It’s no wonder there is a musical and a film about Joseph. Dreams, sold into slavery, prison, rise to prominence, reconciliation to name just a few of the events in his life. As to why I want to look at the life of Joseph, well that’s simple really. One, there is still so much to learn, two it’s great discipline for me, and lastly since writing about the life of David I have spent time praying about “who” so here we go. Please turn to Genesis 37.

The story of Joseph begins with a short reference to Jacob living in the land that his father had made his home (vs 1). For Issac, Canaan was a place of sojourning, it was temporary. For Jacob it was a place to settle. These two words challenge us, sojourning and settling. We can become too settled sometimes and not like change, and also we cannot settle by not making somewhere our home. We have to challenge our own heart attitude as to which one is pushing God away from what He wants to do in our lives.

It’s interesting that Moses does not tell us much about Joseph until he introduces him to us at the age of seventeen (vs 2). I guess his life had been relatively obscure and ordinary up to that point but now it’s all about to change. God can do this, his hidden plans for us suddenly revealed, obscurity does not mean that’s the way it will be forever with God.

Joseph’s work was pasturing his father’s flock as an assistant to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. These are his older half-brothers.

Joseph maligned his brothers to his father Jacob. The word used here is whisper negative reports with hostility (vs 3). We don’t know why he did it but by looking at vs 3 you can get the picture that he was given preferential treatment by his father which probably annoyed his other siblings. We see Jacob’s love was a doting love and disproportionate. Joseph was the son of Jacob’s old age “he was special” and then there was the distinct coat that separated him from all of his other brothers. He was Jacob’s favourite, and in that description we venture into the realm of parenting and scripture gives us a clear warning about favouritism.

I think the brothers resentment towards Joseph can be clearly understood (vs 4). Also, the suggestion here is that the resentment was aimed at their father too. Who Joseph was and what he had received only served to alienate him from his brothers. The question was, would he learn, could he learn, might he change? God’s future leader in Egypt could hardly have made a worse start and it would get worse before it got better. Spoiled brat comes to mind. Yet, if we are open to taking the plank out of our own eye first then God can use us.

Here we go, Joseph has a dream and he is compelled to share it. The compulsion to share it, and the content of it causes his brothers to hate him all the more (vs 5). Please note here, it’s not what we share, it’s how we share! To the brothers, Joseph is a megalomaniac and without boundaries. He is insensitive “hear this dream” (vs 6). Am I listening to this? Are you listening to this? The text is quiet on Joseph’s motives, it is the first dream in Genesis in which the voice of God does not speak.

Joseph and his brothers are binding sheaves in a field. Joseph’s sheaf stood erect and the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to his sheaf. The brothers had no doubt to the meaning of the dream (vs 8) in that, at some point in the future, this dream would come true and they would become subject to and dependant upon Joseph, but as for now they see it as a power grab. They see Joseph as self-appointed and superior, as better than themselves.

At some future date Joseph goes again and has a second dream. But he still managed not to read the situation well at all and told his brothers about the dream. If he hadn’t wound them up enough previously this was certainly going to do it. This time the bowing thing not only included his brothers but his father and mother. This was a cultural ‘faux pas’ and an insult to which he received his father’s rebuke (vs 10).

It is strange however, that the language used here by Jacob suggests that he exercises restraint, that he may believe something greater is going on. It’s almost the same as when Mary was confronted with something so mind-blowing she pondered it in her heart. It certainly is a different reaction to that of his other sons as he stored the dream in his mind. He knew God was up to something but at this point he did not know what.

It’s easy to see the raw, insensitive Joseph as a rash boy of seventeen, but looking beyond what we see to the call of God is a very different matter. Jacob was a man who had learned of God’s providence after a lifetime of struggling with Him. Jacob, who also had a dream that came true (28:10–22), affirms the Lord’s appointment of choosing Joseph to be the next patriarch even if he finds it hard to fathom that he will bow to his son.

I often find myself asking why God did what he has done. What reason did he have for doing it this way and not that way? On occasions, to be honest, it doesn’t strike me as being the best or most efficient way of doing things. On occasions, I say to myself, and to God, “That doesn’t make sense to me. It seems really odd that this is how you have chosen to go about achieving your ultimate glory in the earth”

I have to guard myself because I don’t want to be guilty of unbelief or cynicism. But why, for instance, was it necessary for the second person of our great Triune God to become human? Why did God create the world and permit the fall into sin and orchestrate human history in such a way that it became necessary for God the Son to take upon himself human nature and to become a man? Why was it necessary for him to suffer and endure the mistreatment that he did? And why was it necessary that he die by being impaled upon a cross? Of all the ways that God might have gone about reconciling us to himself, why did he choose this way? Could he not have chosen another way?

In the end we have to settle in our hearts, we don’t know best but he does and trust Him.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9