FBC Daily Devotional – February 4, 2021

Well, a good Thursday to you. February, what is today? February 4th. I hope you're having a good day thus far, and I hope these little devotionals encourage you to maybe have even a little bit better day.

Family Strife in Genesis 37

Encourage in some way in your walk with the Lord. Well, the other day we were looking in Genesis and lamenting how oftentimes there's estrangement in families that takes a tragedy to kind of bring people back together.

Well, when you continue on in the story of Genesis, in the book of Genesis, and you get to the story of Joseph and his brothers, you see more of this strife, and it's really, really sad. But in Genesis 37, you get some good insight in how to engender hatred in the family.

Now, we surely don't need any encouragement in that. Our fallen nature can come up with plenty of ways to cause conflict and engender strife in the family. But by seeing it written down for us and in kind of living color, if you will, as it's recorded in Genesis 37, we can be warned.

We can be warned against some things that could cause strife. So, how to engender hatred in the family? Well, as a parent, one of the ways you can do it is to treat one of your children with greater favor.

Now, all you need is to have two or more children, and you just treat one of them with more favor than the other, or others. And you will be sure to engender some hatred between those siblings. The one that's not so highly favored will always look with a skewed view toward his sibling.

And the unfortunate thing about that is that the child, the favored child, I mean, he really didn't do anything. I mean, he shouldn't be the object of animosity. And unfortunately, the animosity is expressed toward the child, toward the other child, and then eventually toward the parent himself.

So, if you want to engender some strife and some hatred in your family as a parent, play favorites. Play favorites with your kids. And then, as a sibling, one of the ways you can engender strife or hatred among your siblings, your brothers and sisters, is to proclaim your superiority, because after all, you're the more highly favored child.

Now, I don't attribute any malicious motives to Joseph for sharing his dreams, and we read about that in Genesis 37, how, you know, Joseph had these two different dreams, and in both dreams, you know, like, he's the star of the dream, right?

He's the one that all the other sheaves bow down to. He's the one that all the other stars bow down to. He's the chief sheaf. He's the stellar star, and he shares those dreams with his brothers, and it, I mean, maybe he didn't mean it this way, but when you're already the favored son, and the other siblings are, you know, kind of despising you because of that privilege, then to to share a dream like this, where you're the star, all that is going to do is agitate the strife, agitate the strife.

And then another way that strife or hatred is engendered in this passage is, again, as a parent, is to assign your favored son the role of a snitch or chief inspector. Now, the way Jacob did this was he gave to Joseph the responsibility of going to see how things are going with your brothers who are out tending the sheep, out tending the flocks.

Well, again, you have to look at this through the eyes of the brothers who are already on the defensive, who are already viewing Joseph in a negative light, and their dad as well, and along comes this dreamer, and his job is to find out what the brothers are doing wrong and go back and tattle, go back and tell dad.

Well, being put in that position surely doesn't doesn't help to engender positive relationships between brothers in this case. So the animosity is developed, and how deep, how deep and settled that animosity, the bitterness that these brothers have toward Joseph.

I mean, can you imagine this? They, you know, some of them want to kill him, and they set out to do so. He gets rescued from death, but then gets sold as a slave in a caravan heading down to Egypt. They've gotten rid of him.

He's gone, but they've got to explain this to dad, and you know, you communicate to dad that favored son isn't anymore. He's not going to come home, and they have to do it without smiling, or chuckling, or cheering the fact that he's not coming home.

So they come up with this horrible plan to take that favored coat, the coat that represents his favoritism, sprinkle it with blood, and take it to dad and say, is this the coat of your son Joseph? Is this your son's coat?

And look, we found it while we're out in the fields and stuff, and naturally, Jacob's going to conclude my son's been killed by a wild animal. He's dead, and he mourns. He's wailing the death of his favored son, and what do the brothers do?

Oh, dad, we're so sorry. Oh, you know, they're going right along. They're playing right along with the mourning. Imagine this pretend sorrow, how deep the bitterness must be, how deep the animosity, not only toward Joseph, but even toward their dad, that they can fake him out like this.

They can pretend that they really care when he is mourning so deeply, and they really obviously don't. Now, by the way, as you continue in the reading, you come to chapter 38, and you read chapter 38, and it is really kind of a sordid, not kind of, it is a sordid tale, isn't it?

And you have to wonder, why is this placed here? It seems rather odd. This story of Judah has his sons, they die, and the eldest son marries Tamar. She doesn't have a child. The second son is supposed to take up for the older brother, and he doesn't do the job deliberately.

God kills him, and you know, Judah is left without any sons, and so he sends Tamar back to her home. Tamar pretends that she is a prostitute. Judah comes across her, hires her as a prostitute, and she ends up becoming pregnant with Judah's children.

Sons born in her womb. There are twins in her womb. Judah finds out that she is pregnant, and Judah insists that she has to be put to death because of her harlotry, because of her playing the prostitute.

The hypocrisy there is awful. So why in the world is this story placed in the middle here? You get the story of Joseph beginning in chapter 37, then you got this thing about Judah, and then it picks up again with Joseph in chapter 39.

Why here? Well, I think it's here because it really fits with the overall structure of Genesis 37 through 50, and what I mean by that is Genesis 37 verse 2 tells us this is the story of the generations of Judah.

I mean of Jacob. This is the story of his sons. So we're getting into the story of his sons, and you come to chapter 38, and what chapter 38 is doing is telling us how Judah's heart responds when he's under conviction.

It's how he responds when he's under conviction. So back in chapter 37, it's Judah that doesn't want to kill Joseph. He wants to just, let's save his life and send him off to, as a slave, to Egypt, and in chapter 38, when he's confronted with his sin that he's committed with Tamar, he confesses, she's more righteous than I am.

She's more righteous than I am. And then later on in the Joseph story, it's going to be Judah who represents a repentant heart for their involvement in treating Joseph badly. So this chapter just kind of sets us up for that.

But another thing it does in telling us the generations of the sons of Jacob is it explains to us where Perez came from. Perez, the son of Judah, and he plays a critical, critical role in Jacob's family tree.

A descendant of Jacob is Judah. A descendant of Judah is Perez. A descendant of Perez, we're going to find out eventually, is David. And eventually, a descendant of Perez, Judah, is Jesus. It's a very critical role that this chapter plays in the big picture of Scripture.

So I hope that maybe helps you out if you read that passage and you were kind of shaking your head at the end of it today. Well, let's look to the Lord in prayer and give thanks and pray that God give us grace to avoid some of these horrible mistakes that you find in these pages of Scripture.

Our Father and our God, we do thank you today for the instruction we can get even from failure. And so I pray that from the life of Jacob and his children, we can learn much, much to avoid. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right. We'll have a good rest of your Thursday, and I trust God will bless you in it. Have a good day.