Vayeshev: Dreams

In this week's Torah study, I dive deep into Parshat Vayeshev and explore Joseph's transformative journey from dreamer to leader. Discover how his story of faith, integrity, and perseverance speaks directly to our modern challenges.

Through Joseph's experiences, we'll explore:
 • The deeper meaning behind spiritual dreams
 • Standing firm in our values during trials
 • Understanding Divine timing in our lives
 • Transforming setbacks into stepping stones
 • Building healthy family relationships

Join me for this powerful exploration of ancient wisdom that remains profoundly relevant today.

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Transcript

Hi everyone, it's Shirah Chanté, Relationship Artist, helping God's people with relationships and blessing God's people with music, art, and poetry here with Perfect Body Podcast, a Torah portion. Afterthought, we are exploring, reading, studying, discovering what the Torah has to say in each individual portion a week later.

So last week's Torah portion was Vayeshev. That's what we're going to be looking at today. Genesis chapters 37 through 40. And today, Miketz, a new Torah portion started. We'll be looking at that one next week, so go ahead. I'm just telling you this in advance so you can be prepared and I don't forget toward the end, to tell you.

So, Vaya Shev, this show is called Dreams. This is a very significant Torah portion. Because it involves dreams and we all have dreams, don't we? I have a dream, says Martin Luther King Jr. He had a dream that one day all people would be judged not by their skin color, but by the content of their character.

What's inside of them, not the outside. The Bible says that Man, you and I, human beings, man looks on the outward appearance, we look at, how people look, how much money they have or don't have, what they do, what they don't do, how they talk, just all kinds of things. We look at the outward appearance, what car they drive, but that's not how God looks.

God looks at us. God looks at our heart.

I love God for that. Ah, he looks at our heart to see the condition of our heart, to see what we're thinking in our heart. What are we hiding in our heart? Out of the heart comes all the issues of life. Jesus said, it's not what a man, what a man, Oh, goodness, goodness, what is the scripture? It's what comes out of a man.

That defiles him, not what goes into a man. So it's not what you eat that defiles you. It's what comes out of your mouth, which comes out of your heart. Cause as a man speaks, so is he, or no, as a man thinks so is he, but out of the mouth comes what you're thinking. your heart. Murders, adulteries, lying, cheating, all of these evil things the Bible lists.

So

cleansing our heart and paying close attention to our heart is most vital to please God and to have a better life. If you have a clean heart chances are you're gonna have a clean conscience. Because if you're harboring unforgiveness, bitterness, hate, murder in your heart, chances are you could act on that and that would be not good at all.

Jesus said, if you think on a woman to commit adultery with her, that you have already committed the adultery. It's your thoughts. Even if you just think it, it's already done. That's, that's what Jesus is saying. So it's so important what's in our heart. So God looks at our heart and looks at how we look on the outside.

Look, at Shirah Chante? Who is she? We look at who's our appearance, but I want to challenge you. To start looking on the inside of people, to get to know people, to get to know their character and not just look on the outward appearance or their outward circumstances. Get to know people.

It will really make your life more fruitful, more rewarding, and not so shallow. And you will enjoy your life a lot better when you start to actually Take the time to get to know who people really are instead of just looking at what they have or how they look on the outside. What do you think? Can you do that?

You want to, you want to take on that challenge? All right, so Vayeshev starts in Genesis chapter 30 verse And Joseph had some dreams. He had two dreams and he shared them with his family. Joseph was the favorite child. Let's read that scripture where it says, Jacob loved Joseph the most. Ah. More sibling rivalry.

We talked about sibling rivalry when, uh, when Jacob got married to the two sisters, Leah and Rachel. Now we're having more, more sibling rivalry. You see things, things can pass through generations. Got to take care of those things and be careful what we're sowing. So it says in Genesis chapter 37 verse three, now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age and he made him a coat of many colors.

And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, They hated him and could not speak peaceably onto him. Do you blame them? You know, daddy loves you more. He, this is his favorite sign. He's like, ah, the other one's eh. So, but he loved Joseph the most. So they hated them.

They hated Joseph. And what made it worse is Joseph had dreams. He was a dreamer. He had a vision for life. He wanted to be somebody. He didn't want to just sit at home and look after the sheep all his life. He wanted to be someone, be someone, and his brothers hated him all the more. For his dreams, Joseph had a dream.

