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Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. Genesis 37:5

Sometimes receiving the Word of God will isolate you from your friends. Joseph received the Word of God. He believed it and he shared it with others, and the result was that he was hated by them.

That’s not easy. Joseph was 17 years old, and none of his brothers wanted to hang out with him. They didn’t want anything to do with him and the reason was the Word of God. When Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him … take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24), He was telling us that if we speak His Word in this world we will share in the pain and sorrow of His rejection. But it is better to lose friends than to lose Jesus.

However much your friends may despise the Word of God, they need it and their ultimate hope depends on it. How else could men like Simeon, Reuben, and Judah be in heaven except by the grace of God that came to them through the faithfulness of Joseph?

How will the redemption of the brothers come about? Joseph must tell the brothers his dream, so that when it comes about, they see the hand of God and bow before Him. In some sense, the redemption of the brothers hangs on the faithfulness of Joseph, who speaks the Word of God to them and puts up with their rejection. Your unbelieving friends at school and at work need you to love them enough to speak the Word of God to them and put up with their foolish rejection of it.

We need Christians who will say, “My loyalty to God matters more than my loyalty to my friends and my brothers.” We need churches that will say, “Finding favor with God matters more to us than finding favor with the world.” God’s Word must be spoken with grace and with clarity, irrespective of how it is received.

Have you ever been rejected because you spoke the Word to someone?