Fashionable (Christmas Clothes #3)

Have you ever thought your life was going one direction and ended up somewhere else entirely? Not a wrong turn while driving — I mean you planned one career and landed in another. Some of you thought you would be married by now. Some thought you would have one child, or two, or seventeen. Some thought you would have visited seventeen countries or spoken seventeen languages. And life looked very different.

In high school I started thinking about what life might look like after college, and one of the things I wanted was to be married. I reasoned that I was not going to win anyone over with magazine-cover looks, and I probably would not overwhelm her with my comedic personality. So I needed to cheat somehow — by demonstrating I was responsible. Which to me meant the degree, then the job, then a dog. Establish that I can look after myself and the world, and therefore look after you.

I am enormously thankful that did not happen. I did not become irresponsible — but I was twenty-one when Leanne and I married, and she was two months short of twenty-one herself. We were extremely young, and I normally advise people against marrying that young. Yet looking back I can see exactly how God worked to get us where we are.

I was following an American template. My plan seemed sensible, even wise. God took me somewhere quite different, and I am grateful.

I start there because it is what happened with this sermon. I had planned to go one direction, and it went another. I will tell you the original plan, because it was not a bad one — I simply think that had I only gone that way, we would have missed something more beautiful.

A Father Who Should Have Known Better

Last week we met twin brothers, Esau and Jacob. Esau was older and held the birthright, meaning he would take up leadership of the family when their father died. And Jacob manipulated him into trading it for a bowl of stew, then later disguised himself to steal the blessing meant for the firstborn.

Today Jacob is back — but older, and no longer the forty-year-old trickster. In Genesis 35 he wrestles through the night and receives a new name. You know it even if you do not know the Bible: Israel. Now you know where the nation got its name.

And Israel has twelve sons. Not twelve children — twelve sons. Before anyone panics on behalf of the poor woman: he had four wives. I do not recommend that. Find one and stay with her.

He fell in love with one first, and I suspect his original plan was a single wife. But she could not have children, and he ended up with others who were having sons steadily. Eventually Rachel, his favourite, became pregnant and had a son. Israel was elated — and that son became his favourite.

You would think Jacob would know better. Fathers should not have favourites; it damages the other children. And Jacob knew it from experience, because his own father had a favourite, and it was Esau. You would expect him to think: I hated being second best. I hated being only my mother’s boy. I wished my father felt about me the way he felt about my brother. I will do this differently.

He did not. He made the same mistake — and unlike his father, he was not remotely subtle. He advertised it.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. — Genesis 37:3–4 (ESV)

So in a series called Christmas Clothes — what was the gift that advertised the favourite? A coat. A robe of many colours.

Some of you know this from church. Others know it from the musical.

Although, as it happens, we cannot be fully confident it was colourful at all. The Hebrew word used here appears nowhere else in Scripture, so we are guessing. It may mean the sleeves were unusually long. Some translations suggest extra length overall. It may have been specially embroidered, or made of unusually fine material. The reason most translations say “coloured” is that the translators of the Septuagint said so — so it probably was.

And it does not matter. Colours, embroidery, length — the point is simply that he received a robe that set him apart from his brothers. He is the favourite.

Joseph’s Life in Four Chapters

My original plan was to focus on that coat. But as I began studying, before writing a word, I came across sources pointing out that clothing appears all through Joseph’s story — which surprised me. So let me walk the story quickly.

Chapter one: home. He is seventeen, living with his family, wearing the robe. His brothers hate him — not only for being the favourite but because, as verse 2 tells us, he is a tattletale, reporting on them to make himself look better. Then he has dreams which plainly suggest they will all bow down to him, and he tells everyone. They cannot stand this teenager.

So when they see him approaching across the field one day, they start planning to kill him. One brother objects — he is our brother, after all — so they throw him in a pit instead while they decide. Then slave traders pass by, and they sell him.

Some of you are anxious about family gatherings this Christmas. I doubt your relatives will sell you into human trafficking. This is a dysfunctional family.

Chapter two: slavery. He is sold to Potiphar, an Egyptian official under Pharaoh, who recognizes Joseph is remarkable and puts him in charge of the household. Potiphar’s wife also notices him, and when he refuses her advances she becomes angry and accuses him. Potiphar has him thrown in prison.

Chapter three: prison. He serves, makes himself useful, and ends up effectively running the place. Two men there have strange dreams — and remember, Joseph likes dreams — so he interprets them, and both come true. A couple of years later Pharaoh himself has a baffling dream about thin, ugly cows swallowing fat ones, and one of those men remembers: there was a man in prison who interpreted my dream, and it came true.

Chapter four: second-in-command. Joseph interprets the dream — seven good years followed by seven of famine — and Pharaoh is so impressed he puts him in charge of collecting and storing grain for what is coming.

The famine reaches all the way back to his homeland, and his brothers travel to Egypt for food. They do not recognize him: he is speaking Egyptian, dressed as an Egyptian, and nobody expects the brother they sold to have survived, let alone to be running the country. But he recognizes them. He tests them, sees they have changed, reveals himself, and the family is reunited and resettled.

Clothing in Every Chapter

Here is what I had been missing. There is clothing in every one of those four chapters.

Chapter one is the robe. Chapter two is the garment Potiphar’s wife is left holding when Joseph pulls away and runs — the very evidence used to accuse him and land him in prison. Chapter three is the change of clothes he is given when Pharaoh summons him: after years inside he is bathed, shaved, and dressed so he can stand before the king.

If you had quizzed me, I would have got the first straight away. The second I would have needed a moment for. The third would have been genuinely hard. And the fourth I could have thought about for hours without arriving at it.

