God's Dreams and Brotherly Nightmares
Introduction: The Unstoppable Word
We come now to a central pivot in the story of redemption. The narrative zooms in on one young man, the favored son of Jacob, and through him, God is going to save the world. But God's methods are not our methods. His providence is not a straight, clean line drawn on a whiteboard. It is a messy, glorious, and often offensive story, worked out through the sin, folly, envy, and eventual repentance of real people in a real and broken family.
The story of Joseph is the story of God's sovereign and unstoppable Word. God declares what will be, and then the rest of history is simply the minutes of the meeting where that declaration is ratified. He does this here through dreams. These are not the result of some bad cheese Joseph ate before bed. These are divine fiats, prophetic pictures of a future that is as certain as God's own character. And the central conflict of this story is how men react to the declared Word of God, particularly when that Word elevates another and requires them to bow.
What we see in the household of Jacob is a microcosm of the world's reaction to Christ. God sends His beloved Son, and the Son declares His identity and His coming reign. And the brothers, those who should have known better, those of the same household, are consumed with a venomous envy. They hate Him for His words, and they hate Him for the divine favor He carries. We must pay close attention, because the sins that festered in the hearts of these ten brothers are the same sins that would one day nail the Lord of Glory to a tree, and they are the same sins that we must mortify in our own hearts today.
The Text
Then Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; so they hated him even more. And he said to them, "Please listen to this dream which I have had: Indeed, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf rose up and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf." Then his brothers said to him, "Are you really going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
Then he had still another dream and recounted it to his brothers and said, "Behold, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me." And he recounted it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, "What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers really come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?" And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.
(Genesis 37:5-11 LSB)
The Earthly Declaration (vv. 5-8)
The trouble begins with a revelation from God. Notice the sequence: God speaks, Joseph speaks, and the brothers hate.
"Then Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; so they hated him even more... 'behold, my sheaf rose up and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.'" (Genesis 37:5, 7 LSB)
The dream is not subtle. It is set in their shared context of labor, the field. The sheaves represent the brothers themselves, the fruit of their work. And the message is one of undeniable hierarchy. Joseph's sheaf does not just rise; it stands upright, established. And their sheaves, all of them, bow. This is a prophecy of future rule and authority. This is God declaring, in picture form, that He has chosen the younger to rule the older, a theme that runs throughout Genesis, upsetting all the natural expectations of men.
Now, was Joseph prudent in telling them this? At seventeen, he likely lacked a certain diplomatic tact. He seems to be entirely guileless, perhaps to a fault. But we must not get bogged down in psychologizing Joseph. God's purpose is not thwarted by the immaturity of His servants. In fact, He uses it. Joseph's blunt report of what God had shown him was the very spark that lit the fuse of his brothers' envy, and that envy was the engine God would use to drive Joseph down to Egypt, which was the necessary prerequisite for his exaltation.
The brothers' response is telling. They do not misunderstand the dream. They interpret it with perfect accuracy.
"Are you really going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?" (Genesis 37:8 LSB)
Their problem is not intellectual; it is moral. They see the claim to authority, and they despise it. Their question is dripping with sarcasm and contempt. This is the voice of rebellion. It is the cry of the sinful heart that will not have this man to reign over them. And notice, "they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words." They hated the message, and they hated the messenger. This is precisely how the world treats the prophets of God, and how it ultimately treated the Son of God. When Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the King of the Jews, the religious leaders did not misunderstand Him. They understood Him perfectly, and they hated Him for it.
The Heavenly Confirmation (vv. 9-10)
Lest there be any doubt about the source of the first dream, God sends another. The principle of two witnesses is established not just for courts of law, but for the confirmation of God's Word.
"Then he had still another dream... and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me." (Genesis 37:9 LSB)
This dream elevates the claim from the earthly to the cosmic. The first dream was about their work in the field. This one is about the created order of the heavens. The symbolism is again, perfectly clear, and Jacob interprets it on the spot. The sun is the father, the head of the household. The moon is the mother. The eleven stars are the eleven brothers. This is not just about Joseph ruling his brothers in their daily affairs; this is a prophecy that the entire covenant family, including the patriarch himself, will one day bow before him.
This time, Joseph tells his father as well, and Jacob's response is different from the brothers'. He issues a rebuke. "What is this dream that you have had?" This is not the sneering contempt of the brothers. This is the bewildered check of a father who sees the audacity of the claim. It is a proper rebuke. A seventeen year old boy, even a favored one, should not be speaking in a way that suggests his father and mother will bow to him. Jacob is upholding the Fifth Commandment. But his rebuke is a question, not a dismissal.
Two Heart Postures (v. 11)
The final verse of our text gives us a summary of the two possible responses to a difficult and personally offensive word from God. It is the great divide between the heart of Cain and the heart of Abel, between the flesh and the spirit.
"And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind." (Genesis 37:11 LSB)
First, the brothers. Their hatred is now given its proper name: jealousy. Envy. This is the central sin of the story. Envy is not simply wanting what someone else has. Envy is hating the other person because they have it. It is a sin that feeds on the goodness of God to others. They were not jealous of Joseph's dream, but of Joseph himself, the recipient of the dream and the divine favor it represented. This jealousy is a murderous rage, as we will soon see. It cannot stand to see another blessed, another chosen, another elevated. It is the spirit of the Pharisee who despises the tax collector who goes home justified.
But then we have Jacob. "His father kept the saying in mind." The Hebrew here means he guarded it, he watched over it. Jacob, the man of dreams and visions, the man who wrestled with God, recognized the scent of revelation. His parental duty required him to rebuke the apparent pride, but his spiritual sense required him to ponder the message. He did not understand it. It seemed to violate the created order of the family. But he filed it away in his heart, waiting for God to provide the interpretation through His providence. This is the posture of faith. It is the posture of Mary, who, after the strange words of the shepherds, "treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). A faithful heart does not demand that God's Word make immediate sense to our circumstances. It receives the Word, submits to it, and waits for God to fulfill it in His time.
The Pattern of the Rejected King
This entire episode is a preview of the gospel. It is the story of the Christ, written in advance.
Joseph is the beloved son of the father. He is sent to his brothers. He speaks the truth that God has given him about his future reign. And for this, his brothers, the sons of Israel, hate him, are filled with envy, and plot to destroy him. Their rejection and their wicked plot to be rid of him is the very mechanism God uses to send him down into the pit, and then into the foreign land of Egypt. And it is from that place of death and alienation that God will exalt him to the right hand of Pharaoh, giving him all authority, so that he might become the savior of his family and of the world.
Do you see the pattern? God sent His only beloved Son, Jesus. He came to His own, to the household of Israel, and His own did not receive Him. He spoke the truth about His identity, His authority, and His coming reign. And for His words, the brothers were filled with envy. They said, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours" (Mark 12:7). Their wicked rejection, their plot, their betrayal, their selling him for pieces of silver, their casting him into the pit of death, was the very means by which God exalted Him to His right hand.
And now, this exalted King, this true Joseph, offers bread from the storehouses of heaven to the very brothers who rejected Him, if they will only repent and bow the knee. The question for us is the same one that faced this family two thousand years before Christ. When the Word of God comes to us, declaring Jesus is King and that you must bow, what will be your response? Will you be like the brothers, filled with envy, hating the message because it humbles you? Or will you be like Jacob, who, despite his confusion, took the Word, kept it, and waited for God to prove Himself faithful?