Here Comes the Dreamer (Genesis 37-50)

Ryan Scott Carrell - September 28, 2025

Over these past couple of months, we've been on a journey through the book of Genesis, exploring the stories that the Hebrew people in exile told themselves as they tried to make sense of their displacement.

About 2,500 years ago, these people were violently removed from Jerusalem and forced to live in Babylon, about 900 miles from home. In that foreign land, surrounded by foreign gods and foreign stories, they began to tell and write down their stories. Those stories became much of what we know as the Bible.

We find ourselves today at the end of a collection of those stories found in a book we call Genesis. But here's what's important to understand: the end of Genesis isn't an ending at all; it’s a cliffhanger. It's a setup for what comes next. And what we’re going to see is that this story helped the exiles make sense of their own experience of being taken far from home and wondering if they’d ever return.

I want you to think like the exiles did, of the stories in Genesis as this grand epic metaphor helping them make sense of their reality. And as we get to the end of this epic, we come to this story of Joseph. Now, his story is the single longest narrative that we find in Genesis, spanning fourteen chapters. Now, we won’t be able to read them all. What I want us to do is to look at the arc of the story through a few key moments that reveal profound insights the exiles who told this story believed about God and how God works in the world.

So, let’s start at the beginning of Joseph's story, with a man named Israel, his father, who we talked about last week. Israel had many sons, but the focus of his affection was Joseph.

Genesis 37:2-4 (NRSVUE)
2…Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers…3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him an ornamented robe.4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him…

Now, the dynamics of favoritism at play were a mess. But when Joseph, who was known for his dreams, shared a dream about his brothers bowing down before him, their jealousy reached a breaking point. Unfortunately, Joseph was without his father’s protection.

Genesis 37:12-24,26-28 (NRSVUE)
12 Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” 14 So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron. He came to Shechem, 15 and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” 16 “I am seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” 17 The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’ ” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. 18 They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them they conspired to kill him. 19 They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” 21 But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22 Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. 23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the ornamented robe that he wore, 24 and they took him and threw him into a pit. 26 Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. 28 When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

Once in Egypt, Joseph was sold to an Egyptian official named Potiphar.

Genesis 39:4-5 (NIV)
4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.

The author continues and tells us that everything Joseph touched was blessed and says that Potiphar was blessed just because of Joseph. But, just like before, Joseph’s place of being favored ended.

Genesis 39:6-10 (NIV)
6 So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!” 8 But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. 9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” 10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.

Presumably out of resentment for refusing her advances, Potiphar’s wife lied to her husband and said that Joseph had attempted to assault her. Despite his innocence, Joseph was thrown into prison, where he spent years, waiting and wondering if he would ever get out, wondering if his life would ever mean anything, and wondering if God had abandoned him. Then, one day, the pharaoh had a dream no one could interpret. So, they called for Joseph because he had been interpreting dreams for other people. And Joseph interpreted the dream and told the pharaoh that it was about a famine that was going to come to Egypt. So, Pharaoh did the unthinkable and put Joseph in charge of preparing for this famine.

When that famine finally arrived, it didn't just affect Egypt. It reached all the way to Canaan, where Joseph's family was starving. His brothers, desperate for food, traveled to Egypt to buy grain. And this is where the story gets really interesting.

Genesis 42:6-8 (NRSVUE)
6 Now Joseph was governor over the land; it was he who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground. 7 When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke harshly to them. “Where do you come from?” he said. They said, “From the land of Canaan to buy food.” 8 Although Joseph had recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him.

This charade continued for a while, and then Joseph finally reveals himself to them.

Genesis 45:4-8 (NRSVUE)
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here but God

Joseph was able to get 30,000 feet above his circumstances and see that his god is the kind of god we see throughout the Scripture, who meets us in our circumstances and redeems them into something good. Joseph's brothers made a terrible choice. That choice had real consequences. Joseph suffered real harm. But God took that reality, that brokenness, and worked within it to create a future that saved an entire nation from starving.

God intended it for good. Not that God caused the harm, but that God met the harm and transformed it into something redemptive. But the story wasn’t Joseph’s alone. The author ends the story of Joseph here, but it picks up in the next book called Exodus. And in that story, we learn that Joseph’s dreams didn’t stay a reality, and the story took a dark turn.

Exodus 1:6,8-9,11 (NIV)
6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died…8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor…

For the exiled Hebrew people, this shift in the story would have resonated with them and their experience. In many ways, they could see, through their ancestors’ shift into slavery, oppression, and longing for rescue, exactly how they had felt: abandoned by God, captive in a strange land, wondering if there was any hope at all. But Joseph’s story, like all of these stories we’ve read, gave them hope.

Through the stories they told, they saw that God never abandoned them. In every story, God kept showing up, and that belief would eventually be put into the following words.

Deuteronomy 31:6 (NIV)
6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid…for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.

For the exiles, these stories were lifelines. God was with them in their tears. God was with them in their questions. God’s presence wasn’t tied to a place; it was tied to a promise. And this is where I want to connect this to us today.

There is a paradox in this thing we call the Christian faith. And that paradox is that the very things that we believe are the things of heaven are the very things that make us homesick for somewhere we’ve never been. You see, every time we experience joy, goodness, mercy, grace, compassion, and love, we get a taste of heaven. And the more that we begin to desire those things in our lives, the more this world no longer feels like home.

Perhaps you’ve never thought about it in those terms. Maybe the idea of heaven seems like an unlikely reality, yet we all feel the tension that this world is not as it should be. This world needs more joy, goodness, grace, compassion, and love. This world needs a lot more Jesus.

A lot of people say the answer, then, is to just sit around and wait for Jesus to return. Other people say we should just sit around and wait to go to him. But what if Jesus is a lot closer than we think. Perhaps, like the exiles, we don’t have to go anywhere to experience God.

There is an invitation Jesus gave that is still very much true for us today and that is that we can come home to him wherever we are today. And that is a promise that so many of us need to hear right now. God's presence isn't something we wait for—it's something we wake up to, something we can experience because Jesus and this promise.

Matthew 11:28 (NIV)
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus doesn't promise life will be easy, without any struggles, or without questions. These stories have shown us that. But he does promise that we can come to him and that we will find rest. So, friends, however far you feel from God, you’re not. Come and rest.