Playing Favorites

Sibling rivalries have existed from the dawn of time. My brother and I are not much different. He is very smart, more feisty than I am, and three years younger. However, he did not mix well with the way we do school in this country. Poor guy had to have the same teachers I had four years earlier and deal with the expectation that he would get the same grades. Of course, he had his ways of getting back at me. I found out about 10 years ago that he also does not like brussel sprouts, but that he would ask for them every chance he had because he knew I despised them. Please, when bringing your toppings for the potato bar, don’t bring brussel sprouts. But nothing pushes sibling rivalry over the edge like favoritism.

This month we are going to visiting the school of hard knocks, from which Joseph graduated with honors, though it took a long time to get there.

Let’s look at Genesis 37:1-11 together:

Genesis 37:1–11 CSB

Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. 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. Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a robe of many colors for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him. Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” “Are you really going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him. “Are you really going to rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” He told his father and brothers, and his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

In Joseph’s family there was built in sibling rivalry. 6 of Joseph’s brothers were born to his Aunt who was also married to his father. There was rivalry between the sisters that even caused them to give their hand-maids to their husband so that they could get more children through them. His father, Jacob, had tricked his own brother Esau out of his birthright, and Jacob’s father Isaac’s mother Sarah, sent Isaac’s older half-brother Ismael away because she didn’t want him to get any of the inheritance that was due Isaac. Jacob’s mother Rebekah favored him while his father Isaac favored Esau. Favoritism is not just a sin, it is a sin that is passed generation to generation.

Favoritism fractures families.

James 2:1–9 CSB

My brothers and sisters, do not show favoritism as you hold on to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and a poor person dressed in filthy clothes also comes in, if you look with favor on the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Sit here in a good place,” and yet you say to the poor person, “Stand over there,” or “Sit here on the floor by my footstool,” haven’t you made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Didn’t God choose the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? Yet you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the rich oppress you and drag you into court? Don’t they blaspheme the good name that was invoked over you? Indeed, if you fulfill the royal law prescribed in the Scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. If, however, you show favoritism, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

Favoritism impedes the gospel.

Acts 10:34–43 CSB

Peter began to speak: “Now I truly understand that God doesn’t show favoritism, but in every nation the person who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. He sent the message to the Israelites, proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. You know the events that took place throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the tyranny of the devil, because God was with him. We ourselves are witnesses of everything he did in both the Judean country and in Jerusalem, and yet they killed him by hanging him on a tree. God raised up this man on the third day and caused him to be seen, not by all the people, but by us whom God appointed as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.”

God doesn’t play favorites.