Joe Joseph, Isaac's son in the book of Genesis may have felt special when he received a fancy coat and had extraordinary dreams, but he likely questioned his favored status when his brothers bound him and threw him into a cistern.

Today on Truth for Life, Alastur Begg assures us that God is in control in our deep, dark pits,

as much as he is when the sun is shining and all seems well.

We're looking at Genesis chapter 37.

Music looking at Genesis chapter 37. They hated him

jealously because of the bad report he brought.

They hated him because of the richly ornamented robe he wore,

and they hated him because of the dreams that he had.

Now, obviously, these dreams were

no ordinary dreams. Because if you think about this, everybody dreams. Some people remember

their dreams, and some don't, and at breakfast time, it's sometimes quite a laugh and a hoot,

you know, to hear your dreams. Did you dream about anything last night?

Oh, yeah, I was such and such, and so on. And you laughed them off. And it would have been

perfectly possible for the brothers to do that. Oh, man, he's crazy. What a dumb idea. Silly dreams,

silly coat. Doesn't he look deft in his coat? And it would all have washed

off them, but it didn't. And the reason that he didn't, because it was obvious in some significant

way that God was involved in these dreams. That these were no ordinary dreams, that these were

portents of what God would yet do, and that God was speaking

by means of dreams in order that when the events unfolded, as they do, and we'll discover

that, it would become apparent to everybody that these things have not happened fortuitously,

but that they had happened underneath the overarching unfolding of God's plan.

And so it is that he tells his brothers these extraordinary dreams. Should he have told them? Or probably not. We could excuse him the first

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