The Size of Grace

Prayer

The End of the Story

So, here we are. The end of Genesis and the end of the story of Joseph. Next Sunday, as we continue our journey through the Old Testament we’ll start diving into Exodus.

If you remember, Joseph, his father Jacob’s favorite, had been sold into slavery by his jealous brothers years before. He endured years as a slave in Egypt, then as a prisoner, then by a miraculous turn of events, was lifted to second in command of all of Egypt by Pharaoh himself.

The famine that was devastating the land brought his brothers before him seeking food - and as we saw last week, Joseph began testing them to see if there had been a genuine change of heart, truly sorrowing over what they had done to him.

That change of heart was revealed in Judah’s impassioned speech on behalf of his brother, Benjamin, for whom Judah was willing to sacrifice himself, to serve as a slave in his stead.

Here’s where we pick up the story, in Genesis 45, where Joseph, upon hearing Judah’s speech, can no longer contain himself, emotion has overwhelmed him. He commands that everyone leave his presence, so that it’s just he and his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph!”

So Joseph reveals himself and the brothers are in a total state of shock, they are absolutely terrified. After all, in that moment, the evil of what they had done so many years ago is no longer hidden, it’s out in the open - and they’re standing in front of the person whom they’d so deeply wronged and he has the power to do to them whatever he pleases.

Here’s where we see Joseph’s heart, the beautiful part of this story, listen to what he says to his brothers, Genesis 45:4-8, Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.

Now Joseph does not shy away from the evil they had committed - in fact that’s how he identifies himself: I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! He comes right out with it, addresses the elephant in the room.

But immediately, he shows concern for them and how they are going to react to this revelation…don’t be distressed, don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me here. Don’t beat yourselves up, don’t stay mired in the guilt of what you did to me.

And later he goes on to lay out his plans for them to be taken care of, because he knows that the famine still has five more years. He directs them to return home, get the rest of the family and come back to Egypt so he can take care of them, provide for all their needs.

But notice that it’s not just that he’d feel terrible if his family became destitute and had to face starvation if he didn’t help them - it’s that Joseph genuinely wants to be with them, reunited, reconnected with his family. He tells them to “come down to me”, and that they “shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me.” I want you here, I want you to near me, not just to be taken care of, but to be with me.

I want us to step back for a moment, to let the weight of this sink in, Joseph’s response to his brothers and how truly astonishing it is.

His brothers hated him, they absolutely hated him. Back in Genesis 37 we were told that they would not speak a kind word to him - they were constantly rude and hateful towards him. He may have been his father’s favorite, but among the brothers, he was the outcast, ten against one.

But it didn’t stop there - it wasn’t enough for them just to hate him, they made plans to kill him. To murder their own brother in cold blood. Then they sold him. As a slave. It was an incredibly callous act of betrayal and cruelty.

And I want us to stop and ask the question - how? How is this possible? How in the world could Joseph so absolutely forgive his brothers? It’s not just that he withheld punishing them, enacting well deserved vengeance upon…and it’s not just that he didn’t make them grovel, just to feel the satisfaction of it...

But that he wants to bless them, provide for their good. His plans for them are to give them the best that Egypt has to offer. He wants them to move to Goshen, because that’s where the best pasture lands are - and they are herders.

He tells them not to bring any of their belongings - don’t bother, leave it all behind, I’m going to make sure you have the best Egypt has to offer. This is like Prince William inviting you to leave your home and all your stuff and move to England where he’s going to make sure you have all the best England has to offer.

And it doesn’t stop there, Joseph wants to be reconciled to them. He wants to have a relationship with them, for his brothers to be with him, he with them, to be a full family again. Mutually loving relationships.

The reunion is a genuinely joyful one, Genesis 45:14-15, Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping. 15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him.

What could have been a terrible moment for the brothers as their shameful guilt was exposed instead becomes a moment of great joy and gladness.

And there’s only one thing could bring about this kind of flip, this dramatic a turn, complete reversal…and that one thing is grace. Unmitigated grace. Love freely offered to those who do not deserve it.

Question is how, how is Joseph able to offer grace so abundantly, so freely, so amazingly? How can anyone? Forgiveness is hard. It’s really hard. To fully forgive someone - especially someone who has deeply, deeply wronged you, caused you great pain, is hard. If you’ve ever tried to do that - to be fully reconciled, not just glossing over the wrong, the pain it caused (I’m OK), you know how hard it is.

There’s only one way - it’s exactly what we see here, it’s exactly the same with us - it’s the experience of God’s abundant, unfettered grace in our own lives. That’s really the main point this morning, the size of grace - the size of God’s grace in our lives and how that transforms our hearts, enables us to offer grace towards others. The “size” of grace we freely and willingly offer to others is directly related to how full we receive and embrace the grace that Jesus offers us.

Size of Grace

Joseph knows the bigness of God’s grace, he revels in it - it’s the whole basis of his gracious response to his brothers. Joseph has seen God’s goodness in his life - even in the midst of great difficulty and struggle, Joseph never lost sight of how truly blessed he was by God.

He saw it as a young man, heir of the promise God had given to his descendants - Abraham, Isaac and his father, Jacob - who, of course, loved him dearly. Then the grace of the dreams God gave him, giving him a glimpse of the plans he had for him.

Even in Potiphar’s household, though a slave, God blessed him to the point that Potiphar put him, as a young foreigner, in charge of his entire household. Likewise, in prison (prison!), God’s blessing is on Joseph, and he is given responsibility by the warden. Then God blows him away by flipping the circumstances of his life, having him put in second in command of the entire nation of Egypt - wealth, status, a wife, children.

