Joseph A Tattle Tale With A Coat II EP 40

Part 2 of Joseph and His Coat of Many Colors

Episode Transcript

Ethan (00:00):
Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast
dedicated to faithful parentsnavigating their families
through a stormy culture
This is raising joyful childrenin an angry world.
I'm your host, Paul Osborne.
Today, I want to talk to youabout the inevitable habit of
tattling in kids.
It's not something we can simplyignore.
And as we go into the next phaseof this story of Joseph and his

(00:24):
coat of many colors, I reallywant to talk about what happens
when siblings begin to tell oneach other, report on each
other.
When the motive is not helpful,when it's not constructive.
And it doesn't get resolved.
It can lead to the mother of alldysfunction and division under
the umbrella of distrust.

(00:46):
I hope to show you today howunchecked distrust leads to
divisiveness anddysfunctionality with a family.
And eventually it begins to evenpoison our trust in God.
Faith is built on trust.
The Hebrews say that faith isconfidence in things hoped for.
And those that feed onskepticism and relish the

(01:07):
reasons not to trust eventuallypoison their families.
We've been in the story ofJoseph and his coat of many
colors.
We've talked about it as adysfunctional family.
We call it the fall and rise andthe amazing grace that God will
deliver.
And we are borrowing from whatI'm calling a catechismic Bible,

(01:30):
where the Apostles Creed and theLord's Prayer, the Ten
Commandments, and the 23rd Psalmto help kids understand this
story.
this is a family, they're in theherding business, and they're
dealing with favoritism andpride and jealousy.
In our last.
Section, you may recall, Josephhas given his father Jacob, who

(01:53):
is now called Israel, a badreport, and the brothers didn't
like that.
It doesn't really tell us thatit ever got resolved.
they become jealous like what ishe trying to pull?
What's he trying to get awaywith when he, when he shares his
dreams, and today I want us tolook at this in the next
section.
We're going to talk about mainlyis the commandment about false

(02:16):
witness, that the Bible tells usnot to do, not to bear a false
witness.
And we're going to catch up withthis story as, Joseph has been
sent by his father Israel toagain report back to dad what's
going on with those brothers whoare herding the sheep.

(02:36):
before we catch up on Josephthough, I want to share a story
just to kind of give anindication of how this works in
today's world.
Here in the Brazos Valley,there's been a story going on
for the past 10 years.
You may have read about it inTexas Monthly.
Oh, they put a very unique spinto it.

(02:57):
But at the end of the Civil Warin Texas, many slaves were given
land by their, the plantationowners.
There's just no way nice to sayit.
Some of these owners wereactually married or had
relationships with slaves.
And so part of the way this allgot settled was that descendants
were given land.

(03:18):
Property to farm and to live offof because the, the agricultural
business that they were once alla part of no longer exist.
Now what happened here is thatthere were no wills used and the
deeds and the propertyboundaries and How all these
titles got put together is a bitambiguous.

(03:40):
And for about seven generations,this inheritance understanding
of these properties continues.
No one takes the time to go anddo the wills.
And so now you've got, insteadof a handful of people, you now
have maybe 200 people.

(04:01):
And under inheritance propertylaws, which are somewhat
ambiguous, Everybody that's adescendant has a little piece of
what that property's worth.
Now for generations it wasn'tworth anything, but all of a
sudden they built a nice littletoll road down to Houston.
And now you're seeing where acouple of cousins find out about

(04:22):
it.
They hire a lawyer.
The uncles that maybe have beenpaying the taxes on it for 30
years, they now hire theirlawyer.
And of course, we're going tohave the lawyers being described
as the villains.
And lots of folks are going tofeel that they got cheated,
taken advantage of, and anunfair settlement.
And in some cases, they probablydid.

