Undefeated by dysfunction

Genesis 37:1-11 ¹Jacob lived in the land where his father had resided as an alien, that is, in the land of Canaan. ²This is account about the development of the family of Jacob:

When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was tending the flock with his brothers. He was just a boy compared to the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. Joseph brought a bad report about them to their father. ³Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his other sons, because he was the son born in his old age, and he made him a special robe. ⁴His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, so they hated him and could not speak to him in a friendly way.

⁵Once Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, so they hated him all the more. ⁶He said to them, “Please listen to this dream that I have dreamed: ⁷There we were, binding sheaves in the field, and suddenly my sheaf rose up and stood upright. Then your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.”

⁸His brothers said to him, “So will you really reign over us? Will you really have dominion over us?” They hated him all the more because of his dreams and what he said.

⁹Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. He said, “Listen, I had another dream. This is what I saw: The sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.” ¹⁰He told it to his father and to his brothers. His father rebuked him and said to him, “What kind of dream is this that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers really come and bow down to the ground in front of you?” ¹¹His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept what he had said in mind.

The Psalmist prays for certain victory: “Rise up, O Lord! Save me, my God! Yes, you will strike all my enemies on the jaw. The teeth of the wicked you will break.” (Psalm 3:7)

Jake stole his father’s estate from his older brother. When his brother found out, he threatened to kill Jake.

To save his skin, Jake ran away from home. He ran all the way to a different country. There he fell in love with a beautiful woman. Jake wanted to marry his true love. But his father-in-law tricked him. Jake ended up marrying his love’s sister, instead!

Since having more than wife was permitted in this country, Jake married his true love, too. But now he had two wives!

Though having multiple wives was permitted, it certainly wasn’t prudent. The two sisters fought for their husband’s attention. The older, unloved sister blessed Jacob with children. But his favorite wife had trouble conceiving. So, she encouraged Jake to get a girlfriend. His girlfriend could give Jake children.

This ticked off the older sister. So, she told Jake that that he should get a second girlfriend. He could have children with her, too!

After all this, the favored wife gave Jake two sons. Sadly, she died in childbirth after the second son.

In the end, through his two wives and two girlfriends, Jake had twelve sons.

You could say that there was a lot of dysfunction in Jake’s family.

This sounds like a reality TV show. … Yet, this was reality! This is the story of God’s servant, Jacob and his family. You can read about it in Genesis 29-35. God isn’t shy about airing the dirty laundry of those he has called to be in his family of faith.

Jacob had a very dysfunctional family. Jacob was his mother’s favorite son. Esau was his father’s favorite son. Jacob had four wives. He married two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Then he married his wives’ maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah. Rachel was Jacob’s favorite of his four wives. Jacob received twelve sons from these four women. This happened because Jacob disregarded God’s design for marriage of one man and one woman married for life. His disobedience to God’s directive caused discord and division among his wives. That was later reflected in the dysfunction among his children.

Out of his twelve sons, Joseph was Jacob’s favorite, because he was born to Jacob’s favorite wife. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of favoritism going on in Jacob’s family! Jacob didn’t hide the fact that Joseph was his favorite son. Jacob gave him preferential treatment. He gave Joseph authority over his older brothers. He gave him a “richly ornamented” robe. We focus much on this “technicolor dreamcoat” that Joseph wore. But the essence of this robe was that Joseph was wearing a business suit while his brothers were wearing overalls. They were the workers. He was their superior.

Every time they saw Joseph wearing his special robe, they were reminded of their father’s favoritism. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his other sons, because he was the son born in his old age, and he made him a special robe. His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, so they hated him and could not speak to him in a friendly way.” Literally, it says that they could not speak a word of peace to Joseph. Every word from them was sarcastic, hateful and hurtful. They were probably passive aggressive, as well as outright aggressive. Jacob’s dysfunction with his parents and brothers grew into dysfunction with his wives and his children. That dysfunction grew to anger and jealousy among his boys.

That dysfunction revealed itself in Joseph’s dreams. God gave Joseph dreams to reveal that God had chosen Joseph for something greater than being the supervisor of shepherds. In the first dream, the brothers’ sheaves of grain bowed down to Joseph’s sheaf of grain. In the second dream, the sun, moon and eleven stars bowed down to him. You can imagine how this made the brothers feel. That their spoiled 17-year-old younger brother said he was going to rule over them!

This story of a dysfunctional family living four thousand years ago is our story. Their story would receive high ratings as a reality TV show. But the dysfunctional family is our reality.

We live in a culture of broken homes. It is more common than ever for children to grow up in a home missing one of their two biological parents. Single parents. Stepparents. Divorced parents. Widowed parents. Foster parents. Adoptive parents. Grandparents. Live-in boyfriends and girlfriends. These parents can certainly still raise their children in the training and instruction of the Lord. But it is harder. More complicated. Because it isn’t the way God designed marriage and parenthood to be.

God’s design for marriage and family is often ignored, forgotten or seen as an antiquated impossibility.

Even in marriages where the family is intact, where children have been blessed to have their two biological parents at home, there is dysfunction. Husbands and wives openly disagreeing or fighting with each other. Or to avoid yelling, the parents have perfected their passive aggressiveness with each other. The tension hangs heavy upon the household. The children notice. They misbehave. They are trying to get attention for themselves.

