Scripture: Genesis 45:1-9; Matthew 15:10-20; 2 Kings 8:16-18; 2 Kings 22:8; Matthew 5:17-18; Matthew 21:28-32
Preaching Genesis 45 (Joseph’s reveal to his brothers) alongside Matthew 15 (defilement from the heart, not the mouth), the sermon traces an insider/outsider dynamic running from Joseph’s family through Torah’s separating function to Jesus’s collapse of that distinction. Jesus doesn’t abolish the Law but relocates the boundary from tribal/external markers to the heart, condemning only the hypocrisy of saying-without-doing (the Pharisee, not the reluctant-then-obedient son). The sermon closes on Joseph’s line to his brothers — ‘come down, do not delay’ — as an image of grace extended to both victim and aggressor alike, an open invitation regardless of past faithfulness or failure.
Illustrations: joseph-technicolor-dreamcoat-musical, thomas-mann-joseph-novels, joseph-sold-into-slavery, bible-in-a-year-small-group, jehoram-evil-reign, finding-the-law-in-the-temple, smudged-iota-papyrus, last-will-and-testament-wordplay, parable-of-two-sons, tax-collectors-prostitutes-kingdom
August 16, 2026
Ordinary Time
Genesis 45:1-9 Matthew 15:10-20
Genesis 45:1-9
Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay.
Matthew 15:10-20
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Come Down, Don’t Delay
The story of Joseph and his brothers takes up a large portion of Genesis
It’s very dramatic. There was a musical about it — Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Not the biggest fan of the musical but the fact that there was a musical about it should lend to its strangeness. Thomas Mann wrote four enormous novels about it
It’s a story that is told in children’s Bibles, because you get this image of the coat of many colors — and yet it’s a hard story to tell from start to finish. There is reconciliation at the end, but it doesn’t seem to justify everything that comes before it.
First of all, why is Joseph Jacob’s favorite? I guess Jacob liked his mom the best, and so this is something that happens in polygamy. That’s strange. Next, what’s going on with his brothers? They seem some problematic dudes.
They are so jealous of the present that their father gave Joseph that they want to kill him. Then they are softened by Judah into selling him into slavery. A lot is happening to poor Joseph, but he just kind of takes it.
He ends up as a slave. And then he’s accused of assault — falsely — and imprisoned. But then he makes his way out of prison by interpreting dreams, which is not something that happens a lot in the Bible. Daniel has some dream interpretations, but mostly it is Joseph. So this is not a skill that people gain.
Then he gets to this high position of authority. You need to understand that he’s speaking Egyptian now. He’s been in Egypt, he’s been a slave for years. He’s not speaking Hebrew. He becomes successful beyond measure.
And then famine hits. And his brothers come looking for him. Looking for food. The brothers who tried to kill him are begging him for food. If they had known that it was him, they would not have left their house.
Insider and Outsider
Back at the ranch, before the family broken apart, when Joseph gets this coat: he is being favored too highly by our father. He is too connected to Dad. We need to chop him down, or else we’re all going to lose out. We’re the outsiders, he’s the insider. That isn’t fair. We need to get rid of him.
And so they get rid of him. They become the insiders. Joseph is now the outsider. The outsider again and again and again as he moves from their home down to Egypt. This outsider-insider dynamic is important and consistent throughout the Bible.
This is what so much of the Law was in ancient Israel. The Torah, the Law, the books of Moses, are there to distinguish the chosen people from the Canaanites, the Edomites, the Persians, the Egyptians, and all the others who live in the vicinity. They are rules of separation and safety. They offer a way for people to live in light of who God is. They exist to offer a path to follow.
One of the unique aspects of the rest of the Old Testament is that there isn’t a time when the people of Israel are exceeding faithful. In our Bible-in-a-Year small group that meets on Wednesday mornings. We have been working through Kings and Chronicles, which are books of the bible rarely spoken of on Sunday morning. Here is a good example
In the fifth year of Joram son of Ahab king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat began his reign as king of Judah. He was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He followed the ways of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for he married a daughter of Ahab. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. 2 Kings 8:16-18
There are prophets throughout these accounts. Samuel and Nathan and Elijah and Elisha, even up to Isaiah. But were the people practicing Torah at this time throughout these years? Probably not, because they don’t find the Law until decades later in 2 Kings 22 when they are renovating the temple and “Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.” He gave it to Shaphan, who read it."" (2 Kings 22:8)
The histories and prophets of the Old Testament record disobedience more than obedience, yet Jesus doesn’t throw Torah out.
