Dive into an intense biblical narrative filled with drama, moral dilemmas, and divine intervention as we explore the story of Joseph, a young man sold into slavery by his own brothers. Discover how his journey from betrayal to prosperity in the house of Potiphar in Egypt unfolds, setting the stage for an unexpected twist of fate. Meanwhile, back home, Judah’s actions with Tamar add another layer of complexity to the unfolding family saga.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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What in the world is God doing? Where’s he going with all this? So often when you sit down and read the Bible, it’s almost like children’s stories or a primetime soap opera. Is this all written down just for our titillation, or is there a point to it? One of the odd things in the Bible is the way God takes a special interest in some individuals and seems to shepherd them through, to steer them through the dangers and the pitfalls and the landmines of life. In Genesis, there’s a thread within a family where God seems to move forward with a purpose in mind. He moves a story ahead based on certain individuals. And, you know, it seems that there’s no way we’re going to figure this whole thing out if we don’t follow that thread to see where in the world is God going. But at least the story is interesting. It’s full of drama and jealousy and sex and intrigue and murder. And while the several characters in this soap opera each pursues his own destiny, The hand of God steers the central course of the main characters. Imagine the intrigue in a wealthy and powerful family where there are 12 strong-willed young sons from the same father, but from four different mothers. Now the politics implicit in that is there, but add to this explosive mixture the fact that one son is the father’s fair-haired boy who gets special treatment at every turn. You don’t have to be Lieutenant Columbo to think there’s a motive for murder in all this. And you know it nearly came to that. Joseph… wearing his coat of many colors, the very special coat that his father made for him and him alone, the very symbol of his dad’s favoritism, is sent wearing the coat to check on his brothers and report to his father. Now, I don’t have any trouble figuring out there’s a seething resentment created in all this in the other brothers when they looked up and saw him coming down the hillside toward their camp. A good story will always include a murder plot, and we got one here. They decide to kill him. But like any good story, there’s a twist. One of the brothers, the oldest and presumably a cooler head, his name is Reuben, talks them into putting Joseph in a dry pit for a while instead of killing him immediately. His plan is to come back when the other guys are away and rescue Joseph and send him home to his dad. While he’s working out his plans, another brother, Judah, hatches a scheme that says, let’s don’t kill Joseph. Let’s sell him into slavery and pocket the money. We got winners on both ways on this. Well, someone said, what do we tell dad? Oh, that’s no problem. We’ll put blood on that coat of many colors and take it back and tell him that a lion killed Joseph. So to make a long story short, Joseph is sold into Egypt. And his brothers carry out their cruel hoax on their own father. It’s really hard to imagine how cruel this is to their father Jacob because he has to imagine his son who can’t be buried because he’s been carried off in bits and pieces and torn all apart by a wild animal and all he’s got left of his son to bury is this coat. Now those boys had to know how much pain this was going to cause Jacob. And you know that’s a measure of their resentment toward him. There’s a short passage, though, in the book of Romans that comes to mind at this point. It says, We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. I don’t think Jacob nor Joseph, who was on his way to Egypt in a camel caravan, I don’t think either of them had any idea of what good could come of this. Joseph was certainly called according to God’s purpose. The groundwork is being laid for the story that is told in the movie, The Ten Commandments. The defining moment in Israel’s history, the Exodus. The groundwork for that story is being laid right here. In selling Joseph into Egyptian slavery, they established their own salvation in the near history. but they also established the slavery of the entire Israelite people further down the road. And if this hadn’t happened, well, Charlton Heston would have missed the role of a lifetime. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the soap opera continues, and some truly significant children are being born. You could easily read through this passage and not have any idea why it is even here, but God is patiently working the plan. In Genesis 38.1, it says, It came to pass at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and stayed with a certain man whose name was Hira. And while he was there, he saw a daughter of a certain Canaanite. Her name was Shua, and he took her and married her. She conceived and bare a son. He called his name Ur. He conceived again, bare another son. She called his name Onan. She conceived again and bare a son and called his name Shelah. And so Judah has three sons. Interestingly enough, all of whom are half Canaanite. But the plot begins to thicken at this point. Judah took a wife for his oldest son, Ur. Her name was Tamar, and she’s going to figure very large in Judah’s history. Ur, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. Now, normally God doesn’t do this sort of thing. You know, you have to be pretty bad for God to actually take an active hand. There’s only been one city in the history of the world where God has come down in person to look at it to see how bad it really was, and that was Sodom. Normally he lets wicked people just reap the results of their own stupidity and lets time and chance do in the evil characters. But once in a while, he steps in and takes action. Here there’s more at stake than you might