Living Stones – Monday, September 18, 2017
It starts in the head
Genesis 37:4
… when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
In Genesis 37 Joseph takes centre stage in the story of the patriarchs. At this point the theologians wax warm about the significance and symbolism of Joseph in God’s redemptive plan for the fallen human race he had created for relationship with him.
Today, however, we want to look, not at Joseph, but at his brothers. Let’s try to figure out what’s going on in their heads.
It could be argued that the favoritism, openly displayed by their father Jacob, was the trigger for their response to the youngest brother Joseph. For his part Joseph could have been a lot more tactful with what he shared with his brothers and then with his father, but we must remember that he was just a young boy who had not yet learned the ways of the world.
They thought about their father’s action and were jealous. They listened to their little brother excitedly and innocently shared his dreams; but the brothers, older as they were, wiser as they should have been, reacted negatively to the little boy’s boasting.
We must be careful with what’s going on in our heads. We are urged all through scripture to guard our thoughts. What we think about, and how we think about them, ultimately shapes the attitudes of the heart and our consequent conduct.
Joseph’s brothers will eventually execute a plan that was meant to kill him; short of that is was to, at the very least, get the rid of him forever. The result of their thinking was, first of all jealousy. That jealousy sowed the seeds of hatred, by verse 8 of this chapter of Genesis, they identified his dreams and his words as further source of offence. By verse 11, what they were thinking was now described as envy.
All the time their thinking was changing the attitude of their hearts, and then their conduct. The jealousy caused them to have a hostile relationship with Joseph, “[they] could not speak peaceably to him,” and in the end, that thinking caused them to plot his demise.
These brothers didn’t start out with murderous intent, but the jealousy and envy took them there. If we don’t take control of our thinking we have started down a slippery slope where our thoughts cause us to harden our hearts and then execute evil.
Think of these things:
- What are the things or people that you think about the most?
- Can you think of any relationship that was affected by the way you were thinking about the other person?
- Consider whether your present thinking about any other person in your life is likely to cause you to treat then negatively?
Prayer focus:
Pray today that we will learn to always think rightly about others.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex