Mercy and Grace from the Beginning

 Read Genesis 45

Finally, after 9 chapters, Joseph’s brothers find out what happened to Joseph. They were dumbfounded, shocked, and in disbelief. 

Ain’t no way!

Yes, way.

Joseph could no longer contain himself.  He kicked all of the Egyptians out of the room and revealed himself to his brothers. That had to be a moment.  That had to be an emotional roller coaster ride compressed into a moment.

He’s alive!

We’re going to be slaves.

He’ll kill us!

This can’t be real.

This is real.

It’s him.

No, it can’t be him. Not with all of this power and authority and wealth.

Our brother is alive.

We’re dead men.

We have not even gotten to the part where they are going to have to tell their father.  What will he say after the story they had told him was revealed to be false? What will Israel say when he finds out that Joseph is alive?

What would he say if Joseph told him what we did to him? Maybe, Joseph will just have us all turned into slaves or killed and we won’t have to explain ourselves to our father.

What a mix of joy, anxiety, excitement, dread, amazement, and who knows what other emotions flowed into this confluence of thoughts and feelings.

Joseph was alive.  We sold him into slavery.  This can’t be good for us.

Now consider what Joseph had to say about this.

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!  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.  For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping.  But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

Joseph personalized this even more.

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.

Does anyone remember Flip Wilson?  The devil made me do it!

It sounds like Joseph was telling his brothers that God made you do this terrible thing.  That’s not exactly what Joseph was saying.

There was evil in the hearts of these 10 brothers, but God used it to accomplish his purpose.  Joseph was going to Egypt. Joseph would be the only person on the planet able to know what was coming and how to deal with it.  The 10 brothers were just part of the logistics.

You were just playing your part in this divinely orchestrated deliverance of Israel and his family, which would come to be the nation of Israel in Egypt.

Yes, the 10 brothers gave in to evil and should have felt remorse and regret and come to repentance, but Joseph told them that revenge would not come their way.  Joseph, who trusted God in all circumstances, had eyes to see what God had done and was doing through him, and as it turned out, through his brothers.

That doesn’t mean that Joseph enjoyed his time in the hole.  It doesn’t mean that his lifelong ambition was to be a slave.  It doesn’t mean that he had always hoped to do a bit in prison.

Prison would have been a chance to get a tat before the law said don’t get inked and the discussion about what that actually meant ensued. Prison was never on Joseph’s bucket list.

It means that through it all, he trusted God. Through it all, he grew where he was planted.  Through it all he bloomed where he was.  And through it all, he gained eyes to see his part of God’s plan. 

Joseph could have exacted revenge and nobody on the planet would have had anything to say about it. But Joseph saw that his suffering was nothing compared to the salvation he would bring to this part of the world.

Centuries later, the apostle Paul would remind us that our present suffering is nothing compared to what the Lord has in store for us and the glory that will be revealed in us.

Jesus told us to love our enemies.  When your own brothers sell you into slavery and an unknown future, they might just fall into the worst class of enemies.  They were your brothers but they did this to you.  How could you not hate them?

We are beginning to see what mercy and grace look like.  These 10 men deserved punishment.  Joseph could deliver punishment in any form or fashion he desired. No one would question him.

Instead, he delivered mercy and grace.  He did not hold his brother’s sins against them. In fact, in the worst time that the world had known since the flood, he would bless these brothers, his father, and everyone related to them.

We see mercy and grace at work in Joseph.  Those qualities could only come through God.  Human nature would have said, “This is your time now Joey boy.  Make them pay.”

Do you remember the Parable of the Lost Sheep?  The shepherd left 99 in the wilderness to search for the 1 that was lost and when he found him, he rejoiced like crazy.  That’s the first part of this story.

Then, Jesus then told those with ears to hear that there is more rejoicing in heaven over a single sinner who repents than there is over 99 who don’t need to. Okay, I’m sure that Jesus wouldn’t have ended his sentence in a preposition, but you understand the parable.

