The Mess

I'm excited this morning to be sharing with you or starting with you a series on the life of Joseph from the book of Genesis. It is a Sunday school classic. It's got all the factors involved in a really good Old Testament yarn, and we'll be experiencing that together over the next seven or so weeks as we journey through this together. This morning, I want to start by telling you the story of a flight called United Airlines flight 232 which had completed all the ground checks on a particular morning, was cleared to take off. 298 passengers were nestled into their seats.

Hearing the familiar speech about seat belts and exits, I heard the under the warming sound of the engines starting up. Captain Al Haynes, a veteran pilot for United Airlines, brought the DC-10 plane into position after doing another routine flight, a layover in Chicago, and their final destination, Philadelphia. Minutes later, the plane levelled off at 37,000 feet. The flight attendants started their servicing of the passengers. Most of them at this stage were reading, working, napping.

And from all appearances, everything was normal, predictable, and stable. But exactly one hour and seven minutes after takeoff, disaster struck. The number two engine mounted high on the tail suddenly made a resounding boom. The flight panel showed that the engine had failed and the plane's hydraulic system completely ceased functioning. Now that would normally concern the captain, but not alarm him because the plane's engines were usually equipped with three independent hydraulic systems so that a failure in one engine would not affect the rest of the plane and the other engines.

But on all planes up until this time, there existed a small vulnerable spot of these three independent hydraulic systems, a four foot square located towards the tail section of the plane where all the hydraulic systems converged. The odds of anything going wrong in that small area of the plane were calculated by engineers to be one in 10 to the power of 23, or one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It was nearly impossible for all systems to fail, but it did. All the hydraulics out. So without a way of steering the plane, the pilot discovered that he could turn right slightly by adjusting the acceleration of his three remaining engines, and flight control directed him to land at a small airport nearby.

Heroically, the pilot landed the plane without any steering, without any brakes. But in the process of crash landing, a hundred and eleven people were killed. A hundred and eighty-seven lives, however, were saved. Now what went wrong? Investigators had to piece together. They found ultimately that a small fan disc in the engine that exploded was the cause.

Specifically, they determined that it was in the process of forging this little metal disc made of titanium that caused the catastrophic explosion that ultimately flew into the plane and severed these hydraulic systems. Investigators found when they discovered this little piece that the forging techniques, processes involved in making this molten titanium disc subjected to intense pressure and hammering, no less than 50,000 tons of pressure exerted on this little liquid metal disc in the forging process. Put under so much pressure to eradicate all little gas bubbles that could come and be trapped inside, it found that in this particular one, nitrogen bubbles had developed. And it survived for over 15,000 flights, 15,503 to be exact, takeoff and landing cycles before this happened. But because of these little miniscule microscopic bubbles in this small part, the fan's integrity was ruined due to metal fatigue, and it caused a deadly disaster.

What's the moral of this story? Flaws in the formative stages. Even the smallest, most microscopic ones can lead to disaster later. How many times have we seen that in families? How many times have we seen that in the lives around us?

Flawed parents acting out of their own misguided conclusions, their own inability to deal with emotion while raising their children. Children who, without a frame of reference of other families and how they operate, accepting that their parents must be justified in them behaving that way, that this is normal behaviour. These same children then go and repeat the cycle when they have kids. Microscopic or sometimes not so microscopic flaws that bring massive disaster to many, many lives. Well, today, we begin a story where we see fractures and minuscule flaws and not so minuscule flaws that have massive rippling effects in the life of one particular family.

We begin a story of a very dysfunctional group of people. From Genesis 37 through to chapter 50, we find the story of a man called Joseph, one of 12 brothers, who would become one of the patriarchs of the Israelite nation. He has a father called Jacob, who was later named by God Himself Israel, the father of the nation. Now over the next seven weeks, we'll look at this story which is, by all accounts, and you'll see again today, a very messy story. And as we work through the unfolding narrative, we see the powerful working of God to break, to shape, and to remake a family back to wholeness, and in that process, to set up the health of a great nation even out of this mess.

God was going to use Joseph and his brothers to form the nation of Israel, of whom we are descendants in a spiritual sense. But like that little metal in the engine, He, who is God, needed to hammer and forge all these role players in the story in His great almighty furnace of refinement. God needed to crush every part of rebellion and pride in order to make them resilient. The great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said that whenever God means to make a man great, He always breaks him in pieces first. The story of Joseph, therefore, is not actually so much a story of Joseph or of his brothers or of his father.

It is a story of God, His power, His almighty sovereign will, and majestically, the vast love and grace and even tenderness that He has to restore and to redeem those who are terribly lost and broken. Let's have a look at the opening scene. Turn with me to Genesis 37. We're going to read the first 11 verses. Genesis 37, verse 1.

