Fixing Family Feuds
Forsaking Foibles that Fracture Families
Genesis 37:1-11
This morning we begin a new series on the life of Joseph, which I've entitled, Fixing Family Feuds. The Title is actually inadequate—yes a family feud was fixed, but an incredibly gracious God and an incredibly faithful young man were involved. Maybe a better title, but longer one would be Fixing Family Feuds with an Enduring Faith.
At any rate, when it comes to the life of Joseph, we come to one of my all-time favorite Bible stories. It is the one Bible story which I cannot read or speak about, or hear about without being brought to tears. My three daughters know this very well. When they were very young, one of our practices as we would go on vacation and I would be driving was to tell them, as you might imagine, long drawn-out Bible stories. I still remember driving across Nevada on lonely Highway 50 as I told them the story of Joseph, and they may still well remember how often I ended up nearly sobbing as the story came to a climax, as there was finally repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation, and God's great blessing. I guess the story is one of my all-time favorites because it emphasizes just how great God's grace is, in spite of our great sin, and how faithful He is to those who are persevering faithful toward Him.
As we embark on this message series, there are a couple of things that are worth noting. First, what an incredibly faithful, godly man Joseph turned out to be, against all odds, even when everything repeatedly was going wrong in his life, and terribly wrong. Joseph is one of two godly men in the Bible, the other being Daniel, whose life stories are told without there being a mention of a specific sin which they committed. To be sure, they were sinners, but somehow, though severely tested, and I'm sure tempted, Joseph maintained his integrity in the most discouraging and impossible of circumstances—something that we can all learn from in our hard times.
The second thing is just what a totally dysfunction, read that, sinful and wicked, family Joseph came from. It was the family of Jacob, whose other name was Israel, for the very nation He would form. What cannot be forgotten here is that Jacob and his 12 sons, despite their great sin, we're God's chosen people. They were part of the line of descendants whom God promised Abraham, the friend of God, that He would bless. And we see just how great God's sovereignty and grace is in his ability to bless as motley a crew as this family turned out to be. To think, that the blessing of the Messiah, and the salvation of the world, depended upon rotten people such as some of these were, whom God was able to bring to repentance and bring blessing upon the whole world is just amazing. Yes, both you and are I blessed today through Abraham's family, this line of descendants, because through them would come the Messiah, Jesus, our Savior. And there are many parallels, fore-shadowings through this story of how God would redeem us, and that He would redeem us through giving His own son, even as Judah offered to give His life to save another, and thus demonstrated both His repentance and the repentance of His brothers regarding the great sin that they had committed.
One of my mother's favorite sayings, and a saying I'm sure we're all familiar with is this: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that saying is certainly evident from the portion of Joseph's story which we'll deal with today. Thank God, God has the pound of cure and then some, because that's what it would take to overcome the foibles, that is, the tremendous mistakes that were made by this family early in its history.
So, some background. The great patriarchs of the Jewish faith, the forefathers, were Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob. Each of these men came to a personal knowledge of God and became part of the line of blessing. Then Jacob had 12 sons who would become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel who would each receive a land inheritance in the Promised Land. Jacob had had 12 sons and a daughter ultimately through four different wives: Leah, Bilhah, Zilpah and finally his favorite wife, and yes Joseph would play favorites, even as his mother and father had, his favorite wife Rachel. Six sons and a daughter came first through Rachel's older sister, Leah, two would then come from Bilhah, Rachel's maid, whom she gave to Jacob in order to somehow give him children through her, and then the competition continued, as Leah gave her maid to Jacob, and Zilpah had two more. And finally, after 10 sons were born to the other three, Rachel gave birth to Joseph, and then, sadly died, sixteen years later, as she gave birth to the baby of the family, Benjamin.