Joseph was rejoicing that his brothers who were lost to him—who had surely sinned against him—were with him again.  Yes, he had a special affinity for Benjamin, but his joy, his mercy, and his grace were for all.

We get a glimpse of our Divine Father in this encounter.

We have all been through some stuff, some suffering.

Death of a loved one.

Divorce.

Imprisonment.

Job loss.

Protracted unemployment.

Addiction.

Ridicule.

Abuse.

Isolation.

Bullying.

You might think that at least nobody was sold into slavery, but we have people who have sold themselves into slavery with significant debt.

We have all been through some stuff, but for those who believe and trust, we can be confident that God will use whatever we have been through for the good.

Knowing this, can we forgive those who wronged us.  Can be content that God will take everything that happens to us and use it for good?

Can we be content in the sovereignty of God that vengeance belongs to him alone?

Yes, what happened to us or those we love might have been unforgivable, but can we forgive?

It probably won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Joseph is our example.  In a series of stories that have bad decisions, deceit, and being downright dirty, we get this model of mercy and grace.

Joseph showed mercy and grace. He was going to bless his father’s family with the best land in Egypt. The Pharoah said, “Oh we can do better than that.”

There should have been no forgiveness for these 10 brothers, but God was at work here not only saving people with the storehouses of food that Joseph had put together but with this revelation of mercy and grace in Joseph.

We are reading the Old Testament but we are seeing mercy and grace.

We are going to wrap up Genesis in just a few weeks.  We will then do some seasonal messages.  In 2024, we begin a series that we are calling the Words of Jesus.  I know, some of you can’t wait to get there.

Words like mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love abound in the New Testament, but we should clearly see that mercy and grace have been there since the beginning.  We know and we worship a God of love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace.

God, whom we know best through Christ Jesus, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has always been a God of mercy and grace. We see those qualities manifested in Joseph.

Joseph went through so much that all traced back to his brothers selling him into slavery. Who could fault him for seeking vengeance, but he did not.

Joseph realized the sovereignty of God and if God’s plan required him to be sold into slavery and thrown into prison to get where he needed to be to save those God directed him to save, then so be it.

But beyond accepting and embracing God’s sovereignty, Joseph embraced God’s mercy and grace. Joseph practiced mercy and grace.

It’s one thing to post these words online.  It’s another to practice them.

If Joseph could do this long before anyone was talking about a Savior that we know as Jesus, what is our excuse?

We should be modern-day models of mercy and grace.

That means that we can’t park ourselves in the judgment seat.

We are not to be the ones sitting on the sidelines pointing fingers at the wrongdoing of others.

We are not building a clubhouse. We are building God’s house upon the solid foundation of Christ Jesus. There is no other foundation!

We are people of mercy and grace because we have received the mercy and grace of our Father in heaven through Christ Jesus his Son.

As we face this world which can inflict so much pain and suffering upon us and those around us, let us have eyes to see how we may live by mercy and grace.

Our mercy and grace should be for all. We can start at home, but here are a few places where we might start looking to apply them as well.

With those who are broken in spirit.

With those who are hurting and mourning.

With those who are not bold in the ways of the world.

With those who have forsaken the ways of the world and truly seek to live right by God.

With those who practice mercy with others.

Those who endure the process of truly trying to resolve conflicts.

Those who are persecuted.

These should sound familiar. If you need a place to start practicing mercy and grace, look in these places. The opportunities abound.

What did we learn from Joseph this week?  Let mercy and grace be the mainstay of your life.

As you go into the week ahead, let these two words abide in your hearts and minds this week.

Mercy.

Grace.

Amen.

Matthew 18 - Part 5

 

Read Matthew 18

Read the message about this parable from 2017.

Peter wanted to know how many times he should forgive someone.  Seven seemed like a good guess.  Jesus replied, not 7 but 77.  Some translations might say 7 times 70, that’s 490 times.  That’s a lot of forgiveness.

