The Life of a Faithful Believer!

24 May 2015 Sunday Morning Service

Bible
OT Genesis 37 : 1 – 36
NT Acts 7 : 2 – 16

Genesis
37:1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.
37:2 This is the account of Jacob. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, 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.
37:3 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 a richly ornamented robe for him.
37:4 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.
37:5 Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.
37:6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had:
37:7 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.”
37:8 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.
37:9 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 eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
37:10 When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?”
37:11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
37:12 Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem,
37:13 and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.” “Very well,” he replied.
37:14 So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem,
37:15 a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?”
37:16 He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?”
37:17 “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.'” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan.
37:18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
37:19 “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other.
37:20 “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
37:21 When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said.
37:22 “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the desert, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
37:23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe–the richly ornamented robe he was wearing–
37:24 and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
37:25 As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
37:26 Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?
37:27 Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
37:28 So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
37:29 When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes.
37:30 He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”
37:31 Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood.
37:32 They took the ornamented robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”
37:33 He recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
37:34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days.
37:35 All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.” So his father wept for him.
37:36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard.

Acts
7:2 To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.
7:3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’
7:4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living.
7:5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child.
7:6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.
7:7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’
7:8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
7:9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him
7:10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.
7:11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food.
7:12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit.
7:13 On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family.
7:14 After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all.
7:15 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died.
7:16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top