EPIC (Joseph) | Week 1
Week 1: Dreams; Handle With Care
Note to the Leaders:
This discussion guide is a help for you to engage and steer the conversation within your group.
You do not have to read every question; this is just resources for you to move the main idea forward.
Do your best to make the story come to life by asking questions that will spur your group conversations that make this story play come alive and become applicable to their lives.
Key Verse:
You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!
Getting Started:
When you were a kid, was there ever a time that you learned a valuable lesson that took you several mistakes to learn?
How many times did it take, after making the same mistake, before you really understood the lesson?
Truth is, the lessons we learn mold us into becoming the person we need to be.
That, in a nutshell, is the story of Joseph.
Digging in:
Read Genesis 37:2-4
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 (Jacob) 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[a] robe for him. 4 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.
What do these verses tell us about Joseph?
What do these verses tell us about the how Jacob and Joseph’s action affected Joseph’s relationship with his brothers?
Read Genesis 37:5-7 & 9
5 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: 7 Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”
9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
How would you react to your spoiled little brother coming to you and telling you this dream?
Imagine being the little brother who just had this awesome dream.
Being naive, you’d be telling everyone and posting it on Instagram with your techno-colored coat from dad.
Read Philippians 2:3-4
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
When God is revealing something to us, how do we talk to others about it without being boastful?
How do we really know if it is a God desire or a personal desire?
Pray, measure it against scripture, & ask other counsel
Read Proverbs 12:15
The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.
The motive of our dreams and desire should be serving others.
Read Genesis 37:8,10
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.” … 10 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?”
We all have THAT annoying relative.
How would you feel if that relative told you they dreamed you would one day bow down to them?
We don’t choose where we enter this life
We don’t even choose our weakness or our strengths for that matter.
We do choose what we do with what we have been given.
Joseph didn’t choose the dream he had but his handling of the dream was all on him.
Although it was no excuse, why was Joseph the way he was?
Read Genesis 30:22
God remembered Rachel and listened to her and opened her womb.
Joseph was born.
The long awaited first son of Jacobs first love.
After so much anguish and disappointment it’s not hard to see why Jacob loved Joseph so much.
Then suddenly tragedy bound Joseph and Jacob together.
Genesis 35:18
As she breathed her last—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni.[a] But his father named him Benjamin.
Rachel dies giving birth to a second son Benjamin.
Rachel got what she had yearned for but then was suddenly denied the opportunity to enjoy it.
Jacob and Joseph find consolation in each other.
The old man was grief stricken and Joseph was a living reminder of the one he had worked for so long and loved so much but now lost.
Not that this was right, but we see why Jacob lavished his love on Joseph and favored him above the rest of his children.
Unfortunately, Jacob’s favoritism turned into Josephs arrogance.
Joseph was dealt the cards of spoiled rich kid.
No matter the hand we are dealt we are responsible for our actions.
God however used these circumstances to begin to make Joseph the man God needed him to be.
God loved Joseph too much to leave him where he was.
God loves you too much to leave you where you are.
Is there a situation now that God is using to shape you?
What are you doing in with this situation?
Are you using it to grow or groan?