SOVEREIGN GRACE LIBERATES FOR LOVE

Genesis 50: 15-26

INTRODUCTION

There are two things that keep people from loving God and loving others: fear and anger.   You cannot love God or man without risking your reputation, your time, your money, your relationships or your pleasure on earth.   Fear of not being taken care of keeps people from the risks involved in loving God or others.   While we don’t always consciously think this through here is what goes on in our heads.   “If I trust Christ, i.e., love God, that means I have to stop having sex with my girlfriend.   How do I know that the pleasure of knowing Jesus will be greater than the pleasure of sex?   If I become a follower of Christ I will stop getting drunk and start going to church.   How do I know that I’ll still have fun and enjoy myself?   If I love God then he might want me to be a missionary or he might want me to get a different job or he may want me to break up with my boyfriend, how do I know what God wants will be better than what I want?”   We experience the same kinds of fears when it comes to loving people.   “If I am kind to this person how do I know they won’t take advantage of me?   If I overlook this offense and continue to be a friend to this person how do I know that I won’t be hurt again?   Will I be able to get the work I need to get done if I spend time helping another person?   How will I be able to take it if I call a person to encourage them and they never call me back?”  

Fear is a great inhibitor to loving God and loving people.   But also anger, resentment and bitterness are great barriers to loving God and others.   How often I have had people say to me, “I used to believe in God but then this bad thing happened to me.   I can’t understand how a loving God would allow such an evil thing to take place.   How can I love a God who would do such a thing to me?”   Then there is the anger and bitterness that people feel from the mistreatment of other people.   The fact is that there isn’t a person in here who has not been mistreated by another human being.   It is the natural, human response to withhold love from those who have not loved us or who have harmed us.

When Jesus was asked what was God’s greatest commandment he said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.   This is the first and greatest commandment.   A second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   Upon these two depend the whole law and the prophets.”   This means that the reason you and I were created is to love God with our whole beings and to love our neighbors as ourselves.   The only people who are going to be eternally and infinitely happy are those who are loving God and their neighbor.   However, we are afraid to love God and neighbor because we do not believe we will be cared for if we risk this love.   Additionally, many of us are angry and bitter because we feel like we have tried to love God and people and all we’ve gotten for out efforts is a lot of nothing.

In the last chapter of Genesis we encounter the final portrait of Joseph, a man who persisted to love God and to love people for 110 years in spite of the fact that his life was filled with pain for doing so.   We discover in the final 12 verses of Genesis how it is that Joseph overcame fear and bitterness to persist in a life of love for God and others.   I want to be a person who loves God and loves people.   I believe what Jesus said—this is why God has given me life and why he keeps giving me life.   I want to be eternally and infinitely happy, I want you to be infinitely and eternally happy, and this will only happen if you and I love God and people.   What we are going to see here in the life of Joseph is of critical importance.   What we are going to see is that…  

MAIN POINT

Only those who trust the God of sovereign grace will love God and each other because…

I.   Only the God of Sovereign Grace can pardon your sins (vv. 15-19)

It was during the three-week journey back to Egypt from Canaan, after burying their father Jacob, that Simeon first approached Reuben with his misgivings.   “I’ve been thinking Reuben.   Joseph was awfully attached to our father, Jacob.   You saw how he wept when he died and the extravagant funeral he organized.   Now the time of mourning is over and we are alone with Joseph.   Also, have you noticed how these stuck up and proud Egyptians won’t camp near us or eat with us but that Joseph lives among them and is treated as a great ruler by them?   I don’t know, I’ve got a bad feeling about what’s going to happen to us when we get back to Egypt.   What if all of the help that Joseph has given us these past 17 years was just because he didn’t want to hurt dad?   What if he really hates us and has simply been biding his time until dad was gone?   You remember how he begged for mercy when we sold him to the Ishmaelites.   He suffered quite a bit at our hands.   It sure wouldn’t surprise me to find out he hates us and that as soon as we get back to Egypt he comes with the Egyptian army and wipes us and our families out.   Isn’t that what you would do?”