And so we have an ancient version of what we today call blended families. Now if you haven't heard, or you haven't experienced it, blended families are just a little bit of a challenge to the husband and the wife who are still around. Blended families consist of at least two different families, with children by different women or different men, who come together and sometimes try to be one family. The problem is that often not all the children necessarily want to be blended, and if they are blended, they are often determined to bend the will of their biological mother or father against the non-biological step-father or step-mother, making life and relationships all but impossible because of their hurt, often from a divorce, or anger, or jealousy, or bitterness or selfishness. The slightest bit of favoritism, which likely exists on the part of biological parents, is going to be exposed and tested, and rivalries between children for their parent's affection is likely going to become a factor. And so this morning, we're going to examine the seeds of discord that resulted in a horrible betrayal that took place in Jacob's family. These sorts of things can and do happen in any family when there is no fear of God among some, and when bitter jealous and selfish ambition exist, but pose a danger especially for those who have tried to bring together a blended family.
So just how bad was Jacob's family? Well, among the men, apart from Jacob, and Joseph, really, really bad. Jacob's firstborn, Reuben, had by the time of Genesis 37 already become involved in an incestuous relationship with one of his father's wives, believe it or not, namely Bilhah. And sons two and three, Simeon and Levi, had demonstrated their extreme wickedness by breaking a solemn covenant with the people of Shechem, and committing a mass murder of all the male inhabitants of Shechem. Judah, the fourth son, wasn't much better, separating himself from his family for a while he intermarried with the pagan Canaanites and in the course of being a whore-monger, accidentally prostituted himself with his daughter-in-law. Wow—what a mess. How could God possibly bless such a mess? And yet He did, and He managed to do so through the treachery of these very sons as well as another six in the expression of their hatred and bitterness for Joseph.
So what are we hopefully going to learn this morning? When it comes to your family—don't play favorites or rivals or you'll pay big-time. Don't play favorites or rivals, or you'll pay big-time.
Now there's plenty of blame to spread around as we consider what happened in Jacob, er, Israel's family. And honestly, a pretty fair amount of it lay at the feet of the great, even godly, Patriarch, who even though He knew God at this point, found himself repeating generational sin—the favoritism of his parents, Isaac and Rebekah. If you'll remember, Isaac favored Jacob's brother, Esau. Rebekah favored Jacob. And that created a lot of problems in that family. And Jacob now repeats the sin of partiality in relationship to his own children.
We'll begin reading in verse 2: "Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth." What this tells us is that Joseph, though 17, was not yet considered an adult, while his 10 older brothers were all adults. He was pasturing the flock along with his step-brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father.
Now there are a number of Bible teachers who will here blame Joseph for creating his own difficulties. They'll call him a tattle-tale. However, I don't think God or His Word support this conclusion. We've got to learn to think biblically about these kinds of matters. Even though the 10 Commandments had not been given at this point, Joseph's first responsibility in this matter was to God—to do what was right. And His second responsibility was to His Father, since as a youth especially, he was subject to Him and needed to obey Him. Even when the Law did come along several hundred years later, Leviticus 5:1 supports this conclusion. It's a bit difficult to follow, but it says, "No if a person sins after he hears a public adjuration to testify when he is a witness, whether he has seen or otherwise known, if he does not tell it, then he will bear his guilt." In other words, we are responsible to report wrong-doing to those in authority. Those who are wrongdoers are never happy about the one who tells on them, but that's because they are, indeed, in the wrong. The one who tells is not in the wrong. He's doing what is right. We need to be careful that we're not identify with the wrongdoers in these situations by calling them tattle-tales or claiming that reporting a sin is wrong.
