If you think your family is complicated, Genesis would like a word.

Joseph is his father Jacob’s favorite son, and everyone knows it. He wears the favoritism, literally, while his brothers simmer with resentment. Add Joseph’s dreams about his entire family bowing down to him, Jacob’s long history of complicated family relationships, and brothers who are already very comfortable with violence—and you have all the ingredients for a biblical family disaster.

In “Jacob’s Boys,” Pastor Zach takes us into the beginning of Joseph’s story and a family shaped by favoritism, jealousy, bad decisions, old wounds, and plenty of dysfunction. Joseph may be the victim of his brothers’ cruelty, but he is hardly presented as perfect himself. His dreams disturb the expectations of everyone around him, while Jacob’s own choices help fuel ...