Jacob, also known as Israel, lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob. Joseph, a young man of 17, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And he brought their father a bad report about them. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons because he had been born to him in his old age, and he made him a richly ornamented robe for him.

When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, listen to this dream I had. We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it. His brothers said to him, do you intend to reign over us?

Will you actually rule us? And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream and he told it to his brothers. Listen, he said, I had another dream and this time the sun and moon and 11 stars were bowing down to me. When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, what is this dream you've had?

Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. So far, our reading. We see the mess. The Bible cuts to the chase immediately by depicting the tension that is in this home.

But as it usually is in dysfunctional families, this little picture that we see, and it's just one sentence at a time, hide is like the tip of the iceberg of what's really happening underneath. You have to understand that the setup here, Joseph's family is so unbelievably dysfunctional, it makes a soap opera look tame. Joseph had three stepmothers. Three mothers. His mum and three other ladies.

He had 10 stepbrothers. He had one biological brother by the name of Benjamin, and he also had a stepsister. And all of them were living in the same home together. Sounds like an absolute recipe for something that should be on a Jerry Springer show. Growing up in Jacob's family was definitely no picnic.

What we see happening here are some very telltale signs. We have a little arrogant brat named Joseph, a little tattletale who dobs on his brothers, gets them in trouble. We have a father who is distant and cold to most of his kids, but favours one son above them all. And we see a bitter bunch of brothers burning, absolutely burning with hatred and bitterness. So let's dig a little deeper into each of these situations.

Firstly, we see the arrogance and the pride of Joseph who had been so elevated, who had been so favoured that he began believing that he was the cat's whiskers. He was the bee's knees. God, at this time when he was about 17, sent him a dream, two dreams, where he saw that these sheaves or the stars of the moon were bowing down to him, and everyone knew that it was about him. Somehow, they were all able to understand this was a prophecy about him, but he felt inclined to tell everyone about it. No one said he had to.

We see right at the start in verse 2 that Joseph is made to tend the flocks with some of his half brothers that belong to one of the two stepmothers, Bilhah and Zilpah. So not all his brothers, but half of his brothers. Joseph's father Jacob sort of sends them off this way to be together, and whilst they're tending flocks, these brothers do something wrong. They're probably hardworking, rough as guts sort of dudes, and he comes back and he says, do you know what your sons did? Let me tell you what happened whilst we were out there.

And in this boastful, proud, self-inflated, self-righteous way, he dobs on his brothers. And it's in fact this pride that sets up the story of Joseph. But this is far more than simply about Joseph. We see the effects of pride itself and what it does. The Bible often talks about pride.

The Bible often warns against pride and says it is very dangerous. Why is it so dangerous? Well, firstly, pride makes you stubborn. This is seen most clearly when we get into conflict, when we rub against one another the wrong way. You know that feeling.

I bet you do. You are having an argument. You're having an argument with your husband or your wife. She just said something that you know in your heart is true, but it deflates your entire debate. You know that what she said is right.

Yet something inside of you cannot admit that you were wrong. You cannot let her win. You cannot show her weakness. That is pride. Pride is the opposite of humility, and humility is pliable.

Humility is willing to change. So in pride, you try another tactic. You change your attack and you elongate a discussion that could have easily ended fifteen minutes ago with you saying sorry. But you can't lose. That's pride. And it takes so many different forms.

Some people, and I'll put my hand up for this one, call it a competitive nature, but you cannot lose. Why? Because you feel your character is somehow questioned if you do. Some people call it ambition, but it may just be pride that needs to earn and prove respect. So pride makes us stubborn, coldly stubborn, painfully stubborn.

Pride makes us selfish. Pride can be very sneaky. Sometimes we say things we don't mean, but sometimes we say exactly what we mean. Whether intentional or not, we hurt the feelings of those we love. Yet, when the opportunity to apologise comes up, pride makes us stick to our guns and blame the other person.

And we maintain that we were only being honest about our feelings, but meanwhile, we do everything we can to avoid the fact that we have caused someone else pain, and we focus on our self. We refuse to understand the other person's pain because pride is centred on the needs. Pride is about self and your needs and fulfilling them. Pride tells us we can save ourselves. Pride tells us you can heal yourself.

You can keep yourself from harm. But the problem is, if you have such a great handle on your life, where does God fit in? King David in Psalm 10, verse 4 writes, in his pride, the wicked man does not seek God. In all his thoughts, there is no room for God. Joseph in his pride, thinking so highly of himself, so centred on himself, runs to daddy to dob on his brothers to make them look bad and him look better.

In his pride, he thinks that his dreams are self-evident. And right now, in this moment, his brothers and his mother and his father, though he has done nothing to deserve it, should worship him, should bow down to him, rather. At the age of 17. Who's got some 17 year old that think that? In his selfishness, without a desire to help his brothers change their ways, and he saw this happening to them.