At any rate, this set of circumstances did not endear him to his 10 older and sinful siblings. But things went from bad to worse because of Jacob's favoritism. This is the part of the story that we all remember from Sunday School—at least I do. Verse 4: Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he as the son of his old age, and he made him a vari-colored coat." Yep, there it is, the coat of many colors. Now this verse seems to be reporting what all of Jacob's sons knew—Joseph was the clear favorite. We're told here why he was the clear favorite—he was the son of his father's old age. I suspect that he was the favorite also because he was the son of his favorite wife—to make things much worse. Yes, old wounds, and bitter jealousies are now being enhanced, pricked and bleeding. And there's probably one more reason—Joseph was a good boy! He was a godly young man. He identified with His father, and he put his father's interests first, as is evident from the evil report he brought about his older brothers. So it's easy to see why Jacob preferred Joseph, and if we had been in Joseph's shoes, we may have felt the same way. But that doesn't make it right, and in this case, it led to many more wrongs—including an obvious show of favoritism. It was bad enough that it appeared Jacob preferred Joseph, but he punctuated his favoritism with an exclamation point when he made this coat of many colors for Joseph, among the 11, all alone. It was actually a tunic, the garment that is closest to the body, which Jacob made for and gave Joseph. It was long sleeved, reaching to the wrists and the ankles, and the Hebrew word for it actually occurs in other places as a description of a royal garment. In other words, Jacob's favoritism may have gone so far as to indicate his choice of Joseph as the first-born heir, though he obviously wasn't the first-born, above his brothers. Obviously, Reuben, the actual first-born, had sinned grievously against his father already, and so perhaps Jacob thought himself justified in naming a new and much younger first-born or preferred heir.
Well, that multi-colored tunic was the straw that broke the camel's back for his brothers. It absolutely proved what they all suspected anyway: Verse 4: "His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms." They could not even be civil to Joseph. And as often happens, the one who is hated is not the one who is guilty of the sin. He is the object of His father's favoritism. It was Jacob who sinned, but Joseph who suffered because of it. Actually, all Jacob's sons suffered because of it. And ultimately, Jacob and Joseph would suffer the most.
Now if there is a lesson to be learned here it is this: Don't play favorites with your kids, or you will pay. Don't play favorites with your kids, or you (and they) will pay big time.
Now I'm sure that as I'm telling this story almost everyone in here is reminded of a family in which a mom or a dad had favorites. Maybe it was your own family. In my family, between my sister and I, I was clearly the favorite. And Mom and Kim didn't get along for a long time—and this may have been part of the reason. Now Kim overcame it all because she decided to follow Christ and loved my mom anyway. And perhaps some of you are even thinking of your own parenting, and how one of your children may have won your affection more than the others. You know what says about partiality. It says that it's a sin. Don't give into it. No matter how challenging the circumstances or differences among your children might be. James 2:1, talking about partiality in the family of God, the church says, "Do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism." It goes on and talks about how some of us might be enthralled with the rich person over a poor person, and how ungodly that is." The fact is, Romans 2:11 puts it succinctly enough, "For there is no partiality with God." Therefore, no matter what, there can be no partiality with us, whether in the family of God, or our own families at home. You treat all your children with the same love. If you don't, both you and they will pay.
Do, are you impartial? Do you love your children impartially? Do you love members of your church family impartially? Yep, that's something to think about. If we are going to be Christ-like we cannot play favorites. We must love everyone with the same love, the same impartial love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, as the Scripture says, we become judges with evil, even self and manipulative motives. It's a lot to think about, isn't it? And we better think about it if we would honor God. Remember the lesson from last week—you better take how you treat others seriously, even the least of them, because Jesus is going to take it personally. Woops!
So the godly patriarch Jacob wasn't so entirely godly either. He created an environment in which bitter jealousy and selfish ambition would thrive among his sons. And thrive it did. And then Joseph, in his naïveté, contributed to it. He had a dream, no, two dreams. The dreams were very impressive and memorable dreams. And as it turned out, they were directly from God. And at this point, it seems that God was making a bad situation worse. But what we have got to know at this point, is what Romans 8:28 says: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, and are called according to His purpose." And part of the all things God was going to work for good here was the bitter jealousy and selfish ambition of Joseph's brothers. He would use their sin to both deliver the family from a great famine, but more than that, He would use their sin to ultimately bring them to their knees before Him, to bring them to repentance so that they could actually rightfully bear the name of God's chosen people, Israel.
So Joseph has these two great dreams, and the problem is that He doesn't know that some things you just have to keep to yourself. Other people won't understand, and they will use these things against you. The fact was that God had chosen Joseph to be the deliverer of His people, and He had chosen Joseph to rule over his whole family.
And so this is what was reflected in each of the dreams. Verse 5: Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, "Please listen to this dream which I have had." And then he tells how he and his brothers were binding sheaves of grain in the field when his sheave rose up and stood erect, and all their sheaves bowed down to him.
