The Frenemy Factor -- FPC sermon excerpt

Friends. Enemies.

Put them together and you get … “Frenemies.”

A frenemy can be an enemy disguised as a friend. It can also be a close acquaintance who is a competitor or rival.

Think of Dwight Schrute and Jim Halpert in the television show The Office. Will Schuester and Sue Sylvester in Glee. Virtually everyone involved in the recent debt-limit negotiations in Washington, DC.

Frenemies.

These relationships can be mutually beneficial, but they are also highly competitive and saturated with risk and mistrust.

The Bible is filled with frenemies, starting with the Book of Genesis. Think of Adam blaming Eve for giving him the fruit from the tree (3:12). Cain murdering his brother Abel (4:8). Strife between Abram’s herders and Lot’s herders (13:7). Animosity between Sarai and Hagar (16:1-6). The twin brothers Esau and Jacob, struggling together in their mother’s womb (25:22). Jacob prospering at his father-in-law Laban’s expense (30:25-43).

Notice how often these frenemies are members of the same family. A pastor named Thomas Mann took a look at these stories and said, “Genesis is a book about dysfunctional families.”

Amen to that. You may have heard that there was once a national conference for the children of non-dysfunctional families. One guy showed up.

When I take a look at my family tree, I see some frenemies. And they can be found throughout the families of the Bible as well. The frenemy factor becomes especially evident near the end of Genesis, when the twelve sons of Jacob fall into a bitter rivalry. Jacob loved one of his sons, seventeen-year-old Joseph, “more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves” (37:3).

You can easily imagine how this favoritism went over with Joseph’s brothers. Genesis tells us that “they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (v. 4).

There was no brotherly love in this situation. Instead, brotherly hate. They were frenemies.