The story focus shifts to Jacob’s son Joseph. Favored by his father, Joseph is hated by his brothers; he is despised all the more after sharing his dreams depicting him in a position of authority over his family.

Transcript:

The reading today is from Genesis 37, 5 through 11. 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. Then he had another dream, and told it to his brothers. Listen, he said, I had another dream. And this time, the sun and moon and 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 your brothers, actually come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

I think there are a few things that human beings despise more than betrayal. If you're a New Englander, if a Red Sox player becomes a Yankee, they're dead to us. A name like Benedict Arnold becomes infamous because of his betrayal of the American Army during the Revolutionary War. He did other things, but he is only remembered for his treachery.

Of course, betrayal also hits much closer to home in our lives. Some of us can tell stories of how a family member or a friend betrayed us. Their act cuts much deeper than if it simply came from a stranger. It appears to be a chronic symptom of human sinfulness. Betrayal is very old and ever new. In the book of Genesis, we see it aplenty.

And we see it especially in the story of Joseph. And so as we turn to Genesis 37, we are turning to really a new segment of the story which will ultimately lead Jacob and his family into the land of Egypt. So looking at chapter 37, beginning in verse 1, the scene is set. It says, Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.

This is the account of Jacob's family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, 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 an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him, and could not speak a kind word to him. So, we find Jacob's family in the land of Canaan, as promised. They're living there. All seems to be going well, on the surface at least. But, as we see right here from the beginning of this chapter, there's trouble brewing within the family.

Joseph it said, who is at 17 at the time, brings back a bad report about the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Now this would have been his brothers Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Basically kind of tattletales on them. Maybe he wasn't just a situation of tattletailing, though, he may have been put in a kind of supervisory role.

Because after all, it says here that Joseph was Jacob's favorite. And the reason why he was his favorite was because he was born to him in his old age. And it doesn't say this in the text, but we might also suppose it's because he was the firstborn of his most beloved wife, Rachel. And because he loved him so much, he made him an ornate robe, and this has been kind of traditionally described as a, as a coat of many colors.

Now, we don't know if it exactly looked like the rainbow, if it was, but the idea was that it was a very nice coat. And, in fact, wearing such a coat may have signaled at that time, a person occupying sort of a managerial sort of role. Almost like you think about someone wearing a suit jacket. It's nice. And in relation to his brothers, getting this nice jacket, he's kind of being identified as an important one amongst all of them.

And the brothers take notice. They notice, and you've got to consider, because Joseph was born later on, when his father was older, that means all these other brothers, most of them are older than him, if not all of them are older than him. And, so they hate him because of that. They hate him because they can see that this younger brother is usurping their own position in relation to their father.

And so they can't speak any nice word about him. And so, you have that as kind of just the baseline. They don't like Joseph because Jacob is showing favor towards him. But then things get worse. We turn to verses 5 through 11, as John read for us. Joseph has some dreams. He has some dreams first about some sheaves of grain. Now, we don't necessarily live in an agricultural society any longer, so some of you might be wondering, what is a sheaf of grain? Well, you imagine you have stalks of grain. You've got to take those stalks and then you bind them together. So you kind of have this, all this wheat gathered together, standing up. Well, Joseph had this dream that he had all these sheaves.

His sheaf stood upright, all the sheaves of his brother bowed before his sheave. And the meaning is pretty transparent. You don't have to be a, I don't know if rocket scientist is the right word, but you don't have to have any deep insight to be able to try to discern the meaning of this dream. His brothers understand it.

He says in, they say in verse 8, Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us? And so because of that, they hate him all the more because of his dream and what he said. Now, he also has another dream. And this dream, it identifies the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowing down to him. Now this is basically just the whole family bowing down to him.

His father, his mother. Now it's interesting to think, you know, who the mother is here. Was it Rachel? Rachel had already passed away at this point. Perhaps it was Leah. Perhaps it was Bilhah, because Bilhah was Rachel's handmaiden. It's difficult to know, but in any case, the significance is, is the whole family is bowing down before Joseph.

Now, this makes the brothers all the more angry, jealous. And the reason why they're responding this way, rather than just being like, That's weird, is because Joseph is not telling them these dreams as though it's just a funny story. You know, we have weird dreams sometimes. You know, I had this crazy dream last night, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, isn't that nuts? When people had dreams in this time, they took it seriously as kind of foretelling something that might transpire. And even to this day in the Near East people take dreams very seriously. It's been the case that many Muslims have actually come to Christ through dream encounters with him.

That's been a big part in their conversion. So we have to just understand that we're much different people than they are when it comes to dreams. We think it's like, I ate a bad burrito last night. For them, like, this, this means something. And so Joseph is staking a claim out there. Now Jacob, when he hears, especially the second dream, about him and his, and Joseph's mother bowing before him, he's not really amused by it.

But, it says that he kept the matter in mind. So he does think to himself, there might be something to this. And it kind of recalls for us, the idea of how when Mary was told that, how she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. It's kind of this idea of he, he knows there's something here, even if, on the surface, Jacob's like, I don't really, I don't, I don't really like your tone, young man.

That kind, that kind of thing. Now these details help us understand what follows. The brothers dislike Joseph, Jacob favors him, and now circumstances will come together bringing a conflict to a head. So looking at verses 12 through 17. Now his brothers had gone to graze their flocks near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem.

Come, I am going to send you to them. Very well, he replied, so he said to him, go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks and bring word back to me. Then he sent him off from the valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, what are you looking for?

He replied, I'm looking for my brothers, can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks? They have moved on from here, the man answered. I heard them say, let's go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. So just to kind of orient you to the landscape here, we've got a map.

I know you can't see it, so I'm going to zoom in in a second. This is the area we're working with. You can see the red lines. That's basically identifying the route that Joseph's journey here is going to take. Hebron, you'll see, is right down here, kind of the starting place of that red line. It's just to the west of the Dead Sea, Salt Sea.

And he's h...

A Beloved Son and Brotherly Betrayal - Pastor Tom Loghry