Ben Shiller Jacob
Life Lessons Teenagers Need to Learn from the Life of Joseph
Getting into Potiphar’s house was not a desirable experience or journey to his destiny for Joseph. This plan was not in Joseph’s itinerary. Though he had dreams of sheaves of brothers bowing and the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowing before him, unlike what the dreams conveyed to him didn’t come into existence until this point. When Yahweh gave these dreams to Joseph, he was excited and blurted out. Joseph cannot be blamed because who does not like to be admired and authoritative?
From Joseph’s life history, we as sons of Yahweh should have to hew out a couple of character flaws from the life of Joseph as a young boy which made his progression towards his destiny harder. We like to believe, or it is our comfort or default fallen nature of man that we do not take responsibilities for the decisions or choices we make mainly when they go wrong in life. We do as the blood within us speaks. It is a trait carried forward throughout generations from our ex-parents, Adam and Eve did when they both decided according to their will to do what is prohibited by Father God and realized something wrong occurred after their choices made, they pointed fingers. What I want to point out is that not all of tragedies Joseph encountered down the line since he was a child were from Yahweh. However, our Father God in His infinite wisdom and might, He creates new ways to bring His chosen ones to reach their destinies even when they decide to move out of Father’s divine plan knowingly or unknowingly by using their wrong decisions for their own good eventually. While keeping this in the back of your head, let’s dive into the Scripture to find out what were the qualities Joseph lacked as a lad.
Here is the context,
2 This is the account of Jacob and his family. When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks. He worked for his half-brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.
Genesis 37:2, New Living Translation
2These are the descendants of Jacob. Joseph, seventeen years old, was tending the flock with his brothers and he was a lad with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. Joseph brought to his father very evil reports about them.
Genesis 37:2, One New Man Bible Translation
Verse 2 says Joseph brought very evil reports to his father, Jacob, about his brothers. Though these above two versions speak slightly differently, both convey clearly what Joseph was doing.
This happened when Joseph was seventeen. While Joseph was tending the flock with his brothers, he happened to see the evil things his brothers were doing. The Scripture is not clear what evil things his brothers were doing. Additionally, Scripture is unclear if this was one time incident or frequent. Anyways, Before getting into this, one thing to be noted here is that Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children. The reason Bible says because Jacob got Joseph at his old age when he was ninety-one years old. Since Jacob showed favoritism to his youngest child, this created hatred and bitterness among other children toward Joseph. This is something every parent must be aware of. This favoritism of Jacob caused the first crack in the relationship between Joseph and his brothers.
Now, Jacob expressed more affection and love toward his youngest son, Joseph plainly (Genesis 37:4). By this time, Joseph understood that his father loved him more than anyone else, he took advantage of father’s weakness. Like any child, Joseph feared by any means he had to keep his father’s love for him in place. For this very reason, Joseph looked for every opportunity to find fault with his brothers. In other words, Joseph kept his eyes wide open upon his brothers’ activities. If it was with good intention to correct his brothers, there wouldn’t have been any problem. Instead, the Scripture is very clear that Joseph brought very bad reports, that means he was slandering and gossiping about his brothers to his father to make him aware that rest of his children were disobedient and evil unlike Joseph. This way Joseph could retain his father’s love toward him forever. Joseph exaggerated things about his brothers instead of constructively correcting them in the first place. If his motive was to change the way or behavior of his brothers, he should have acted differently than slandering. The root cause of the slandering of Joseph was his fear of losing ‘the favorite child’ position. As we know, when fear creeps in, it opens door widely to the enemy or the devil. This took a diversion in Joseph’s journey which Yahweh had not planned for him. Truly that was a destructive diversion where Joseph’s destiny could have ended abruptly in dungeon forever because of the door he opened to the devil by slandering about his brothers. This was one of the misconducts Joseph committed as a young boy.
Secondly, do you know what are the two important virtues teenagers or youngsters need to have? Let’s see what king Solomon had to say about youngsters or youth because he was wiser than all men (1 King 4:29-34).
To give prudence to the simple,
To the young man knowledge and discretion
Proverbs 1:4
King Solomon mentions two groups of people and what they need to have to prosper in life. The first group is the simple and the second is the youth. This verse begins with giving virtues to these groups what they must have to prosper otherwise destruction befalls.
