Dysfunction or Function?
Notes
Transcript
Reading through this passage about Joseph and the hatred that his brothers had for him would make for a good movie about dysfunctional families.
Dysfunctional families, you’ve met them or know them. You might have even grown up in one.
I came across a list of 17 signs that you might be in a dysfunctional family
17 - New bill to ban assault weapons specifically mentions your family.
16 - Your vacations are planned through AA instead of AAA.
15 - Your mother and your preteen sister always fighting over the last beer.
14 - In the middle of family reunion, the FBI cuts power to ranch.
13 - Bikers next door always complaining about the noise.
12 - Local police save money by making your house a precinct substation.
11 - Brother is writing nostalgic screenplay, "A Menendez Family Christmas."
10 - Your new little sister is named after a famous serial killer.
9 - Holidays usually celebrated by sniffing glue and kicking a toaster around the house.
8 - Your son informs you he doesn't care to be your cellmate anymore.
7 - You have to buy separate Mother's Day cards for each of Mom's personalities.
6 - Family discussions usually begin with, "Put the gun down."
5 - You *finally* get your work published in a major newspaper and your brother sics the Feds on you.
4 - Instead of saying grace before dinner, father reads the most wanted list for your county
3 - Thanksgiving Dinner consists of Wild Turkey instead of roast turkey.
2 - Didn't make today's Top 5 List? Dad holds ya, Mom beats ya.
1 - No more sunny breakfast nook now that kitchen is a meth lab.
I hope none of those are true for you!
This passage from Genesis is a demonstration of how dysfunction effects the entire family. It is also a picture of Joseph falling in status from that a privileged teenager to a slave boy. I also see a thread of mercy throughout the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
Thank God for His mercy. He gives us what we need rather than what we deserve.
Abraham twice placed Sarah in a position of compromise and danger.
Isaac and his wife Rebekah had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau was the firstborn, he was the one to receive the birthright and paternal blessing. Isaac favored Esau over Jacob. Esau was the rugged outdoorsman. Jacob was a shepherd. Jacob was doted on by his mother.
Esau gave up his birthright for a bowl of stew and Rebekah and Jacob tricked Isaac into giving Jacob the paternal blessing.
Now that is a picture of a functional family, right? No, it was certainly a dysfunctional family.
Jacob married twice because he got tricked by his father-in-law. He worked 7 years for the love of his life, Rachel. It was only in the morning after the wedding that he discovered that he was married to her older sister Leah. He worked another seven years and finally was able to marry Rachel.
Leah had a number of children, but Rachel was unable to have children. Rachel gave Jacob her servant Bilhah and she produced two sons for Jacob. Leah eventually was unable to produce any more children so she gave her servant Zilpah to Jacob as a wife and she produced two children.
Do you see a little dysfunction here?
Leah did eventually have two more sons, now there were six sons she produced. Her last child was a daughter Dinah.
The Bible tells us
22 Then God remembered Rachel, responded to her, and let her conceive. 23 She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my shame.” 24 She named him Joseph, saying to herself, May the Lord give me another son.
So here we see that Jacob has two wives and two quasi-wives and between them he has twelve sons and at least one daughter. If that doesn’t set a family up for dysfunction, I do not know what will.
Add to that, Rachel was his first love. Leah and the two servant women produced ten sons for him. Rachel finally has two sons, Joseph and then Benjamin. Joseph was his first born from his true love Rachel. Joseph was the son that Jacob wanted in the first place. Even though he was number 11 in the birth order of the sons, in Jacob’s heart, he was the first born.
Jacob was an older man when Joseph was born. He doted on him and it seems that Joseph was a spoiled brat.
One author put it this way:
Opening Up Genesis Chapter 12: Misery and Mystery (37:1–38:30)
All these facts combine to make the account of this unusual family not a story of godly heritage so much as a story of mercy!
Thank God for His mercy. Jacob had quite a mess on his hands that was going to lead to some very challenging times. This mess was mainly of his own making and from what he learned from his own parents.
Take a look at verses 3-4
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons because he was born when Jacob was old. Jacob had made for him a long4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him and couldn’t even talk nicely to him.
