Genesis 37:1-11 The Dreamer

 

We’re entering into a new series of stories here in Genesis and they’re introduced with, “This is the account of Jacob’s family line.” This is important to remember over the next few weeks as we walk through the Joseph stories; that Joseph’s stories are all about Jacob’s family line, not just Joseph. Joseph’s story at the beginning, surprisingly doesn’t have any mention of God; though we make some big assumptions about what God is doing. This story of Joseph’s dreams and early relationships with his brothers are foundation stories, setting the stage for the main part of God’s plan for Jacob’s family.

We get introduced to Joseph as a 17-year-old young man. The first thing we learn about Joseph is that he tattles on his brothers after they were taking care of the sheep together. This is not a good way to act with your brothers and sisters, no one likes a tattle tale! It’s important to recognize that Joseph tattles on his brothers from his father’s concubines, not from Leah, Jacob’s first wife. Family standing and importance is an important part of the story. Then we’re told that Jacob loves Joseph more than all the other kids and gives him a special coat. Jealousy rears its ugly head! This is becoming a family thing, that the younger sons get favoured and blessed over the older ones.

You would think Jacob would know better after his own experience with his brother Esau and his father Isaac’s experience with his older brother Ishmael. Jealousy, anger and deceit shape Jacob’s family dynamics, just as they did with Abraham and Isaac’s families. God doesn’t use perfect people or families to carry out his plans, he uses some pretty broken and messed up people to accomplish his plans. This has always given me hope, it helps me believe that God can use me and my family to carry out his plans too, that he uses us and our own peculiar brokenness, just as he can use yours.

Dave Bast recognizes that God has his own ways of doing things that don’t always match our ways; using the younger son over the older son is becoming the way God chooses to move his plans forward, “Yes, there is a pattern developing here. That clues us in. You know, there are always two levels to a Bible story. You can imagine the reactions – or you can even read about the reactions of the characters toward one another, but we the readers stand outside that and we see the hand of God operating through this, because in and through the whole story, it is not just a soap opera about the ups and downs, the loves and lives and loses of these people. It is about God instituting a plan. Remember way back to Abraham in Genesis 12, “I will bless you, and through you all the nations will be blessed.” And that is the thing that drives it forward, that promise. How is Joseph going to play a role in that?” Keep this in mind over the next few weeks!

Joseph now has a dream about sheaves of grain that he interprets as being his brothers, and they all bow down to his sheaf. Of course, Joseph tells his brothers. They’re not impressed. Joseph then has a second dream and in that dream the sun, moon and eleven stars all bow down to him, and of course Joseph has to tell his brothers and dad about that dream too. This time even Jacob is not impressed, thinking that he will end up bowing down to his son.

The Bible doesn’t tell us here that these dreams come from God, we assume they do. They could have simply been the dreams of a young man full of himself as the favoured son, who simply made up what the dreams mean to make himself important. After all, he’s the son dad gives a special coat to, the son of the favoured wife. However, we remember how God appeared to Abram in a dream after Abraham had made sacrifices of animals and placed them in a row. God appeared in the dream as a burning pot to confirm his covenant with Abraham. God spoke to Jacob in a dream at Bethel, showing Jacob the movement between heaven and earth; that God’s at work on earth, not sitting idly by watching humanity mess things up again and again. Now Joseph is dreaming. Peter Wilcox reminds us, “the fact that a person has a gift from God is no guarantee that they also have the wisdom and maturity to use it well.” Does Joseph use the gift of dreams and their meanings well? Probably not. Joseph has some growing up to do.

Scott Hoezee writes, “Martin Luther King, Jr. once told the world: I have a dream; and his dream inspired millions. Entrepreneurs sometimes have dreams for building a new business, and if they realize those dreams everybody celebrates the success; but sometimes dreams can make life hard for the person who has them. Just ask Joseph. He had a dream of a future in which he would be an important person, the most important person in his family in fact; and although in the book of Genesis those dreams come true one day, they made Joseph’s life miserable for a very long time.” Dreams can inspire us to achieve great things, give us hope and perseverance, but dreams that call us to hard change also create big pushback, as with Martin Luther King Jr, as dreamers in the church who call for change often face, as Joseph faces.

God doesn’t use easy as a way forward for his people or his plans. Anything valuable and important is usually achieved only after a lot of hard work and even adversity. Just look at how he chooses to reconcile his people, that’s us, to himself. God makes things right by coming to earth in Jesus who calls the people to repent and believe, and when his own people reject him or abandon him, Jesus goes to the cross to take the penalty of sin, to die for us, and even be buried. But Jesus, on the third day, rises again, proving that the twin enemies of sin and death are defeated and this guarantees our own resurrection into new life.

Dreams are part of how we find hope and inspiration to move forward. Genesis was written by Moses during the Israelite’s time in the wilderness. The Israelites are dreaming of returning back to the Promised Land; dreaming of claiming the land that God has promised them. The dreams are calling them to change, to commit to being God’s people; allowing God to shape their lives, their morals, beliefs, and ways of thinking about the world around them and their place in it. Our dreams need to be God centered, to be interpreted in light of what Jesus is doing and who Jesus is calling us to be.

The story of Joseph and his dreams reveal to us how God uses broken families, dysfunctional people to move his plans forward to bless the world and save his people. We see that brokenness and deceit have become foundational to the family God has chosen to bring his plans of salvation forward. Joseph, in his dreams, focuses on his position over his brothers, there’s no mention at all of what God might be revealing to him about why his brothers would be kneeling before him. Joseph, as much as many of us want to see him as a devoted God follower all his life, has issues to work on, he’s a work in progress, just like we all are. We’ll watch how God shapes Joseph through the next few weeks, leading Joseph to learn to trust in him while preparing Joseph for what lies ahead for Jacob’s family. We’ll see how dreams, and especially the God given ability to rightly interpret them will become an important of Israel’s history.

Why should we pay attention to these families since they have so many issues, after-all, it’s Jesus we’re focused on, right? The stories of the people and families God works through in the Bible are important because they show us a God who is willing to work through imperfect people, that God’s family is made up of imperfect people who keep messing up. It’s not how good they are that makes God include them as part of his family, it’s that God makes them useable and worthy. I’ve had conversations with many people over the years who believe that God can’t use them because their lives, their families are hot messes, and yet, as Paul reminds us, it’s in our weaknesses, our messes, that God reveals his grace, power and glory. God has his own ways of accomplishing his plans, often very different from our ways; using the less important, the less perfect people and ways to shine the light on him instead of us. It makes me wonder if sometimes we miss what God is doing, what he is calling us to do or be, because we love our ways of doing things too much.  We’re so focused on being in control so that there are no surprises, no messes.

It’s through our own issues, our own messes that we are best able to reach others with the good news of Jesus because the people you are reaching out to then see that Jesus can really bring hope, change, new life to any one who reaches out to him, accepts him as Lord. When we accept Jesus, Jesus fills us with his life, words and courage. As we speak Jesus into our friends, our co-workers, employees, workers, and neighbours’ lives, we can be confident that God is using us to lead them to him.