Even if the parents get along, the children are rivals. They constantly fight and bicker with each other. Children scream and yell. Teenagers sulk and storm into their rooms. Grown siblings won’t speak to each other. Spouses try to avoid each other. Parents say they don’t have favorite children … but they do. There is bitterness. Resentment. Hard feelings.

Families don’t function in the way God has designed them to function. Are we as bad as Jacob, Rachel, Leah and the boys? Hopefully not! But there is certainly dysfunction, even within our Christian families.

We forfeit some of God’s blessings when our families are not headed by a leading father, supported by a loving mother or strengthened by respectful children.

Have you shown favoritism to one child over another?

Do you give your children more attention than you give to your spouse?

Do you spend more time and effort at work than you do building the relationships you have with your family?

Do you always get along with your siblings or your aging parents?

Is there anything that causes you to not speak words of peace to your family?

Dysfunction plagues our hearts and minds. It plagues our words, attitudes and actions.

Jacob’s familial dysfunction threatened the promise of the Savior. If Jacob’s family had been destroyed by infighting, what would have happened to that promise?!

But God was undefeated by dysfunction!

God understands that families are tainted by sin. Therefore, they are going to be dysfunctional. But that dysfunction will not discontinue God’s will being done. Dysfunction cannot hinder or halt God’s promises. God gave the promise of humanity’s Savior through Abraham, through Abraham’s son Isaac, through Isaac’s son Jacob, and through Jacob’s son Judah.

God created an entire nation out of Jacob’s dysfunctional family! Jacob’s less-favored wife, Leah gave him six sons. His favorite wife, Rachel, gave him two sons. Leah’s maidservant, Bilhah bore Jacob two sons. So, did Rachel’s maidservant, Zilpah. Out of these twelve sons came the twelve tribes of Israel. (Israel was another name for Jacob.)

Jacob’s sons became so jealous of their second youngest brother, Joseph, that they sold him into slavery in Egypt. But God used this dysfunction to build a nation! Through an extraordinary series of circumstances, God moved Joseph from Egyptian slave to second-in-command of all of Egypt. God then moved Jacob’s family from the Promised Land of Canaan into the land of Egypt for preservation during the seven-year famine. Four hundred years later, God moved the nation of Israel – now numbering over 2 million people – back to the Promised Land of Canaan.

God used the sinful dysfunction of Jacob’s family to preserve his family of faith. He used Jacob’s family dysfunction to keep his promise to bless all nations through the nation he would create through this particular family.

God sent his Son, Jesus, through the family of Judah – the fourth of the sons born to Leah. Through Jesus, God brings us all together into one family – a dysfunctional family to be sure, but a family of faith. A family of baptized believers. A family of forgiveness. A family of prayer. A family of praise. A family built on God’s Word and Sacraments. A family where God is our Father, God’s Son is our Brother and God the Holy Spirit is our family Counselor.

The devil is working very hard through our current coronavirus crisis. He wants to sow fear and apprehension within God’s family. The devil wants to use this crisis to turn people’s attention away from God’s Word and his worship. He wants to sow discord and disunity among families.

Yet God is the One who kicked Satan out of heaven. God is the Creator and Sustainer of families. Whatever Satan means for evil, God can always use to accomplish for his good. Satan knows that the easiest way to destroy the Church is to destroy the families who make up Christ’s Church. The Creator of families can use this current crisis to strengthen the bond of his families and gather them together around the family altar.

While the world is practicing social distancing, God is causing families to socialize with each other once again. Families are using this time of being sequestered together to put together puzzles, play board games, make Lego creations, do art and craft projects, and learn to play the ukulele. They are doing outdoor scavenger hunts, Easter egg hunts, watching sports movies since there are no live sports to watch. With no sports to watch, the husband is rediscovering that woman he shares a house with is actually his wife!

Families are decluttering, doing deep cleaning and finishing projects in the home.

Many of our families gathered together around the family altar on Wednesday evening for the first of our Facebook Live worship services. (By the way, I loved the comments and pictures of you worshiping together! Please keep sharing them!) Many families used the prepared liturgy and followed along with the service. Some sang along to the Koine hymn after the service was over. Some said that instead of just visiting their home church for worship, they invited various WELS churches into their home for worship.

Many churches, like ours, were planning on doing livestreaming for worship in the future. The future is now!

My father said this reminded him of when we were kids and we couldn’t get to church because of a blizzard. That Sunday, we had a family devotion where we sang a hymn on our electric organ. That was the first time I led a service. As a kid! Decades later, my family still fondly remembers gathering for worship around our family altar. I pray that you are cherishing these times as you are rebuilding your family altar.

I pray that God is using this current crisis to create functional families with games and family dinners and conversations that we were all too busy for before. More importantly, I pray that our heavenly Father is using this crisis to create functional families of faith as they rebuild their family altar.

The devil wants to sow discord and division through dysfunction. But God used the dysfunction within Jacob’s family to create the nation of Israel. He used the dysfunction to bring the Savior of nations through that particular nation. Satan still sows dysfunction within families. Our Lord defeats dysfunction by sowing the seeds of unity, love and grace within his families.

God remains undefeated by dysfunction. Amen.

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:57) Amen.