you look at Genesis, it’s kind of interesting to see all of the major characters played out.

And I want you to look at this chart with me and you’ll see here, Abraham to the far right. The blue at the very top is just whenever he’s referred to by another name. So his name was Abraham. Then God changed it to Abraham. So 910 times Abraham is mentioned in Scripture. And so you can see how important these are, kind of the main characters that we’ve been going over. And so now this guy Joseph, we’re really, truly going to take a deep dive. And I believe you’re going to be able to learn more about his life than you ever have before. Are you ready to begin? If you have your Bible, which we encourage you to bring your Bible to church, if you want to grab that Genesis chapter 37 beginning in verse one, this is what it says. Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob’s family line, which is what we spent the last four months. We did a deep dive on Jacob. So here’s this family line. Here we go. Here’s the big transition. New series. Joseph. Young man of how old? We only 17 year olds in here. And he junior in high school. So think of this. He’s a teenager. He’s tending the flocks with his brothers, and he has, with his with the sons of two of his dads. Why? So he’s got four. He’s got two wives, two mistresses. One is dead at this point, so he’s down to three wives. And he brought their father a what about them?

Why would he do that? Your 17 year. Because he’s 17 years old. You’re 17 years old. Do you want to give your parents bad news? I mean, here it is. It’s the family business. This is what they do for a living. They they tend to the to the estate, which is all of their animals. And here’s this young buck that goes out amidst all of these older brothers. He’s only got one other brother, Benjamin, that’s younger than him. Then he comes back and he gives his dad a bad report. So you ask yourself, okay, God, what are you telling us? What are you starting to reveal to us in these in this very first verse? And what’s happening is he’s he’s giving you a glimpse of Joseph’s character that Joseph actually is going to see what needs to be said, even if it’s difficult to say. And so here he goes to his dad, which no one ever wants to give their dad a bad report, but he wants to be honest with them about the state of their family. Business gets interesting because the next verse says this. Now Israel and I remember this God changed Jacob’s name to Israel. And so since he did that Genesis goes back and forth between either calling them Jacob or Israel. So in verse three calls them Israel. Now Israel loved Joseph more. Verse three, and we already got drama. Anybody see an issue with this? 13 kids, remember 12 boys, one daughter and child number 12. He loves more. Those of you that have been on the Genesis journey with us know this is not the first time that we’ve seen parent favoritism.

It’s actually interesting to see how many times this generational pattern has existed. Jacob, for crying out loud, is the youngest of his family. Esau is the older brother, and God picked him instead of Esau over and over again. God changes the orders of things in Scripture because God is sovereign and God can do what he wants, and he knows who he wants to pick, to do certain things and accomplish certain things through why he loves Joseph more. We’re not sure, but he does. And because he’s old, he thought, you know what? I love this guy so much, I’m going to make him a robe of many colors. How many you think is a dad? That’s a great idea to do. They already know emotionally. They can tell. When you look him in the eyes. They can tell by the way that you hug them, that you love him more than you love us. What the heck are you doing now? You’re going to put this robe of many colors on him. That’s how many of you might have multiple kids in your home when you’re on your way home from work, you stop at a place called Baskin Robbins and you walk through the door and you say, I will have one ice cream. And you get home and you walk through the door of your house, and you assemble all of your kids in the foyer and you say, Will my favorite child come forward? And you only give that child the ice cream. What do you think’s going to happen to that kid? They’re going to eat ice cream. We all know that. But what’s going to happen with all the other kids that you have? They are not going to be happy about it, which is exactly what happens when his brother saw that his father loved him more.

