The theme for this Quarter is “Love For One Another”. The title for this unit is “Struggles With Love”. The title of this lesson is “Biased Loved”. Interestingly enough, this digression is quite normal for families with more than one child. And, as we will find out through this quarter, while there can be struggles between siblings, those struggles can present opportunities for growth, provided that the ground in which the family unit is planted is fertile with love.
Judges 3:1-2
1 These are the nations that the Lord left in the land to test those Israelites who had not experienced the wars of Canaan. 2 He did this to teach warfare to generations of Israelites who had no experience in battle.
There is an old adage, “Pressure makes diamonds.” The adage is true but, the conditions must be exact. You can overlay that template on many different segments of Creation and get similar results. With the right amount of pressure or stress, given the right conditions, beauty can be produced.
Families are particularly fertile ground for building beauty under pressure. Everybody comes from somewhere. When the conditions are right, some families produce greatness from distress. In Jacob’s case, his entire family was set apart for God’s eternal purpose. Joseph’s story is a good case study.
Genesis 37:2
2 This is the account of Jacob and his family. When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks. He worked for his half brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.
The facts in the opening are important so, let’s make a list: 1. Joseph is 17. 2. He tends his father’s sheep. 3. He works for his older, half brothers. 4. Joseph reports any poor decisions by those brothers to his father. These facts are all rich with conjecture. Joseph is old enough to work as a shepherd, but he is the next to the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons. Additionally, he works for the four sons of his wives’ maidservants. Without taking into account any other factors, this situation lends itself to some volatility.
“You’re not the boss of me.” I can either the voice of either my two children saying that to the other any number of times over the years. The rivalries between siblings have been well documented over the course of human history. Joseph and his brothers are no exception.
There is one other important fact given in verse two: Joseph is a tattletale. That’s normally the term used amongst siblings. Seems a little unsavory for a young man whom we will all hold in such high esteem. This last observation genders questions. Was Joseph just a tattletale by nature? Did he report on his brothers in retaliation for their mistreatment of him? Did Jacob put him up to it? The Bible doesn’t provide the answers. It just provides the setting.
Genesis 37:3-4
3 Jacob[a] loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age. So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph—a beautiful robe.[b] 4 But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them. They couldn’t say a kind word to him.
Jacob had two wives and children by four different women. Of course, he had problems. Jacob loved Rachel. He worked for twenty-one years to acquire the wife of his dreams and his freedom from her father. Even though he fathered a nation, if there was any single thing he could have changed, it may have been to have born a son by Rachel first, instead of next to last. That was not God’s plan for his family though. What Jacob did was show his favoritism toward Joseph, his beloved Rachel’s firstborn son. For this reason, Joseph was hated by his brothers.
The next thing to make note of was Jacob’s ornate coat. What? What was Jacob’s motivation? A better question is, what was God’s intent? The ornate intricacy of Joseph’s robe implies that it represents a type of royal priesthood, or more accurately, a prophetic mantle. I won’t take the time right now to elaborate (it’s late). Just know that every significant event in scripture always points us to God. Joseph’s coat most certainly does. The other thing his coat did was exacerbate the animosity between him and his brothers.
Genesis 37:5-10
5 One night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever. 6 “Listen to this dream,” he said. 7 “We were out in the field, tying up bundles of grain. Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine!”
8 His brothers responded, “So you think you will be our king, do you? Do you actually think you will reign over us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.
9 Soon Joseph had another dream, and again he told his brothers about it. “Listen, I have had another dream,” he said. “The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me!”
10 This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him. “What kind of dream is that?” he asked. “Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?”
Joseph twice dreamed that his brothers bowed in obeisance to him. In the second dream, his father and mother also bowed. It didn’t help that Joseph boasted of these dreams, first to his brothers, then his parents. Really. Joseph’s indiscretion would cost him, as it should. The bible is true; you reap what you sow. These events, happening within the confines of a not so happy home created and intense pressure that might, given the right circumstances produce something of great value.
Genesis 37:11
11 But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant.
Finally, in all of this, Jacob sees something that he recognizes. He sees the spiritual intersecting the temporal. Jacob had been a dreamer too. In a time of deep despair, God intersected Jacob’s temporal existence to reassure him that He would see not only see him through the moment but, that he would bring him into the inheritance promised by God to his forefathers and eventually to Jacob, himself. Jacob wondered.
John 3:8
8 The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
Selah
wb
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