Fall & Rise Of A Disfunctional Family Part 1

Episode Transcript

Ethan (00:00):
Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast
dedicated to faithful parentsnavigating their families
through a stormy culture
The longest story in the Bibleis the story of Joseph and his
coat of many colors.
We're going to look at adysfunctional family, its fall
and its rise, and the amazinggrace in which God delivers
them.
I want to borrow from what Iwould call a classic Christian

(00:23):
means of teaching this story toyour kids.
We might call it the CatechismBible.
I spent the last few weeksreviewing many children's
Bibles, and most of them arejust the Bible itself, with some
graphics and some to explainwhat a cistern looks like, and
then they show you a well.
Others try to simplify thestory, so there's one that was

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something like this is the storyof Joseph and his mean brothers.
It's one of my least favorites.
What I want to suggest to you,that if you remember our
emphasis way back when we talkedabout the catechisms, the Lord's
Prayer, the Apostles Creed, andhaving kids memorize this, the
Ten Commandments, the Lord'sPrayer, the Apostles Creed, and
the 23rd Psalm can help explainthis story.

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These things that are memorized,or at least they're familiar
with, can deliver understandingof Bible stories.
And so I want to try anddemonstrate how to tell this
story using these four pieces ofthe historic faith.
We might call it a youngperson's systematic theology.
See, giving your children aBible and telling them stories

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is great.
I'm so impressed with Superbookon Amazon and how familiar you
are.
Those Bible stories have made mygrandkids who have watched it.
But we've got to give them alsothe tools to understand the
story, to unlock the clues, tosee what is unseen in the story,
to better understand themselvesand their relationship to the

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Lord.
So one of the reasons I want todo this, one of the reasons you
want to do this as a parent,especially today, is we are
living in a digital world ofinstant answers to everything.
And that methodology is going tofail them to build the spiritual
muscle that the heart needs,that the soul needs to take in

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God's gifts of faith, hope, andlove.
Our walk through the kingdom ofGod, faith, hope, and love is
not going to fit in the searchengine methodology.
The big things in life arejourneys.
I mean, we might say it'ssomething like learning to make
homemade pasta, homemade sauce,and homemade meatballs.

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You can't grasp that bymastering the Uber Eats app.
That's why it is important tolearn these stories.
And we're going to start withthis long Bible story.
We'll break it down.
over a series of weeks.
So what I want to do is I wantto say to my kids, now listen,
we're going to look for someclues from the Lord's Prayer,

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the Ten Commandments, theApostles Creed, and the 23rd
Psalm to help explain our story.
Because the secret to a story isseeing what's unseen.
Finding out where's God hidingand how God works in our lives
and his relationship to us.
In this first section, I'm goingto take a look at, Give us this

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day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as weforgive others their sins.
That's from the Lord's Prayer.
Honor your father and motherfrom the Ten Commandments.
Lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us from evil.
Those are just a few pieces thatI think are helpful.
I want to make sure of thisthough, is we're not looking at

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this to find faults and sins inthis family and saying, See,
they're bad people.
Those are mean brothers.
What we want to do is to learn,we're prone to dishonor parents.
We tend to be unforgiving.
We're vulnerable to take mattersinto our own hands and to be
tempted into deadly sin.

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We tend to be unthankful forwhat we have.
We want to take what's not ours.
We're jealous if we thinksomebody's taking what belongs
to us.
So we're not going to see whywe're in need of the prayers
that we pray Unless we see thatwe are vulnerable to the very

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things that are in this story.
So the opening verses in chapter37 of Genesis.
Let me read them and then we'llcome back and we'll see how the
commandments, the Lord's Prayer,and these tools help.
Jacob lived in the land wherehis father had stayed, the land
of Canaan.
And this is the account ofJacob's family line.

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Joseph, a man of seventeen, wastending the flocks with his
brothers, the sons of Bilah andthe sons of Zilpah, his father's
wives.
And he brought their father abad report about them.
Now Israel, who is also known asJacob, that's the two names that
they have for him, he lovedJoseph more than any of his

(05:09):
brothers because he had beenborn to him in his old age, and
he made an ornate robe for him.
And when his brothers saw thatthe father loved him more than
any of them, they hated him andcould not speak a kind word to
him.
Now Joseph had a dream, and whenhe told his brothers, oh, they
hated him all the more.

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He said to them, listen.
To this dream I had, we werebinding sheaves of grain out of
the field, when suddenly mysheaf rose and stood upright.
While your sheaves gatheredaround mine and bowed down to
it.
His brothers said, do you intendto reign over us?
Will you actually rule us?

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And they hated him all the morebecause of his dream and what he
said.
Then he had another dream and hetold his brothers, listen, I had
another dream.
And this time the sun and themoon and 11 stars were bowing
down to me.
When he told his father as wellas his brothers, his father
rebuked him.
What is this dream you had?

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Will your mother and I and yourbrothers actually come and bow
down to the ground before you?
His brothers were jealous ofhim, but his father kept the
matter in mind.
Well, I want to go back now andstart to kind of tell the story
and get some of the clues.
So the first thing we see hereis that Joseph is the son of

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Rachel, Jacob's first love.
And if you remember the story,he goes to marry Rachel and then
his father in law slips hisRachel's sister into the wedding
tent.
And he ends up with two wivesafter he works another seven
years for the father in law.
But now he's got many wives, onedad and many mamas.

