Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any other of his sons. Genesis 37:3
Showing favoritism to one child over another causes all kinds of trouble in families. You may have suffered under this. Your brother or sister seemed to have a hold on the heart of your father or your mother, and nothing you said or did could ever change that.
There was a history of favoritism in this family line—Isaac loved Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob. So it would be easy to assume that Jacob was simply reproducing what had learned in his childhood.
But there is something more here. Jacob had twelve sons. But only two of them were born through Rachel, who had always been Jacob’s first love. The first was Joseph, and the other was Benjamin, the youngest (Gen. 35:24). These two were the “sons of his old age” (37:3).
Put yourself in Jacob’s shoes. You have a large family, and one after another, you see your children taking a destructive path. They are not walking in the ways of the Lord. Your children lie to you and deceive you. You find out that they are sexually promiscuous. You are cut to the heart by the life they’ve chosen, and great sadness and disappointment weigh on your soul.
What is the future for this family? Where is God at work in all of this? Well, you have another son, much younger than the rest, and he is different. There is a godliness about him, and you think to yourself, Maybe there is hope! Maybe he will have some influence on the others. Maybe God isn’t finished with this family yet.
Have you seen this sort of thing in your family of origin? With your own children? On a scale of 1 (hopeless) to 10 (hopeful), where are you in your thinking about the future of your family?