To each and all of them he gave a change of clothes, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes. — Genesis 45:22 (ESV)

This comes just after the reunion. Pharaoh has heard Joseph’s family has found him and tells him to send for all of them — he loves this man, and offers them the finest land. So Joseph is outfitting his brothers for the journey home and back.

You may be thinking: how could Joseph repeat his father’s mistake and show favouritism to Benjamin? There is an explanation. Benjamin is his only full biological brother — their mother had Joseph, then Benjamin, and died giving birth to him. There is a particular bond there.

But notice what he gives them all. Not revenge — a wardrobe. He does not enslave them as they did him; he serves and provides for them. He does not use his power to take for himself. He uses it to give, to care, to love.

Joseph’s story runs on to chapter 50, but this is like a murder mystery — the mystery is solved, and what remains is the settling: getting home, fetching their father, the reunion. For practical purposes his story is complete here.

Which means it begins with clothing and ends with clothing. It begins with him receiving a robe because he is favoured, and ends with him giving robes because his brothers are forgiven and favoured.

I am in awe of God’s artistry — that He would write literature in which this figure’s story opens and closes with clothes.

What I Had Planned to Say

My intention was to focus on the robe: just as Israel gave his favoured son a beautiful coat, your heavenly Father gives you a beautiful spiritual cloak — coloured with His love, His grace, His goodness, His kindness, His faithfulness, His character, His presence, His power. He has clothed you in Christ.

We saw that in Galatians last week, and it is not a one-off. Ephesians 4:24 says that if you are in Christ you have put on the new self — and “put on” can equally be rendered “be clothed with.” What is this new self? It is created after the likeness of God. And who is in the likeness of God? Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God. So we are being remade into His likeness, in true righteousness and holiness.

If you follow Jesus, then at the deepest core of who you are — despite what you have done, despite your past, despite your worries, despite what is happening right now — the Father has robed you in righteousness. He has clothed you with Christ. He is creating a new person in you. Not to make you look good on the outside, but to change you from the inside. That is the fundamental truth of who you are.

Some of you need to hear that God does not define you by your worst moment. He sees the cloak of Christ over you and around you, covering and cleansing you — the cloak that lets you come into the presence not of a Pharaoh but of a King who is not testing you to see whether you know enough, because He has done it all for you.

And the Trap in It

All of that is biblically accurate and theologically beautiful. But there is a risk in stopping there — a trap plenty of Christians fall into, myself included.

When we read the Bible we insert ourselves into the story. So here: Joseph received a robe from his father, we receive spiritual clothes from our heavenly Father, therefore we are Joseph.

I do not think God wrote this story with you first and foremost in mind. Yes, it is for you. But you are not Joseph.

I recently started a book called The Christ Key by Chad Bird — and you know it is a good book, because the author’s surname is Bird. In the introduction he argues that the Bible is not a collection of independent stories, nor merely a stack of independent books. It is one tied-together narrative.

Which means earlier stories get called upon by later ones. You become familiar enough with Scripture that a later passage summons an earlier one to help you understand it — and sometimes illuminates the earlier one in return. Exodus helps interpret Genesis. Joshua and Judges help you understand Exodus. Samuel explains something in Judges, Daniel something in Samuel, and on it goes — until you arrive at the Gospels and at Christ, who is the key that unlocks the beauty and power of the Old Testament.

In Luke 24 Jesus has risen but has not yet appeared to all the disciples. Two men are walking to a village called Emmaus. They know Jesus died, and that morning the women returned saying they had seen an angel who told them He was risen and the tomb was empty — but in that culture the testimony of women was not treated as reliable, and in any case nobody rises from the dead. So they are thoroughly confused.

And Jesus falls in beside them. They do not recognize Him — you do not expect a man to rise from the dead — so they take Him for a stranger, and when He asks what is going on they explain everything.

Then Luke tells us that beginning with Moses and the Prophets, Jesus went back through the Hebrew Scriptures and showed them how all of it pointed to Him. He was the fulfilment of everything there.

All of Scripture points at Christ. John Calvin put it this way in the preface to the Geneva Bible — a study Bible that predates the King James: if one were to sift thoroughly the Law and the Prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to Christ.

That conviction shaped a seminary professor named Edmund Clowney, who taught Christ-centred preaching. One of his students was a young man named Tim Keller, who took it to heart and spent his life preaching how all of it points to Jesus — which is what led him to the phrase the true and better.

Jesus is the true and better Adam, who passed the test in the garden, and whose obedience is credited to us. The true and better Abraham, who answered God’s call to leave the comfortable and familiar to create a new people for God. The true and better Isaac, who was not only offered up by his father on the mount but truly sacrificed.

The True and Better Joseph

Which means Jesus is the true and better Joseph. Not you. Not me. Jesus.

He is the favoured Son — which helps when you are the only begotten Son. The favoured Son who went into slavery, as Philippians 2 describes, and who rose to the right hand of the King. The one who forgives our betrayal and clothes us in His righteousness.

So do not walk away today thinking Joseph simply points to you. He does — but it goes further and deeper and is far more beautiful than that. Ultimately he points to Jesus. He is your true brother. He is your true King. And it is He who, through the cross, did this for you so He might change you from the inside out.

If you follow Jesus, that should humble you, and awe you, and make you want to worship Him this Christmas — because you have been fashioned with forgiveness, given a righteous robe, clothed with Christ, arrayed in the colours of God’s love and grace and presence and goodness.

And if you do not follow Jesus, this is an invitation to come to Him this Christmas.

Because when people grasp that the story is true — that God the Son came as a baby, lived a perfect sinless life, and then died like the worst of criminals, paying the penalty humanity owed — they usually cannot help but pray.

Joseph’s brothers thoroughly deserved to be punished for what they did, and their brother forgave them. Your brother — the true human, the true Adam — credits His obedience and His righteousness to you. You need only accept it.