Reuben replied, “Now that you mention it Joseph has seemed less friendly to me since dad died.   He hasn’t smiled much when I’ve been around him and he seems to be staying closer to the Egyptians than he is to us.   The other night two of my sons tried to get Ephraim and Manasseh involved in a camel race but they said they had more important things to do than play games.   Just yesterday Joseph was talking with two of Pharaoh’s closest advisors and when I came up the advisors quickly left and Joseph just didn’t seem very happy to see me.   I think we better talk it over with our other brothers and figure out we’re going to do because I agree with you that it seems that Joseph is planning something to get even with us.”

During the rest of the journey, the brothers talked about the subtle changes they observed in Joseph’s behavior.   They also talked about how natural it would be for him to be very angry with them for what they had done to him.   They reflected together on how he had deceived them when they first came to Egypt to get food.   They all felt naked and exposed without their dad being present to guarantee that Joseph would be kind to them.   The more they talked with one another, the more their fear grew.   The more certain they became that Joseph was plotting to pay them back for all that they had done to him.   The first night they were back in Goshen they called a meeting of the ten brothers to talk about what they were going to do.   The fear in the tent that night was almost visible.   The men looked at one another with furtive eyes, filled with guilt and terror.   As they spoke their voices would often crack with fear and uncertainty.   The night, though filled with the ordinary, happy noises of the camp going to sleep seemed to them filled with foreboding.   The reality of the evil they had done and how just it would be for Joseph to punish them, weighed heavily upon each one.   All of Joseph’s behavior seemed to them filled with sinister intent.  

After much discussion they arrived at a plan.   They chose three of their oldest and most trusted servants.   These were men whom Joseph had known since he was a young boy.   These were also men who knew what had happened between these brothers and Joseph and who knew how guilt and fear were oppressing these men.   The brothers instructed the men on what to say and sent them off the next morning to see Joseph at his home in the great city of Thebes.   When Joseph was informed that these three loyal servants of his family had come to see him he stopped all that he was doing and had them ushered into his presence.   He warmly greeted each of them and asked what his brothers needed from him.   The three servants looked at each other and fell before Joseph.   The oldest of the servants cried out in an anguished voice.   “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph, “I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.”’   Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.”

In disbelief Joseph staggered back and slumped into a chair.   He couldn’t believe his ears.   His brothers did not believe that he loved them.   They feared him and what he might do to them.   They were convinced he hated them even after all he had done for them.   They couldn’t even come to see him themselves because they were so afraid of him.   Joseph began to cry.   His tears soon began to fall in great streams as his breast heaved in massive sobs.   His servants looked away from the pain of their master.   The servants of his family remained with their faces pressed to the floor.   Joseph wept for their fear and he wept for the evil they had plotted against him.   He wept over the lost years with his family and he wept that his family was still not reconciled.   He wept over the guilt and unbelief of his brothers.   He wept, as it appeared that all his suffering had been for nothing, his brothers still did not understand the great love of God and power of God in fulfilling his purposes to save them.   How could these brothers not see that all that had happened was according to God’s good purposes?   How could they not know that he loved them?   What more could he do than he had already done to convince these men that God loved them, he loved them and that they should rejoice in this love rather than be afraid.

As his weeping subsided, Joseph told the three servants to quickly return to his brothers and to tell them to come to him immediately.   The brothers rode towards Joseph with the same panic and fear as when the servant had found Joseph’s cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain.   They were certain that God was finally going to make them pay for what they had done to Joseph.   They rode as men who are sentenced to death.   Their faces showed no hope but only the doleful expression of guilt and fear.   When they entered Joseph’s throne room, with Joseph seated in all his regal attire, they cast themselves as one man upon the floor at his feet and cried out between their sobs, “We are your slaves.”   Joseph rose to his feet and asked them to stop their crying.   He told them, “Do not be afraid, am I in the place of God?”

These ten brothers know that they deserve only death for what they have done to Joseph.   They cannot imagine how Joseph could possibly forgive them.   They have believed that his kindness for the past 17 years was only due to his love for their father, not because he loved them.   They are convinced that Joseph hates them.   They cannot fathom that God or Joseph could simply pardon their sin.   On one hand they are correct in their assessment of the situation.   How is it right for Joseph to not make these men pay for what they have done?   In fact, how is it right for Joseph not only to pardon them of their crimes but also to treat them so well?   How is it right for God to consider these men his chosen, favorite people?   These men understand that forgiveness is a huge problem.   What can they do to make up for the evil they have done?   There is nothing they can do to escape the punishment that is due them.   They are dependent upon Joseph to forgive them.