think. This man is a descendant of Judah, and the rulership of Israel in time to come is going to come from his half-Canaanite sons. But this poses a problem. Inheritance laws of the time required the passing on of the birthright to the firstborn son. But Ur and Tamar had been childless when Ur died. Now, there was a peculiar law in the ancient world. It seems strange to us looking back down through time, but it was very important from the standpoint of establishing inheritance and lines of genealogy. The law required that if a man died not having any children, that his eldest brother had to marry the childless widow, and the son born of that union would then receive the birthright. That son would be deemed the son of the firstborn. In other words, he would be the son of the dead father who never had a son of his own. Now, if there were no son of this union, then the birthright presumably would fall to the secondborn, because the son in this case, Onan, and because of that, the plot gets even thicker. So Judah says to Onan, the secondborn son, go into your brother’s wife and marry her and raise up seed to your brother. He gave him instructions. Take this woman, the child that’s born, the firstborn son will actually be deemed the son of your brother, not your own son. Now, when Onan knew this, he knew the seed would not be considered his. He thought this over. He thought, well, if we don’t have any child from this union and my father dies, then that birthright will pass to me instead of to this boy that would come of my union with Tamar. So it came to pass that when he went in to his brother’s wife Tamar, he spilled his seed on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And what he did displeased the Lord, and the Lord slew him also. Now, God’s doing an unusual amount of killing here, so there’s got to be something really important going on. The Bible’s a very earthy book, even if it is sometimes a little delicate, and some details are necessary to carry the storyline. We don’t know if Onan engaged in coitus interruptus or simple masturbation, but he dumped his seed on the ground instead of giving that seed to Tamar and causing her to bear a son. And the word Onanism, after his name Onan, entered our language as a euphemism for masturbation. This scripture has sometimes been used to frighten little boys into avoiding the habit, but that’s not what got Onan killed. It was the refusal to raise up a child for his brother. Now, why was that so important? Well, we’ll come back to that in a moment.
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But first, listen to this message. What in the world is God doing? Does he have something in mind or is life just a grand soap opera and God a spectator? For a free introductory CD in the series titled, What is God Doing? Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Judah didn’t handle any of this very well. His third son, Shelah, is too young for marriage just yet, and Judah has an understandable concern that this third son might go the way of his two previous brothers. They both got themselves killed for their wickedness. So he said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, look, why don’t you remain a widow at your father’s house? In other words, go home. Till Shelah, my son, be grown, for he said, lest peradventure he die also like his brethren did. He basically wanted to get rid of the girl, and I don’t think he intended to give Shelah to her at all. And Tamar went and dwelt in her father’s house. She went home. In the process of time, Judah’s wife died. And after his period of mourning, he went up to see some of his friends. In fact, he went up to see his old friend Hira. And it was told to Tamar, Your father-in-law is coming up here to shear his sheep. So she put off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil and wrapped herself and sat in an open place by the road up to Timnath. For she saw it was clear to her that Shelah was grown. She had not been given to him to wife. She is no fool. She sees the handwriting on the wall that she is going to be a childless widow until the day she dies. Well, when Judas saw her there, he assumed she was a harlot because she’d covered her face up and she was in a place doing nothing where a woman doing nothing really shouldn’t be. So he turned to her, by the way, and said, Let’s go. Let me come in unto you. He didn’t have any idea who she was. And she said, well, what are you going to give me that we can have sex together? Because that’s what you’re talking about. And he said, well, I’ll send you a kid from the flock. And she said, well, that’s not good enough. Why do you get me to pledge until you send it up here? She wasn’t going to take any chances. And he said, well, what pledge do you want? What do you want? And she said, your signet ring, your bracelets, and the staff in your hand. So he gave it to her. And they had sex. And she conceived by him. He had no idea that it was his daughter-in-law. She arose and went away, took off her veil, put on the garments of her widowhood, and life went on. And Judah, well, Judah got back home, and he had his friend. He said he didn’t want to go back himself. He said, look, it’s embarrassing. Would you take this back up here and receive a pledge out of this woman’s hand? Get back my ring and my staff and my bracelets. Just take the kid. The guy said, well, okay, and he went up. The woman wasn’t there. So he asked the men of that place, where’s the harlot that was openly by the wayside? And they said, there’s no harlot around here. And he returned to Judah and said, I can’t find her. And the men of the place said that there is no harlot in that place. Well, by this time, Judah wants to forget the whole thing. He said, let her take it, lest we be shamed. Of course, he’s already well and truly shamed. He just doesn’t know it yet. Look, I sent the kid. You didn’t find her. The deal is over. Well, it wasn’t quite over. It came to pass about three months later, it was told to Judah, saying, Tamar, your daughter, has played the