Let's read his dreams chapter 37 verse seven. And he said unto them, here, I pray you this dream, which I dreamed for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field and low my sheaf arose and also stood upright and behold, your sheaves stood around about and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brother said to him, shall you indeed reign over us?

Or shall you indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, dream number two. And he told his brothers and said, behold, I have dreamed a dream more. And the sun and the moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to me, meaning they, they bowed down to him.

The sun, the moon, and the stars are bowing down to Joseph. And he's telling his brothers this dream who already hate him. And his dad is like, Jacob's like. What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow down ourselves to you to the earth? And it says his brothers envied him more, but his father observed the same.

So his father was like, well, think about it. Maybe, cause this is his favorite son. Like, wow, he's having these dreams. All right. You know, my son is going to be somebody. And. But his brothers are like, I hate him. I hate him. And so one day as we continue on, his father asked Jake, uh, asked Joe's Jacob, his father, asked Joseph, his son to go and see what his brothers were doing to make sure it was okay with them because they were out. 

With the. With the animals and perhaps they had been gone a long time. I really don't know why Jacob wanted Joseph to check on them, but he did. And he sent Joseph to check on his brothers. Long story short, his brothers saw Joseph coming and they conspired against him. They made a plan to get rid of him.

They're like, here comes that dreamer. Here comes that dreamer. Let's kill him. They wanted to kill their brother, but the oldest brother, Reuben, stepped up to the plate and was like, this is not right. You know, we can't kill our brother. And so he said, let's just throw him in it. Here's a pit. There was a pit nearby.

Let's just throw him in this pit. And then later on, Judah said, Let's sell him and, make some money off of him. They wanted to sell him to the Ishmaelites, they said, the Ishmaelites were their, distant cousins. Ishmael was the son of Abraham, and so they wanted to sell him. What happened is, the next day they went to the pit, they decided not to kill Joseph, but to sell him to the Ishmaelites, and he wasn't there.

The He wasn't, he was gone. Turns out another group of people called the Midianites saw Joseph first, retrieved Joseph out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites themselves and got the money themselves. So the brothers really don't know what happened to Joseph. They pretended that he died. They took his coat of many colors.

Remember the coat I was telling you about that his father gave him because he was the favorite son. And they, killed an animal, a calf, and they took the blood of the calf and dipped the coat in the blood and pretended like Joseph had been devoured by a beast. And they took it back to their father. This is before DNA testing.

And so their father, okay, sorry. So the father, he was really grieved. His favorite son was gone. And he wouldn't be more, he wouldn't be comforted. They tried to comfort him and J and Jacob said, no, I'm going to go to my grave, grieving my son. That's what he said. And the Ishmaelites in the meantime had sold Joseph to Potiphar's servant.

So that is in chapter

38, I believe. Let's see if we can find it. Genesis chapter 38.

Nope. Genesis chapter 39 verse two. And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a prosperous man and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. He was brought down to Egypt and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian bought him. of the hands of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down there.

So the Ishmaelites took him to Egypt, Potiphar, who worked for the pharaoh, Potiphar bought him and he became a worker in Potiphar's home. God blessed him. Potiphar gave him duty over everything in his house. He saw that God was with him and he didn't question Joseph at all. Joseph had all the favor in the world working for Potiphar.

He had a pretty good gig going for himself until, until, Another, another trial, another test. You know, we have tests in life. Until Potiphar's wife, she wanted Joseph. Yeah. She was trying to cheat on her husband with Joseph. So what happened is it says Potiphar left all that he had in Joseph's hand. And then it came to pass after these things that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and he said, lie with me.

She wanted Joseph to have sex with her and Joseph refused. Joseph is like, no, I'm not, I'm not doing that. My master has given me charge of everything. He loves me. He, I love, I believe in God. This is, you know, Joseph's like, no, I'm not going to sleep with you. I'm not, I won't, I won't do that. And she kept on and kept on day after day, trying to get Joseph to have sex with her.

And. Eventually, it came to a point where he was the only one in the house, and she was there, and she grabbed him. She grabbed his coat, was like, come, come lay with me. And he ran, he fleed fornication, like it says in the Bible, fleed fornication. You gotta run, because, you know, those, those sexual organs, they be acting up and you be feeling all kinds of ways and it's like oh you gotta get out of there like no this is not right and so joseph did the right thing he fled fornication he said no i'm not gonna sleep with this lady that's wrong but he left his coat in her hand because she had his coat so she he just like you can take the coat i don't care i'm not gonna do this i'm gonna keep my integrity And my honor by not sleeping with you.