Joseph’s first response to them tells us how it is that he is able to forgive them and love them.   He does not want to punish them because God does not want to punish them.   He asks, “Am I in the place of God?”   He knows that God has freely, contrary to what these men deserve, for no reason in them, chosen to forgive them, to make them his very own people.   How can he not treat well those whom God has forgiven?   How can he hold a grudge against those whom God does not hold a grudge against?   Joseph knows that while they have offended him they have offended God in far greater ways.   How can I not forgive those whom God has forgiven?   If God’s forgiveness depends upon human response, in other words if his forgiveness is not a sovereign forgiveness, then how will anyone ever be forgiven?   How can you ever pay back an infinite penalty?   Joseph knows that God is pleased in himself to forgive these men, not because they have done anything to be forgiven.   They don’t deserve to be forgiven.   However, God, as the only sovereign king has out of his own mercy and by his own free choice forgiven these men their many sins.   Therefore, Joseph cannot act towards these men any differently than God does.

The fact that all of us who belong to Christ have been forgiven not because of anything any of us have ever done ought to enable us to forgive and love one another.   “Be imitators of God then as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”   We are to be like God in the way we love each other.   Christ didn’t die for us after we shaped up, after we repented, after we trusted him.   God didn’t send his Holy Spirit to give us new hearts after we believed.   He saved us when we were still sinners, just like he saved these brothers while they were still sinners.   We don’t wait for others to merit our love or to earn our love.   We love regardless of how people have treated us or how they might treat us because we know that this is how God loves, freely with no preconditions.   We delight to exhibit the love of God for sinners, loving in spite of how we’ve been treated, not because of how we’ve been treated.

Only those who trust the God of sovereign grace will love God and each other because…

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can pardon your sins

•  And because…

II.   Only the God of Sovereign Grace can protect you from harm (vv. 19-21)

Verse 20 is one of the most astonishing statements in the entire Bible.   It is a statement that most people read but don’t believe.   Yet the only way you will ever love God or people is if you are able to say the same thing about every evil thing that others have done to you.   Let’s take v. 20 apart very slowly so that you and I don’t try and explain it away but embrace it as the antidote for fear and bitterness that it is.   Joseph says first of all that they on purpose planned and they acted in a way that was designed to do evil to him.   That is exactly what he says, “you intended evil for me.”   These men hated Joseph, they plotted to kill him, and then when they saw an opportunity to make a profit and get rid of him they sold him into slavery.   No one made them do this.   This is what they wanted to do and it was evil.   Joseph does not say that what they did was not evil.   He does not say that what they did was good.   He says that what they did was evil.   It was wrong.   It deserves punishment.

However, then he says that what they intended for evil God intended for good.   Joseph uses the exact same verb for what they intended and for what God intended.   They intended his sale to do evil to Joseph while God intended the sale of Joseph and all that happened to him afterwards for good.   Notice the little pronoun “it”.   In Hebrew, unlike English, you can tell what noun every pronoun refers to by its gender.   The first clause literally says, “you intended evil for me.”   “Evil” is a feminine noun and the “it” is a feminine “it”, which means that God and the brothers both intended the evil that happened to Joseph.   Joseph is not saying that the brothers did evil and then God came along and made a bad situation good.   It says that God planned and acted to make sure that they did evil and that the evil they did served his good purposes.   However, neither does Joseph say that God did evil.   The brothers did the evil but in doing the evil they did exactly what God wanted them to do so that his good purposes were accomplished.   As John Calvin says in his commentary on this passage, “The selling of Joseph was a crime detestable for its cruelty and treachery; yet he was not sold except by the decree of heaven.”

