Life Lessons from Joseph – Part 1 November 25, 2001
INTERACTION: I want you to get in groups of three to five, and grab a yellow prayer request card. Allowing for the possibility that there might be such a thing as a perfect family, complete one of these sentences: “A perfect family would always,” or, “A perfect family would never.”
Collect these and read some of them.
You can see we have different ideas of what a "perfect family" would be.
Family life has sure changed over recent decades. It wasn’t all that long ago that TV showed families like the Cleavers, the Waltons, and even the Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie. Those were fairly normal families for their time periods, and perhaps many viewers looked upon them as models of perfection.
During the sixties and seventies we saw TV families like the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family and Eight is Enough. Families where the kids had more freedoms, blended families and families with one parent.
The eighties TV families attempted to stay together while tackling tough issues like teen sexuality and drug use. Family Ties and the Cosby Show led the way.
Then came the nineties with TV families like Roseanne and the Simpsons and today we have the families depicted on Once and Again, Dawson’s Creek and Malcolm in the Middle. Clearly imperfect families where there is little discipline and very little respect.
While we can point to more modern TV families like the Taylors of Home Improvement, or the Camdens of 7th Heaven, the prevailing message is that even the strongest of families have their share of imperfections.
We observed Thanksgiving this past week. For some of you it was a reminder of your families’ imperfections.
In a book called, "It Takes a Village Idiot," the author, Jim Mullen says...
“I have long held the theory that the pilgrims were so happy on Thanksgiving because they didn’t have to go back to England and spend time with their relatives.” (Jim Mullen, It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life)
Maybe you can relate.
Nancy Gibbs says this in a wonderful article in this week’s issue of TIME magazine...
“…Family dysfunction is now taken for granted, so the pressing question is what to do about it, and the prevailing answer is, Just get over it.” (Nancy Gibbs, “We Gather Together,” TIME, 11-19-01, p. 32)
Today we’ll find some different answers.
A census taker knocked on the door of an old cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains. The door was answered by a rather unkempt, adolescent girl.
The census taker asked, “May I speak with your father?”
The girl answered, “He ain’t here; he’s been in jail for two years.”
The man said, “Then can I speak with your mother?”
The girl responded, “She ain’t here either. She ran off with the moonshiner.”
The man continued, “Is there an older sister I can speak with?”
“No,” she replied. “She married off and lives with her seven kids down at the bottom of the mountain.”
The man asked, “Well, perhaps there is an older brother I can speak with?”
Once more the girl answered, “He ain’t here either. He’s at Harvard.”
“Harvard?” said the man. “What’s he studying at Harvard?”
“Oh, he ain’t studying nothin’,” the girl said. “They’re studying him!”
Today we’re going to study the family background of a man named Joseph.
While families have changed, there is a sense in which they haven’t changed. Joseph’s family lived some 4000 years ago. While the culture has changed, we’ll see some of the same moral failures in his family that you’d find in some of today’s families.
God is still in the business of helping people survive imperfect families.
TRANSITION: Let’s consider briefly how…
I. JOSEPH’S FAMILY TREE
IS A CASE STUDY IN IMPERFECTION (Genesis 21-35)
Abraham, the father of God’s chosen people, had a son Isaac. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob is the man who eventually became Joseph’s father.
In Genesis 29 Jacob falls in love with a woman named Rachel. Her dad says work for me seven years and you can. Wedding day rolls around, His father in law tricks him. He wakes up in the morning laying next to her less attractive older sister Leah. Jacob is allowed to marry Rachel too in exchange for promising to work another seven years.
Read Genesis 29:30 – Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah.
This is important because it gives us a hint of the dysfunction and favoritism that will nearly ruin his family.
So Jacob is now married, not just to two women, but to two sisters. The fierceness, competition and jealousy between these two sisters must have been intense. But, it got worse. Leah was the one who started getting pregnant and bearing children; Rachel did not. Leah is feeling a bit superior, and Rachel is becoming enraged.
