Genesis chapter 37.
Genesis chapter 37, we're gonna do a quick excursus
through the entire chapter,
skipping over some of the narrative portions
to kinda look at the idea of navigating family jealousy,
the idea of jealousy in the family.
A few years ago, for those of you who don't know,
I have a sister, she is 10 years younger than I am.
And so my sister and I, we had a great relationship
growing up, I was kind of always the big brother,
you know, the model figure in her life.
We didn't really fight much,
we didn't really have a whole lot in common
as far as things to fight over.
And so we kind of just always enjoyed each other's company.
The negative part of that, of any of you who is like me,
who have, you know, a decade or more in between siblings,
is that you miss out on large swaths of their life.
And so by the time I went off to college,
she was just entering into her middle school,
high school years, and then I went straight from college
to ministry down in South Florida.
And so I missed all of her college years.
And so we missed a lot of that kind of bonding time
through some of those ups and downs of life.
But a few years ago, my sister kind of came clean
with my mom and I about the idea that she had really
struggled really most of her middle school
and high school years with kind of fitting in
and really feeling like she measured up.
Because I had always gotten really good grades in school,
had a high GPA, graduating with honors,
and I went into ministry school.
And from her perspective, she always saw kind of like that.
I was like the golden child.
My mom would always, you know, a dot on me
and she kind of felt a little bit left out.
We were sort of a blended family.
She's technically my half sister,
but we never really saw things like that.
But she came out a few years ago and said,
you know what, I've always felt like I lived in your shadow.
And that was kind of surprising to me
because I've never really tried to act
like I was a dominating figure
or like I was better than her.
That would never really ever came across my mind.
But when she admitted that,
she admitted that she had struggled with that for years.
Since then, and since her kind of opening up about that,
I think things have been pretty good between us.
I had the opportunity a few years back to do her wedding.
And that was a cool bonding experience.
And it kind of got me thinking, you know, like,
a lot of times we think about the complications
and the conflicts that we navigate in family.
Certainly the things that you say out in the open
can create conflict,
but a lot of times it's the things that are unspoken
that can create some conflict in family.
It kind of got me thinking a little bit about that.
It's not usually just only the stuff that you say out loud,
but sometimes the stuff that you keep inside
that can do a lot of damage in relationships,
in family relationships.
That's kind of what we're gonna see tonight
in between the narrative of Joseph and his brothers
and then their father, Jacob.
If you're not familiar with Genesis chapter 37,
let me get you up to speed a little bit.
We're gonna be entering kind of into the beginning
of the narrative portion of Joseph's story
in Genesis chapter 37.
Leading up to this time,
Jacob and his sons have returned back
to the land of Canaan.
They had an interaction with Esau, his brother.
They've made peace.
Jacob's wife, Rachel, has passed away in childbirth,
birthing Benjamin.
And then they traveled back to Beth El
where the covenant was reconfirmed
and Jacob was then officially renamed to Israel.
And then were introduced kind of in chapter 37 to Joseph,
which will kind of be the main character
for the rest of the book of Genesis.
Now, the longest narrative in Genesis
is about this particular person, Joseph.
There's 13 chapters from 37 all the way to the end of the book
and all of them have to do with the story of Joseph.
And the only person that rivals that
as far as narrative amount is Abraham
and Joseph beats him by just a few verses.
Joseph's story kind of closely resembles the idea
of the person and the work of Christ in the New Testament.
A lot of people will say that Joseph is like a type of Christ,
a representative of him in the Old Testament.
And Joseph's story really shows the fall and the rise
from human strife, salvation of a people
and the faithfulness of God.
And that's kind of the overarching narrative of Joseph.
But tonight we wanna look at specifically
this idea of navigating family conflict
in the idea of family jealousy.
So let's do this.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer,
ask him to bless our study through scripture today
and then we'll begin reading in verse one of chapter 37.
Let's pray together.
Father in heaven, we thank you so much
for the opportunity we have to look
into your scripture tonight.
We thank you for family and the wonderful gift that it is.
Father, that you've created the first marriage
of Adam and Eve, Lord,
and gave to them the blessing of children
for children are a heritage of the womb and gift from you.
Father, we do thank you for this wonderful gift of family,
but Lord, we do recognize the power of sin
and the destructiveness that it can have in relationships
because where sin is, there's death.