I know that this sounds like a contradiction.   I know it goes against how you naturally think.   This language makes it sound like these men are not really free and it sounds like God is responsible for evil.   While no one fully understands how it is that God can will the evil that men do and yet he is not responsible for evil but those who do evil are responsible, that is what this verse says. As Augustine said it 1600 years ago as a result of reading the Bible, “God wills with a good will what evil men will with an evil will in such a way that God is not guilty of evil and the evil that men do serve his good purposes.”   This doesn’t mean we are fatalists and passively accept evil.   Joseph didn’t simply accept these brothers into his embrace the first time he saw them.   He knew they were evil and he knew that his father and Benjamin were not safe.   He worked to rescue them from these evil brothers and to bring these brothers to repentance.   This verse does not teach us to be passive about evil.   Like my friend, whose grandfather was a pastor and who sexually molested her and her sister.   Her grandmother knew about it and said it was God’s will and did nothing about it.   That is not how we respond to evil.   People who do evil are to be resisted and corrected.   However, as a Christian, when you have been sinned against you can be free from anger and bitterness because you know that the evil done to you has been ordained by God for good purposes.   You can continue to love God and people even when you have been sinned against because you know that you cannot be harmed by the sin of others.   God has ordained the evil of others to accomplish good for you and for others.   Thus, like Joseph, like Jesus, you can love your enemies who harm you because they cannot harm you.

What is the good purpose that God intended the evil wills and actions of these brothers to accomplish?   The good he intended was the saving of many people, (not “lives” as the NIV has it).   While Joseph’s sale into slavery resulted in many other people beyond the family of Jacob being saved the emphasis here is that God intended the evil done to Joseph by the brothers to result in the salvation of these brothers.   Joseph tells these brothers that the evil they did to him God designed for their salvation.   Here is the gospel of Jesus Christ.   There is a picture in my oldest son, Jared’s, room that was his favorite picture.   It shows Jesus carrying a young man who is holding in his hands a wooden mallet and a large spike.   The point is that each of us, by our own wickedness, nailed Christ to that cross.   The evil we do resulted in evil being done to him and that evil which was done to him results in our salvation.   He saves those by his cross who put him on the cross, just as Joseph saves by his slavery those who sold him into slavery.

What we see here in the life of Joseph and what we see in the life of Jesus is true in the life of every Christian.   God intends the evil that people do to you for good purposes, both for you and for others.   While you are suffering the evil you don’t know what the good is, just like Joseph didn’t know what the good purpose of God was during his thirteen years of slavery and prison.   I do not think most of us will fully know in this life what all of God’s good purposes are in the suffering he decrees for us.   However, there is a day coming when we will fully know, just as Joseph knows, the good purposes that God intended when he decreed our suffering.

Look at how the knowledge of God’s intending good in the evil intentions of the brothers caused Joseph to treat these men.   For 17 years Joseph has used his power and influence to protect and provide for these brothers.   He reaffirms in verse 21 his intention to continue to provide for them.   He also speaks tenderly and compassionately to these men.   What Joseph shows us is that when you believe there is a sovereign God who is ruling in and over the evil that is done to you, then you not only do not pay those who harm you back but you also actively love them.   You only show your faith in this sovereign God when you work for the good of those who you believe have harmed you and when you seek to speak kindly to them.   Ignoring those who have harmed you shows you do not trust in the sovereign God.   Acting to pay back those who have harmed you shows you do not trust in a sovereign God.   If you are trusting in the God who exists, then you are seeking to bless those who curse you.   You are working for the good of those who harm you.   You are speaking kindly to those who have injured you.   Can you see that in living like this you bring great honor to Christ?   This shows that you know that every evil thing done to you is for good.   It shows off the great power and love of God.  

Only those who trust the God of sovereign grace will love God and each other because…

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can pardon your sins

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can protect you from harm

•  And because…

III.   Only the God of Sovereign Grace can promise you a good future (vv. 22-26)

There are 53 years that pass between verses 21 and 22.   Joseph and his brothers are completely reconciled as a result of Joseph’s mercy and kindness.   His willingness to forgive as God forgives and to trust God’s good purposes in the evil they did has brought about family unity and harmony as v. 22 says.   What a picture of the church dwelling in the land of suffering and slavery enjoying the harmony that comes to those who know that a sovereign God rules over all the details of their lives and who forgives them not because of anything they have done but because of his own kindness.   Here is a picture of the church enjoying the fruitfulness that God gives to his people as seen in Joseph’s knowing his great grandchildren.   When God’s people trust in the sovereign grace of God to pardon sins and to rule over evil, then the church lives in the harmony and unity of God.   It is confidence in God’s gracious sovereignty that is the foundation of our unity as Christ’s people.   The only way that sinners will live together in peace is if they are shocked by the forgiveness that they have received from God and if they know that all the evil that is done to them by other sinners is designed by God for their good.