When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children or I’ll die!” (Gen. 30:1).
Jacob says, “Not my fault.”
Out of desperation, Rachel says, “Take my maidservant, Bilhah, and sleep with her so that she can bear children for me.”
The maidservant became pregnant – twice. Now, Leah is getting a bit uneasy. Her lead in childbearing is now only 4-2. So, she takes her maidservant, Zilpah, and gives her to Jacob. That woman has two sons. Then Leah has two more sons and a daughter, giving Jacob at this point 10 sons and one daughter.
Finally, after years of infertility, Genesis 30 says this beginning at verse 22… Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and opened her womb. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” She named him Joseph, and said, “May the Lord add to me another son.”
But Jacob turns out to be a rather weak and ineffective father. In chapter 34 as the family travels across country, Jacob’s only daugther, Dinah, is raped by the son of the mayor of Shechem. When Jacob learns what happens, he does nothing. His sons, however, when they saw their father wasn’t going to do anything, took matters into their own hands. They devise a plan and kill all the men in the city (34:29). When Jacob learned what they had done, his chief concern was about bad public relations with the rest of the people in the land. But he still did nothing. Later, his oldest son, Rueben, has a sexual affair with one of his step-moms, Bilhah – again Jacob does nothing. His daugther gets raped, his son commits incest, and he does nothing. It’s not too difficult to guess how Jacob’s passivity as a parent added to the turmoil in his family.
Chuck Swindoll says…
“Jacob is a classic illustration of a man who was too busy for his family, too preoccupied and unconcerned, which meant he was too passive to deal with what was occurring in the lives of his children.” (Chuck Swindoll, Joseph: A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness, p. 5)
Rachel dies giving birth to her second child, Benjamin, Jacob’s 12th son and 13th child overall. Then Jacob’s father, Isaac dies.
So, by the time Joseph is about 10 years old, here’s the family situation. The father is a polygamist, fathering 12 sons from 4 women (two of whom were sisters), who lived in the same household; as did all of the brothers and half-brothers. His only sister had been raped. His older brothers were guilty of murder, plundering, theft and gross immorality. His mother, Rachel, and his grandfather Isaac are dead. That’s messed up. That would qualify Joseph for an appearance on the Riki Lake show.
That’s the background of Genesis 37
Read Genesis 37:1-4
And we see again one of the problems in this family – favoritism. Jacob loved Joseph more than any other son. (37:3)
Not only did he love Joseph more than his older brothers, he demonstrated this favoritism openly and dramatically. In no way did Jacob attempt to hide his partiality. He gave him a richly ornamented robe.
The Hebrew word describes it as a robe extending to the ankles and the wrists, perhaps with an embroidered narrow stripe of color around the edge. It was a garment worn by nobility and the wealthy. Joseph’s brothers wore garments that were short and sleeveless. With such garments they were able to clamber up hills, wade through swampy areas, and carry sheep on their shoulders. In essence, Joseph’s robe declared that he was free from manual labor and hardship. Even the light color of his robe indicated that he did not expect to get dirty or have it soiled in any way from hard work.” (Robert E. Reccord, When Life is the Pits: A Biblical Study on the Life of Joseph, p. 24)
What we have here is far more than a typical garment with a few added touches of finery. It represented Joseph’s favored position in the family. The first-born son of the favorite wife.
Jacob got all his kids clothes from the clearance rack at K-Mart, then surprises one son with a new Tommy Hillfiger coat.
Hated by his brothers
Verse 11 – says they were envious of him
Read verse 14
Joseph, perhaps a little naïve – or even a little proud – wears it out to check on his brothers who were working in the field. Recipe for disaster.
Read Verse 23-24
Verse 28
Sold into slavery
Joseph’s brothers go home and lie to their father. They dip his coat in blood then, an tell their father he was killed by a wild animal.
