Remembering Our Redeemer, Isaiah 63:7-9

First Sunday of Christmas
State College, PA



Some years ago I was talking to a friend and heard someone else in the room say, “well, they got themselves into this trouble and now they’ll need to get themselves out.” They created this problem by their own irresponsibility or bad judgment and now they need to fix it themselves. It would be wrong to bail them out. I wasn’t part of that conversation, so I let it pass, but I found myself thinking later, “what if God had taken this attitude toward us? What if He had left us to get ourselves out of the consequences of our sins?” And, of course, the answer is that if He had done so we would have been utterly and completely lost, because getting ourselves out of this situation is beyond us. This is what we are celebrating in the Christmas season, that God is committed to rescuing His people from their sins. He has not said about us, “well, they got themselves into this trouble – which is true – and now they need to get themselves out.”

If we’ve been in the Church for any length of time we know this and have heard it over and over through the years. But that message gets drowned out by all the other things we hear and by all the pressures of just dealing with life. So, because of our forgetfulness, we need to regularly call to mind what God has done for His people throughout history, as the author does in verse 7: “I will recount all the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel.” The author is doing here what the psalmists do over and over. He’s remembering, in God’s presence, the things that God has done to redeem His people.

This is one of the things we’re doing when we use the Psalms as tools for prayer. Many of them do the very thing Isaiah is doing here, recounting “the steadfast love of the Lord.” But our dullness often gets in the way of this. We start to pray Psalm 105, “O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the people,” (v. 1), but when the psalmist starts recounting these things our eyes glaze over and our mind starts to wander. We’ve heard all these things before.

At this point, we need to pause and take ourselves in hand. The problem isn’t with God’s Word; the problem is with us and our forgetfulness. So the thing to do is to stop and refocus. I often use this prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours: “Lord, open my lips to praise your holy name. Cleanse my heart of any worthless, evil or distracting thoughts. Give me the wisdom and love necessary to pray… with attention, reverence and devotion. Father, let my prayer be heard in your presence, for it is offered through Christ our Lord.” This prayer helps me to pull away from my distractions and back to what I am doing. It also reminds me that I need the Lord’s help as I enter His presence.

The importance of remembering as a spiritual discipline comes up again and again in Scripture. In Deuteronomy 8 the Israelites are warned against becoming proud when they do well in this world, and verse 18 urges them to “remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.” Knowing our tendency to be proud of our strength and ability, the author is Ecclesiastes says “Remember your creator in the days of your youth” (12:1). And Paul urges his disciple Timothy to “Remember Jesus Christ,” (2:8) knowing how easily we become distracted by other things in the course of our lives despite regular involvement in church and even in the work of ministering to others, as Timothy was doing.

So, the first problem is our forgetfulness. But there’s more; because of our sinfulness and our tendency to turn away from God, we are constantly in need of His mercy. Verse 8 says, “For he said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely.’” But they did deal falsely, as Isaiah has been pointing out again and again in this book. And yet God has been persistently merciful and forgiving despite the rebellion and wandering of His people.

This is why we have this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Even if you have a busy day and can’t do anything else, you can lift your heart to God using the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s not a bad idea to include it in your daily prayers, both morning and evening. Eastern Orthodox spirituality makes extensive use of the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy,” or “have mercy on me, a sinner.” The order for night prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours begins with a time of self examination, asking where we have sinned against God during the day that is now ending. All of these remind us of our daily need of mercy and grace.

Contrary to what some churches have taught, especially in the past two centuries, God’s forgiveness is not dependent on our remembering and confessing every sin. Paul says that we are “standing in grace” (Romans 5), we are surrounded by His loving and merciful care. It’s probably not possible for us to remember every sin we’ve committed even in the last couple of days, and our acceptance before God is not based on this anyway. But the Church, throughout the centuries, has recognized the importance of entering God’s presence confessing our sins and need of forgiveness, as we do at the beginning of the service. It’s not a bad idea to begin your daily prayer time with the order of confession that we use in worship.

It’s common in many North American churches to think that theology doesn’t matter and that it’s divisive. I was taught this as a new Christian. But it’s important to know that bad theology does harm to our spiritual lives. I knew one man who was obsessed with remembering and confessing every sin and lived in fear that maybe he’d forgotten something (which I’m sure he had). He’d been taught that God only forgives sins that we’ve confessed, and it got to the point where he had to be hospitalized for depression. I also know of a man, one of the leaders in my former denomination, who would not pray the Lord’s Prayer because he believed he had been fully sanctified and no longer committed sins. He was very public in claiming this and lived with a complete lack of awareness of his need to receive mercy from God every day and to offer thanks to God for His patience. He thought he’d moved beyond that point, although I suspect many who knew him well had their doubts.