Then, at the end of his life, Joseph the powerful prince of Egypt gathers the growing family of Israel together and passes on the promise of God.   He has turned his back on the wealth and power of Egypt and thrown in his lot with the persecuted people of God.   He affirms that the hope of God’s people lies in a future deliverance out of the land of slavery and suffering, not in building a secure life in Egypt.   He insists that the people of God, the nation Israel, keep looking to the promise of God for a future salvation and not seek a salvation in Egypt.   What Joseph says here is a description of how the people of God must always live.   God has chosen us, he has forgiven us, he dwells with us but his final and complete salvation is yet to come.   Jesus did not die to bring heaven to earth now but he died to bring us to heaven and then to bring heaven to earth in the final consummation.

Hoping in the promise of God for a future salvation keeps us from demanding a present salvation.   So much of the fear, anger, bitterness, sorrow and anxiety that grips our hearts and keeps us from loving God and others is due to a demand on our part to have heaven on earth.   We are impatient people. We want to be healed now.   We want to be loved now.   We want to be treated, as we deserve immediately.   We live as if we have a right to be treated well, right now.   However, God’s salvation is not now.   There is a day coming when God will surely come to our aid, just as he has promised.   He will take us out of this land of slavery and suffering and bring us into the land of Promise where we will dwell with him and with one another in perfect safety and health and love.

Our condition is just like the nation Israel in Egypt.   They are waiting for the day when God will come to their aid and take them out of Egypt.   This is not our home.   We are on a journey with one another to heaven and so we must stop requiring God and others to treat us as if we are already in heaven.   We must seek to help each other hold on to the promises in order to make it to heaven.   Like Joseph reminds his family that salvation is yet to come, it is not now.   I know that I’ve used this illustration before but it helps me so much to think about our life right now that it bears repeating and it captures so well the condition of the people of God that Joseph expresses.   The year is 1850 and you and your family are living on a little farm on the soggy, mosquito-infested prairies of central Illinois.   One day a large covered wagon pulled by six oxen stops by the creek that flows through your property and a family asks permission to camp there for the night.   You give your permission and spend the day talking with them.   They are heading for Oregon with a wagon train that is forming just over the Mississippi in the little town of Dubuque, IA.   They tell you how awesome Oregon is.   The land is fertile.   There is always plenty of water.   There are no mosquitoes.   It never gets too hot or too cold.   There are mountains to the east and the ocean to the west.   The land is free for the taking.   By the end of the day you and your wife are converted.   You are convinced that life would be better in Oregon.   So you sell your farm, buy a wagon, pack up your possessions and head for Dubuque where you join the wagon train.  

The journey is long and difficult.   The food is not that great.   It’s hard sleeping in a wagon or on the ground every night for months on end.   The other travelers are annoying at times.   The baths are few and far between.   People get sick and die.   There are dangers from bandits and Indians and wild animals.   Wagons break down and people drop out.   How do you keep yourself going?   How do you help one another make it to Oregon?   You talk often of what it will be like in Oregon.   You remind yourself and one another when the journey gets tough that yes this is difficult but this isn’t Oregon.   You are going to be in Oregon one day and then things will be better.   The trouble and hardship will have been worth it.   You won’t make it alone to Oregon.   You need each other to make it safely.   When the wheels fall off someone’s wagon, the whole train stops and encircles the broken wagon and helps them get their wagon fixed.   You are patient with the hardships and difficulties and with one another because you know this isn’t Oregon.

This is how we live in this present world.   There is a day coming when God will come to our aid and deliver us from this present evil age.   He will certainly bring us to the new heavens and the new earth.   This isn’t it and so we must not demand that this world be what it never can be.   We must not demand that others treat us as if we were already home.   With our minds and hearts set on things above we seek to help one another hold fast to the promises rather than demanding that one another fulfill God’s promises to us right now.   The only people who are going to love God and others are those who do not expect to have a happy life here but are hoping in a happy life to come.

Only those who trust the God of sovereign grace will love God and each other because…

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can pardon your sins

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can protect you from harm

•  Only the God of Sovereign Grace can promise you a good future