This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Genesis 37. This is week 8, day 2, and Genesis 37, it begins one of
my favorite sections of the book of Genesis. Primarily, the book of Genesis
contains the stories of four men, a man who believed, Abraham, a man who dug
wells, Isaac, a man who struggled, Jacob, and finally, a man who dreamed, a man
by the name of Joseph, the son of Jacob.

The lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are recorded for us in Genesis 12
to 50, and they cover a period of 345 years. If historians have this right, it's
2160 to 1815 BC. All four of these men are mentioned in Hebrews 11, the Hall of
Fame of Faith.

They're all about how to live a life of faith. In my life, in your life, we all
need to learn from them. We need to learn from Abraham how to live a life of
faith, Isaac how to live a life of being in second place, Jacob how to live a
life when you struggle and wrestle with God, and from Jacob, we have to learn
how to live out the dream of God in our lives.

Every one of us, we need to be directed by principles, driven by purpose, and
energized by a dream. You need all three. You need to be directed by principles,
driven by purpose, and energized by a dream.

If all you have is principles, you become just a pharisaic rulekeeper. There's
nothing else to your life. You're not headed anywhere.

If all you have is purpose, you don't care what direction you take to get there.
You're going to get the job done. You're going to get your purpose done instead
of God's purpose done, and either of those principles and purpose without a
dream, that leaves you without the energy for living daily life.

You need a dream to motivate your life. You might know what's right to do, but
without the motivation of a dream, you're not going to do it. We're going to
talk about dreams these next few weeks together, and some of you need to listen
to God speaking a new dream into your life, a dream that's beyond the present
that you're living right now.

Some of you, many of you need to recognize the dream that's already there,
that's right around you. You're raising kids right now. God's giving you the
privilege of being a parent.

There is a dream in that of what God wants to do in and through your life. You
need to begin to see it, and who better to teach us about dreams than Joseph?
Joseph's life is like a five-act play in many ways with a costume change in each
act.

He goes from son to slave, to prisoner, to ruler, to patriarch, to wearing the
multicolored coat of a son, to the rags of a slave, to the garb of a prisoner,
to the finery of a ruler, to the faith-filled garb of a patriarch. Joseph's life
is all about dreams and how God wants to work dreams into your life, and as our
story opens, we find that Joseph is just a 17-year-old kid living in the town of
Hebron. He's got his 11 brothers and one sister there with him.

It's a story about how dreams begin, how they're developed, how they're
realized, and how they live. It's going to take the rest of the book of Genesis
to tell it, and the story doesn't begin too well. Listen to what happens in
Genesis chapter 37, beginning in verse 2.

Joseph, a young man of 17, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of
Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought their father a
bad report about them. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons,
because he had been born to him in his old age, and he made him a richly
ornamented robe. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any
of them, they hated him, and they could not speak a kind word to him.

Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the
more. He said to them, "Listen to this dream I had. We were binding sheaves of
grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright while your
sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.

" His brothers said to him, "Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually
rule us? " And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had
said.

And then he had another dream, and he told his brothers, "Listen, I had another
dream, and this time the sun and the moon and the eleven stars were bowing down
to me. " When he told his father, as well as his brothers, his father rebuked
him and said, "What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and all your
brothers actually come and bow down before you?

" His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept this matter in mind. So
there's the dream, and there's what's happening because of this dream, and in
verse 12, here's the motivation in the brother's life that comes from that
dream. "Now his brothers had gone out to graze their father's flocks near
Shechem, and Israel came to Joseph.

'As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I'm going
to send you to them. ' 'Very well,' he replied.

So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan, but they saw him
in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. 'Here
comes that dreamer,' they said to one another. 'Come now, let us kill him and
throw him into one of those cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured
him, and then we'll see what comes of his dreams.

'" Down in verse 23, "So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of
his robe, the richly ornamented robe that he was wearing, and they took him and
they threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty, there was no water
in it, and they sat down to eat their meal. They looked up and they saw a
caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.

Their camels were loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh, and they were on their
way to take them down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, 'What will we gain
if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Let us sell him to the
Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him.

After all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood. ' His brothers agreed, so
when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the
cistern and sold him for 20 shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him
to Egypt. " Then down in verse 32, "They took the ornamented robe back to their
father and said, 'We found this, examine it to see whether it was your son's
robe.

' They'd taken it and they dipped it in blood. He recognized it and he said, 'It
is my son's robe. Some ferocious animal has devoured him.