(04:42):
But how did it all happen?
Well, perhaps it's true in thebeginning, they couldn't afford
a lawyer on a will.
But seven generations, wills arefairly, This is a story that's
very affordable.
They're one of the mostinexpensive things that lawyers
do.
Why won't you do it?
Well, maybe it is true that theydidn't have money.
But I suspect that people didn'twant the rest of these families

(05:04):
to find out about the landbecause of the consequences that
might result from it.
And eventually it all happened.
The story of Joseph and hisfamily is a story of distrust.
In fact, If you think aboutJacob's life, his life is built
on distrust.
He and his mother cheat hisbrother out of his inheritance.

(05:25):
His father in law swaps hiswife's sister into the marriage
tent.
Another trick.
So this is a man that has a lifefull of distrust.
And what ends up happening isthis distrustfulness, this
tattletale problem that getsignored, it actually gets
encouraged in this family.

(05:45):
And while we'll see how Godredeems the failures here,
again, I want to go back to someof the things out of the
catechisms, some of the creedsthat help explain this story.

(06:09):
So I believe in God is one.
Hmm.
That's a trust issue.
Thou shall have no other godsbefore me.
You That's in other words, don'ttake things into your own hand.
Don't become your own God.
And what happens is there's,there's a bearing of false
witness.
There's Joseph tattletailingback to Israel.

(06:30):
There's all of this distrust.
It's hard to see his motivation,but we do see the distrust and
everyone's trying to harm eachother's reputation.
we're going to see God kind ofhiding underneath all of this.
He's going to redeem iteventually, but I want to get
into this story now as to Josephand his brothers.

(06:50):
So if you remember in the first,sections in Genesis 37, in the
first few verses, Joseph hadcome back and given a bad report
on his brothers.
Now we're in another section,verse 12, and his brothers have
gone to graze the father'sflocks in Shechem.
And Israel, who is also known asJacob, says to Joseph, As you

(07:12):
know, your brothers are grazingthe flocks near Shechem.
Come, I'm going to send you tothem.
So this reporting back, thisdistrust of the brothers, and
their herding, Israel wants toknow what's going on again.
You see his distrust.
Go and see if all is well withyour brothers, with the flocks,

(07:32):
and bring word back to me.
So he sends him off from theValley of Hebron, and here we go
again.
Israel is not trusting thebrothers.
And we see this whole life nowof distrust just continuing.
So when Joseph arrives inShechem, a man, has found him
wandering around in the fields.

(07:52):
And he says, what are youlooking for?
And in verse 16, he says, well,I'm looking for my brothers.
Can you tell me where they aregrazing their flocks?
Oh, they've moved from here, theman answers.
I heard them say, let's go toDothan.
And so immediately you think,well, wow.
If you know anything about thisarea, or at least scholars tell
us, Shechem is like a grassyplains.

(08:14):
It's fields that are rich,perfect for feeding sheep.
Dotham is hill country, so it'snot as ideal.
Well, we may not be sure whythey moved to Dotham in the hill
country, but it seems like it'sa trust issue.
So Joseph, in the next verse,went after his brothers and
found them near Dotham.
And here's what we find.

(08:35):
But in verse 18, You go to thehill country in war and in
distrust so that your enemydoesn't sneak up upon you.
And here they could see him atthe distance and they plotted to

(08:55):
kill him.
Immediately we see a violationof thou shall not kill.
Matthew Henry says it's worse toplot evil than it is to do it.
Because one deal with the devilleads to another.
And that's what we're going tosee.
And so we hear them in verse 19.
Here comes that dreamer, theysaid to each other.
Come now, let's kill him.

(09:17):
Let's throw him onto thesecisterns and say that a
ferocious animal has devouredhim.
Then we'll see what comes of hisdreams.
See, distrust has poisoned theirfaith.
They don't trust the dream.
They don't trust the brother.
They have not even thinkingabout what God has to say about
any of this.
That's why we profess, I believein God the Father, because it is

(09:39):
a trust issue.
And we want to prevent distrustfrom leaking into the souls of
our kids.
This is why tattletailing has tobe something that you address.
Verse 21.
When Reuben heard this, He triedto rescue him from their hands.
Let's not take his life.
See, I shall not kill.