And Father, I pray that as we look in tonight scripture
of Genesis chapter 37 and we realize the destructive nature
of jealousy and favoritism in regards to children
and siblings, Lord, I pray that you would help us
to understand the meaning of the text,
but Lord, help us to be able to apply it to our life
wherever we may find ourselves,
whether we are just beginning families
or our children are grown
or we're still dealing with difficulties
between siblings or parents,
whether we be children or adults, Lord,
I pray that you would help teach us from your word
how we can navigate some of these family conflicts.
Give us your wisdom, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
So if you have your copy of our scriptures,
we're gonna be in Genesis chapter 37
as we begin reading in verse one.
Tonight I wanna kinda tell you really the idea,
kind of the sermon in the sentence, if you will,
and that's really the idea that we can avoid animosity
in our families by seeing three connections
that lead to family conflict, all right?
So we're gonna logically follow these connections
all the way to a specific destination, all right?
So if you're taking notes,
it's on the back of your prayer sheet tonight.
If you didn't get one, we have them in the back,
feel free to step up and get one.
If you're taking notes tonight,
the very first connection we'll see is that favoritism
that leads to jealousy, favoritism that leads to jealousy.
And we'll begin reading in verse one.
It says here in the scripture,
and Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger
in the land of Canaan.
These are the generations of Jacob.
Joseph, being 17 years old,
was feeding the flock with his brother in,
and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah
and the sons of Zippah, his father's wives,
and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children
because he was a son of his old age
and he had made him a coat of many colors.
And when his brother saw that their father loved him more
than all of his brethren, they hated him
and could not speak peaceably unto him.
In the first few verses here,
we really kind of see this,
we're introduced to the family conflict, if you will.
Joseph is at the young age of 17,
and he's at work with his brothers.
And already we're introduced to some complications
in their family.
Now if you're not familiar with some of those complications,
they're noted here in verse two
when it talks about him being with the sons
of two different men, women who were his father's wives.
Now to say that their family was a little bit dysfunctional
might be a little bit of an understatement
because Jacob had actually four wives
and the brothers that Joseph had had four different mothers.
There were four different groups of siblings
because each of these mothers had their own children
and one dad, so that was kind of majorly dysfunctional
even by Old Testament standards.
And here it says that Joseph being with his brothers
at the end of verse two talks about him bringing
an evil report to his father about these brothers.
Now here we're given some information about Joseph
and his interaction with his brothers.
It says here that he's feeding the flock with his brethren
and then he reports on their behavior to their father.
Now this is kind of an interesting side note
not necessarily part of our study tonight,
although I think that there may be some merit to it,
but the idea interesting side note here,
this phrase feeding the flock with his brethren
is actually a Hebrew phrase, which is the phrase,
Ra'aet.
Now what's interesting about Ra'aet,
and we'll kind of look at it here,
illustrated in a few other verses,
is that Ra'a means to feed or to take care of,
we would say maybe to pasture,
but it has a very wide swath of caring for.
In 2 Samuel chapter five and 2 Samuel chapter seven,
the same word is translated differently.
2 Samuel chapter five verse two,
you can see the verses up on the screen.
It says also in times past when Saul was king over us,
that was he that lead us out and brought us in Israel,
and the Lord said unto thee thou shalt feed my people.
That's the Ra'aet version of in 2 Samuel chapter five,
and thou shalt be a captain over them.
Now he's not technically feeding them like open up, say awe.
This is the idea of he's watching over them,
lording over them if you will, being a leader among them.
2 Samuel chapter seven, seven says it this way,
in all the places wherein I have walked
with all the children of Israel,
spake I a word with any of the tribes of Israel
whom I commanded to feed my people.
It's the same phrase in Hebrew Ra'aet,
which means to take care of, right?
To feed, it's translated feed here,
but it's not literally putting,
here open up, here comes the birdie, right?
It's not that kind of feed,
it's the idea of taking an oversight
and taking care of.
This idea of Ra'aet together creates that.
This word et is sometimes translated in English
as a preposition, but it really doesn't have a,
this phrase in Hebrew does not have a parallel in English.
It's something actually it's used
in their language to point a verb to an object.
So we would call that somehow maybe a preposition
or how we would translate that,
but that's not how it's used.
In fact, when it's used with an indefinite article,
it's actually dropped altogether from their language.
So they don't even actually use it.
So for us, we would usually use the word like the,
the banana, we're pointing to a specific banana.
If we would say a banana, we're gonna say,
well, which one?