In Matthew 5, right after the beatitudes Jesus says
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Matthew 5:17-18
An iota is the smallest letter in Greek. It can seem insignificant. On old paper or papyrus, the iota is the first letter to go. It can smudge into an alpha or omega easily so as to be indistinguishable.
But Jesus is about love and freedom not law, right?
A lot of people have this gut reaction. It leads to a tendency to view the Old Testament as a wicked, angry God, and the New Testament as having a kind, and generous God. This is a misreading of both.
Have you ever wondered why the phrase Last Will & Testament uses the same word as Old Testament and New Testament? There are not many other areas of modern life where we use that word. Maybe in reality shows when people go to testimonials, we recognize the root, but testament is really only in those two place: the bible, and legal documents after someone dies. These are both serious material to deal with.
A testament is another way to say witness. The Old Testament is the old witness of Christ. The new testament is the newer witness of Christ. They both point to Jesus. They both point to God’s relationship with creation and how this world is in need of saving. Other methods are tried, including monarchy, and they are found wanting. Each offers us a path back to Jesus, explicitly or implicitly.
So what do we do with the Law? The Law seems so serious. I mean, it includes the word LAW.
Here is where we need to come back to the insider/outsider distinction. Jesus breaks down that distinction which guided the world since the fall. It still guides the world for many people. And there was a season when it was helpful, but with Jesus Christ it no longer is. The insider/outsider division cuts, instead, right through all of our hearts. So the issue is no longer which external group do we belong to, but where does our heart belong? For it is out of our heart that sin takes place. These are what defile a person.
Now, how we react to this depends a lot on where we see ourselves in a society. If we think Jesus is talking about other people’s hearts, it is quite concerning. It is a lot harder to control them or “protect” them when the objective marks of faithfulness to the law no longer apply.
If our position in the world is to make sure other people stay in line, Jesus has some tough words for us. Christians have been missing this over and over again. Who are the people that Jesus is angriest at? The hypocrites. The people who say one thing and do another. But it goes only in one direction. There is a specific form of hypocrisy that Jesus finds repugnant. There is another form that he finds no fault with.
In Matthew 21, Jesus tells the parable of the Two Sons
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
The ones who say, “I will do it,” but don’t. That is the hypocrisy he criticizes. It is the hypocrisy of the pharisee, of the holier than thou Christian. Of the person thinking more of how the look than how they are.
But the power of Jesus’s focus on hypocrisy is that he isn’t just creating another system of insider/outsider. The hypocrites are obvious but they are all of us. We are always tempted to hypocrisy. We are not immune. Our institutions are not immune. The first Christians knew of the pharisees and the problem of pharisees, and still became more focused on the external obedience of others than on their own internal connection to God.
The freedom of Jesus, though, is the freedom to let go of external judgment. We are relieved of our duty to make sure other people are living as they should. We are left with the duty to turn the searchlight inward. To measure ourselves and our own heart. And that this is what God sees.
New life in Jesus, conversion is not about moving our heart from one set of rules to another but God changing our heart so we no longer desire the old things. We can still act in certain ways, but our inclusion is not based on those actions. This does not mean that we are to ignore external circumstances. By no means, instead those circumstances need not define us.
The brothers who betrayed Joseph are welcomed. He, in fact, tells them: “Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay.”
Come down, don’t delay. Despite everything, we are called back. Come down, don’t delay. Whether you have been faithful your whole life just decided to follow Jesus, come down, don’t delay.
You are not excluded from grace. You are not excluded from Mercy. Whether the victim or the aggressor, come down don’t delay.
Where your heart is, there your treasure will be. If your heart is with Jesus, come down, don’t delay. The table is full and you are welcome. Lay down your burdens. I must lay down mine, as well. Let us lay them down together. Let us answer the call to come down, don’t delay.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.