Right? Instead of going to them and saying, guys, I don't think this is God-honouring. Without a desire to help his brothers, Joseph thinks that he will score brownie points instead and show off how good he is to his dad. And so we see a proud little boy instead of a selfless, gracious, and humble man who would love his brothers and his family enough to seek their restoration. We see another player, a cold-hearted dad playing favourites in verse 3.

In this mess of a family, we see Jacob, the dad of 12 sons, choosing one of them to spoil. He gives him a magnificent and multicoloured robe. Now that's just to highlight him amongst the other guys. Scholars say that this robe and its many colours would have been extremely, extremely valuable. To have been able to dye clothes required all sorts of rare and unique ingredients to make these dyes.

To have multicoloured or ornament or very ornamental robes was extremely, extremely rare. With 12 sons to love, however, Jacob loves the son of his also favoured wife. Four wives, he favoured one. Rachel, who gave him two boys whom he probably loved those two more than any of the other 10. Jacob has a favourite wife out of four wives.

He has a favourite son out of 12. You can see the small heart of this man. Cold, distant. These boys we see at the end of this chapter, it says his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. He doesn't address his proud little brat of a kid.

He doesn't touch it. He lets him go on with his sin. This week, I read an article on how parents' affection critically shapes a child's happiness. Not just in growing up, not in the home when there's a kid, for their entire life, when you're long dead. A cold-hearted dad does not simply mean an unhappy childhood, it means an unhappy life.

It scars for life. In a number of studies, it was found that the amount of direct affection through touch, hugs, kisses, compliments, affirmation a child received, the better their overall health, physical and mental was. They had high levels of self-esteem, improved academic performance, fewer psychological and behavioural problems. On the other hand, children who did not have affectionate parents tended to have lower self-esteem. They felt more alienated, hostile, aggressive, and anti-social.

In 2010, researchers at Duke University Medical School found that babies with very affectionate and attentive mothers grew up to be happier, more resilient, and less anxious adults. Other studies found that the more affectionate parents were with their children, the better their brain development was. Affection literally changed a brain physically. But Jacob was none of this to his sons. He was a small-hearted man, distant and cold to his kids, all but one.

And then we find the brothers, a jealous bitter bunch. These boys were so marginalised by their dad that they burned with hatred towards Joseph who was the golden boy. In their eyes, he was the problem and the cause of everything that was wrong. They didn't look at how immoral and how sinful their lives were. He was the problem, and they harboured that anger towards him.

And this is classic bitterness. And bitterness is, again, something that the Bible often urges us to get rid of. Bitterness in people is something we hold on to in the past. Bitter people are archaeologists. They're always digging up the past.

If you think about bitterness, you realise that it's all about revisiting painful circumstances from what happened ages ago. Bitter people cannot move on. They return back. They're stuck. They'll tell themselves or other people, that was the day my life was ruined.

That's the day my hope was destroyed. Bitter people, as we see in this example, remember incredible detail of all the causes of their bitterness because they keep a record of wrongs. Bitter people revisit and they rethink and they recollect certain circumstances and they obsess about them. They may be able to name the day of the week, the time of the month, the day of the month, the year. They can express what people's faces look like in that moment, what people were wearing.

They can tell you exactly what you said on that day and the tone of your voice. They obsess, and they keep a record of wrongs. Meanwhile, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that the opposite of bitterness is love because love does not hold a record of wrongs. Bitterness comes from deep pain, from close people. That's why.

The truth is you are bitter about someone or something because you deeply love that person or that thing. Bitterness is most often triggered less by the offence of what happened and more by the love or the lack thereof by the offender. Think about it. If a complete stranger did something to you, even if it was detestable, ten years down the track, you would be less bitter about them than if it was someone really close to you. If someone that you have deep affection for sins against you or hurts you or disappoints you, you are more likely to be bitter because your expectations are higher of them.

In most cases of crippling bitterness in people's lives, you will find that it's related to a parent. It's related to a spouse. It's related to a sibling. It is related to a best friend, not strangers. It's the people we love that hurt us the most and cause the most bitterness.

So lastly, bitterness originates in self-righteousness because it actually thinks that I am the victim here, I've always been the victim here, and that other person is always the offender. Bitter people tend to place themselves on the judgment seat where they pass the verdict on people who have done them wrong. Bitterness originates in thinking, I see everything clearly. I'm the only objective person here. I'm absolutely right in every detail of this narrative.

I am the victim here, and I have every right to judge the offender. Bitterness is only ever possessed by a person who perceives themselves to be the one that was wronged. If you don't think that you have been wronged, you're not bitter. And that is why forgiveness is the ultimate solution to bitterness. If you are able to forgive, you say, I am not a victim of this any more.