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And this is why we have thecommandments.
We would simply say to our kids,look, Adam and Eve, we can, you
know, there's one wife, it's ahusband and a wife.
And His grandfather, Abraham andSarah, his father, Isaac and
Rebecca, but somehow Jacob,who's called Israel, has drifted

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into what the other nations, whoaren't following God's model.
And this is why God gives usrules, because when we don't
have them, they actually causeproblems.
Instead of keeping freedom, Theyactually cause us to get into
snares.
So that's sort of a generalconcept, why we have the

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commandments.
Even though we know we don'tfully obey them so now Israel
loved Joseph more than his sonsbecause he'd been born to him in
his old age.
Maybe Joseph favored his mother,and that's why, that's his first
love.
Maybe it's because he's old andhe kind of feels like, oh man, I
still got it.
But here's where we want to sayto our kids, look, as parents,

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as moms and dads, we makemistakes, we have flaws.
We are not, we are not gods.
We try our best, but we're notwhen we make some mistakes.
And sometimes we even treat eachof you a little differently.
But what the commandment says isthat you're to honor your father
and mother.
And then in that respect, thatmeans you don't focus on our

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flaws, but focus on what you'vebeen blessed with.
All of the brothers were in theherding business, all of them
were given things, but theyfocused on the ornate robe
instead of honoring theirparents and overlooking the
mistake that Israel had made.
So Joseph has a dream, and heshares the dream.

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And if you know our ApostlesCreed, we say, I believe in God
the Father Almighty.
And what's happening here isthat Joseph is taking his dream,
and he's making himself, oh,maybe I'm going to be the big
dog.
Maybe I'm going to be the one incharge.
And of course, his brothersreact to this in anger, because

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they want to be the Almighty.
Do you intend to reign over us?
You see how the line ofquestioning goes.
No one is taking this dream toGod and saying, God, what does
this mean?
In fact, they end up getting thesecond dream and, and man, he's

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boasting, right?
And the scriptures tell us, letanyone who boasts, boast in the
Lord.
We also see the failure toforgive us our sins.
And, and instead of forgivingand coming to reconciliation,
they got so hostile theycouldn't even see a way to give
a kind word.

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So when we, we ask God, seewe're prone not to forgive.
So when we pray, forgive us oursins as we forgive those who
have sinned against us.
It's our ability to then give akind word, to put something
behind us.
And when we don't do thatbecause it's hard, and we can't
do it unless God delivers us todo it.

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Well, what ends up happening is,our anger intensifies.
In fact, what then happens is,is that Dad has this favoritism
issue.
And as we just said, thecommandment of honoring your
father and mother gets ignored,and then when you ignore that,
you can't recognize, give usthis day our daily bread from

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the Lord's Prayer.
You're not focused on, hey,we've got these herds of these
sheep, we've got this business,we've got substance, God's
giving us substance every day.
No, no, no, you're focused onthe coat.
That's why we say, give us thisday our daily bread.
Help us to be grateful.
Instead, the brothers arefilled, in verse four, with,

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with jealousy.
Jealousy means you think youhave something, or maybe you do
have something, and you'refearful and angry that someone's
trying to take it from you.
Because these brothers wereolder, they thought they were
entitled to be the boss, and theyounger brother's trying to be
the boss, and this is whatcauses it.

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Jealousy.
We're going to see how jealousycan turn into the deadly sin of
envy in our next section.
But it's a failure to forgiveand a failure to be grateful.
That's why we pray that.
Now it's all escalated in verses5 through 8.

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They're, they're now allbattling over my kingdom come
instead of thy kingdom come.
That's why we pray the Lord'sPrayer.
Our Father, who is in heaven,hallowed be thy name, thy
kingdom come, thy will be done.
This is not being prayed.
This is not being even thoughtof.

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And so the failure in us, in ushuman beings, and our failure to
recognize the need to forgive,the need to resist the
temptations, it causes us to bevulnerable to to just do more
and more sin.
And so we're going to see, as wesort of wrap this up, is the

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temptation is to now becomeevil.
This is why we pray.
Deliver us from evil.
We pray that because we'revulnerable, we're easily falling
into it.
So, this is where I want to stopin this, this issue.
Because they're all in thisbelief of everybody wants to be

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almighty.
And we're seeing this pattern ofthis story.
If you go back, and this is howthis all happens, right?
we go into Isaac and Rebekah andRebekah and Jacob trick Esau
into stealing his inheritance asthe older son.
And now we see, uh, the sons ofJacob conspiring against Joseph,

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and you see their jealousy andtheir anger.
It tells us that sin is handeddown from generation to
generation, and that's why wehave to trust in God's promises
and not ourselves.
Well we're going to look for, inthe next few verses now, is
where God is hiding.
But I want to close up to saythis, we're supposed to live by

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faith, not by sight.
And so when these brothers Aswell as the family are all
focusing on each other'sshortcomings in giving bad
reports, in being jealous, incaught up in favoritism.
we block our vision to see ourgreat God in our life.

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In the next section, we'll seewhere this leads the family.
We'll see the other portions ofthe creeds and the commandments
and the Lord's Prayer kind ofexplaining what's happening and
why we pray these things.
And then we'll see eventuallywhere God hides and how God
rescues us because we all are inneed of being rescued.

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If that's the main thing thatthis story is going to teach us.
The ultimate battle for theheart and soul is a fight for
identity.
Our king invites our kids toknow who they are, what to
believe, and where they belong.
Until next time, let's rememberthe words for theirs is the

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Kingdom of Heaven.