Your Home Environment Growing Up
For many people this week has been a week to be around family. What about your home environment growing up? What was it like? It is safe to say it was nothing like the environment of Joseph in the Old Testament (Gen. 37-50).
Joseph is one of my favorite people in the Bible because he was a guy who made his share of mistakes but grew to be a great man. He is also a favorite because he was not a prophet, priest, or king. He was not royalty, at least not in the beginning. He was just a guy trying to live life in the midst of incredible negative surroundings.
Let’s consider some of those difficulties. His father was a schemer and a trickster. At an early age he tricked his twin brother out of his birthright – privileges that came from being the firstborn. Joseph’s mother was beautiful, but she was a thief and a liar. In fact he had four mothers. One biological mother, Rachel, and three stepmothers Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. He had ten stepbrothers, one stepsister, and one biological brother, Benjamin.
Early on, Joseph made an incredible mistake that almost cost him his life. His father Jacob made him a coat, a coat of many colors. It was the coat of an eastern chieftain. This coat communicated. It said he was the heir to his father’s fortune. It said he was Jacob’s favorite son (Gen. 37:3).
Joseph’s problems began when at the age of seventeen, he decided to wear that coat. In his naive seventeen-year-old mind, he thought his brothers would be excited for this amazing gift from their dad. But just the opposite was the case. When he wore that coat in front of them, they wanted to kill him.
Some of the noteworthy factors of his life that shaped him was his immaturity in his teenage years. The favoritism and improper training by his dad. In his family we see a clear example of sibling rivalry. Because of the coat, two dreams, and other family dynamics, Joseph’s brothers despised him. For those of you who were raised in a blended family, Joseph knew of this reality bigtime.
Joseph was also a victim of human trafficking. As some of his brothers thought about killing him, one brother tried to divert these thoughts of premeditated murder by devising a plan to get him out of harms way. Before this plan materialized, another brother offered an idea of selling him to slave traders. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver and then sold again when he arrived in Egypt.
There are many reasons why Joseph should have become a bitter and angry man, full of thoughts of revenge. But he was nothing like that.
The next time you think, “If my upbringing and home environment would have been different, I would have become a better person” take heart and learn from Joseph of the Old Testament.