Stop and think about this dysfunctional family. Israel (Jacob’s new name) loved Joseph more than any of his other sons. Jacob went so far as to have a special robe or coat made for him. Some translation say it was a coat of many colors others that it was a long-sleeved coat. Either way, the coat or robe was a status symbol.
Did your parent’s ever give one of your siblings something you had always wanted? Do you remember the disappointment and maybe even anger that they got it and you didn’t?
Here is this teen-age brat and he get’s this special robe from their father. Jacob is practically rubbing their noses into the fact that he loves this kid more than he loves the others.
I believe that the brothers are beginning to see where they stand in the family. Remember the event in Jacob’s and Esau’s life? Esau was the first born, he was the one to have the birth right. He was the one to receive the paternal blessing. Jacob managed to get both of them away from Esau.
Jacob was the one who was afraid of what Esau might do to him.
I would have thought that Jacob would not have done anything that would have been a repeat of his own life, but he did. Jacob’s other sons all hated their younger brother. There are four steps that are shown here where the fire of their hatred grows hotter.
2 This is the account of Jacob’s descendants. Joseph was 17 years old and tended the flock with his brothers. While he was helping the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, Joseph told their father unflattering things about them.
Joseph purposefully says things to change his father’s feelings about his older brothers. This translation says that he told dad some unflattering things about four of his brothers. The NIV says that he gave dad a bad report about them.
Have you ever been around a tattle-tale? They are so annoying. I refuse to listen to it. The kid doing it is trying to get the other one in trouble.
Joseph has been working with these brothers. The Bible doesn’t tell us what they did. Maybe they were slackers and not doing everything they were supposed to. Maybe they were mean to the animals in their care.
What ever it was, Joseph dresses up what they did, and probably exaggerates it and goes to tell dad.
Now I’m just going to think for a moment that Jacob had a conversation with those brothers and reads them the riot act. You can almost picture Joseph eavesdropping on the encounter and laughing to himself that they were in trouble.
The brothers hated him because of that.
Take a look again at verse 4
4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him and couldn’t even talk nicely to him.
They couldn’t even talk nicely to him because of their hatred.
Realize this, this wasn’t Joseph’s fault that Jacob loved him more than any of the others. This was Jacob’s fault, but their hatred was directed at Joseph.
Maybe it was because Joseph put that special coat on and flaunted himself before his brothers. I want to believe that this part is true because of what happens next.
Beginning in verse 5 Joseph has a dream and he tells his brothers about this dream. He says that they were all stalks of grain. His stalk stood up and their stalks all bowed down to him.
Look at their response there in verse 8
8 His brothers said to him, “Will you really be our king and rule over us?” So they hated him even more because of the dreams he told them.
Their hate is growing deeper because of his dreams. He even has another dream that he tells his father about the sun, moon and stars bowing down to him
Check out the response in verse 11
11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father took careful note of the matter.
Could Jacob had done something? Probably, but it had been going on all of Joseph’s life.
One author wrote:
Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary Joseph Alienates His Family (37:1–11)
The account of the dreams, coming at the outset, makes God, not Joseph, the ‘hero’ of the story: it is not a tale of human success but of divine sovereignty.
These dreams were though from God. How should Joseph have responded to them? It seems that pride was deeply ingrained and he responded in pride that he was going to be great than his brothers. He could have used these dreams to prepare for the future that God was laying out for him. They indicated that he was going to lead his family.
Instead, Joseph used the dreams to puff up his pride and over inflate his ego.
Kurt Strassner wrote:
Opening Up Genesis Joseph’s Slavery
Joseph took gifts from God—his dreams—and turned them into tools of self-promotion!
He goes on and writes:
Opening Up Genesis Joseph’s Slavery
And aren’t we also prone to take the good gifts of God—our positions, our possessions, our intelligence, our education, our sexuality, our ability to pray—and use them, not for the benefit of others and the glory of God, but only to make ourselves feel better? Think it out. What good gifts has God given you which you are tempted to use solely for yourself? As you think it out, notice the obvious: Joseph’s sins came back and bit him! He ended up in a pit, in a slave caravan, and in slavery because he abused the good gifts of God. If he was to be God’s leader, he would have to learn humility somehow. So God let him stumble; “whom the Lord loves, He disciplines.”