TRANSITION: That’s clearly a picture of an imperfect family. But that’s not the end of Joseph’s story in the Bible. For a few moments now let’s consider…
II. JOSEPH’S LIFE LESSONS FOR US ON SURVIVING IMPERFECT FAMILIES
After being brought up in chaos and sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph becomes the survivor of an imperfect family in dramatic fashion. His life tells all of us, first of all…
Don’t quit
I suppose most of us would understand if Joseph just gave up at this point resigned himself to failure. We’d forgive him if his attitude was poor and his disposition a little less than cheery. We might even let him off easy if he used his family background as an excuse for his inactivity.
But Joseph shows none of those tendencies.
In fact, when Joseph turns up next in Genesis 39, he is the servant of a man named Potiphar, the captain of the guard in the Egyptian Empire.
Read Gen. 39:3-4
God gave him success in everything he did
Found favor in the eyes of his attendant
So Joseph shows us that we can’t give up just because of an imperfect family background. We can’t use that as an excuse for inactivity.
Second, Joseph’s life tells us to…
Be faithful
Some people from imperfect families may be tempted to blame God for their troubles, and become bitter with Him. We might understand if Joseph abandoned his faith for awhile after such a traumatic ordeal as being disowned by your own brothers. But instead, Joseph kept his faith in God and became known for his devotion to Him.
In fact, Joseph is set apart as one of the greatest people in the Bible because no criticism ever offered on his life. 14 chapters of the Bible deal with his life, yet no moral failure or major shortcoming is ever mentioned. This sets him apart from Abraham, Moses, David and other great men of God mentioned in the Bible. Joseph was truly a godly man.
Regardless of our family origin, we can make it our life’s goal to follow God and be faithful to his teachings.
Third, Joseph’s life shows us we can…
Break the cycle
Joseph’s family was known for deceit. His father Jacob deceived his own father Isaac to steal Esau’s birthright. Joseph’s grandfather, Laban, tricked his father into marrying both Rachel and Leah. Later Jacob deceived Laban and took advantage of him. Joseph’s brothers deceived their dad by telling him Joseph was killed by a wild animal. On and on we could go, but you get the picture.
The family was dishonest and deceitful. Yet, Joseph became known for his integrity.
Genesis 39:4 says Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.
When Potiphar’s wife makes sexual advances on Joseph, he replies by saying, Genesis 39:9 – “How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”
Sometimes we make excuses – I’m like this because my father was like this, etc.
Joseph shows us our families’ imperfections don’t have to live on for another generation through us. We can break the cycle. A new tradition can begin with us.
Fourth, Joseph’s life teaches us to…
Trust God
Potiphar’s wife didn’t like it that Joseph wouldn’t respond to her advances, so she falsely accused him of attempting to rape her. Joseph was immediately sent to prison.
But there is a recurring theme in Joseph’s life… we see it first in Gen. 39:2, then again in 39:21…the Lord was with Him.
An imperfect family background in no way means that God has forgotten you or left you. God will never leave you! Even when the situations appear to be the worst. The Lord is with you.
Lastly, Joseph’s life shows us to…
Be useful
In prison, Joseph’s character qualities granted him favor with the prison warden, and he put Joseph in charge of his prisoners.
Later he is calle upon to interpret Pharoah’s dreams.
At the age of 30, he rose to be 2nd in command in the world’s most powerful empire.
Genesis 41:41
Some people from an imperfect family may feel like a pitcher that has been broken. Know that they can be put back together, but not be very useful.
You may feel broken, but God wants to not only restore you, but make you useful. Fulfill your God-given mission. Joseph’s life shows us that God can and will use people from all kinds of backgrounds to do his work.
TRANSITION: Joseph had a rotten family background. On the surface he would appear to be unqualified to account for much of anything. But he survived.
He didn’t quit.
He was faithful to God.
He broke the cycle.
He trusted God to be with Him.
And he allowed himself to be useful in the hands of God.
A true survivor story.
WRAP-UP
Some of you are right where Joseph was…
You’ve been treated unfairly
Betrayed by loved ones
Falsely accused
Forgotten by those you counted on
You can be a survivor!
With God’s activity in your life – you can be a survivor!