harlot, and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth and let her be burnt. Now, you know, you would kind of think that somewhere in the course of this sentence being spoken to him, that Tamar, your daughter-in-law, has played the harlot. The word harlot would have passed through Judah’s mind, and Judah would have said, harlot, temnath, the area, I wonder. But no, it didn’t cross his mind. He said, let’s get her in here, let’s get her forth, and let’s burn her. The old double standard, hard at work. Well, when she was getting ready to bring her down there, she sent to her father-in-law and said, by the man whose these are am I with child. And she said, Discern, I pray you, whose are these? The signet ring, the bracelets, and the staff. And when Judah saw them and learned that she was with child by the man who owned those things, there wasn’t much she could say. He said, She has been more righteous than I am, because I didn’t give her to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more. He didn’t fool around with Tamar anymore after that. But two sons are still on the way. Now, this is just a passing little story in the continuing soap opera, right? Wrong. This little episode is crucial to the story to come. Well, it turned out that when Tamar finally went into labor with this child or children, behold, twins were in her womb. It came to pass that while she was in labor, one of them put out his hand, and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. This is important because once again we are establishing the question of which of the twins is firstborn and therefore has Judah’s birthright. Because whatever you look at it, Tamar was the wife of his firstborn son, so she is bearing seed to the birthright of Judah. It came to pass that that one drew back his hand, and behold, his brother came out, and he said, How have you broken forth? This breach is upon you. So his name was called Phares. And afterward came out his brother, and the scarlet thread was upon his hand, and his name was called Zerah. Okay, big deal. We have twins named Phares and Zerah. Interesting Bible story. Maybe it will impress you more if I tell you that one of these boys is a progenitor of two men whom you will recognize immediately. One of them is David, the son of Jesse, the king of Israel. And the other one? Jesus, the son of Mary, the son of God. These two babies being born at this time to Judah are very crucial to the story that is to come. Meanwhile, down in Egypt, that part of the plot is developing quickly. We’ll talk about that when I come back.
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The Arabs took Joseph down into Egypt and sold him off to Potiphar, who was an officer of Pharaoh. He was captain of the guard. He bought him off the Ishmaelites that brought him down, and the Lord was with Joseph. He turned out to be a prosperous man, and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. This is really remarkable when you think about it. Here is a slave. He bought him, and yet he is becoming a prosperous man even as a slave. Well, his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything Joseph did prosper in his hand. Really remarkable in a sense that just about every decision Joseph made was good. It prospered. It worked. He was effective. And it just underlines that even when you’re in slavery, there is always a demand for the effective servant, for the effective man, the man who can manage affairs. And certainly Joseph could do that. He found grace in his sight, and he served him. And the man made Joseph the overseer over his entire house, over everything that he had in his hand. It came to pass that from the time that he made Joseph the overseer in his house, from the time he put him over everything he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake. The blessing of the Lord was upon he had in the house and in the field. In other words, everything they were doing was making money. Now, this man looked upon all this, and he thought, there’s no point in me fooling around with this. Joseph knows exactly what he is doing. He left everything he had in Joseph’s hand. He didn’t even know what he had except for the bread he ate. And Joseph, well, Joseph was a goodly person, well favored. I’ve got to say this. He must have been a very good-looking, charismatic young man. Well, the wife of Potiphar noticed this as well. And she said to Joseph, Lie with me. He refused. He said to his master’s wife, You know, my master doesn’t even know what’s with me in the house. He’s committed everything he has to my hand. There’s nobody greater in this house than I am. He has not kept back anything from me yet. except you, because you’re his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Wow, think about that. All the way back in this time, it was understood that adultery was a sin against God. In fact, if you do your Bible study, you will learn that it was a sin to break every single one of the Ten Commandments prior to the time they’re given to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is a man not only of great ability, not only a handsome man, not only a charismatic man, but he’s an honorable man as well. Potiphar was incredibly lucky in one way to have him in his household, but he was incredibly unlucky to have this particular woman for a wife. The kingdom passed. She kept after Joseph every day, and he would not listen to her to lie with her or even to be with her. It got to the place to where he tried his best to avoid this woman. And boy, was that smart. You know, it’s funny. I remember even as a young boy reading this passage and being kind of excited by the idea that a woman would ever grab a man by the arm and say, hey, come over here and sleep with me. And, you know, sometimes us young boys would read the Bible for the titillation we’d get from some things like this. But along with it, we also got something else. The full awareness that the conduct that the woman was inviting Joseph to engage in was wrong. It was a sin against God, and in the end it had