Relationships with Siblings

Intro

Excited to be back with you all and looking forward to the next month

We will be going over relationships for the next 5 weeks in home groups and youth nights

Tonight we will be talking about our relationships with our siblings.

If you don’t have any siblings don’t worry because you can apply this to your sports teams, and even your church family, because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

For the next 5 weeks we will be in the story of Joseph and how he handled different relationships through his life

Tonight we will be in Genesis 37 verses 1 through 20

Before we get into the Scripture, let’s pray

Pray

Let’s look at verses 1-2

Genesis 37:1–2 “1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. 2 These are the family records of Jacob. At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father.”

Your first point is

Unchecked Sibling Rivalry Can Cause Long Term Hurt

Here in the story of Joseph the very first two verses, Joseph tells on his brothers for something they may or may not have done wrong

It sets the tone for who we know Joseph as. If you’ve heard the story of Joseph often times we think poor Joseph.

But in reality he’s starting out by telling on his brothers to their dad

Then Joseph is given the nice long sleeved coat by his dad showing off the favoritism he has for him which makes his brothers so mad that they can’t bring themselves to say anything nice to him.

Then after the coat Joseph told them about the dreams he had that talked about how he would rule over them and his family.

This made his brothers hate him even more, but Jacob, his dad took what he said and kept it in mind because even though it might not be something he wants to hear, he knows things that come from God is something to pay attention to.

Because of Joseph showing off the favoritism from their dad and the dreams Joseph is telling them, Joseph gets jumped by his brothers

Thankfully for Rueban, they don’t kill him, only sell him off to slavers for 20 pieces of silver

Illustration

Q: Who has ever felt like there was a favorite sibling in the house? (Be honest)

Q: Has there ever been a time that you told on your sibling, or you got revenge on your sibling where it didn’t turn out the way that you wanted to?

I remember a time when my brother was in high school and I was home from college we were starting to turn away from God at the time. We were cussing, and partying, dating people we shouldn’t have been, and just doing stuff we shouldn’t have. My parents had been on my case and watching me closely because of all that I had been doing. My brother had just gone to someone’s house where they had vapes and I’m pretty sure were drinking. I told on him for two reasons, one to get my parents to not focus on me but also to be fair I was worried about the choices he was making at the age he was at and didn’t want him to be in the place I was at the time. So instead of talking to him about it and how it wasn’t good for him, I told on him and it really broke his trust of me. Now him and I through getting revenge on each other and not wanting to hang out with each other because of how we viewed each other we have a hard relationship today.

Application

When our brothers and sisters are doing something that we may not like or just doing something wrong we need to think about the intentions of why we are telling our other siblings or telling our parents on them

For Joseph he was the favorite of Jacob and he knew it

Maybe some of us in here tonight are the favorite or get treated better than your other siblings because you don’t do as much bad things as they’ve done

I was a favorite child for a while and in my extended family I was as well so I get where you all are

How often do we use our status of being the favorite for our own gain and show off by not getting in trouble and teasing our siblings when they do?

We often don’t think about how this could effect our relationships with our siblings and rarely do we think about how God views these things because it’s written off as just sibling rivalry

But what if all of the revenge, and telling on each other, and showing off how we are the favorites can actually seriously hurt our relationships with our siblings and is actually sinful.

So for Joseph he could have been telling on his brothers because he wanted to keep his favorite status or to rub it in to his brothers because he’ll do this later.

A lot of times we will use telling on our siblings for our benefit.

Like in your stories and in my story, unless they are putting themselves in serious danger and harm these things can break the trust of our siblings.

When this happens, we lose our ability to encourage and help our siblings if they’re struggling with their relationship with God, damages future relationships with them, and hurts your ability to share the Gospel with them if they’re unsaved.

So how do you handle these things?

We can look at Joseph’s dad and uncle, Jacob and Esau.

Jacob and Esau had sibling rivalry because Jacob was his mom’s favorite while Esau was their dad’s

Jacob took Esau’s birthrite and the blessing from Isaac to inherit the promise

Jacob and Esau would go their separate ways and Jacob was scared Esau was still mad

But when it came time to meet, Esau was happy to see Jacob and put everything behind them and forgave him.

When we have sibling rivalry because of favoritism, or things that we have done in the past, it is unbiblical to be unforgiving of our siblings

when we hold onto the hurt and hatred of our siblings then we lose the ability to show them Christ like love and if this goes unchecked and unrepentant we lose the ability to minister to them or even share the gospel