So, we’re forgetful and we sin repeatedly despite our best efforts. But there’s one more thing in this passage in Isaiah: because we so often suffer in this world, we need to know that God is not indifferent and has even entered compassionately into our suffering. You can see this in the translation we read from earlier in the service, but it comes across more clearly in some others. For example, the English Standard Version reads, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them.” And here is The Message: “In all their troubles, he was troubled, too. He didn’t send someone else to help them. He did it himself, in person.” God Himself is troubled in all our troubles; He cares about the things that hurt us even to the extent of entering into our suffering.

We need to know this, because suffering can be devastating to our faith. Abraham Kuyper, a theologian and the former prime minister of Holland, said this: “When for the first time in our life the cross with its full weight is laid upon our shoulders, the first effect is that it makes us numb and dazed and causes all knowledge of God to be lost.” When this happens, it doesn’t mean that God is no longer with us or that we no longer belong to Him. I read a book by one of my former professors talking about his daughter’s death in a car accident. He said at the funeral one of his co-workers said to him, “Jesus is your rock,” and he responded: “well, right now that rock feels very slippery.” He hadn’t lost his faith; he was suffering from intense, overwhelming pain. He was experiencing what Abraham Kuyper described, the initial impact of the full weight of the cross.

Pope John Paul II was a sportsman in his early life and loved to spend time hiking, canoeing and kayaking with his friends. But as he got older he became increasingly frail physically and was no longer able to do the things he loved to do; even walking was difficult and painful for him. He meditated on his new situation and said: “I understood that I have to lead Christ’s Church into this third millennium by prayer; by various programs, but I saw that this is not enough: she must be led by suffering” (Witness to Hope, p. 721). Rather than deciding that he was no longer fit to lead the Church, he saw the importance of becoming a model of suffering in Christ’s name: “The Pope has to be attacked, the Pope has to suffer, so that every family and the world may see that there is… a higher Gospel: the Gospel of suffering” (ibid.).

In this he was following Jesus, who came to suffer. On the cross, He entered into the depths of our darkness and alienation when He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He didn’t observe our suffering from a safe distance and say, “oh, that’s a shame.” No, “In all [our] affliction he was afflicted.”

That’s what we are celebrating in this Christmas season, that the Word was made flesh and entered into our human existence in every way apart from sin. We’re remembering all that God has done to redeem us, which reminds us that we are sinners in need of mercy and grace. And we’re reminded that God is not indifferent to our weakness and suffering in this life. I don’t think it’s at all strange that Christmas day is immediately followed by the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Then the 28th is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the children murdered by Herod in his attempt to destroy Jesus. And the 29th is the Commemoration of Thomas Becket, who also died as a martyr. This is the world Jesus entered into at His birth, a world of overwhelming pain and sorrow and of deliberate evil. This is the world He came to redeem: “in his love and in his pity he redeemed them.” Isaiah says this looking back on the history of Israel, but it also points forward to the events we are celebrating now. May God enable us to seek Him and to grow in our knowledge of Him in the coming year.

Motivated by Hope, 1 John 3:1-3

When I was in High School, I visited Boonville, a town about 2 hours from my home in Sonoma County. There was a circus in town and I recognized it as the same one I’d seen at home a few weeks before; so I spoke to the head guy and mentioned this to him. He responded, “well, what are you doing here?” To which I answered, “this is where I’m from,” which was not really true. I was born in Mendocino county, further north on the coast and my family was deeply rooted there, but Boonville is inland and is about halfway between Sonoma and Manchester, the town where my family lived when I was born. Boonville was a place I traveled through on my way to somewhere else.

Why did I respond in this way? Boonville is in Mendocino County, and I think I felt, at that time, a stronger sense of connection with Mendocino County than the wine country in Sonoma, where I was growing up. My grandfather, who was one of my favorite people in the world, lived on the coast and knew everyone in the area. I often stayed with my sister and brother-in-law and was very close to their two sons, who were only a few years younger than I was. I think the rural coast environment felt more to me like a place I wanted to belong to. I identified myself as someone from Mendocino County, and that sense of identity was very important to me.

