Survival as a Mover and a Shaker

Tom Shrader begins a new series called 'Survival Through the Cycles of Life' by examining the story of Joseph in Genesis 37. He explores how Joseph's dreams of his brothers bowing down to him, combined with his father's favoritism shown through the coat of many colors, led to intense hatred from his brothers. When Joseph is sent to check on his brothers who are pasturing flocks far from home, they plot against him and ultimately sell him into slavery to the Ishmaelites. Shrader emphasizes that despite appearing to be in dire circumstances, Joseph is exactly where God wants him to be, teaching that our physical circumstances don't always reflect our spiritual condition.

“What do people say when they see you coming? What do you want them to say at your funeral without having to lie?”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Survival Through the Cycles of Life

Recorded: 2026

Duration: 37 min

Themes: dreams, favoritism, jealousy, betrayal, suffering, sovereignty, hardship, perseverance, facing betrayal, experiencing favoritism, dealing with jealousy, going through hardship, young adult, family conflict, feeling abandoned, struggling with circumstances

Scripture: Genesis 37:1-36, Ephesians 1-4, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9

Theological Themes: providence, divine sovereignty, gods plan, spiritual warfare, covenant faithfulness, biblical narrative, redemptive history, sanctification

Full Transcript

If you have a Bible, why don't you open it to the book of Genesis and the 37th chapter. We're going to start a new series today and the title of the series is Survival Through the Cycles of Life.

You do not have to be around very long to figure out that there are cycles. I'm reading a book right now on seasons of life and the author's making, to me it's an interesting point. He's saying you may have this overall season. So let's say for me personally, I am likely in the winter of my life. I get up every day knowing anything that I'm ever going to accomplish is already done. It's an area where you look at just the normal flow.

We had the boys over the other night for pizza and to watch Sandlot. I'm watching, I'm sitting on the couch and I'm watching the boys watch Sandlot and I said their eyes were this big and they're just absorbing this movie. I'm thinking that's that front end of that. Then the author makes a really interesting point to me: you may be in this overarching winter of life but you have subsets of that where you're in the spring of a project within that. You're engaged in something that's at the beginning. So you're in cycles.

When I started at Coal Banker, you don't need to say anything but this, Jimmy Carter was president. Interest rates were almost 20%. So think of trying to do that deal now. I was just talking to somebody this morning saying they're doing deals at about three. So imagine something like that.

The Context of Cycles

This series, I was shocked. I would have sworn I taught this a year or two ago but it's been five years. I know I taught this series when the economy and everything was roaring. It's when you went to the Christmas party and you said to the guy, "How'd you do in your investments this year?" and he said "Oh 21%, 21%? Fire that guy. You should be getting 40." Then the next time I did it you went and said "How'd you do?" and he goes "I only lost 5%." You only lost 5%? Can I get the guy's name? So I mean I've done this series through this and it's so affirming.

It's a character study. The guy that we're going to look at, if he were here today, you could easily pick him out because he'd be about 4,000 years old. His name is Joseph and you see him through all sorts of different cycles within his life.

Now I'm big on the practical side of all of this. It doesn't matter what the macro cycle is if your micro cycle is different. So if unemployment is 0.00001 and you're that one, then you're at that cycle. You're in a down cycle. So you can be in here today and have talking to everybody and everybody's doing great, and yet that's not where you are.

Understanding Personal Cycles

The other thing that I've observed is rarely is everything at the same point in a cycle. So oftentimes finances and business might be doing very well, but personal stuff not so well. Oftentimes personal stuff doing really well, business not so well. So the point here is for me not to smooth out these cycles. The point is how to not just survive but thrive in the midst of them.

What I love about this series is I've taught it to groups of seniors. I've taught it in business settings. I've done it to married couples. I did it to junior high and high school kids. These are tools for your entire life.

Now I said the study was going to be about Joseph. In reality, the main character of the study is God. It's very simple, similar to the stuff that we've seen in the past. What you know trumps what you feel. It's the theology. Life is difficult, but we want to get beyond the surviving part to the thriving part. And I'm not saying in this trust me. Here's my big point: What I'm saying is you can trust Him.

The Foundation of Trust

So if you look at the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter 1, 2, and 3, Paul's laying out these amazing theological truths. When he gets to chapter 4, he says, "Therefore walk in a manner worthy of the calling." Because these theological things are true, you can live in a specific way. So that's what this is all about.