And so, Jesus told the story of a man who owed his king 10,000 talents.  That’s a bunch of money.  There was no way he could repay that now but the debt had been called.

The man pleaded that he would not be sold to pay for the debt.  The king had mercy on him and forgave the debt.  Now that’s some mercy right there!

The man went on his way and came across a man who owed him a hundred silver coins and he demanded payment.  The man could not pay and he pleaded for more time to repay.

The man who had been forgiven so much would forgive nothing.  He had the man who owed him put into prison until he could pay.  His fellow servants found out about this and reported it to the king.

The king was furious.  He said, I canceled all of your debt and you couldn’t show just a little bit of mercy on your fellow servant?  OK, two can play this game.  He handed this man over to the jailers to be tortured until he could repay what he owed.

Realize that there are many strategies for getting out of debt, but getting tortured doesn’t reduce the sum owed.  It’s a no-win scenario.

Now we can look at this parable and think justice was done.  It was but the king desired mercy more than justice. 

Jesus told this parable to help Peter and us understand what it will be like at the end of the age.  We can never pay what we owe God but God desires mercy more than justice or sacrifice or any perfunctory payment.  He desires mercy.

He delivers mercy.  He wants to see mercy operating within us so much more than compliance, mindless obedience, ritual, or anything else that misses the divine heart of God.

When we are at a loss as to what we should do, find the way that includes love and mercy.

When we are struggling to please God, find the way governed by mercy.

When the world is going absolutely crazy around us, find a time and place to practice mercy.

Consider how Jesus called us to come to him as a child, not as a judge or master of ritual, but as a child.  Come to him as a completely accepting child.  Accept love.  Accept forgiveness.  Accept others with the same love and mercy that you received.

Grant forgiveness.  Be known by your love and mercy.  Be an example of mercy to your fellow servants.  Do not lead anyone astray by your lack of compassion and mercy.  Speak the truth to your fellow servants in Christ, even about uncomfortable subjects, but do it in a spirit of love.

Practice mercy.

We did a little warm up at the beginning of the service.  Let’s do it again.

Seek justice.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly with your God.

Think about these two words:  love mercy.  What if we not only tried to practice mercy, but we loved mercy.  We loved being merciful.

What if our new nature—our Christ nature—loved mercy.  What if we did what Jesus instructed the Pharisees to do.  Learn what this means.  I desire mercy not sacrifice.

The child does not know bitterness or contempt or hate or coveting.  The child accepts the love of a parent without questioning.  But our human hearts have been corrupted by sin.  Left to our own desires we seek to gratify ourselves more than others, more than God.

To enter the kingdom of heaven we must become like a child again.  We don’t come seeking to balance the scales that can never be balanced.  We owe more than we can pay.  We owe more than we can imagine.  Our only recourse is mercy.  Without mercy, we are toast.

But mercy is not our first nature.  We want what is owed to us by others.  What others owe becomes our focus.  It gets in the way of putting God first.  It blinds us to what God has done for us and we see only what we desire from others.

We have received mercy beyond our comprehension.  We must deliver mercy to the best of our ability.  We must remember that while we were God’s enemies, Christ died for us.

Let’s say our words from Micah again.

Seek justice.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly with your God.

Christ came full of grace and truth.  We have received more than mercy.  We have received favor.  How can we ever deliver condemnation? How can we look upon another with disdain?  How can we see others through eyes of contempt?

Our M.O. must be mercy.  As we begin this New Year, consider all the old things that you hold on to because someone wronged you.  So long as you hold on to these things, you are not prepared to deliver mercy.  You want justice from your own unique perspective.

It makes for a good action movie with plenty of violence, payback, and revenge, but it also makes for a terrible likeness of Christ Jesus whom others should see in us.

As we set upon this New Year, I asked us to set as our goal to do the things of God.  Let’s put practice mercy near the top of that list of the things of God.

Seek justice.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly with your God.

Amen!

