God is in Charge & Chooses His Ruler

This is in the Bible in Genesis 37

This week we are hearing about an amazing true story in the Bible that shows us how great God is. It’s a story that looks like a complete wreck but is in fact a true story of an amazing rescue.

It is in the Old Testament, which is the part of the Bible written before Jesus was born.

God made some amazing promises to a man called Abraham. He promised that one day God’s people would enjoy living with God as their king.

Abraham’s grandson was Jacob & he had 12 sons. Joseph was the 11th son & was 17 years old when this story started.

Jacob loved Joseph more than the other sons. He was his favourite. And he gave him a really posh coat but that made his brothers mad! Joseph’s brothers hated him and did not have one nice word to say about him.

And then one day Joseph had a dream. And he told his brothers about it:

“Hey guys I’ve just had a dream. And guess what, we were all tying up the bundles of wheat when yours all bowed down to my bundle.”

That did not go down well with the brothers! But Joseph doesn’t just have one dream, he had a double dream.

“Listen, I had another dream. I saw the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down to me.” He said.

Now Joseph realised this was not just any old dream like we have, but a double dream from God. Before the Bible was written God spoke to people in dreams. God was telling Joseph that he would one day be his chosen ruler.

But Joseph’s brothers weren’t having any of that! They hated him even more. One day Jacob sent Joseph to find his brothers who were shepherds. His brothers saw Joseph coming from a distance and they plotted to kill Joseph!

“Let’s kill him and throw him in the well. And we can tell Dad a wild animal has killed him!” they said.

Reuben, one of the brothers said “You can’t do that, but we could just throw him in the well instead.” Reuben hoped to save Joseph & send him back to his Dad. When Joseph arrived they grabbed him removed his coat and threw him in the well. Then while they were eating their lunch a group of people travelling to Egypt gave Judah (another brother) an idea.

“Hey guys. What’s the point of killing Joe. We would be guilty of murder. Why don’t we sell him and makes some money out of him”. They all though that was a great idea and so they sold Joseph for 20 silver coins.

To cover up what they had done, the brothers killed a goat, put some of the blood on Joseph’s coat to make it look as though a wild animal had killed him, and then went back to their Dad.

Jacob was really, really sad when he thought that his son Joseph had been killed. But Joseph was actually alive and the men who bought him had sold him as a slave to a very important man in Egypt called Potiphar. He was an officer to the king of Egypt and captain of the palace guard.

Even though God had chosen Joseph to be his chosen ruler, the brothers rejected him and did not want him to rule over them. But God is still in charge and even this won’t stop his plan.

And this true story points us to Jesus. He is God’s chosen ruler but way better than Joseph because he is God’s ruler for everyone. So the question we need to ask ourselves is how do we treat Jesus? Are we like the brothers?