Look down to verse 18. Jacob sends Joseph on a trip to check on his brothers.
18 They saw Joseph in the distance before he got close to them, and they plotted to kill him.
That is where hatred will take us if we allow it. They so hated their younger brother that they plotted to kill him. This probably wasn’t the first time that they thought about killing him, but now those thoughts were out in the open and they began plotting to kill him.
Their idea is to kill him and toss him into one of the water cisterns and then tell their dad that he was killed by a wild animal. Reuben, the oldest brother must have had some guilt about what was proposed. He told his brothers to just toss him into a cistern. He was planning on sneaking Joseph back home.
But what happened?
23 When Joseph reached his brothers, they stripped off Joseph’s long robe, 24 took him, and threw him into the cistern, an empty cistern with no water in it. 25 When they sat down to eat, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with camels carrying sweet resin, medicinal resin, and fragrant resin on their way down to Egypt.
Notice this, Joseph shows up in his special robe. Joseph it seems came to be noticed. The brother’s reached their boiling point, and stripped the robe off and threw him into and empty cistern and they sat down to eat.
Reuben had attempted to step in and find a way out for them. This entire situation could have been chalked up to “boys will be boy”, it could have ended as nothing more than a prank. A really mean prank, but a prank nonetheless.
They didn’t take the out. They allowed their emotions to get the better of them. The entire situation got away from them and then next thing you see is Judah convincing his brothers that Joseph is their brother and convinces them to sell him off as a slave to the Ismaelites.
Isn’t that what happens when we allow sin in our lives? Sin will always take us to places we never thought we’d go.
Jacob and his family will certainly go down in history as a very dysfunctional family.
That is not the way we are meant to live. We were made for more, so much more.
26 Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”
We were created in God’s image and to resemble Him.
I know, sin killed that, it destroyed that image. Jacob and his family were no longer in the image of God. They were only doing what they thought was best for them.
You’re right, but that is still not how it is supposed to be.
We were created in God’s image, we were created to resemble Him.
Take a look at Ephesians 4
17 So I’m telling you this, and I insist on it in the Lord: you shouldn’t live your life like the Gentiles anymore. They base their lives on pointless thinking, 18 and they are in the dark in their reasoning. They are disconnected from God’s life because of their ignorance and their closed hearts. 19 They are people who lack all sense of right and wrong, and who have turned themselves over to doing whatever feels good and to practicing every sort of corruption along with greed.
When you are living a dysfunctional life, this is what it looks like. Paul said of the Gentiles, “They base their lives on pointless thinking.”
I have known way to many who claim to be Christian that are fully dysfunctional. They base their lives on pointless thinking. I say they claim to be Christian because their lives do not measure up to what it means to be a Christian.
Paul didn’t stop there at verse 19, listen to what he has to say:
20 But you didn’t learn that sort of thing from Christ. 21 Since you really listened to him and you were taught how the truth is in Jesus, 22 change the former way of life that was part of the person you once were, corrupted by deceitful desires. 23 Instead, renew the thinking in your mind by the Spirit 24 and clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.
That is a radical change that Paul is talking about. This is taking your life from dysfunctional to being functional.
There is to be a radical transformation in our lives. If we are still living essentially like we did before we came to know Jesus, if that introduction to Jesus did not result in a radical change in your life then you are not truly a Christian.
Paul says to “change the former way of life that was part of the person you once were, corrupted by deceitful desires.”
Did you catch that? “Change the former way of life that was part of the person you once were.” You are no longer that person. You’ve been changed, at least you should have. If you haven’t changed then you need to reevaluate your relationship with God.
Paul says that you need to “renew the thinking in your mind by the Spirit.” That is the transformational work of the Spirit in you. You are a new creature in Christ. The image of God that we were created has been restored in you.
24 and clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.
There you go. Clothe yourself with the new person created according to God’s image in justice and true holiness.
It cannot be said any better.
In Christ you are a new person created according to God’s image.
You were not meant to live like Jacob and his family. You were not meant to live a dysfunctional life.
You were created for something greater. You were created to live in the very image of God.