(10:02):
Don't shed any blood.
Throw him into the cistern inthe wilderness, but don't lay a
hand on him.
See, Reuben says this to rescuehim from them and take him back
to his father.
Reuben's going to try to come upwith a plan, but he's trying to
resolve this issue strictly bylaw and reason alone.
God's not in the process.

(10:23):
So, when Joseph came to hisbrothers, they stripped him of
his robe, the ornate robe he waswearing.
They took it from him, and theythrew him into the cistern.
The cistern was empty.
There was no water in it.
It's a well.
And so they, as they sat down totheir meal, in verse 25, they
looked up and they saw a caravanof Ishmaelites coming to Gilead,

(10:45):
where they were.
Their camels were loaded withspices, bauman, mar.
And they were on their way downto Egypt.
So Judah, another one of thebrothers, says what will it gain
if we kill our brothers andcover up his blood?
Come, let's sell him to theIshmaelites and not lay our

(11:08):
hands on him.
After all, he is our brother,our own flesh and blood.
So his brothers agree.
Thou shall not kill is too much.
But the stealing of his freedomand the selling of him and the
lying, eh, And so when theMidianite merchants came by, his

(11:28):
brothers pulled Joseph up out ofthe cistern and sold him for 20
shekels of silver to theIshmaelites who took him to
Egypt.
So when I'm telling this storyto my kids, I want to, I want to
get into.
Why tattletailing can bedangerous.

(11:49):
Because we can start to enjoyseeing our brother or sister get
into trouble.
our motive isn't to benefitthem, but it's to benefit us.
And this then starts to poisonour soul.
And we start wanting to takematters into our own hands.
When we ignore what God has toldus regarding his laws.

(12:12):
And we see that here in thisfamily.
It starts with the beginning ofdistrust as we saw in the first
report.
And now the second report, moredistrust.
And so the brothers thenconspire against him.
And so I think going back to ourown children when they come and
say, Did you know that Tommyjust blah blah blah did this or

(12:36):
did that or you know, my sisterjust hit me with the block in
the head.
We have to sit down and sayokay, what really happened?
Did you attempt depending on theage, of course, but did you
attempt to resolve this?
Did you confront your brother?
Did you discuss this and thenand then you've got to come to a

(12:57):
place I think with all membersof the family You To say, okay,
we need a time of confession, weneed a time of restoration, and
we need to do this.
other times, hey, so and so'snot sharing or, or some more
minor things.
We have to be careful that we'renot building a habit.
And so, why are you telling methis?

(13:18):
What is the motive here?
And we've got to make sure, areyou telling me the whole truth
to this story?
Am I missing anything?
Are you leaving anything out?
Are you saying this to make yourbrother or sister look bad?
I think we have to ask thesekinds of questions to our kids
in order to deal with this issueof mistrust.

(13:39):
Because when it goes out ofcontrol, when everybody in a
family begins to distrust othermembers of the family, We're in
trouble.
We're going to find ourselves ina divided family.
This is why sometimes when thereis divorce in a family, it
affects children.
It creates an enormous distrustthat they couldn't count on the

(14:01):
promise of mom and dad.
I want to close with thisconcept today.
We have to make an effort toencourage our kids to trust one
another and to trust in ourfamily and to live up to our
promises.
We've got to teach them when wesay we're going to do something,
we do it.

(14:22):
When we find somebody in,disobedience that can be harmful
to them, our motive has to bethat we're only telling our
parents if and only when wecan't get them to stop doing
what they're not supposed to bedoing that's harmful to the
family and to the relationship.
And no one should ever come andtell things that aren't
truthful.

(14:43):
That's called damaging anotherperson's reputation.
This is going to happen in theirworld.
It's going to happen at theirschool, but it's not something
that we can tolerate in ourfamily.
Feed too long at that, practicethat, and you're going to find
yourself a distrustful, divisiveperson eventually will begin to

(15:05):
leak into your own trust in Godthe Father Almighty.
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

(15:28):
Kingdom of Heaven.