Looking a Blind Man in the Eye

In chapter 9 of John’s gospel, Jesus healed a man who had been blind since birth.  Jesus put mud in his eyes and told him to go wash.  There is more detail but I want to get to the part where he was healed.  He could see!

Some said that this was the man who hand been blind since birth and others said it only looked like him.  Here’s the question of the day.  How could they not know?

How could they not know?

They probably never really saw him.  They knew he was there and quickly proceeded past him surely in some discussion of world-saving importance.  They didn’t want to look his way.

They didn’t want to look a blind man in the eye for if they did, they might just be compelled to compassion and mercy.  They might have seen another person—someone made in the image of God—and they would have been compelled to mercy.

That might have cost them money or time.  It would have taken them off their path of urgent demands and out of their comfort zones.  It might have given them eyes to see and left them without excuse for not showing mercy.

How was it that the people that had walked by the blind man hundreds or thousands of times on their way back and forth on that road over the past decade couldn’t tell if it was the same man who could now see? They never really saw him.

Just as the priest and Levite walked on the other side of the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan, most of the people who had walked by this man daily wished the road was wider and that they could walk on the other side as well.

Fortunately, this doesn’t happen today.  Actually, it happens much, much more but we have become more subtle about it.  We find ways not to see the blind man on the side of the road.

Programs and movements lump people into groups and categories and divide them according to the whims of the program instead prompting the power of compassion to jump into action.  Programs have metrics.  People need relationship.  Programs let us keep our distance.  Mercy makes connections.

See a man not a movement.

Look the blind man in the eye and be led by the Spirit.

Do not surrender the Spirit that God placed inside of you to something that voids the relationships he intended for you.

Build God’s kingdom in this age one relationship at a time.  Be known by your love not your membership.

Love one another.

Meet people where they are but lead them to life for God has given life to us thorough relationship with him

Mercy

Read Psalm 51

We are going to spend a little time on the topic of mercy.  Mercy is a recurring theme in God’s word.  Mercy is a quality of God and a quality of his people.

If you follow Jesus, then you are called to be merciful.

So mercy is just another word for grace or forgiveness, right?

Sort of but not exactly.  Precise definitions are elusive, but let’s take a short at this.   Mercy is God not giving us what our sins deserve.  Mercy abates God’s punishment.

That mercy is rooted in forgiveness and grace.  It’s all about who God is and not what we did or did not do.

Grace extends God’s favor and blessings to us even though we don’t deserve them.  Mercy delivers us from judgment and grace extends God’s lovingkindness to us.  Neither which we deserve based on anything that we did or did not do.

Mercy, like grace and forgiveness, is about God’s divine heart.

David—a man after God’s own heart—had surrendered to his lust with Bathsheba.  That lust resulted in pregnancy and the sequel here is that David arranged for Bathsheba’s husband to get killed in battle.

Just when he thought he had put all of this in his past, Nathan who was both prophet and friend to David, showed the king what he had done.

When David realized just how far he had fallen, he was broken.  He had disqualified himself from living in God’s goodness, at least at first glance.  But in the course of his relationship with God, David learned that he was a God of mercy.

God’s desire was not punishment.  God was not looking for more sacrifices.  God did not want David walking around in ashes and sackcloth for the next 7 years.  God’s desire is mercy.  God is merciful.

So, David called out to God to have mercy on him.  In this request, David acknowledged his sin.  In fact, he said that he couldn’t get away from it.  It was always there right in front of him.

David’s request was to blot out his transgression, take his sin away, create in him a clean heart.  David knew how terrible his sin was but he also knew that it was not game over.

In verses 11 and 12 we see David seeking mercy and grace.

Do not cast me from your presence

    or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

That’s a bold request.  Head hung low in shame asking God not to punish him is one thing but to be so bold as to ask to have the joy of salvation and sustenance was another. 

To understand mercy, we must understand that God not only wants to forgive us but he also wants to bless us and pour his favor out upon us.