We're in about chapter 37 of the book of Genesis. We've seen Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and now Joseph. So Genesis chapter 37 verse 1: "Now Jacob lived in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan. And there are records of the generation. And Joseph, who was 17 years of age, was pasturing a flock with his brothers while he was still youth. And along with the sons from his father's different wives, Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. Now Israel, that's Jacob, loved Joseph more than all his other sons because he was son of his old age and he made him a very colored tunic. And when his brothers saw that his father loved him more than them, they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms."

If you look down to verse 8, this hate accelerates. They hate him even more. There is a bitterness here. There's a fundamental problem.

The Problem of Favoritism

I've always excused this or explained it or accepted it. If you have more than one kid, it seems likely to me you're going to like one more than the other. If you're a dad and you got four boys and you're a hunter and one boy's into cooking and one's into art and one's into theater and one holds the world record for the largest bow kill of whatever you kill with them. A javelina, a moose, whatever it is. You're going to drift toward this one. And I personally don't think there's a problem with that. I think that's totally natural.

But don't give him a coat of many colors. Don't give him a tunic that he wears around so that they all see this.

For years, we teased my mom. There's four boys. I'm the oldest and then a couple years younger is Dan. A couple years after him is Jim. And then John is 10 years younger than I am. For years, we teased my mother that John was her favorite. And one night, we got an extra glass of wine and she admitted it.

My daughters were there. They can confirm it. I don't have any problem. I can understand. If I was her, I would pick John over me. He was easier to raise. He was a nice kid. He was a compliant kid. He was a smart kid. He didn't cause any problems. But this is the backdrop in this story. And the hatred is there.

Joseph's First Dream

Verse 5: "Then Joseph had a dream. And when he told his brothers the dream, they hated him even more." And they said to him, or he said to them, "Listen to this dream. Behold, we were binding sheaves of the fields and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect. And behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf."

Then the brothers said to him, "Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?" So they hated him even more. You see the acceleration here.

Joseph's Second Dream

And he still had another dream and related it to his brothers: "I've had another dream. And behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars were bowing down to me." And he related to his father and his brothers. And his father rebuked him and said, "What is this dream you had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually bow down ourselves before you on the ground?" And his brothers were jealous of him. And his father kept the saying in his mind.

Dreams, Visions, and Wisdom

Joseph has a dream. And this gets into the whole topic of dreams. By dreams I mean visions and appetites and things that you want to do. Joseph has this dream. Listen, here's a fundamental principle: If you have a dream that your brothers are going to bow down to you, keep it to yourself. I mean, that's one-on-one. You don't need to share every dream that you've had.

In your life—now we're really expanding the way we use that term dreams—but in your life you have these visions. You see things, you see things that never were and ask why. I remember when I first came to town. My first job was at Motorola. At the time they were the largest employer in the state, 55,000 employees. I was there about two weeks when it became painfully apparent to me that this was the most screwed up organization on the planet.

I was not as wise and shrewd as a serpent as I am now. So I went into my manager and I said, "This thing is a mess. I've written a paper here that I think will solve a lot of the problems. It's going to require me moving up the organizational chart. Probably go to Schaumburg and back to Chicago, but I'm sure you'll provide transportation for that." And he said, "I'd keep this to myself if I was you. I don't think I'd share that."

The Evolution of Dreams

I made this comment the other day, and it seems appropriate in this room. My memories exceed my dreams. I don't have any great plan. There was a plan at one time where I thought I could revamp Motorola after two weeks. I remember when I was 18 years old, I took on the task of trying to essentially gerrymander the state of Iowa.

The state of Iowa has 99 counties. California has something like 27. It's just totally preposterous. In 1846, when Iowa became a state, the idea was you could go anywhere within the county to the county seat, transact business and return the same day. Well, now you go your whole life and you don't go to the county seat. I, as an 18 year old, could see the waste of 99 county boards of supervisors, 99 county attorneys, 99 county treasurers. Unfortunately, the people who had to change this were the 99 county attorneys and the 99 county board of supervisors.

I just remember going, "Wow." When we were just back there this summer, going from city to city to city, you go about 10 miles and you hit exactly the town square again. I thought, "What a waste," but that's the way it is.

When Dreams Die and Dream Killers Emerge

Here's what happens. Let me warn those of us who are maybe at the end of our life dreaming cycles. When your dreams start to dry up, you tend to become a dream killer. You become the curmudgeon in the room. You become the person that's going to kill dreams. So somebody comes to you and they've got a brand new idea for whatever, and you don't see the potential of it. You see a thousand things that are going to go wrong with it.

