Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / On Sibling Rivalries

Transcript

On Sibling Rivalries · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:04
  Sibling rivalries. That's our theme today. Welcome back to the podcast. We've
• 0:09
  talked about siblings on the podcast and a couple of different contexts. We addressed
• 0:13
  the prodigal son and his older brother in APJ ten fifty nine, and we
• 0:19
  looked at how Jesus is our perfect elder brother in APJ nine thirty four.
• 0:24
  I love that episode, the fact that Jesus is our brother. He calls
• 0:27
  us brothers. But today we get a question about sibling rivalries in the home,
• 0:33
  something we have not yet addressed on the podcast. And here's the question
• 0:37
  today for you, Pastor John, who once again joined us remotely over zoom.
• 0:42
  The question is from Stephanie, Pastor John, and Tony. Thank you
• 0:45
  for all the work and thoughtfulness you put into APJ. I have listened for
• 0:50
  years, always encouraged by hearing brothers and sisters ask questions I would never even
• 0:55
  think to ask myself. Your careful responses exemplify first Peter three fifteen. Always
• 1:00
  to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you, to give
• 1:04
  the reason for the hope that you have with gentleness and respect. My question
• 1:11
  for you is about sibling rivalry in Genesis. It seems that every family dynamic
• 1:17
  was affected by jealousy or envy between siblings Kane and Abel, Jacob and Esau,
• 1:23
  Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his brothers, just to name a few.
• 1:27
  What are gospel implications of this reoccurring plot theme in the Bible? And
• 1:33
  seeing that many of these broken relationships are the result of favoritism or passivity by
• 1:37
  parents, what lessons can we learn as fathers and mothers today? Wow?
• 1:42
  What a good question it is. Yeah, that caused me to do some
• 1:48
  serious thinking on things I haven't quite posed in that way. So let's start
• 1:53
  at the beginning. God creates man male and female and designs that by becoming
• 2:01
  one flesh in marriage, they would have children who are called in their relationship
• 2:08
  to each other brothers and sisters. So this is a universally understood relationship.
• 2:15
  It's amazing brothers and sisters all of the world. Everybody knows what that is.
• 2:20
  Every culture understands what brothers and sisters are together with marriage. This relationship
• 2:27
  is primal, It's really basic. Brothers and sisters ordinarily grow up under the
• 2:32
  hair of parents and are helped to be productive adults in the family structure.
• 2:39
  All over the world. Now Sin enters the world, and its first devastating
• 2:46
  effect is on the married couple. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent.
• 2:53
  Their innocence is over shame and guilt coming to their relationship ship and break
• 3:00
  havoc. And the next relationship that we read about as contaminated and ruined by
• 3:06
  sins came killing his brother April. So the basic family structure is brought into
• 3:15
  being by God, and then Sin moves out through that family structure to destroy
• 3:22
  all the relationships. Simultaneously, though, God's grace enters into the world and
• 3:30
  begins to do its redemptive work. And what we are to see is that
• 3:35
  in these very broken and sin ruined relationships a brother and brother and sister and
• 3:42
  sister, God nevertheless has worked redemptively savingly. We see it in God's relationship
• 3:49
  with Isaac and Ishmael. We see it in his relationship to Jacob and Esau.
• 3:54
  We see it in Egypt where Moses said to two Israel, why are
• 4:00
  you fighting? Are you not brothers? And in that very context of brother
• 4:05
  against brother, God is saving his people. When Jesus enters the world,
• 4:12
  two dramatic things happen in the way Jesus defines the relationship between himself and his
• 4:18
  followers, and then the way those followers understand their relationship with each other.
• 4:24
  First, he defines his relationship with those who follow him as brothers to himself,
• 4:31
  whether there's any physical family relationship or not. For example, he says
• 4:36
  in Mark two thirty two to thirty five, the crowd was sitting around him,
• 4:45
  and they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking
• 4:48
  you. And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers?
• 4:55
  And looking around at those who sat at his he said, here are my
• 5:01
  mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is
• 5:08
  my brother and sister and mother. And in the picture of the Final Judgment,
• 5:16
  when the disciples asked the King when they served him, it says the
• 5:25
  King will answer them. Truly, I say to you, as you did
• 5:29
  it unto one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to
• 5:34
  me. So the followers of Jesus who love like Jesus are brothers of the
• 5:42
  King of the universe. This dramatic act of identifying as brother to his followers
• 5:51
  had a huge implication for how they understood their relationship to each other, and
• 5:59
  how the apostles later taught about the nature of the church. For example,
• 6:04
  Jesus said to his disciples, you are not to be called rabbi or you
• 6:11
  have one teacher, and you are all brothers. They weren't physical brothers.
• 6:16
  They were a new kind of brother so to each other, brother to each
• 6:21
  other, not just brother to him. And then when we turned to the
• 6:26
  apostle Paul and asked how he understood the relationship among believers in the church,
• 6:31
  we find an amazing fact. Just to give you a sense of proportion,
• 6:36
  this was a surprise to me. I've made a big deal out of Paul's
• 6:42
  favorite name for Christians being saints. Right, he loves to call Christian saint.