When they use it in that regard, they would just drop it
all together.
Now, why do I even bring that up?
Well, it's an interesting thought
because when you look at this text here,
and it says that he's feeding the flock with his brother,
and that's the Ra'aet version of this text,
the flock is inserted in between Ra'a and et.
And I think that to be, to be a faithful to the text,
another faithful way of saying this was that,
could be that Joseph was 17,
and he was shepherding the group, that's the flock,
of his brothers and brought an evil report to his father.
The reason why I bring that up is because later on,
we'll see that that's exactly what happens a second time.
And so there's, I can't be,
I cannot speak authoritatively on this subject,
but it is interesting to note that another way
of understanding this passage would be that
he was not feeding the flock,
but that he was lording over his brothers.
He was, in a way, watching over them.
And that would make sense because as soon as he's done,
he turns around and reports on them,
which is exactly what he'll do later on in the chapter.
Just an interesting thought.
Not a hill I would die on,
but an interesting thought nonetheless.
It's unclear whether this is really,
this idea of reporting on his brothers
is like dedicated malicious behavior,
or he's using it to gain favor with his father,
but understanding and only caring about this behavior
could really cause an issue for his father's reputation.
It's unclear whether or not he was like,
yeah, I'm taking notes guys
because you guys are really messed up
and I really wanna look like the best son,
or whether or not he really cared
about his father's reputation.
It was like, I gotta tell dad about this
because these guys are just acting like crazy people.
We don't know, it's not really clear from scripture
what his motivation was for why he gave the evil report.
At best, it may have been naive,
and at worst, maybe divisive.
But what we do know is that it inflamed
the already fiery situation that was going on
between him, his brothers, and his dad.
Here it says that his brethren saw that their father
loved him more.
And what we see in this passage is that the favoritism
that was garnered by Joseph from Jacob from Israel
really led to jealousy among his brethren.
It tells us here in verse three,
that Jacob, Israel, loved him because of his connection
to his mother who was Rachel,
who had passed giving birth to her second child, Benjamin.
And because he was special,
because he was the child of his old age
and the child of his favorite wife,
Rachel, he gives to him a coat of many colors.
Now, an article of this quality would have assumed
to represent really not just wealth, but also station.
We would have seen not just a representative of his love,
but also kind of an elevation of him
being the favored child.
Do we have any favorite children in here tonight?
Don't raise your hand, right?
Some of you may be saying, I'm the only kid,
so yes, I'm the favorite kid, right?
I don't know what your situation was like in your family.
I don't know if your family ever had any of this issue
in with favoritism, but Jacob here
in a way of elevating Joseph and making it very clear,
this is my favorite child.
It says that he makes for him a coat of many colors.
Now, there's some argument about what this coat
really looked like.
Was it all the way down to the floor?
Was it a long sleeve?
None of that really matters too much to the narrative,
but what strikes me odd is that when I read this
from a modern perspective,
really the first thing I think about is,
how is this a flex?
The last thing I wanted when I was 17
was for my parents to give me clothes, right?
To dress me.
I wanted to wear what was cool.
I wanted to wear what was hanging up in the mall
on the, in the window, right?
Most of the stuff my dad wore was like,
what was on sale at Costco, right?
And that's the last thing I wanted to wear
when I was 17, right?
So, looking at it from a modern view,
I'm kind of like, well, what in the world?
The last thing, I would say, yuck,
I don't want my dad dressing me when I was 17, right?
I don't know if maybe your parents were like this,
but I saw both in my grandfather and in my dad,
it was like, they had like this,
if you would have looked at their closet,
it was almost like they wore the same thing every day.
So it was like, they always had this color pants
and then this kind of shirt.
And so like my stepdad always has a shirt kind of like this.
Oh man, I'm dressed just like him.
He had this kind of shirt,
and he always had his aviator sunglasses
that he would wear on his head, right?
I'm just like, dad, it's raining.
Why do you have aviator sunglasses on your head, right?
This is the last thing I wanted when I was a kid
was I wanted my parents to dress me.
Now, looking at it from the cultural context,
however, this multicolored clothing
would have been something that would have been
very, very important to wear.
In fact, if you look at it through the historical lens,
there's a few pictures up here.
Some of the tombs that were discovered
that were in this same century are noted.
There are many of these that are of people
who are kings and dignitaries.
