The last few days we've been looking at the history of Genesis up to Joseph. Today we are going to focus on Joseph's immediate family. Remember Jacob now has 2 wives and has moved out of Laban's care, returning to the country of his fathers. A picture here is worth a thousand words so here you go:
Jacob has quite the complex family situation and with it comes very complex family dynamics. At first Rachel was barren so she gave Jacob her servant Bilhah to have a surrogate child for her. Which she did, two children that is, Dan and Nephtali. Leah, in competition with her sister for her husband's affection, (who could've seen this scenario playing out?) gives her servant girl Zilpah to have surrogate children for her as well. Leah later has more children and eventually Rachel even has a child—Joseph.
So this is the family dynamic Joseph is born into. His father has four wives, his mother is his father's favorite wife and he, Joseph, is his father's favorite son. This is obviously a recipe for dysfunction.
Genesis 37:1-4
Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan. 2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.
Joseph grew up, due to no fault of his own, with the belief that he was more special than his brothers. On Sunday we talked about how we all have these narrative scripts that we believe about ourselves. Many of these were derived from our family of origin. Some are good, some are not so good. Some are innocuous and some are catastrophic. What's important is for us to work through these and come to a better understanding of our identity as created in the image of God and made new through the gospel of Jesus.
Practice
- Name one of the false narrative scripts you received from your family of origin.
- How has that affected you in your adult life?
- What is one of the truths from Scripture that you can use to disarm that lie?
Sermon starts at 20:22