evil consequences. Joseph wouldn’t even be with her. It came to pass about this time that Joseph went into the house to take care of some business, and none of the men were in the house there with him, and that turned out to be a mistake. She grabbed his garment and said, Hey, lie with me. And he left his garment in her hand and fled and got him out. He slipped his coat off and ran out of the house. He knew that he had to run from this woman. She was a real barracuda, this one. It came to pass when she saw that she had the garment in his hand and he had ran away from her. She called the men of the house and spoke to them, saying, Look! My husband has brought to us a Hebrew and a mockus. He came in to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice, and it came to pass when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, he left this garment with me and fled and got him out. Joseph ran. She cried, Rape. Folks, how old is this story? And we haven’t said this sort of thing goes on even all the way down to today, as all of us well know. But here it is going on in the ancient world. And who did they believe? They believed the woman. It came to pass, when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spoke to him, saying, This is the way he did with me, that he was furious, and well he would have been. So Joseph’s master took him and slapped him in jail, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound, and he was there in the prison, and in the normal course of events might very well have died there. But you know, if you’re God, And you’ve got a plan you’ve been working out with this young man, and you actually have something in mind for him, for his future, and for his children in the future. You’ve pretty well got to take care of him. And, of course, especially since the fact that he was really trying his best. He really did honor you, God, by not doing these things. So the Lord was with him in prison and showed him mercy. He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. I mean, everybody liked this man. I mean, Potiphar’s wife liked him, but the jailer likes him. And he got favor there. And he actually put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners in the prison. Whatever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison didn’t even bother to see what was going on because the Lord was with Joseph. And whatever he did, the Lord made it work. It’s really astonishing. You know, when God sets his love on somebody and God decides, I’m going to work with this man, and the man’s loyal to God, everything works. Well, it came to pass after these things, and this is in the normal course of our ongoing soap opera, the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord, the king of Egypt. And I rather imagine that probably was not that hard to do. I don’t know what he did to the bread. I don’t know what the butler did with the wine. Something was wrong, and they got slammed in jail. Pharaoh was furious. He was against the chief of the bakers, and he put them in a ward in the house of the captain of the guards, slammed them in prison, the place where Joseph was bound. And the captain of the guard put Joseph in charge of them. And he served them, and they continued for a season in Ward. And they dreamed a dream, both of them, the baker and the butler. And now we get started into God, for whatever reason, begins to reveal the future to these men. And oddly, he doesn’t initially reveal it to Joseph. He reveals it to the man affected by it. Each man dreamed a dream according to the interpretation of the dream, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, which was bound in prison. And Joseph came to them in the morning and looked at them, and they were both very, very sad. And he says, What’s the matter with you guys? They said, Well, we’ve dreamed a dream, and we don’t have anyone to interpret it and tell us what’s going on. Both of us have had one. And Joseph said, Well, interpretations of dreams belong to God. Tell me your dream, I pray you. Well, the chief butler told his dream to Joseph. He said, In my dream there was a vine before me, and in the vine there were three branches as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth, and the clusters sent forth ripe grapes. So Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. That’s the dream. Joseph said, oh, I see. Here’s your interpretation. The three branches are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh is going to take you out of here and restore you to your place. You’ll deliver Pharaoh’s cup into his hand. You’ll be back at work in your old job. Now, please, remember me, would you, when you’re out of here and it’s well with you, and show kindness to me. Make mention of me to Pharaoh and get me out of this jail. For indeed, I was stolen out of the land of Hebrews, and I have never done anything wrong that they should put me in here. Fair enough. The chief baker saw the good interpretation. He said to Joseph, well, I had a dream too. I had three white baskets on my head. In the uppermost basket, there was all manner of baked meats for Pharaoh, and the birds ate them out of the basket on my head. And Joseph said, oh, here’s the interpretation. The three baskets are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh will get you out of here and hang you on a tree and the birds will eat your flesh from off you. And it came to pass, the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast to all of his servants and he pardoned the chief butler and the chief baker was also taken out. He restored the chief butler to his butlership again. and he was back as the king’s wine steward. But he hanged the chief baker just like Joseph had told him. And you know a funny thing in spite of all this? The chief butler, the king’s wine steward, did not remember Joseph. He forgot him. It’s too bad. Real winners don’t forget their friends. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. you may call us toll free at 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