The other thing I've noticed is as kids get older, we feel compelled to interject the component of the real world to them. So my five year old—now he's seven year old grandson—I mean, he really thinks in his mind, I was going to say he thinks he could be Dustin Pedroia. That's not true. He thinks he's better than Dustin Pedroia. That's how he thinks. I don't try to take him down a notch on that. I try to tell him here's what Dustin would do. Here's a picture of Dustin. Let's watch Dustin play.

Now they get to be 18 or 19 and they have this dream and they're going to revamp and take and build upon whatever Steve Jobs did. Then you feel like you've got to come in and kind of quench that dream maybe a little bit. But this dream comes to Joseph and Joseph shares it openly. What you see is a problem is really self-evident. The boys hate him. Now they can't do much because they're under their dad's protection, but that's all about to change.

Joseph Sent to Find His Brothers

Look at verse 12: "Then the brothers went to pasture their father's flock at Shechem. And Jacob said to Joseph, 'Are not your brothers pastoring the flock at Shechem? Come, I'll send you there.' And he said, 'I will go.' And he said to him, 'Go now and see about the welfare of your brother and the welfare of the flock and bring word back to me.' So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron to Shechem."

That's a distance of about 30 miles. "And he found a man and behold, he was wandering in the field. He said, 'What are you looking for?' He said, 'I'm looking for my brothers. Please tell me where they're pastoring the flock.' And he said, 'They've moved from here. I thought I heard him say, let's go to Dothan.'" That's another 20 miles.

Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan. He's now about 50 miles away from home. There are two things that are in play now. You got the backdrop, right? These boys have hated him, hated him more. They're jealous. Now they're 50 miles away. Joseph doesn't have the protection of his dad and the boys don't have the restraint of their father. All of a sudden now, Joseph's problems become very serious.

You see almost a mob mentality begin to develop. They decide they're going to get him. That's exactly what happens. Verse 18, when they saw him, that's Joseph, when they saw Joseph from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted to kill him. Verse 19, and they said, here comes the dreamer.

What Do People Say When They See You Coming?

Stop right there. What do people say when they see you coming? When they pick up that phone and they see your name, how fast do they hit accept or decline? Do you get a lot of calls that ring once and go to voicemail? What do they say? This is a big deal to me.

Five, six people, they're in a restaurant. You walk in, you get in line and you begin to order your kale salad. And they're talking about you. You can't hear them. What do they say? How do they identify you? What are you going to be known for, known as? What do you want them to say?

This is my go-to line. What do you want them to say at your funeral without having to lie? And I've sat through so many of those. Whatever it is, it seems to me you're going to have to begin working on that now. It's not something that's haphazard.

When Paul says at the end of his life, I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith. My sense is, as I read through Paul's letters, is that that was a constant goal of His. This is what he was. I strive. This one thing I do. I push on. I reach. I grasp. We use the old cliche. We start with the end in mind.

Building Your Legacy Now

What do you want them to say? Do you want that come-by-all moment when they sit around and they say, you know, Grandpa was always available, and Grandpa was just a cool guy, and yet you're never there with the kids? He was a guy I could count on. But not anybody in the whole joint can come up with a story about how somebody could count on you.

What is it at the end of the day that you want to be? Character is who you really are. Reputation is who people think you are. How do I get those to match up? I want to be that guy. I want to be that person that somebody's going to say, He was reliable. He was rock solid. He was there when I needed him. I could count on him. He was a guy who loved God. Are you working toward that now?

To me, that's just a great picture. You walk in, and you're ordering, and four guys are sitting here. Gals are sitting there, and they see you. What are they saying about you?

The Brothers' Mob Psychology

Well, they're saying, hey, we got this figured out. Here comes the dreamer, and now a mob psychology takes over. Now then, they say, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. And we will say a wild animal devoured him. Then let us see what will become of the dreamer. You can hear the resentment in there.

And Reuben heard this and rescued him out of their hands and said, let's not take his life. Reuben further said, shed no blood, throw him into the pit that is in the wilderness. But do not lay hands on him that they might rescue him out of their hands and restore him to his father.

So it came about when Joseph reached his brothers that they stripped him. There goes that coat. We're going to get that coat. And Joseph of his tunic of many colors. And they took him and they threw him in a pit. Now the pit was empty without any water in it.

