Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's Your Family's Story? | Torah | Genesis 25:19-34

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

Do you come from a family of sibling rivalry and favoritism? Does jealousy exist in your family? Do such things exist in families in the Bible? In today's episode, Patrick looks at Jacob and Esau, two brothers in Genesis 25:19-34, to illustrate the brokenness of families. Listen to find out what it's like in God's family. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 25:19-34 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. I've been reading Harry Potter to my kindergartner, and she is obsessed with it. It's become a nightly tradition that we both really look forward to. But because she's only five years old, a lot of it doesn't quite make sense to her. So sometimes as I'm reading, I'll add in little explanatory moments that aren't actually in the book. Or maybe I'll even pause and ask her if she understands what's how.

happening. But there was one thing about the first Harry Potter book that I never had to explain. Harry's aunt, uncle, and cousin are rotten people. It's just obvious. When she heard how Aunt Petunia doted on his cousin Dudley, on his every word, on his every action, but that she only spoke harshly to Harry, my daughter knew something was wrong. When she heard about Christmases where Dudley received dozens of presents, but Harry only received one, she knew something was wrong, which you learned that Dudley often beat up Harry at school and made all of the other kids treat him poorly lest they incur his bullish wrath. Well, again, my daughter knew something was desperately wrong. When Uncle Vernon selfishly kept Harry's mail from Harry and lied about how his

family died, again, my daughter knew this was a grave injustice. In those early chapters, after I shut the book, she would often look at me and say, I don't like Dudley. Or Uncle Vernon's not a very good person. I didn't have to explain any of this to her because it's something primal and fundamental. It's rooted in her internal sense of right and wrong, of justice and injustice. She just knows without ever being told that blatant favoritism, preferential treatment, jealousy, rivalry, competitiveness, that's not how families should be. I never had to tell her. She just knew. And of course, we all just know that's wrong. And not just in its obvious forms, like in the story of Harry Potter, but also in its less obvious forms.

The quiet way one parent always gives a bit more gentleness and grace to one child, but not the other. Or the way a dad quietly emphasizes one child's weaknesses, while he emphasizes another child's strengths. Let's just be honest here, this is really hard, and so often it's unintentional. I remember growing up, my parents often pointed out that I was a procrastinator while my sister was the diligent one. She was smart and able to memorize things, and me, well, no. Not so much.

And if she was here, I promise she could give you a reverse list, all the things that they encouraged me in, but maybe said that she fell short in. And my parents were, you know, doing their best. They were rightly pointing out what described reality at the time. And yet, I think that they'd still have to admit that maybe they weren't as right as they thought they were. As an adult, I'm the opposite of a procrastinator. I prefer to work far in advance.

I do my worst work at the last minute. And now I find intellectual forms of work much easier than other forms. Now, I'm not sharing these stories to condemn anyone. Most parents are just trying to do their best. And try as I will. I know that I will show favoritism to my children. I know that I will inadvertently instigate rivalry amongst my kids. I'm sharing these stories to point out the way favoritism, rivalry, competitiveness, and jealousy.

They're present in every family. No matter how hard you try, they are always there. And these things, they have a profound way of sticking with us throughout our entire lives. You might not live in the same city as your parents or your siblings, but my guess is that you still find yourself defining yourself by how you're different from your sibling, or how you proved your parents wrong, or maybe how you proved them right. What I love about the Bible is that it doesn't give us Brady Bunch families with perfect parents and perfect kids. In fact, in the Bible, families are a lot closer to the Dursley family from Harry Potter.

than they are to the Beaver family from Leave It to Beaver. And I love this because it shows how perennial these issues really are. And it also shows how real and true the Bible is. It's truly a book that speaks to you, to your family, to your heart, to your hurts, to your wounds, to your glories, to your happiest memories. It speaks to them all. But in Genesis 25, we read the story of the birth of twins, Esau and Jacob. And from their birth, their story is a story of favoritism. jealousy and rivalry. Just see for yourself. Verse 24. When the time came for her, this is Rebecca,

to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment, so that they named him Esau, which sounds like the word red. After this, his brother came out with his hand grasping Esau's heel, and so he was named Jacob, which again has this kind of trickster connotation to it. Isaac was 60 years old when Rebecca gave birth to both of the them. Verse 27. The boys grew up and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home and live among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for a wild game, loved Esau. But Rebecca loved Jacob. You're already beginning to see it, right? Jacob grasping at Esau's heel, the rivalry, the favoritism, one parent favoring one child, the other parent

favoring the other. It keeps going. Once, when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country famished. And he said, Jacob, quick, let me have some of that red stew. I'm famished. Jacob replied, first, sell me your birthright. Again, you're beginning to see the rivalry. Issa was the firstborn. And so he had the rights of the firstborn. He not only had the blessing, but he had the birthright, which would have meant that he was the one who would inherit his father's property and his father's legacy. And Jacob is here in this moment of rivalry saying, I see what you have. I'm jealous of it. And I'm going to take it from you because you think you're about to die from being famished and you're a foolish person who isn't very smart and I'm

going to take advantage of that by saying you can have stew but give me your birthright. Look, I'm about to die, Esau said. What good is the birthright to me? But Jacob said, swear to me first. So he swore an oath to him selling his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank and then he got up and left. And so Esau despised his birthright. It's kind of a painful story, isn't it? And it's painfully real. The rivalry makes Esau into a man eventually who's cynical. He's cynical about his family's blessing from God. He's cynical about God's mission to work through his family, to reach the nations. It turns him into a man of violence who protects what he has from tricksters and thieves like Jacob. Jacob, on the other hand,

he grows up into a man who's always tricking and deceiving. He tricks and deceives his way into wealth and to influence. He's kind of the nerd who loves to show that brains are better than brawn. And in some ways, they never leave behind these old wounds. But in other ways they do. We'll see that in the episodes to come as we explore their story. But I want to focus for one second on Jacob, because God refuses to let Jacob go. When Jacob's on the run for his lies and deception, God meets him. Not once, but multiple times. And on one final encounter, Jacob on the run again for lies and deception, God wrestles with Jacob and he gives him a lifelong wound that makes him limp. But in that weakness, Jacob learns his own weakness, his own need.

He begins to see his own wounds. He begins to understand his own story. And he learns to begin to trust God. Not the deceit that he learned in his family from rivalry, from jealousy, from favoritism. He learns to trust God, not deceit. He learns to be faithful to God, not to his selfish desires. He learns to be owned by God and wrestled by God because he sees that that's where true joy and happiness lie. And I share that story to tell you whatever your family's story is, God hasn't let you go.

Whatever wounds you have in the past, God will never stop seeking after you. Even in the midst of your sin, even as you're living out of those wounds that you got growing up in your family and your family system, there may be a day of wrestling, there might be a day of humbling. but when that day comes, it's because God has invited you to be in his family. And in his family, there's no favoritism, there's no rivalry or jealousy. There's only sacrificial love. There's only his loving gaze, your heavenly father, his loving gaze on you, his precious son, his precious daughter.

And that gaze is the only thing that can unright the hurt caused by your family. It's the only gaze that tells you what was truest and best about your family. It's the story, your family's story ultimately points toward. And all the best parts of your family's story, this is the story that that story points toward because his family is the perfect family. His love is the perfect father's love. And his love is a love that heals us wherever we're at, wherever we've come from, and wherever we're going.

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