So why ask God for a half-measure of anything?  When we seek his mercy, follow David’s example and seek his blessing and favor.

What’s our part?  Repentance.  We must desire to turn away from and leave behind that which is not of God.  That doesn’t mean leave all of your worldly stuff at the pawnshop and get a receipt.  Leave it all behind.  You are not coming back for it.

We did this when we turned away from the world and professed Jesus as Lord.

We became a new creation.  I am crucified with Christ.  Christ lives in me, but the old creation just won’t go away and if we are not diligent, it takes a shot at getting its old job back.

We are his disciples.  We are known by his love.  We press on towards the goal.  We are running a good race, and then we slow down or stop and take a breather in our race of faith and start focusing on others and what they are or are not doing and our eyes are no longer on Jesus.

It happened to Peter as he took a few steps on the water and then started focusing on the storm.  So much for walking on water.

That’s when that old creature can get its hooks in us, when we lose sight of where Jesus is leading us and start focusing on everyone else.

The disciples struggled with this.  They saw some people driving out demons in the name of Jesus and so they told them to stop.  Why?  They were not part of the group.

Jesus admonished them noting that they could not do this and the next moment become his enemies.  If they are doing this and not against us, then we are surely on the same team.

The disciples were not quite ready for what would happen after the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit.  Their tight-knit little group would launch similar events all over the known world. 

We do this too.  We stop running our race.  We stop following Jesus and we start judging other believers for how they respond to God’s grace.  Who am I to judge another man’s servant?

When this happens to us, let’s repent.  Let’s ask for God’s mercy.  Let’s ask to receive God’s blessings as we get back in the race.

We know that God doesn’t want to hear our excuses.  He wants to hear our confessions.  He doesn’t want our apologetics for our divisiveness.  He wants us in one accord in his love and mercy.  He wants to give us his mercy.  He wants us to know his heart.  He wants us to live in his favor.

But first comes mercy.  We have all fallen short of the glory of God.  That’s a familiar scripture most know from Romans, but understand that we all need mercy to rescue us from that fallen state.

The dictionary defines mercy as compassion or forgiveness given to someone who is within your power to punish.  Before we live in God’s favor, we need merciful forgiveness.

When we ask God for mercy, we must first repent.  It’s not, God forgive me so I have a clean slate and can do this sinful thing again.

God grants us mercy knowing full well that we will likely sin again, and soon.  It is our human condition.

God has always been merciful.  He has the absolute right to judge and condemn but his divine heart is one of love and we know that love in his mercy.

His mercy is so great that his own blood was given in sacrifice.  The mercy seat in the Old Testament was that place above the ark of the covenant—between the two golden cherubim—when God would appear in the Holy of Holies.   Once each year, the high priest would enter with the bull’s blood and atone for his own sins and those of the people.  Some translations read those that the people committed in ignorance.

But this was a foreshadowing of things to come. 

The blood of bulls could not give people a clear conscience.  The people had made their part of the prescribed sacrifice, but atonement was not complete.

Only by the blood of Jesus are we free of our sins.  Only by the mercy of God, can this atonement be for eternity.  Only in this New Covenant can we truly live.

All of this comes from God’s divine mercy.

When we truly examine our lives with eyes to see granted to us by the Holy Spirit, then we see that the difference between what we deserve and what we receive is mercy. 

I am going on record today saying that I am a big fan of mercy.  It is so intertwined with forgiveness and grace that we often see them as one, but know that it all began with God’s mercy.

As we move forward in our exploration of mercy, know with certainty that God created no one for the purpose of condemnation and eternal destruction.

As we move forward, know with certainty, that God knew we would fall short but that mercy not sacrifice was and is always his first choice.  External rituals—even though they came from his own directives—give way to mercy.

There was sacrifice, but God in his mercy and compassion, make this sacrifice himself.

I know that mercy and grace and forgiveness are tightly intertwined, but this week set your thoughts and prayers on God’s mercy. 

God is merciful.

Amen.