They hated him and they began to gossip behind his back. They couldn’t even speak a kind word. They were so enraged. Gets interesting because all of a sudden Joseph has a dream. And dreams are very important in Scripture. They’ve been very important in Genesis. And when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. It’s one thing to have a dream. It’s another thing to go, hey guys, guys, guys, guys, you’re not going to believe this. I need to share with you what I just dreamt, and that’s what he does. He says here this dream that I have dreamed. We were binding sheaves in the field. And behold, brothers, my sheep arose and stood upright, and your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed to my sheaf. How many of you older siblings out there would love it if your younger sibling came and told you a dream like this? How many of you younger siblings love torturing your older siblings? Even though you’re 50 years old, you still do it right? Well, of course, as brothers respond, do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us? And so they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words gets worse. He has another dream, and this time he tells his brothers, I have dreamed another dream. The sun, the moon, and 11 stars were bowing down to me. Oh man, could you imagine? Wait, what? Is the court? Not enough dude. Walk around. They had already hugged you a little bit longer. It’s clear that he loves you. Why all of a sudden now are you getting these dreams? And these dreams are very direct. And these dreams are very interesting, as they all seem to put you in a place of leadership. But when Joseph told to it to his fathers into his brothers, his father actually rebuked him. So now all of a sudden, it’s not just his brothers anymore, as his father hears this, his his father even says, wait a second time out.

Is this really of God? What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? I mean, talk about stirring the family pot. Start a talk about like starting this whole series off and Joseph creating drama within his own family. Now, today I want to let you know we’re doing something a little bit different. We’re doing something a little bit unique in that I’m going to divide my message into two, and in a few moments we’re going to pause and we’re actually going to receive Holy Communion together. And then I’m going to come up and I’m going to do the second half of my message. Did everyone understand that? And the reason I’m telling you that is because I know so often we end our service with communion and a song, and some of you like to slip out early, okay? And you might be like, wow, Tim’s New Year’s resolution is to preach shorter. I’ve never seen him preach for this short of time. This is incredible. I love this church. I’ll be back next week. That’s not the case. You only get in part one. I just want to make sure you stick around for part two. Trust me, you will want to be here because I have some exciting things to share with you about what God is doing in and through this church. But there’s a reason for that order. I want you to see the shift that takes place now within our account this morning. And we purposely kept the scriptures short, because today is kind of like the first day of class. It’s kind of like when the teacher gives you a syllabus and says, hey, this is what we’re going to be studying for the next several weeks because we want to give you a taste of who we are as shepherds.

We want to introduce you to this series, and we want you to commit to being here each and every week. And so this is the last verse that I’m going to share with you this morning. His brothers not only hate him, but they’re jealous of him. And this is the turn that’s beginning to take place in their heart, because they’re starting to realize that maybe these dreams aren’t from Joseph, or that maybe these dreams are, in fact, from Almighty God. And just as they can look back on their family lineage and realize that God has broken the order already up to this point with their ancestors, that maybe God is breaking the normal protocol for families of this time, and that maybe Joseph is the one that God is calling who will become the leader of their whole family. And not only do you see the change in the brothers, but look at what it says last there. His father kept that saying in mind. So now the father has kind of taken a step back and say, wait a second, maybe we need to take Joseph seriously. Maybe we need to hear about the dream again. Maybe we really need to lean into this and really hear what’s at the heart of what is going on with Joseph. What is it that God is doing in Joseph, and what is God doing in our family? So I want to ask you this. As you’ve read those 11 verses with me, what did Joseph do wrong?

Think about it. Think about it. He came to his dad and he gave his dad the honest report. It was a bad report. But it doesn’t say it wasn’t. It wasn’t. I mean, if it would have had a good report, he would have been dishonest because it actually wasn’t was happening. God’s the one that’s giving him these revelations. And he’s not sure because he’s this young man how to how to articulate what the call of God in his life. And so, of course, he wants to share it with those that are closest to him because he’s got nobody else to share it with. He’s not married, doesn’t have kids, doesn’t have anybody else. All he has are his dad and his brothers and his family. And yet, as he’s sharing these things, as he’s trying to to understand and articulate what it is that God is forming in his life, he’s met with anger. He’s met with hatred, he’s met with difficulty. Now, for us, this is our first Sunday of the new Year, because last week we had the choir with us. And so as we start today is this is really our start of the new year 2025 as a church.