Cycle Breaker, Table Maker Series

Good morning! Today we are going to have our last sermon in this series from Genesis. You can go ahead and turn to Genesis 37, but know that we are going to be covering all the way to the end of the book this morning. If you are caught up with our Bible reading plan, we finished Genesis today! Good job! Two down, sixty four to go!

If you aren’t caught up, or are going at a different pace, that’s ok. There is nothing magical about finishing the Bible in a year. The point is you are reading it. And when you do finish, you will have done what only 11% of Americans have done. So just keep at it!

It's been fun to hear all the comments from you guys as we’ve hit this part of the reading plan. I’ve heard people say, “Man… Abraham’s family was a dumpster fire! It’s like the Jerry Springer show on steroids! One of our church members got to chapter 38, the story of Judah sleeping with his daughter in law because he thought she was a prostitute, and it almost made him mad. He came up to me on Wednesday night and said, “What is that story even doing in the Bible?”

That’s a good question. But that’s just one story in four generations of dysfunction, distrust, deceitfulness, and double-dealing. There’s resentment, rejection, and sibling rivalry. And then you remember that God chose this family to be His chosen people. And you’re thinking, couldn’t God have chosen a normal family? These guys are like the Addams family. Only, they’re the Abrahamic Family [snap snap].

Listen: when we wonder why God didn’t choose a normal family to bless and make a great nation, God’s answer is, “Normal family? What is that?” There are no normal families. We’ve all got more problems than a math book.

But in the last quarter of Genesis, we are introduced to a guy named Joseph. And somehow, Joseph is able to break the cycle of dysfunction that has pretty much dominated his family for about two hundred years now.

This morning, we are going to look at how Joseph was able to break the cycle. And hopefully you will realize that if God can bless this crazy family, He can bless yours as well.

Let’s pray, and then we’ll dive in.

There are several points in Joseph’s story where we get some clues as to how he was able to rise above all the rivalry and pettiness that had defined his family up to this point. And the first one is this:

1. He was secure in his father’s love (Genesis 37:3; Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5)

Let’s look at Genesis 37:3 together.

3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors.[a] 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son because he was born to Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel. Long story, but Jacob had four wives—two of them sisters, both of them his cousins—remember, Jerry Springer—and Joseph was the first of two sons born to Rachel late in life. and this is why he’s the favorite.

And Jacob gives Joseph a special robe. We don’t know if this is actually a coat of many colors—the Hebrew is pretty obscure here. So some translations say that, others say a long robe, or a long sleeved robe, or a richly ornamented robe. It probably wasn’t an amazing technicolor dreamcoat, though. The point is, Joseph got one, and his brothers didn’t. So if they hated him before, they REALLY hated him now.

Now parents, if you don’t remember anything else from this morning, remember this: don’t play favorites with your kids. It will mess them up. Remember that Jacob himself had grown up knowing he wasn’t his own father’s favorite, and now he turns around and does the same thing to all his other sons.

Not long ago, researchers from wanted to see what kind of role fathers played in their children’s success and self regard as adults. They studied over 600 pairs of twins, and they found that affection from their fathers—not discipline, not permissiveness, not generosity, not a work ethic—affection-- was most related to their self-esteem as an adult. And if one twin perceived that they received more affection, guess what? They typically had more self-regard, more confidence, and a better outlook on life than their sibling.

Now, if you have more than one child, it’s ok for one of them to think he’s your favorite, as long as all his siblings think they are your favorite too.