The Coat of Different Colors

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LESSON 4

*April 16- 22

The Coat of Different Colors

NOTE Since Gospelcom apparently no longer sets a cookie with your selected Bible version we will make a lesson version with links directly to the KJV and NKJV for this quarter at least.

SABBATH AFTERNOON

Read for This Week's Study:

Gen. 29:21–30:24; 34; 37; 42:13; 1 Cor. 9:24–26.

Memory Text:

“Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours” (Genesis 37:3).

The seed (so to speak) for this whole story began in Genesis 29, with Jacob and his wives and concubines. One father, four mothers, and about a dozen children between them: one didn’t need to be a prophet to know beforehand what a dysfunctional and dismal family this would turn out to be. How much better had Jacob followed the earliest archetypical example, the one from Eden: one husband, one wife. Period. This was the ideal model for all homes, for all times. But as we have seen, God created us free beings, and that freedom includes the freedom to do wrong. Symbolic, perhaps, of the mistakes that Jacob made, the famous “coat of many colors” reveals how one mistake can lead to others and others, with consequences far beyond our control. How much better, then, to nip sin in the bud before it devours us and those we love.

*Study this week's lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 23.