Joseph has surely been torn to pieces. ' And then Jacob tore his clothes and put
on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. " In these verses, you see what
happens when somebody gets a dream.

Joseph was a very different man from his father Jacob. Jacob was the schemer,
Joseph was the dreamer. But they both started out very immature, not knowing how
to handle the way that God had designed them.

Jacob was the schemer, Joseph was the dreamer. All of us can relate to Jacob. We
all have our own schemes.

We all want to be in control. And all of us are inspired by Joseph. Jacob is
where we are.

Joseph is where we'd like to be, a dreamer with a dream from God. But he doesn't
know what to do with that dream. So in getting the dream, the first step to the
dream is getting the dream.

And in this step, the reaction to the dream is Joseph shares it at the wrong
time, too early to the wrong people. Be careful with the dream when God gives it
to you. Don't share it too early.

Don't share it with the wrong people. And adding fuel to that fire, Jacob loved
Joseph more. He gave him this beautiful rope.

He's just repeating the pattern of his family, the younger son being loved more.
Even as Jacob had been loved above Esau, now Joseph is being loved above all the
other brothers. Joseph shared the dream at the wrong time.

And Jacob, his father rebuked the dream. Now, Jacob had had two dreams of his
own from God. But he struggled with the fact that his own son had these dreams
because he didn't like what it was saying.

But at least you can see the faith in Jacob's life. At least the Bible says he
kept the matter in mind. He had a sense that God was doing something even though
he pushed back against it.

The brothers had nothing of that. Their response to the dream, they hated the
dreamer. That often happens.

The dreamer is hated. They don't push back against the dream. They push back
against you.

Joseph shared the dream at the wrong time. Jacob rebuked the dream. The brothers
hated the dreamer.

Here's the interesting thing. Of these three, which of these three is used the
most of God in accomplishing Joseph's dream in chapter 37? It's the brothers.

It's the brothers that sell them to get to Egypt where the dream is going to be
accomplished. It's amazing to me how powerful God is. He can use even the worst
that Satan throws at us to get us where he wants us to be.

God's an all-powerful God. Now, in this getting of the dream, Joseph immediately
goes into the testing of the dream. Dreams are always going to face tests.

Joseph's dream immediately faced the three tests of denial and doubt and
destruction. Denial. People deny that you even have a dream.

They deny you have a dream because they don't have any dreams of their own.
They're afraid. They don't want any dreams of their own.

They're disappointed that life hasn't worked out as they wanted. So he faced
denial. He faced doubt.

He faced people who doubted that the dream was real. Hatred, questions, rebuke,
all the forms that doubt can take. He also faced seeming destruction.

They tried to destroy the dream. Here comes this dreamer. We'll put him in this
cistern.

We'll sell him to the Egyptians. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams. This
is a great family.

This is the nation of Israel that's going to grow out of this family. But as we
read about it here, it's just a little bit dysfunctional, wouldn't you say?
First, they say, "Let's kill our brother.

" Oh, no, we shouldn't do something so evil. Let's sell him instead. And then to
the many colors of this coat, they add one more.

Blood red. And they lie to their father and say he's dead. Sold into slavery.

Can you imagine anything further from being a ruler? God could. We'll see next
week.

Joseph is put in this place where it seems as if he's as far as possible from
the fulfillment of his dream. Does that make any sense to you? Wouldn't God just
incrementally get us closer and closer to the dream he has for us?

Why would he put us as far as possible from the dream? This is the life of
faith. This is a dream facing a test.

Why do dreams face tests to provide answers? How do I know whose dream it is?
That's the answer that I'm going to find out in that test.

Is it my dream or is it God's dream? Is it my idea or is it God's idea? That's
the answer that's going to come out of the test.

Let's take a few minutes together to talk to Jesus Christ. And as we talk to
him, just pray two simple prayers. First say Jesus, give me a dream.

Give me a dream that's from you. I have so many thoughts in my mind, so many
ideas. Give me a dream that's from you.

But then when it comes, help me to know that you're going to test that dream.
And help me to have faith that the testing of the dream does not mean it's not
your dream. It's just a way of affirming that it's your dream.

So even in the test, even in the denial and the doubt and the seeming
destruction, when I seem as far away as possible from the dream that I had of
what you wanted to do, help me to look to you and once again ask, "God, is this
your dream? " I ask this, Jesus, in your name. Amen.