A Caravan Appears

They sat down to eat a meal and they raised up their eyes and they looked and behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing aromatic gum and balm and myrrh and on their way to bring them to Egypt.

And Judah said to his brothers, what profit is it for us to kill our brothers and cover his blood? Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him. Now a little background. Any Jew would rather be killed than sold to the Ishmaelites. This may on the surface look like some sort of a generous offer here. In essence, he's saying, well, you know, let's do the American thing. Let's make a buck out of this. If we kill him, nobody wins. But you see the mentality.

The Danger of Mob Psychology in Parenting

You see that as a warning. I taught on Parenting Sunday, which is just brutal to do because you're filled with guilt no matter how good you are at it. I was in a panel two weeks ago where we were asked about regrets and I started to talk about parenting and the guy I was with said, Tom was the best father I ever saw. Now, I'm not going to dispute that. No, no, you laughed too early. I'm not going to dispute it because this is opinion. I don't feel that way at all. Parenting, it's just this guilt upon guilt upon guilt.

So I'm getting ready to go out. Haley knows I'm going and Haley said, Dad, here's one of the problems I have in parenting is I'm so often driven by what will people think about me as a parent. You know, if I do this, if my kid acts this way, she had an incident a couple weeks ago at BSF where Harmony got away from her. So she had Lucy here. Harmony took off running. She's running full speed across this field toward Ray Road with traffic everywhere. BSF is getting out and Haley said, as all this is unfolding, I'm concerned about Harmony's safety, but I'm thinking to myself, what do these 200 women think of me as a mother?

Now you see the mob psychology. I don't know if you've ever been in an environment or a situation where you've seen a mob kind of take over. The closest I came was the Ali Foreman fight. We're in Davenport, Iowa, and in those days you didn't have the, you had a big, it was closed circuit. You had like a big box with a light and some of you guys were there with a

Joseph's Circumstances Worsen

The brothers' plan unfolds with cold calculation. These men are 50 miles away from home. They can do whatever they want, and their plan is to literally sell Joseph into slavery. It's the worst fate they could possibly imagine. No Jew would want this.

The Ishmaelites now take him. In verse 27, they say, "Let's sell him, not lay any hands on him." Verse 28 continues: "Then some of the Midianite traders pass by, so they pulled him and lifted Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver."

Now Reuben returned to the pit. Behold, Joseph was not in the pit, so he tore his garments—a sign of repentance. He returned to his brothers and said, "The boy is not there. As for me, where am I to go? I'm the oldest, I'm responsible for this."

The Deception of Jacob

They took Joseph's tunic, slaughtered a male goat, dipped the tunic in blood, and sent his very colored coat to their father. They said, "We found this, examine it to see whether it's your son's tunic or not." We've got sin of commission and omission here. They're going to say, "Hey, I'm not saying it is, and I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying we found this tunic and here's the blood, and you draw your own conclusions." It seems pretty obvious to us, but they maintain this facade of respect: "You know, Dad, we respect you."

Then he examined it and said in verse 33, "A wild beast has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces." So Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son for many days. Then all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. He said, "Surely I will go down to Sheol and mourn for my son." And his father wept.

Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt to Potiphar, Pharaoh's officer, the captain of the bodyguard. It's here where, if it were a TV show, we'd stop it and say, "To be continued."

From Bad to Worse - Or Is It?

Joseph is in dire circumstances. He's gone from maybe bad to worse. He's now in slavery in Egypt, far from home, with no protection, no rights, no history. He doesn't know anyone.

As we stop and say we'll be back next week, let's make a couple of points here. You need to be very careful because I can look at this and say, "Wow, Joseph's in a tough jam." Yeah, he is from our perspective, but he is in the perfect place because we're told in chapter 39, verses 2 and 3, that the Lord is with Joseph.

I look at it and say, "I wouldn't want to be there." In fact, I might, kind of like Job's friends, even gather around at this point and say, "I wonder, is there something, Joseph, that you did to bring this on?"

Don't Judge Spiritual Condition by Circumstances

We need to be very careful to equate our physical circumstances, relationships, or financial well-being to our spiritual condition. We may say, "Hey, everything's going well circumstantially. They must be a spiritual giant," but that's not necessarily true at all. We may look and say, "Look, there's pain and suffering and hardship in their life. There must be sin in their life."

There may be. I always want to start there, right? You want to take a look and examine your own life. You want fresh eyes as you look at that to say, "Is there something I'm doing? Am I constantly in disobedience to God?"