Part of what was noted about the figurines
and the paintings that were on the walls
that depicted scenes from their life
is that only the people in high stations,
their servants and other dignitaries
were pictured wearing multicolored clothing.
You gotta think about it from this perspective
that in this time and day,
there wasn't impressive clothing companies.
There wasn't a lot of places where you could go
where they had all these pre-made dyed clothes
that you could get.
It was a lot of work to create a multi-layered,
a multicolored tunic or robe.
And so there was a lot of money and effort
that went into this.
Most people just wore animal skins and hides
and didn't have a whole lot of color in their wardrobe.
And so to have a gift of this quality
would have been a big thing for Joseph
and would have meant a significant,
I would have a significant meeting for him from his dad.
And because of this gift, because of his station,
the siblings here, the brothers' jealousy
was so severe that in verse four,
it says that they could not even speak peaceably to him.
Here in verse four, it says,
when the brother saw their father loved him more
than all of his brother and they hated him
and could not speak peaceably unto him.
This word peaceably is the word shalom,
which is still used as a greeting today in Israel.
So it could have been even possible that his brothers
couldn't even greet their own brother.
They had nothing, they wanted nothing to do with him.
Now sibling resentment really isn't something,
it's something new, it's something that's been around
for generations and something that's happened
for a long time.
There's a famous sibling duo,
you may recognize their name, Warren and Doris Buffett.
They had a brother and sister,
they had a really jealous resentment.
And as history tells us,
one became a very wealthy philanthropist
who was kind of devoted to gaining riches,
while the other, his sister Doris,
was also a philanthropist,
but she was dedicated to giving her riches away.
And there was a lot of resentment in their story,
but eventually the two of them
reunited past their differences.
And according to some recent statistics in 2019,
when the two of them, instead of seeing themselves
as odds joined forces,
they've actually in 2019 had given away
over $80 million to individuals who were needy.
And their story really demonstrates
how sibling jealousy can be transformed
into a powerful force for good.
But a lot of times that's not the case.
A lot of times when favoritism and jealousy are involved,
it leads to our next connection.
If you're taking notes, the next connection
where favoritism that leads to jealousy,
we will see that jealousy that leads to deception,
jealousy that leads to deception.
And we're gonna skip down a little bit in this narrative,
down to verse 18.
So in between verses four and 18,
Joseph is sent, he talks to his family
about a dream that he has.
It doesn't go over very well with his brothers
or with his father.
And he is sent again to care for his brothers.
And when he is sent again,
this time they hatch a plan.
They hatch a plan.
So let's read in verses 18 and down to verse 24.
Scripture says that when they saw him afar off,
even before he came near unto them,
they conspired against him to slay him.
And they said one to another,
behold this dreamer cometh.
Now, come therefore, let us slay him
and cast him into some pit.
And he will say, and we will say,
some evil beast hath devoured him
and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
And Reuben heard it and he delivered him
out of their hands and said, let us not kill him.
And Reuben said unto them, shed no blood,
but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness.
And lay no hand upon him that he might rid him
out of their hands to deliver him to his father again.
So he kind of hatched up a plan, let's not kill him,
let's throw him in a pit and then later I'll double back
and I'll pull him out.
Verse 23 says it came to pass when Joseph was come
unto his brethren that they stripped Joseph out of his coat,
his coat of many colors that was on him
and they took him and cast him into the pit.
And the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
So as I've already mentioned, in between these two narratives,
Joseph is gifted with a dream and he explains
to his siblings and his parents, it doesn't go over well.
And being sent by Jacob in verse 14 to Ra at Shalom,
which means to see whether it be well
or to take care of them and bring peace.
And then report back, verse 14,
Jacob gives them that task again,
that brothers choose this time to conspire against Joseph.
Now this idea in verse 18 that when they see him afar off,
even before he came near, they conspire against him
to slay him.
This idea of conspire means to be crafty
or to be deceitful.
Their plan was to kill Joseph in the far country
of Dothan where they were and to toss his corpse
into a cistern.
Now cisterns were very common back in that day,
especially with the herding,
community that was around.
There were many people who were shepherds
and taking care of goats and livestock.
And so this became a lifesaving thing,
especially for them in the dry seasons.
And so many people would dig out these large pits
in the ground and they would basically be
in three different shapes.
They've been excavated through archeology in the Holy Land.
And when they find them, they usually find one
of three shapes.