Well, his brother did take kindly to these kinds of delusions of grandeur on Joseph's part, at their expense. Only problem is it wasn't a delusion, it was prophetic, it would come to pass. Being as ungodly as they were, they answered incredulously in verse 8: "Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and his words.
And then the second dream came, and the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars were bowing down to him. This time Joseph should have known not to relate the dream. In truth, a second dream using different symbols but meaning the same thing was, as Joseph would later learn, a sign of the certainty of the prophetic truth of the dream—two witnesses to the same truth. This time even His father rebuked him, and now his brothers not only hated him, they were all the more jealous of him. But in verse 11, we find an interesting statement. Jacob had not been entirely unfamiliar with the concept of divine dreams. He had had one or two himself. He recognized that this might not just be the wild and delusional imaginations of a young man too big for his britches. He realized that these might actually be divinely-sourced dreams, and so we're told in verse 11; His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind." Maybe God really is speaking here after all. Hmm, we'll see.
Well most of us here know the story of Joseph. These dreams were no mere accidents, not merely delusions of grandeur, they turned out to be from God and were absolutely prophetic.
And they added to the hatred, and bitter jealousy of Joseph's brothers. Now again, we need to think straight about this whole matter. Who was wrong here? Was God wrong for giving the dreams to Joseph? Who can find fault with God about anything? Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right? God is not to blame here. He had his reasons, and ultimately his reason was to rescue and redeem the whole family from the consequences of their sin. And this was part of His grand plan in doing so.
On the other hand, was Joseph wrong for relating the dreams? It probably wasn't wise, but we can't exactly say it was sin either.
So who was wrong in this circumstance? Yes, Joseph's brothers. What we have here is an intense case of sibling rivalry. We might say it's only natural for older brothers to be upset because they have been passed over in favor of a younger one for a position of prominence and blessing. But what we've got to realize is that so often that's the problem with us—we do what comes naturally to us. But what comes naturally to us is so often sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We're competitive. We're jealous of others successes. We want what they have for ourselves. We're covetous. And if someone gets what we want and we don't like it we're going to seek to tear that other person down. We're going to attempt to build ourselves up at their expense. Isn't that the epitome of pride, selfish ambition and bitter jealousy?
We need to take another look at the book of James. James 3:13-18 describes precisely what was going on here, and precisely what was going on this family, and so often what's going on in our families when there are sibling rivalries. James 3:13: "Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where Jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gently reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness sis sown in peace by those who make peace.
The lesson from the sin of these brothers is plain enough. Don't become sibling rivals—or you'll lose. And ultimately, through their sin, which was hatred and jealousy, and ultimately was conceived into a murderous intent, these brothers, these 10 older brothers lost. They lost a brother, they lost a clean conscience—I doubt that they had one anyway. They found themselves haunted for years about a horrendous betrayal of a brother, and a father, and a family, which only God could straighten. And because of God's faithfulness to His promises to Abraham, God did straighten, for His glory and their good.
All because one of their number, Joseph, ultimately overcame the sibling rivalry, the bitterness, the jealousy and the desire for revenge, to show grace to his brothers, and forgive, and demonstrate the true grace of God which is available to all of us.
For there is no partiality with God.
So, what do we learn from Joseph's early history. Don't play favorites or rivals in your families—you and they will lose big time. Love with God's impartial for God's glory and the good of all.
For there is no partiality with God. And God demonstrated that once for all when Christ died for us—He died for all sinners, and as I John 2:2 says, especially for those who believe.
This morning, do you want to be among those who actually receive God's blessing intended for all through Christ's death for our sins? Then believe—put your trust in Him, and follow Him. He died for your sins, so you might live forever. Pray this prayer with me this morning: Father, thank you that you have loved me in spite of my sins. Thank you for the great demonstration of your love in the fact that Jesus died for my sins. I now understand and believe that He died for me so I could be forgiven. Thank you for forgiving me sins and giving me eternal life. Now make me the kind of person you want me to be—one like Joseph, one like Jesus, who displays the grace of God for all to experience. In Jesus' name. Amen.
