Hello, my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
Was there any favoritism or partiality shown in your family either when you were growing up or when you parented your children? Did that result in some sibling rivalry and did that ever get out of control in your family?
In our “Grand Narrative” journey with Jacob we come to Genesis 37 where we discover sibling rivalry has reached a boiling point with Joseph and some of his stepbrothers. While all the brothers shared Jacob as their father, they were from four different mothers! Joseph and Benjamin from Rachel, all the other stepbrothers from Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah. They all lived together with Jacob, their father, on one big homestead, yet in tent clusters which separated them as families with their mother. Can you envision this family arrangement and how it fed sibling rivalry?
Everyone knew Rachel had been Jacob’s favorite wife and her two sons were by far Jacob’s favorite sons. Joseph even wore a ‘coat of many colors’, a gift from his father which drew attention to Joseph and often aroused jealousy with the brothers. We can understand that, can’t we?
Gen. 37:1-4 tells us jealousy grew to resentment and even hatred toward Joseph from his siblings, but Joseph seemed unaware of how dangerous things had become for him. To make matters worse, Joseph was having dreams and telling those dreams to his father and brothers. In those dreams both Joseph’s siblings and even father were bowing down to him and that turned sibling hatred into rage! (Gen. 37:5-11) So how did your family handle sibling rivalry, both when you were a child and as you raised your children? In Joseph’s case it was not managed well!
Joseph 37:12-24 gives us the famous story of teenager Joseph, sent by his father Jacob to see how his brothers and the flocks were doing, finding himself facing the jealousy, anger and hatred of his brothers in a way he could never have imagined. Stripped of his fancy robe, they threw Joseph down into an empty pit planning to leave him there to die.
But as they sat having lunch under a tree the brothers saw a caravan of traders approaching and instead sold their brother Joseph to the traders who were heading to Egypt. There young Joseph would be resold on the slave market, a common practice in those days. The traders are identified as “Ishmaelites” which means they were descendants of Ishmael, brother of Isaac whom Abraham had sent away with his Egyptian mother Hagar, remember? (Gen. 21:8-21) Ishmael would have been uncle to Jacob, thus distant relatives to Jacob’s sons who were selling their brother Joseph.
Joseph was likely bound and carted off to Egypt, walking behind a camel, most all the way to Egypt! As we look at this scene it seems horrific, barbaric, but as we will soon see, God was at work in this apparent disaster, preparing the details of a future miracle. Has that ever happened to you, my friends? Out of the ashes of despair, have you seen God build possibilities that you could never have imagined?
For Joseph’s brothers this was finally relief, at least for the moment. But of course, they needed a story for their father Jacob, and someone got the idea of tearing the coat and sprinkling it with blood from one of their sheep they killed. Upon their return home, they showed the torn coat to Jacob asking if he recognized it and claiming they found it, suggesting maybe an animal mauled and ate Joseph? Jealousy had turned to hatred which conceived a murderous plan; sale of their brother as a slave; and now a lie they hoped would lead Jacob to forget his son, believing him as good as dead.
Three Scriptures come to my mind as I pause to ponder what has happened in Jacob’s God blessed, Covenant family.
1. Genesis 4:7 God said to Cain: “if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
2. Proverbs 4:23 King Solomon wrote: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
3. James, the 1/2 brother of Jesus wrote: “When tempted no one should say, ‘God is tempting me’. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does God tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.”
So, what do you and I understand about the daily, hourly battle for our hearts and the schemes of the dark kingdom to draw us away from what is good, right and God honoring? How are we vulnerable to those schemes enticing us to think, say and do those things which undermine our reputations, shame us and disqualify us from God involving us for His glory in the grand story He is writing in history?
It’s not difficult for us to put ourselves in Joseph’s story and understand exactly what has happened and how sibling rivalry got carried away to such an atrocity, do you agree? We see it all around us today, no matter where you live in the world. But knowing the Genesis story we’ve followed of God’s Covenant promises to Abraham, then Isaac and more recently Jacob, do you struggle trying to understand WHY God would allow such evil to happen to Joseph, one of the Covenant descendants of Jacob, through whom the Covenant promises of God were certainly intended to be passed on one day to the next generation? Do you struggle understanding why God allows such evil in our day? Only God can help us understand HIS perspective on such deep questions as we will see in days ahead with Joseph.
When Jacob was presented with the evidence by his sons, the blood stained, shredded coat of many colors, his broken-hearted response should not be a surprise to us. Genesis 37:34 says: “Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son for many days… meanwhile the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials…”
We need to pause right here and reflect. For Jacob, while he still had a large family, his beloved Rachel was dead and now his favorite son Joseph is presumed dead. Jacob had little reason for optimism as he looked out into his future. For the brothers, they could assume no one would ever see Joseph alive again, but at least he was alive and hopefully would have a reasonable existence working for a benevolent master in Egypt.
For Joseph, he had no reason for hope and every reason to conclude God had abandoned him and his life would be worthless, hopeless and barely survival as a slave in Egypt. But Almighty God was working a much bigger plan faithful to His Covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
Oh, it would not be seen for some time, but Joseph faced a major decision that first night in Egypt: Give up on God or believe God does not change and He is always faithful to His Character and His Covenants? What would you have done? Here’s a worship song that calls us to lift our eyes above the dreadful circumstances, declaring God’s faithful, reliable majesty! Will your heart rise up and join this song, even if you face ‘Joseph like’, painful circumstances?
Today’s Scripture: Genesis 37.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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