They're three shapes, they're usually either the bottle shape,
the triangle shape, or what's called the bell shape,
or the pear shape, which is in picture three.
This is what you would normally find.
This is what a cistern would look like.
You've got the ground above and then this big,
empty hole in the ground.
And its purpose was to collect rainwater
through the rainy season.
And then in the dry season, you could go back
and you can throw in your bucket,
you could throw in your jar, and you could pull up water
and water your animals.
Normally there was a large rock, flat rock,
over these cisterns, kind of like a lid,
to keep the water from evaporating in the heat.
This would be an ideal place for taking care
of your, rashing your water, but it was also
an ideal place to cover up murder
and to, in some cases, we find in scripture,
it'd be used as a jail cell.
It's a perfect natural jail cell.
You put people in and they can't get out.
Most of the inside would have been covered
with some kind of clay that would have kind of sealed it
so that the water wouldn't escape
and go through the surrounding soil.
But this was an ideal place to put Joseph,
the brother's thought, because it would finally end
their misery of having to deal with daddy's favorite kid.
Now these places were often associated with death.
David writes about it in Psalm chapter 30, verse three.
He says, oh Lord, thou hast brought me up my soul
from the grave, thou hast kept me alive,
that I should not go down into the pit.
That were pits the same pit we see here
that the brothers consider throwing Joseph into.
So in the middle of this plot, the oldest son Ruben,
he's got a bright idea.
He says, you know what?
Killing him may not be the greatest idea for us.
That's kind of a bad thing to do.
And so how about we do this?
Instead of killing him, why don't we just throw him
in the cistern and then we don't have to technically
take the blame, right?
Before God and others that we killed him, right?
And his idea was, well, if I can make them agree
to this, then I can go back and I can rescue him later.
Now it's sort of unclear, it doesn't say in the scripture
why Ruben had this thought.
Maybe it was a moral thought.
Some people have suggested maybe Ruben was trying
to garner some good graces with his dad
because he really blew it a few chapters earlier
with his dad and maybe they thought, well,
maybe he's just trying to garner some good graces
so that when they say, well, he never made it to us.
What happened to Joseph?
And here comes Ruben.
I saved Joseph.
I found him in a pit.
He must have fallen in like a big dummy,
but I'm the hero of the story, right?
We don't really know what his motivation was,
but in any case, Ruben's plan was executed.
That's exactly what they did.
They decided to take Joseph,
they stripped him of his multicolored coat
and they threw him into a cistern here.
Scripture says in verse 24 that this pit,
this cistern was empty and there was no water in it.
As far as they were concerned, the deal was done.
They had thrown him in there.
He would have died either of exposure
or having no food or water and they could be done with it.
They put the stone on top of it
and they could go on with their life.
The sibling's jealousy led to this multifaceted deception,
a place where the brothers deceived Joseph,
that Ruben tried to deceive his brothers
and then the brothers would ultimately try
to deceive their father, Jacob,
when they go back and report to him.
We see here that jealousy leads to deception in this case.
Now, I don't know if many of you are maybe movie buffs.
I like to watch a large variety of movies.
I've never seen this one,
although I know the actor,
but in 2003 there was a movie
that was put out entitled Shattered Glass.
Has anybody seen this?
It's based on a true story,
but the true story is of a young journalist.
His name is Stephen Glass
and he wrote a 40, really 40 plus articles
for the New Republic Magazine,
which is a Washington, DC and New York City operated magazine
and he wrote them back in the 90s.
And this journalist, Stephen Glass,
he would write these incredible reports
and the reports would get more and more incredible
every time he would write an article
and he would have,
these articles would come across really
as well, well research works.
And it wasn't until another reporter
from a competing magazine, Forbes Magazine,
began to dig into some of his cases
that they would uncover that really almost half
of the articles that he wrote were completely made up.
But this guy was really into telling lies,
so much so that a lot of the articles that he would write,
he would create his own evidence
and he would create his own supporting material,
so much so that he would go into,
he created fake websites that represented fake businesses,
he created fake business cards of people
that he said he had interviewed,
he had fake email accounts,
he had fake voicemail messages that he said,
oh yeah, this guy called me and left a voicemail
and he gave me the whole stoop,
the background information about what's going on.
And eventually he got caught because they just weren't true.
And what happened for both Stephen and for the company
is that it shattered the image of both Stephen
and the magazine, which kind of leads us
to our last thought here tonight.
