Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #41 in Genesis 37.   We will read Genesis 37:28:

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.

In our last study, we were trying to understand the spiritual picture of Joseph being lifted up out of the pit.  He was sold to the Ishmeelites, and they were now his owners.  They were the ones that bought Joseph.  As I mentioned last time, this seems “upside down” because the Bible tells us that it was Christ who purchased us.  We were bought with the price of His life.  It was not that we purchased Him.

We also talked about how God is a merchantman, and the Gospel is His good merchandise.  We closed our last study by going to Proverbs 31 where we saw that the “virtuous woman” is like the merchants’ ships, and we are told in verse 18 that her merchandise is good.  It is a picture of God’s people who were tasked with the duty of sending God’s Gospel into the world.  It was like being a merchant dealer going forth with the Gospel, just as God.  It is Christ who went forth with the Gospel into the world, but He did so through the “body of Christ.”  God is the merchantman, and we are His merchants as we faithfully declare the true Gospel of the Bible to the world.  In the day of salvation, we were like these merchantmen, and dealt in the merchandise of the truth of the Gospel, the Word of God.

Another example is found in Proverbs 3:13-14:

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

Here, God is comparing the merchandise of wisdom (Christ who is the essence of wisdom) to the merchandise of physical silver and gold.  And wisdom, the truth of the Bible, is our merchandise.  That is what we are handling, and that is what we are “buying and selling.”  When we read of “buying and selling” in the Bible, it typically has to do with the Gospel.  In John 2 we read of the Lord Jesus, and He was upset with those that were selling on the temple grounds.  We read in John 2:13-17:

And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

But is it not true that God likens Himself to a merchantman, and would that not mean that His house is a house of merchandise?  Yes, but these men were merchandising in a physical way, and the spiritual picture here is that they represent those that turn the church into a house of corrupt merchandise.  Their merchandise was not good.

Notice in verse 16 that it said, “And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”  What do doves represent in the Bible?   To see what something is representing, we see how it is used elsewhere in the Bible.  What does God use the dove to represent in the Gospels?  The answer is that it represents the Holy Spirit.  For instance, it says in Matthew 3:16:

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

The Spirit of God is like a dove.  This is another one of those verses that gives us the biblical definition of a word and provides us with the spiritual meaning.  By the way, the prophet Jonah’s name means “dove,” and that has proven to be very helpful to us as we applied this definition of “dove” to the account of God commanding Jonah to go to Nineveh the first time, and then He commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh a second time.  Again, Jonah’s name means “dove,” and it is the same word translated as “dove” elsewhere in the Old Testament.  So God was sending the dove to Nineveh, a picture of the world, and He sent him not once but twice, and we can relate that to God sending forth His Holy Spirit two times.  And the Bible tells us of two different major periods of time in which the Holy Spirit of God was poured out.  The first time started with the Day of Pentecost in 33 A. D., and extended throughout the church age, and the second time started with the Jubilee year of 1994 during the Latter Rain period which extended to May 21, 2011.  These were the two major outpourings of the Holy Spirit to the world. 

So with that definition and the account in the book of Jonah, the “dove” is seen to be a representation of the Holy Spirit.  And in John 2:16 that is what Jesus was angry about.  That is why He overturned the moneychangers’ tables.  They were merchandising the Spirit of God.  That is what it represents, and Jesus said, “Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.” 

In the house of God there should be the hearing of the true Gospel.  This is how it ought to have been over the course of the church age, and it did work that way in some faithful congregations.  People could go to church and hear the Bible taught truthfully and faithfully.  They would learn that they were sinners and that they could do nothing to get themselves saved because salvation is of the Lord.  They would learn of God’s election program, and that they could go to God and maybe He would save them.  They would learn that they partake of the Lord’s Table only to put them in remembrance of Christ’s work, and they would learn that water baptism was only a sign, but it did not actually cleanse anyone of sin.  They would lay it all out, and they would direct their congregation members to go to God.

It was just as the five wise virgins of Matthew 25 did not try to give the oil to the five foolish virgins who asked them to give of their oil.  They did not say, “Here.  Let me give you of my oil to light your lamps.”  Instead they said, “Not so, lest we not have enough for ourselves.”  And they directed the five foolish virgins to go to them that sell to buy, the Triune God.  It is the duty of those that share the Gospel to direct people to God because only God can give the necessary “oil,” or the Spirit, to enlighten the sinner’s soul to the truth of the Word of God, the Bible.

But most of the churches did not do that, although there were some faithful churches over the course of the church age.  Of course we know the church age has now ended.  The unfaithful churches during the church age, plus all churches today, merchandise the “dove.”  They sell the “spirit” to the people when people ask, “How do I get saved?  How can I have the oil?”  They respond, “Here, let me give you the oil,” or they say, “Here is what you can do to get the oil.”  In other words, they did not direct people to the God of the Bible, and tell them that they must wait upon Him, and cry for mercy, and maybe He would have mercy.  They did not do that, but they said, “Here is what you do to get the oil.  Walk down the aisle, say the Sinner’s Prayer, and accept Jesus and get baptized, and when you are baptized the Spirit will come upon you.”  Whatever they said, it is a corrupt gospel.  It is a false gospel. 

That is why Jesus overturned the moneychangers’ tables.  He was finding fault with them because they were not doing right.  They were making physical merchandise of the Gospel, but it was pointing to something far worse spiritually when the churches “buy and sell” a gospel that basically deals in the Holy Spirit: “My merchandise is the Holy Spirit.”  That is what the free will crusaders do.  They merchandise the Holy Spirit.  That is what the pastors do when they make an “altar call.”  That is what the churches in general do by teaching that false gospel of a “free will” gospel.  They are merchandising the Spirit of God, and they act as if He is under their control and ownership.  They claim to possess it, and they can give it to you.  You can “buy” it from them.

Do you see how that starts to fit with Joseph, a type of Christ?  In 2Corinthians 11:4, we know that Jesus can be a synonym for the Gospel: “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted…” 

And now the children of Israel had sold Joseph, as though they were selling the Gospel.  It was as though the Spirit of God was under their control, and they could deal with it like merchandise, and they could sell the Spirit, or sell the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the Ishmeelites merchantmen bought him. 

Let us think about who the Ishmeelites identify with?  Does God get into that in the Bible?  Yes, He does.  It is in Galatians 4.  We have run out of time in this study.  Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible, we will see that the Ishmeelites  are the children of Ishmael.  And Ishmael was born to Abraham through the bondmaid Hagar, and Hagar was an Egyptian.  These Ishmeelites are on their way to Egypt, and that is where they would finally sell Joseph. 

I hope you are starting to see the spiritual picture regarding what it means that Joseph has been sold to the Ishmeelites, and he is now in their possession.  We will look into this, once again, in our next Bible study.