Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #36 in Genesis 37.   We will read Genesis 37:24-28:

And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?  Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content. Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt. 

It is getting down to the point of the terrible action that the brothers of Joseph committed.  They were doing a very wicked and evil thing when they threw their brother into the pit.  That was bad enough, but then they sold him to strangers, the Ishmeelites, which are also called Midianites, who were just passing by.  There was wickedness all around.  The merchant men were doing wickedly.  Did they ask, “What crime did this man do that you have put him in a pit?”  God does not tell us of the conversation, but it seems they were all too willing to make this deal without knowing the situation.  The children of Israel could have been bandits that came upon this boy and threw him into a pit, and now they were selling him.  But the merchantmen had no problem with paying the price for him, so they had no integrity.  And of course the children of Israel had no integrity.  We know they sold Joseph because of envy, and we talked about that.

But first, in verse 24 God tells us again about the pit.  It says in Genesis 37:24:

And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.

There was a hole in the ground.  It was an empty hole with no water of any kind.  They threw him down, and they sat above him as they ate bread, and they had conversation, we can suppose, and they were probably enjoying themselves, and they were enjoying that Joseph, whom they hated, was in this predicament. 

Who knows what can happen?  Sometimes brothers have fights, and there can be a lot of emotion.  If no one had come by as these Ishmeelites did at that exact time, what would have happened?  What if they had just sat there and eaten their bread and Reuben had come back?  It would have been a whole different story.  It would have been embarrassing, but more than likely if they had gone back (to their father) with Joseph, they would have been in trouble because this was no minor thing they did in stripping Joseph of his coat, throwing him into a pit, and plotting his death.  They would have been in big trouble.  But maybe Joseph did not know that they had conspired to kill him, so they could have reasoned, “Well, if we take him out of the pit and take him back home, we will get in trouble because he is our father’s favorite.  We all know that, and our father will discipline us.”  Maybe they were afraid of that, to some degree, but they would have survived it, and it would have passed.

Yet we can see the hand of God.  We can see the will of God being accomplished right before our eyes.  We have this wonderful vantage point of having the whole Bible, and we know the whole story of this account in Genesis, and we can look ahead and see how God worked it all out for good.  But at that time, they did not know what was going to happen to Joseph.  They wanted to be rid of him, and this was an opportunity to get rid of him without killing him, and his blood would not be on their hands, as Judah said, “…for he is our brother and our flesh.”  So they agreed, and with one consent they said, “Yes, this is a good idea.  Let us sell him to these Ishmeelites.”  And that is the working of God.  At the exact moment that they needed to make that kind of decision, there was the opportunity as God provided it because it was all by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.  It was the will of God, as it was the will of God that Christ go to the cross, suffer and die.  And he had to pay for the sins of His people at the foundation of the world, and that was what the cross was teaching us in 33 A. D.  So God controlled the circumstances and events to make sure it happened, forcing the issue.  He forced Pilot’s hand when the people cried out, “Crucify him!  Crucify him!”  Then Pilot said, “Shall I crucify your King?”   The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”  The political pressure put to bear upon Pilot, and all the circumstances demanded that Christ be crucified although he found no fault in him of any kind. 

So this was the beginning of the orchestration of God’s hand in bringing Joseph into Egypt.  And once he got there, it did not end.  Further developments would take place in Potiphar’s house that would result in him going to prison.  Then in prison there were two prisoners that happened to have dreams, and Joseph, who was called “that dreamer,” was able to interpret dreams.  God gave him the ability to interpret dreams.  Then a couple of years later, the butler of Pharaoh was released from prison and was once again the cupbearer, and he remembered that he had made a promise to Joseph in prison to remember him.  And at the perfect, needful moment for him to remember, he remembered, and he remembered there was a man in prison named Joseph who could interpret dreams.  We will get into that in the future, and I look forward to that. 

That is the wonderful thing about this whole account because it really reveals the “hand of God” in everything.  God is not as the deists claim.  They are a religious sect that claimed that while God is the Creator, but when He created the world it was like He just “wound it up” and then He left it, and everything just happens by chance.  But that is absolutely not true.  God is a very “hands-on” God.  He enters into the affairs of men, and it says in Proverbs 21:1: “The king's heart is in the hand of JEHOVAH, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.”  The Bible says that God “openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.” 

God moves within His people to will and to do of His good pleasure, and He guides us, as He guides all things in all the world.  As cars drive down the highways, and as planes fly in the sky, and as the trains go upon the rails, and as the boats cross the sea, and as people go to and fro upon the face of the earth, the hand of God is involved in everything, especially in the lives of His people.  If this were not true, He could not say, “…all things work together for good to them that love God,” if God were not the One working things together for good.  If His brilliant mind was not organizing, designing, and carrying out all things for the good of His people, then all things would not work for our good.  But He does. 

We do not see Him because He is the invisible God.  We do not see His hand in it until after He has accomplished His will, but just look back on the circumstances of how God has arranged our lives and led us to where we are right now.  How did we come to be a believer in the Bible and a believer in Christ, and to have taken the path we have taken?  Looking back on my life, that is not the road I started on, and I can testify to that.  I was on the path to destruction, but I found myself, by the grace of God, on the narrow path, and a very different path that very few tread, and that is because of what God has done as He moved and worked in my life, even in strange ways at times. 

This is a personal comment, but as I look back on my life, one of the ways God changed me and set me on a different course was at a time of real pain and misery in my life due to a lot of drinking and getting into trouble.  God used this, and I was sent to rehab while I was in the Navy.  The captain of my ship ordered me to enter rehab, and while I was at this United States government rehab they taught me that I had a problem, and that problem was drinking, and the way to solve the problem was to understand there is a “higher power.”  They did not name that “higher power,” but at the meetings some people were talking about God, and that was a change in course for me.  It was not long after that when I was driving in my car one day, I turned the dial to Family Radio, and it hit a chord with me because I wanted to stay sober, and I wanted to stay in contact with this “higher power” that could give me strength.  But here was Family Radio talking about the God of the Bible, and not long after that I heard Mr. Camping speaking with authority, knowledge, and wisdom about what the Bible says about marriage and divorce, about women teaching (men) the Bible.  I had never considered these things, or many other things.  But I listened, and as he would quote the Bible, I would think, “That is true,” and, “This other thing is true.”  All of a sudden, the whole kingdom of God just opened up to me, and that is how God has operated in the lives of many of us.  He grabs hold of us with His Word, and then He starts directing us and moving in us: “This is the way you should go.  These are my commandments.  Walk in them.”  And as we do so, we find the world is now just in “the rearview mirror,” and we are going a way we had never considered.  That was God’s plan for our lives, and thank God it was His plan because that world that is behind us is all going to be destroyed. It is the broad way that leads to destruction.

Well, we got a little but off course at the end of this study.  Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will continue in this account in Genesis 37.  It is just a wonderful account that we see in these last chapters of Genesis.  The whole book is wonderful, but it is going to get more and more interesting, and more and more significant as far as having to do with the time of the end.