If you're taking notes, the last connection we see
is that deception that leads to brokenness,
deception that leads to brokenness.
So we follow this trail,
favoritism that leads to jealousy,
jealousy that leads to deception,
and deception that leads to brokenness.
Let's jump on down to verse 31
and some of the following verses.
So Joseph's been thrown into a pit
in between this time and where we leave off in verse 24,
Joseph's brothers, they decide they're going to sell him
to some Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver
and that will completely get rid of Joseph for them.
Let's pick up in verse 31.
They return back to their dad and it says in verse 31,
they took Joseph's coat and killed the kid of the goats
and dipped the coat in the blood.
And they sent the coat of many colors
and brought it to their father and said,
this have we found, know now whether it be
thy son's coat or no.
And he knew it and said, it is my son's coat.
An evil beast has devoured him.
Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
And Jacob rent his clothes and put sackcloth
upon his loins and mourned for his son many days.
So after throwing Joseph in a pit,
the brothers are recorded to go and have lunch.
Apparently it didn't bother them too much
that they had just really kind of murdered their brother.
He just hasn't died yet.
And so they get together and they have lunch
and as they're eating lunch,
scripture says that this band of Ishmaelites,
some foreigners from the North, really their cousins,
are coming down as tradesmen to go down to Egypt.
Egypt was a world power at that time.
And so they were coming down to Egypt to do some trade.
And as they saw them come by, they decided, you know what?
Why don't we fish him up out of that cistern
and we can make some money on this deal
and we can sell him as a slave
and we'll make a little bit of cash.
That way we can really be done with Joseph.
And that's exactly what they do.
They sell Joseph for 20 pieces of silver.
Interesting, that's where another connection is
between Joseph and our savior Christ.
Here we see that they have a plan
and their plan is we're going to deceive our father
but we gotta make it look right.
So what they do is they decide to take one of the goats
that they're herding, they kill it
and they spread the blood all over
what is now kind of a torn up coat.
They make it look realistic.
And as they return back to their father,
their brothers use a very interesting technique.
They allow dad to extrapolate the situation
rather than come to him with a story.
Instead of saying, oh, dad, this horrible event happened
and we can tell you all about it.
You can trust us.
What they decide to do is they bring the coat
and when they bring the coat, they say,
is this your son's coat?
Interesting, they don't say that.
Is this our brother's coat?
They say, is this your son's coat?
And they kind of let dad decide what happened.
They seem to really appear emotionally distant
from what they have done in this situation.
And upon review of this coat, Jacob makes the conclusion
that an evil beast has devoured Joseph.
Now, it's hard to kind of fathom really this.
I would imagine that the coat that Jacob had made
for his son was not just any other coat.
If someone was to find a Sonoma brand
or a member's mark coat out in our lobby,
it could be one of anybody's
because they make those things like hotcakes.
You can buy the same looking coat in Walmart, right?
This coat was not something that you could just buy
and everybody had one of these.
So it was strange to me that as they present this coat
to their father, they go, hey, do you recognize this coat?
Is this your son's coat?
It's like they didn't know.
It's strange to me that Jacob wouldn't have said,
you don't know what your brother's coat looks like?
Anyway, when he sees the coat,
it becomes very obvious to him, yes, this is Joseph's coat.
And he does then kind of follow the dotted line.
The coat's torn up, it's covered in blood.
He knew that he had sent Joseph by himself
through the wilderness to where his brothers
were in Dothan some distance from where they were.
And so he extrapolates from the information given to him
that an evil beast had devoured Joseph.
Now, in Old Testament tradition,
God would use one of four instruments to send judgment.
We see this list of instruments recorded in Ezekiel
and Jeremiah, even in Leviticus and in Hosea.
The four of them were famine, evil beast, pestilence,
and sword.
Ezekiel chapter five verse 17 has all of them
together in one verse.
It says this in Ezekiel five, 17.
So I send upon you famine and evil beasts,
and they shall bereave thee,
and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee,
and I will bring the sword upon thee,
I am the Lord have spoken it.
Now, it's possible that Jacob could have seen
this idea of evil beasts as a judgment for his sins.
Certainly he had some coming,
or maybe Joseph's, maybe one that he didn't know about.
But whatever the case, he believes it to be true,
that judgment has come and was passed upon Joseph,
and Joseph was killed by evil beasts in the wilderness.
And this situation will go on to alter Jacob
for much of his remaining life.