• 6:49
  Forty times he calls Christians saints. But when you last, when you
• 6:56
  ask, well, what about brother, what was his real favorite? He
• 7:00
  refers to Christians as brothers over one hundred and thirty times. So Paul picked
• 7:08
  up on Jesus reference to himself as brother as well as to each other.
• 7:15
  He says in Romans eight twenty nine, those whom God foreknew he predestined to
• 7:21
  be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be
• 7:26
  the firstborn among many brothers. So God predestined us to be the brothers of
• 7:34
  the Son of God and for him to be pre eminent. So the link
• 7:41
  is finally made with God. God explicitly son of God, Jesus Christ is
• 7:46
  the pre eminent, firstborn among many brothers, meaning that the whole church are
• 7:53
  the children of God and part of a divine family through thrid him of work
• 8:00
  of Christ. This is breathtaking if you just let it sink. In God's
• 8:07
  original creation, order of husband and wife and then brother and brother become the
• 8:13
  two dominant ways of thinking about Christ and his church. He's the elder brother
• 8:20
  to brothers and sisters in the church, and he is the husband to his
• 8:24
  bride. The church. God's original design finds its fulfillment not mainly in the
• 8:35
  redeemed earthly nuclear families, but mainly in the divine family, with the Son
• 8:41
  of God as preeminent brother over his brothers and sisters and as the husband over
• 8:48
  his bride. Now, what about the second part of Stephanie's question? What
• 8:54
  can we do as fathers and mothers to foster peace minimize rivalry between our children?
• 9:03
  And I think the little survey that we just did sheds light and I
• 9:09
  think I've got four things here quickly, just to mention. So what should
• 9:13
  I do as a parent. I've got old kids now, the oldest fifty,
• 9:20
  and many of our listeners have tiny kids, So what can we do
• 9:26
  to help minimize a sinful sibling rivalry? Number one, don't make the mistake
• 9:33
  of Adam and Eve. They rejected God as an all wise, all providing
• 9:39
  father and replaced him with their own private preferences, and the result was a
• 9:43
  destroyed family. So turn that around and make God in Christ the supreme treasure
• 9:50
  of your life and trust his word and his care. Implicitly, let the
• 9:56
  children see you do that. Mom and Dad trust and treasure God. Mom
• 10:03
  and Dad have a heavenly father and they trust him to take care of them
• 10:09
  and us. Number two, teach the children that this natural family that they're
• 10:13
  part of is not ultimate. Belonging to God's family is ultimate. Humans,
• 10:20
  boys and girls, teenagers need something great to live for, something much greater
• 10:30
  than the natural physical family they're a part of. If you idolize that family,
• 10:35
  it will not suffice for the human soul. If they can be captured
• 10:41
  by something glorious that is greater than the family, namely the global family from
• 10:46
  all the nations, they will have resources to love their natural family better.
• 10:54
  Number three, teach them that squabbling over which is the greatest puts them in
• 11:01
  the category of those who do not understand Jesus. When the disciples did that,
• 11:07
  who's the greater among you, Jesus said, who is the greater one
• 11:11
  who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who
• 11:16
  reclines at table? And yet I am among you as the one who serves.
• 11:22
  In other words, if you follow Jesus, then being a servant is
• 11:28
  true greatness. So if you want to try to be greater than your brother
• 11:33
  or your sister, be a greater servant. Finally, number four, when
• 11:39
  you think about the different gifts that your children have, don't demean or discount
• 11:46
  any of them. Take your cue from Paul's teaching in First Corinthians twelve,
• 11:52
  twenty four and twenty five. He said, God has so composed the body,
• 11:58
  giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be
• 12:03
  no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care
• 12:09
  for one another. There's no point in pretending that your children are all equal
• 12:15
  in every way. They know they're not. You know they're not. Some
• 12:20
  are better at one thing, some at another. The key is teaching them
• 12:26
  the humility of viewing everyone as precious and useful in God's sight as they are.
• 12:35
  Nobody is wasted. God doesn't waste his creation. Nobody's pointless. Everyone
• 12:41
  has a design in God's mind, and they're called. They're called to something
• 12:48
  significant. So Stephanie, thank you for a very provocative and helpful question for
• 12:56
  me. It was good for me to think about this. May God help
• 13:01
  us to love being God's children Christ, brothers and sisters, and may God
• 13:07
  make us good examples to our children. Yes, a very provocative and helpful
• 13:13
  question. In response, thank you, pstor John. This is our first
• 13:18
  episode on sibling rivalries and the home. What else needs to be addressed on
• 13:22
  this topic? Tell us email your question to us at asked Mester John at
• 13:26
  Desiring God dot org. And speaking of sibling rivalries and tensions inside the home,
• 13:33
  tensions in the family can bubble over into months long, and years long
• 13:39
  and even decades long feuds. So how do we learn to forgive family?
• 13:48
  An important question? And it's the question up next. I'm your host,
• 13:50
  Tony Rankie. We'll see you back here on Monday. Thanks for listening.