So she lied on him. Yep. She was, kind of, salty that Joseph did not have sex with her. Well, and she said that Joseph was trying to rape her. Mm hmm. Yep. She lied. She told her husband this and her husband, of course, was angry. Wouldn't you be angry if a man who you gave everything to in your house to take control of, to be over it, to work for you, tried to sleep with your wife?

Of course you would, you would be mad. And so Potiphar, Joseph's boss, So, Joseph suffered for being honest, for following God, for being faithful to God. Now that may sound strange to you. What? Why did he have to suffer? He's doing what God wanted him to do. He didn't have sex with his boss's wife.

 He's He did what was right. How could he be suffering? It doesn't seem fair, does it? , eh, well, some things in life are just not fair. Some things in life we have to suffer through because the world is wicked and this is just what it is. So you might find yourself in a situation where you're doing the right thing, but the right thing isn't happening.

To you, that's happened to me more than once where I did the right thing, but the result was not in my favor. It wasn't, I had to suffer and you may find yourself in that place, but it's a better place to be in than deferring to the enemy and doing what the enemy wants you to do. It's better to suffer than to sleep with someone else's wife.

It's better to suffer. Than to sleep with someone else's husband in the long run. Yes. So Joseph is in prison even though he's totally innocent, he's in jail. How many innocent people are in jail today? Probably more than we think now. Joseph was in prison and it just so happened that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, got mad at two of his servants.

The baker. And a butler. And so Pharaoh threw the baker and a butler in prison with Joseph. And they had dreams. Oh, so Joseph was a person who was very versed in dreams. We know he's a dreamer. God gave him these two beautiful dreams when he was younger and the baker and a butler were sad because they didn't know what the dreams meant.

And so Jacob, uh, Joseph said something really. Remarkable. Do not interpretations belong to God. Tell me, I pray you. So Joseph is saying, tell me your dreams. God will give us the interpretation. He's going to give me the interpretation to tell you. And he did. The baker told Joseph his dream and the butler first, the butler told Joseph his dream, and it was a good, favorable turnout.

It turned out that Pharaoh was going to restore the butler to his office of delivering his cup,  his wine to Pharaoh. So the baker said, Hey, that sounds pretty good. Well, why don't you interpret my dream too? And when the baker told Joseph his dream, it wasn't that favorable. The end result was that Pharaoh was going to take his head.

He wasn't going to be restored to his position. And so let's see if Joseph was right. And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants. And he lifted up the head of the chief butler. And of the chief baker among his servants, and he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted to them.

Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgot him. So, Joseph asks The butler to tell Pharaoh about him when he restores him. But the butler didn't, he didn't tell Pharaoh about him. Cause Joseph is like, look, I'm in this prison. I didn't do anything wrong. Let the, let Pharaoh know this. And, but he hasn't yet, but.

We're going to, we're going to see some things change in and turn it around. God is not going to leave Joseph in this prison. That's just a preview. You might suffer. You might have something to suffer for, suffer for righteousness, suffer for the kingdom of God's sake. Because in the end. It's going to be better for you way better than if you give in to the enemy and sleep with that woman or sleep with that man.

And it's hard. I know. I'm not saying any of this is easy. It's sometimes it's very challenging to follow God, especially when wicked people are trying to get you to do something that you shouldn't. I mean, this is his job. You know, that's his, his means of survival of living. You know, we work, we pay our bills with our job.

We, we do all of these things. He was like, no, I'm not going to do wrong. Even for a job sake. Even for, you know, he, he trusted God more than he trusted, this job. And yeah, he got sent to prison, but he's still alive and he still has his integrity and we're going to see God turn it around for him. Join me next week.

It's going to be good. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. And I want to encourage you to. Know that you might have to suffer. You might have to suffer for something you didn't have, you didn't do. I've been there. I've done that. I got the t shirt.

It happens in life. It happens. So grin and bear it and watch God turn it around for you. In Jesus name. All right. That's our show for today. This is Perfect Body Podcast. Miketz. We're going to go over that Torah portion next week and remember to love God, love you and love people.