2/4 Dream On

This is Scripture for Students. I’m Steve Whitacre, president of Trinity College and a pastor at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville. I want to help students build a daily habit for life-long Bible reading. Today is February 4, 2025 and this episode of Scripture for Students is called Dream On. Grab your Bible and let’s get started.

Our readings for today are Genesis 37, Mark 7, and Job 3.

Please open your Bibles to Genesis 37.

I’ve read that most people have about half a dozen dreams per night. I’m not convinced. Or maybe something is wrong with me because I almost never remember my dreams, I don’t remember dreams, I don’t remember dreaming. I fall asleep and about 30 seconds later, it’s morning, and I get back after it. Maybe about once a year or so, I will have a dream that I remember when I wake up and it is always the same thing: I’m being chased across a golf course by an alligator. I am hesitant to share that with you because I don’t want to have that dream again anytime soon. Maybe I should keep my dreams to myself.

In today’s Scripture for Students, we’re going to learn about another dreamer who seems to have had dreams a little more often than I do. Maybe he should have kept his dream to himself, too, but for very different reasons.

Please follow along with me as I read Genesis 37:1–11,

1 Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan. 

2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 

3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. 

4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. 

5 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. 

6 He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: 

7 Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” 

8 His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. 

9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 

10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” 

11 And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing and the keeping of his Word.

Let’s regroup here. A lot has happened by the time we get to Genesis 37. We’ve read about the creation of the world, Adam and Eve and the fall into sin, Cain and Able, Noah and the flood, Abraham and the covenant, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and all his tricksy dealings with Esau and Laban, and now we come to Jacob’s 11th son, Joseph. The rest of the book, chapters 37–50, are going to focus on Joseph. That’s 14 chapters! It’s very interesting that such a large portion of the book of Genesis is devoted to Joseph, but it makes sense if you remember when, why, and by whom Genesis was written. It was written by Moses as the people of God neared the end of their wanderings and were preparing to enter the Promised Land, and one purpose of the book was to explain how God’s people ended up in slavery in Egypt if they had such a promising start (pardon the pun) when God made the covenant with Abraham and swore to give him both offspring and the land. By the time Moses is writing, there were plenty of offspring—probably 2 million strong—but the Israelites had spent quite a lot of time outside the Promised Land—more than 400 years!. Did you notice how Moses makes a point of saying in verse 1 that Jacob lives in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan? How did this happen? How did the great-grandchildren of Abraham lose the promised land? Well, settle in and let’s allow Moses to tell the tale. 

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Joseph. He was a tattle-tale, a showoff, and a bit of a braggart, and his brothers didn’t like him very much. But you know all that because we just read it! Let’s think about some details here. 

There are just a couple of characters in the Bible that are presented almost without flaw. I’m thinking here of Ruth, Daniel, Mordecai. Ok, it’s a pretty short list. Joseph could fit in this description, too, except for the very beginning of his story. He doesn’t seem to be very good at reading the room. You would think that a boy with 10 older brothers would have learned something about keeping your head down and your mouth shut. But apparently not. In quick succession, we learn that there were at least three ways that Joseph antagonized his brothers and made enemies within his own family. First, he was a tattler: in verse 2 he told on his brothers to his father. Doesn’t say what they did. Doesn’t really matter. What matters to this story is that he was a snitch. Next, his father loved him more than his brothers and gave him an expensive—and flashy—coat of many colors. It’s not technically Joseph’s fault that his father loved him more but the way the narrator lists this between two specific stories of doing things to antagonize his brothers seems to suggest that maybe he was a bit of a showoff about it. 

Third and finally, there is the issue of the dreams. My grandmother used to say, “Stephen, you don’t have to say everything you think.” Too bad Joseph never met my Nannar. You already know about these dreams. Two separate dreams that both communicate the same message. First, sheaves of grain in a field, then stars in the sky. In both dreams Joseph is at the center of things and the grain or the stars representing his parents and his brothers are all bowing down to him. I don’t have any brothers, but if I did, it is hard to imagine that this would make them like me more.

And sure enough, in verse 8 it says that they hated him even more. And in verse 10, even his father Jacob has had enough. And it finishes with this: his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

Of course there is something for all of us to learn here about how we should treat other people. But we have these details in Genesis 37 because Moses is a very good storyteller. He’s doing something called foreshadowing, where he hints at what is coming in the story. If we are thinking rightly about why these details are here, we would guess correctly that the brothers’ animosity towards Joseph is going to figure prominently in the story and so will Jacob’s love for his son Joseph. All of this carefully, slowly builds tension in the story. The tension in this story will get much worse before it gets better. This story is here so that we will know—from the beginning—that Joseph’s troubles are at least partly self-inflicted but even so, God will redeem Joseph’s sins and accomplish his purposes in the life of Joseph, his parents, and his brothers.

And who knows! Maybe it will make you think twice about sharing your dreams with people!

That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend and follow us on Apple Podcasts.

This content is sponsored by Trinity College of Louisville. We shape young men and young women for Christ and for the church. Learn more at TrinityCollegeLou.com. Until next time, keep growing!