A simple man does not have prudence means he doesn’t think about his future, or he lacks foreseeing eyes. Since he has limited insight into his furtherance in life, he falls. The second part of the verse is about youth. A youth does not have two virtues mainly, one is knowledge and the other, discretion. This is one of the reasons many youngsters stray away from truth and life during this period. During this period, we make very important decisions in our life which could turn our destinies around and which could lead us either into life or destruction. The importance of having knowledge of Yahweh is very much critical. Yahweh speaks about the consequences of neglecting Yahweh’s knowledge through His prophet, Hosea,
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you from being priest for Me;
Because you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.
Hosea 4:6
Coming back to Joseph’s story, as a young boy, when we scrutinize Joseph’s behavior in response to the dreams he had, Joseph exhibited himself as an immature, young boy. When he first had this dream of sheaves of his brothers bowing down before his sheaves, he was too excited and blurted out. Truly, the dream was desirable, uplifting and holds a positive outcome for Joseph. Joseph could not keep mum due to the power and authority he was going to gain in future. This shows a lack of discretion. By revealing his first dream to his brothers, he should have understood how much his brothers were hurt from the responses of his brothers.
8His brothers responded, “So you think you will be our king, do you? Do you actually think you will reign over us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.
Genesis 37:8
Obviously, he must have come to know how much they were intimidated by hearing his dream because who wants to bow down before someone, even worse would be the situation when you had to come low before your younger one. Anyways, Joseph did not stop here. When Joseph dreamt a second dream (the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bow down before Joseph), he did the same. He told his dream to his brothers including his father that clearly shows that Joseph did interpret his dream well as the sun and the moon were his father and mother and those stars were indeed his brothers.
10 This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him. “What kind of dream is that?” he asked. “Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?” 11 But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant.
Genesis 37:10-11
After hearing the dream, Jacob understood this was not a pipe dream. It had significance. To cover up this fact, Jacob scolded Joseph in front of his brothers. In other words, it was not wise to tell your personal dream like this to others, even to your blood relations. Verse 11 says his brothers became jealous of Joseph and reached a point whereby by no means this dream should come to fruition.
18 When Joseph’s brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him. 19 “Here comes the dreamer!” they said. 20 “Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. We can tell our father, ‘A wild animal has eaten him.’ Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!”
Genesis 37:18-20
Verse 20 tells that the intention of his brothers to slay Joseph was only to stop Joseph’s dream coming to pass. From this, we get a clear picture of what Joseph was doing by sharing his second dream. Joseph was just trying to provoke his brothers, putting them down before his father. Joseph knew if he would tell his second dream would tear apart the remaining relationship he had with his brothers, yet he told them before his father and insulted.
Verse 8 even makes clear that not only the dream that caused hatred in brothers toward Joseph but also the way Joseph talked about his dream. Joseph didn’t tell his dream with a good intention of heart but in an arrogant manner.
At this young age, Joseph lacked discretion and acted foolishly like any young kid would do. If he acted discreetly enough, he could have avoided all the tragedies he faced later in his life. But the important truth we should understand here is that even when we mess up our life in our ignorance, our Lord has His own ways to make them straight and untangle even those impossibly seemed twisted situations.
Shiller’s Takeaway
When we closely look into Joseph’s story, there were times where he treated his brothers wrongly. Slandering and indiscreet were the character flaws Joseph had as a young boy that changed the course of his life. Sharing personal dreams or visions given from the Lord is not meant to be unraveled in any circumstances until those visions come to pass. The picture of Joseph that was painted in our imagination has no resemblance to the real picture of Joseph in reality. Every person we see in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation whom Yahweh used mightily and uniquely was not perfect in any way. The interesting truth about our Lord is that He chooses imperfect people like us with His perfect love and unwavering nature, by which He brings changes in our nature and character gradually into the design He created us for. Since Joseph endured all the trials with an awe and hope in Yahweh, resulted in rock solid character within him eventually.
Communion with a Contrite Heart
Heavenly Father, we come before you in one accord in the name of Yeshua. We ask the Holy Spirit to expose every slandering we have done against others, and we pray to give us conviction and repentance in those areas, and we admit that we have sinned against you and others. We receive your forgiveness and deliverance from spirit of slander right now. We admit that we lack wisdom, understanding and knowledge of Yeshua and we ask in the name of our Yeshua and believe we have received them in the most magnificent name of Yeshua we pray – AMEN!