There's a little formula that we've been working on that goes: the Word of God plus obedience plus time equals growth. Well, if I'm not—here you go, I want to say the week before last on a Monday was, and I'm ashamed to say it, but it's true, was the first time I've studied in a year. By that I mean it's the first time I sat down, it was the first time I could write. I've had a week where I've been writing—by writing I don't mean a book, I mean writing sentences. I could write and I could hold a book and read. I went to Walgreens and got a pair of cheaters so I can see the words. It's the first time in a year that I've looked at anything new. I've been teaching, but it's all stuff that I've done. There's nothing new coming out. I feel bone-dry.

The Cycles of Spiritual Life

I desperately need, like you, to be in His Word. His Word plus obedience plus time equals growth. Those are one thing, but here we say it all the time: your spiritual life does not just go like this. There are just times where it explodes like a rocket ship, and then there are times where it just kind of sits for whatever reason—circumstance, time. For me, my excuse (I don't know if it's true or not) is the physical part of it.

You're going to be in these cycles of life, and they're inevitable. Here's what He's saying: don't quit in the middle of those. Don't quit in the middle of those circumstances.

Remember when Susan was sick and Susan was diagnosed with cancer, and we were told right away: inoperable, incurable. "Okay, six months, maybe a year." That went on for seven years.

and I would get all the time. How do you handle that? How do you handle knowing that?

The reality is that I know God's in control and I know God loves us and I know that we're in the best place we can be because we're where He has us. It's Paul when he prays three times to remove the thorn in the flesh and he said finally now I'm done here. Okay, here's what I know, God's grace is sufficient. So in the midst of all this hurt and pain and whatever it is, God will be glorified in the midst of that.

When "Father" Is a Difficult Word

I'll give you something that I never understood but I have accepted to be true. For many of you, especially some of you ladies but men as well, when you hear God the Father that's a hard thing sometimes. I never got this with Susan. I would talk to her about God the Father and she'd get this kind of pained look and finally after about six months she said I just don't like that image. My father, when I was 12, went to work one day and never came home and we never heard from him again. He never sent us a dime, he never took care of us. I went to work, my sisters went to work, my mom went to work.

God's not a father like a human father. God is a father to the fatherless. God's the one who began the good work in you. If you're a Christian today it was His work in you.

I said it's primarily gals. Last time I was teaching along this I'm talking to a guy and he was talking about a big high school game he played in and he was the pitcher and he threw a one-hitter and he went three for four at the plate. He had two home runs and a triple and his last at-bat he grounded out to short. Then he said when the game was over it was a big deal. I don't know that you ever get over this. You want your dad.

I mean every game I ever played, my dad came to every game I played all the way through when I was playing for the circle tap and we were playing slow pitch softball. I loved having my dad watch me play baseball but I wanted him at the end to say hey that was really good. This kid throws the one-hitter, hits two home runs and a triple, grounds out and when the game's over he can't wait to get over to his dad and his dad said to him I don't know how you missed that last pitch. I don't know how you can ground out. I don't know how you can ground out to short.

God Is Not Like That

So let me make that connection. Sometimes we turn to God and we see God that way. Like you're moving along and all He's trying to do is nitpick you apart. As Larry would say we see God in heaven as though He's looking for somebody who's having fun to zap them.

God is a God who loves you, who cares for you, who will nurture you, who will protect you. It doesn't mean He puts a bubble around you and not let anything happen to you. Your life is going to be, you can't stop this cycle of life. You can't stop the ups and the downs nor do you want to. It's in those times that you see God work more strongly.

Sandy is teaching three-year-olds at BSF now and they're doing the life of Moses and they're all of these stories oh my gosh they go on and on and on. The whole point of this is you can trust God. He may put you through the Exodus but He's gonna give you the Red Sea. He's gonna protect you. He's gonna provide for you.

The Beginning of Joseph's Story

So that's the story of Joseph. That's one of six. It's where we start. We pick up right there next week.

Let's pray. Father thank you for that truth, that amazing truth that you are a God who loves us and cares for us. That we get into these situations in our life and our instinct is to assume we are wise enough to get out or the situation's bad for us. That's our instinct. Our instinct in tough times is to cut and run when in fact you'd rather have us right here growing, learning. Father we pray that wherever you have us right now whether we're at the top of a cycle or at the bottom that we would learn the lesson you have for us. Teach us, use us, grow us. God let us submit to that pruning from you. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.