I'm not holding on to being wronged anymore. Bitterness, when forgiveness enters, loses all of its power. If you don't think that you've been wronged anymore, if you have been able to hand that over, you're not bitter anymore. But Joseph's brothers are bitter. They are so angry.

They hate Joseph because he is the criminal. He is the victimiser. Even though they're pretty bad themselves, even though they were going about things the wrong way, and we see that in the next chapter, the next episode, they want to murder their brother. These guys are no angels themselves, but they hold on to this anger and it turns and it stews into bitterness. And this is how messy this family is.

But if we are to really reflect, we'll see so many similarities between their situation and ours. Even our family and theirs, if we were to be completely honest. But the great story of Joseph, as we'll discover more and more, is that with God, there is always hope. With God, there is always hope, and I'm excited to be sharing this journey with you. There is always hope with God.

We started this morning by talking about that little bit of metal that lacked integrity. The investigators found that that became fatigued because of its inconsistencies and flaws. The Bible says that our hearts and our characters have flaws in them as well, but that God is the one who is at work in correcting that. It's not an if. He is.

Many, many times, the children of God are spoken of in terms of a precious metal that God needs to melt down, to break down, and to refine. Isaiah 1:25. At the start of his great prophecy for the nation of Israel, the prophet Isaiah writes this as a warning to God's people before the exile. God says, I will turn my hand against you. I will thoroughly purge away your dross, and I will remove all of your impurities.

This is what's going to happen. I will purge away your dross, remove all of your impurities. But this is so wonderfully conveyed in Zechariah's poem, where God says that when the enemies were to come and take Israel away from their homes, verse 8, He says, in the whole land declares the Lord, two thirds of the nation will be struck down and perish. Yet there is one third that will be left in it. This third, I will bring into the fire.

I will refine them like silver, and I will test them like gold. Then they will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, they are My people, and they will say, the Lord is our God. We are never too far away from God's refining work in our lives, friends. He will break you, He will shape you, and He will remake you as often as is needed in order to get you where He needs you to be.

And He will do it so that you come to this point that we see in Zechariah where we will say, it's the Lord who is my God. It is not prideful, arrogant you. It is not bitter you looking at yourself and your situations and how you're going to solve this and how much anger that you can build up in your heart to solve this. He will break and shape and refine so that we will say, the Lord is my God. There are aspects in your life, friend, that are not good.

I'm sorry to say, there are aspects that are messy, and these messy, sinful parts are pockets in our lives that ruin our integrity and can cause massive failure, just like that fan disc in the plane. Ask the Lord to show those flaws in you. That's a dangerous prayer, but ask Him to show that. Embrace the lessons that God is trying to teach you. Be sensitive to His refining work, and see your story in this light of how God is working with you.

And we'll see the story of Joseph as it unfolds and his family that God goes about the task so wonderfully of with surgical precision, dealing with every single one of these little flaws. And He does it with unflinching desire to bring about growth and refinement in His people. God may need to break us. He may need to melt us and remake us. But thankfully, we also know that He did that exact same thing with His Son.

In Jesus Christ, we see the one who was also broken. But He was not broken for Himself this time. He was broken for us. And we know that in Jesus, our greatest flaws, our most catastrophic flaws that would cause catastrophic failure for eternity was dealt by His shedding of His blood on the cross. Why, therefore, can God refine us?

Why do we have the hope that He can and will? Because His refining fire, we know, will never destroy us. Because of Jesus, He is forever for us. He is forever delighted in us. He is forever favourably inclined towards us.

So let Him then do that work in us. Let Him refine us. Let Him test us like gold in the furnace so that we can call on Him and say in our hearts, the Lord is our God. And we can hear Him say, they are My people. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the warmth, the realness of the Old Testament. We thank you, Lord, for men and women in these stories that so often reflect our own flaws and weaknesses. We thank you, Lord, for the detail that you did not spare, the mess that you did not shy away from, the authors, the prophets that you inspired that weren't embarrassed by sin because they know, Lord, what you can make out of that. Father, I pray for our hearts and our lives. I pray for the work of our character that you are doing in us, the building, the edifying, the refining that you are at work with.

And, Father, I pray that you will continue to do that. Show us, oh God. Help us and strengthen us. Give us the courage, Lord, to deal with this. And, we desire to please you.

We desire to wholly and solely be able to say, the Lord is our God. There is nothing in this earth that we try and lean on, run after, seek for, that will give us as much joy, as much peace, as much health and wholeness as our Father in heaven. So, Father, the work that you have started in us, we ask that you complete. Show us, mould us, and make us patient and persevering in the fire. And, Father, help us to come out like purified gold on the other side. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.