But - this is key - it’s his recognition of God’s grace in the larger plan, how God is using all the difficult circumstances that Joseph endured, the evil he endured - sold into slavery, imprisoned - for his great saving work.

Remember what he told his brothers not to be angry with themselves…”because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.”

This was God at work, he made this happen. He sent me here. He organized the circumstances of my enslavement, my imprisonment, gave me the gift of interpreting dreams, put me in command here in Egypt - so that lives would be saved. So God could work his saving power in the lives of many.

This grace, the power of God to overcome evil with his good, this is THE theme of the entire saga of Joseph. Genesis ends with this. After Jacob dies, the brothers fear reprisal from Joseph, so they beg forgiveness from Joseph, and Joseph responds with this, Genesis 50:19-20...

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

You intended to harm me, you intended evil - but God is greater. God’s goodness wins. He intended it for good, and that’s exactly what happened - the saving of many lives.

This is the Gospel, the good news. Joseph’s story points us to Jesus, which is the ultimate act of God taking what we meant for evil, God means for good, to secure our eternal salvation, full and forever life.

Cross is emblematic of this, this terrible instrument of death - upon which we nailed Jesus, we rejected his coming to us, we put him to death as a common criminal. God takes what we did to Jesus, our rejection of him, our “no”, and says through this, I will save you. I say “yes” to you.

There is no limit to the size of God’s grace through Jesus Christ - which is exactly what Joseph knew, he knew the grace of God, he knew God’s power to work through the evil of his brothers for good.

And if God has been this gracious to me, if I can recognize and receive the enormity of God’s grace in my life - and for others around me - how can I not offer it freely as well?!

Listen to how Paul describes the gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ in Ephesians 1:4-8...In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.

If God so lavishly and abundantly pours grace upon us, who am I to withhold it from others? What gives me the right, the arrogance? If God is so big with his grace, how can I be small with mine? If this is how God saves lives, transforms them, and we have the opportunity to share in this as well, this amazing act of good overcoming evil.

Size of Our Grace

And this is exactly the call, the heart, the attitude God wants for us. This is what it means for us to share in the gospel, as we experience and receive the grace of Jesus, we offer it as freely and fully. In fact, it’s only as we know Jesus’ grace that we’re able to offer it to others - to try to do it out of our own willpower and strength, to forgive someone, is a fool’s errand.

In fact, Jesus says it this way in his sermon on the mount, Matthew 6:14-15...For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

In other words, when you receive a gift this wonderful, given so freely, absolutely undeserved - how can you not then offer the same to others? In fact, how dare you not?! How dare you be stingy with what God has so lavishly poured out on you?

If you are small with your grace towards others, God will be small with his grace towards you…but if you lavish grace on others - God will continue to lavish his on you.

This is why we better be careful about not falling into the trap of seeing ourselves as “pretty good” people. That subtle moral superiority that’s so easy to slip into, because we see others doing things that we think we’d never be capable of doing. How could they ever be so stupid as to start taking drugs? She’s such a Karen. I can’t believe he believes that. If they weren’t so lazy, maybe they wouldn’t constantly need help. I always knew there was something fishy about that guy.

When we slip here, we begin to think we’re being good in and of ourselves, that we don’t desperately need God, his grace, the forgiveness he offers us through Jesus Christ because we were so mired, so dead in our own sin, we will be small in grace.

But when we recognize how absolutely amazing God is, how rich and full and free his grace is, that we are forgiven - it melts our hearts, it makes us soft towards others. We want them to experience the same thing.

We had a great discussion about this very thing at our Spiritual Formation Group last Wednesday - we were really wrestling with favoritism, how hard it is not to favor people we like, people we see as good, over others. And we just spent a few minutes marveling over Jesus’ love for everyone…his willingness to lay down his life for us in our worst - it wasn’t just for the pretty good people - it was for the people involved in sex traffic, who abuse their own children, who scam others out of their life savings…we could go on, there’s no shortage of terrible things in the world. Jesus lavishes grace on them - he wants them - as he wants us - to be near him, to be reconciled to him.

And not simply grace for our sins, but what’s known as “common grace”, God’s goodness poured out in our day to day lives, that he pours out on everyone (rains watering the earth, picture perfect spring days, freshly baked cookies, just out of the oven, music that just puts joy in your heart. Gifts we don’t deserve at all, we keep receiving them.

This is what Joseph knew. He knew God’s goodness, his grace - in his own life, for the sake of the world - the saving of many lives. Because he knew the size of God’s grace, the enormity of it, he could offer it to his brothers.

Spiritual Disciplines - So, as always, how do we put this into practice? How do we become people of grace, those ready to forgive and be reconciled to others?

Spend time in quiet prayer this week, basking in the lavish grace of Jesus Christ. Surrender to it. Let it become bigger and bigger in your own life.

Both in common grace (spiritual discipline of giving thanks, counting your blessings)

But most of all, reflecting on Jesus’ work on the cross, his sacrificial death. My experience here in prayer yesterday morning…wanting to hang on to the anger, self-righteousness in it - but I can’t when I start turning to Jesus and remembering what he did for me, the readiness of his grace.

Be attentive to your own heart towards others - how gracious are you towards others? Who is it that you are withholding grace from, to whom you are “small” in grace? It might come out in critical comments. Or judgmental thoughts. This is serious issue - the degree to which you forgive others, the degree to which God will forgive you.

As you recognize your lack of grace, seek God’s forgiveness. Experience his grace for you.

*Inspiration - Let me finish with a story of someone who absolutely gets the size of the grace of Jesus Christ…Stan.*