The next time we see Jacob isn't until many chapters later
in chapter 42, where he sends the brothers
in the middle of a famine to Egypt.
But what does he do?
He holds back Joseph's blood brother, Benjamin,
who was Rachel's other son.
Rachel had two sons.
He holds back Benjamin for fear that Benjamin would be lost.
Genesis chapter 42 verse four puts it this way,
but Benjamin, Joseph's brother,
Jacob sent not with his brethren,
for he said, lest per adventure mischief befall him.
The sending away of any of Rachel's children
would never again happen under Jacob's watch,
because this event would go on to break Jacob.
It would change his perspective on his kids forever.
The situation of Joseph brings brokenness to this family.
There's brokenness between the brothers and between Joseph.
They had sold him into slavery.
First tried to murder him, then sold him into slavery.
It would bring brokenness between Joseph and Jacob,
because a lot of Jacob's, or Joseph's life,
Jacob would not see.
It brought brokenness between the brothers and their father,
because from this point on,
their father would be emotionally distant from them.
We see that in Genesis 42, 43.
We don't have time to study out those texts,
but if you go on to read,
you can see there's an emotional distance
where he's like, you know what?
Anything can happen to you guys.
I just don't want anything happening to Benjamin.
And they'll come back and they'll report,
we can't go back to buy more corn
unless we bring Benjamin.
And then he says, if anything happens to him,
I'll die and I'll go to my grave, gray-haired,
and bereaved.
And some of the brothers are so brokenhearted,
I believe, for their father, that they literally say,
you know what?
If we don't bring Benjamin back,
you can kill our kids in place,
like to take your revenge.
That's how broken their father had become
and how much they had seen their father's brokenness.
Things are altered for the worst for this family
because of what happens.
And it starts from the connection of favoritism
to jealousy, from jealousy to deception,
and then from deception to that brokenness.
Things are altered for the worst for this family,
but as we know, God is still at work,
even in the midst of brokenness.
Joseph will experience the reality
of the New Testament promise that we find in Romans 828.
It says in Romans 828,
and we know that all things work together for good,
to them that love God,
and to them that are called according to his purpose.
Here's the reality.
If you know the story of Joseph,
Joseph then goes on, he finds favor with his masters
and then with Pharaoh,
and he's elevated to a position
because of the dreams and the interpretation that is given
that ends up saving not just the people of Egypt,
but the surrounding nations and his own family.
And then eventually his brothers show up right before him
as he is second in command of Egypt,
and he gives to them,
and then eventually reveals that connection.
And their family moves to Egypt to be taken care of.
And it's God's plan.
He says, what you purpose for evil, God meant for good.
You know what, this isn't always the case
in every family, however.
Sometimes brokenness lingers for generations.
And although God can work out good in broken purposes,
sometimes it's not always the case.
We cannot always rely on the fact
that God will just fix it if we break it.
God can redeem things,
but sometimes brokenness lingers for generations.
What I believe the lesson to be learned here isn't,
well, let's just roll the dice
and hope God will fix everything in the end.
The lesson to be learned for us in relationship
and especially our family relationships
is to watch out for the warning signs,
to see the connections that lead to conflict
in our family relationships
and to learn that unchecked animosity, unchecked jealousy,
leads ultimately to brokenness in our families.
So what should we do?
How can we respond to the warning signs?
Well, let me leave you with these a few thoughts.
What I think we should do is in our families,
we should walk the way of Jesus.
We should walk the way of Joseph,
which is the way of humility.
Because jealousy says, what about me?
While humility says, what about you?
If you want to bring restoration to your family,
perhaps your family may be plagued by this idea
of jealousy, favoritism, deception,
people taking advantage of one another.
Walk the way of Jesus and Joseph.
Not one of jealousy that thinks, what about me?
But one of humility that says, what about you?
And don't ever take your eyes off what God is doing
in your life to look and see what others
are doing for someone else's.
Let me say that again.
Don't take your eyes off what God is doing in your life
to look and see what others are doing for someone else.
So if you're someone who might struggle with jealousy,
perhaps about your siblings or someone else in your family,
it could be something even as wide as a church family.
Let me tell you, walk the way of humility.
Be thankful for what you have.
And don't let what other people have distract you
from being grateful and thankful and humble
about how God is working in your life.
Let's have a word of prayer.
We're gonna have a prayer time here in just a moment.
We'll listen.