Several years ago I read a letter in “Runner’s World” magazine where a woman asked “at what point can I call myself a runner?” She didn’t think she ran very well, so she wasn’t sure she could legitimately claim that name. But the response from the magazine was “if you run, you are a runner.” I suspect this was a helpful answer and gave her the freedom to think of herself as a runner without second-guessing whether she was good enough. Our identity is important to us and can either free us to do the things we want or hinder us by taking away our confidence.

I suspect the success of identity politics right now is related to this. I think this movement is seriously wrong-headed by pitting groups against each other, leading to an increasing sense of tribalism in our culture, but its appeal is in giving people a sense of who they are and where they belong. And I was glad last Sunday to hear Chris Wicher point out that God’s Word gives us a sense of identity: “if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31).

These verses in 1 John take this a step further by identifying us not only as disciples but as God’s children. We are disciples, people who are learning to follow Jesus, but we’ve also been adopted into God’s family and are called to increasingly bear the family likeness. If we see ourselves as slaves and God as a hard taskmaster, our Christian lives will be deeply impacted by this. On the other hand, if we believe we’ve been given a “get into heaven free card,” which guarantees our future salvation, and see God as an indulgent grandfatherly figure, that will also have a major impact on the way we live out our lives as Christians. The Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor and writer A.W. Tozer wrote that nothing so twists and deforms the soul as an unworthy or low conception of God (see “God is Easy to Live With” in The Root of the Righteous).

What we can see in this passage is that an awareness of our true identity, a confidence that we are God’s children, will lead us to begin eliminating things from our lives that are in conflict with this identity. We want to increasingly bear the family likeness. Being called to follow Jesus Christ as His disciples is an amazing thing. But then to be told that we are not only disciples but beloved children goes beyond our wildest imagination. Our discipleship is rooted in our adoption as children of God and we want to please our loving Father who has graciously called us to belong to His family.

So, the first thing these verses tell us is that God, in love, has made us His children: “see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” God has adopted us into His family and set us apart as His children, we who by nature were “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). The words “what kind (of love),” translate a word that often meant “from what country.” “It is as if the Father’s love is so unearthly, so foreign to this world, that he wonders from what country it may come.” It carries with it a sense of astonishment (John Stott, The Epistles of John). This love the Father has bestowed on us in calling us His children is astonishing.

Now this sounds like a wonderful thing, and it is. But it doesn’t mean that we’re “kings kids” and that our lives on earth will go smoothly (as some have said from time to time), because it’s also true that we live in a world that doesn’t know God and is in rebellion against His lordship. So our identity as God’s children means that we are out of step with a world that doesn’t know or acknowledge Him. John says the world “doesn’t know us,” doesn’t recognize us as God’s children. Of course not. If they don’t know Him, they’re not going to know what it means when we say we are His children.

So, the first thing in this passage is a reminder of our identity, in the present, as God’s children. But the second thing is that although we know who we are as God’s children, we don’t know what our future, in God’s kingdom, will be like. We are members of God’s family, but we don’t know the particulars of what this will look like in the future.

It’s important to remember that God’s revelation is about leading us to salvation, not satisfying our curiosity. A few years ago a popular Bible teacher named Harold Camping forgot this and thought he had learned from Scripture that Jesus would return in May of 2011. He should have known better. After all, Jesus said to the apostles when they asked Him about the coming of His kingdom: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). These words should be enough to rule out that kind of speculation, but for some reason he got caught up in trying to calculate the date of Christ’s coming, and many others throughout the centuries have done the same. It’s good to keep in mind these words from Deuteronomy: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law” (29:29). The things revealed are things that bring us to God and prepare us for eternity, “that we may follow all the words of this law.” God is not interested in satisfying our curiosity about the things He has not revealed, and prying into these things -- the date of Christ’s return, what our lives will be like when we’re in His presence -- is a dangerous thing and a first step on the path of disobedience.

What we do know is that when Jesus appears we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. Paul says that we see now “but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Cor. 13:12), but even so “we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). Even though we don’t see Him clearly now our communion with Him is transforming us into His image, and when we see Him clearly we will be fully transformed. Communion with Jesus is transformative even in our present clouded condition, but we know that in the future we will become fully like Him, “because we will see him as he is.”

So John tells us about our identity as God’s children and that in the future we will be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, but then he says something about how this affects our lives in the present: “everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he is pure.” Knowing that when we see Him face to face we will be fully transformed into His image doesn’t lead us to sit back and do nothing: “well, I obviously can’t see clearly enough to bring about this transformation now so I may as well wait until His appearing. What’s the point of my feeble efforts in the present?” This is not the case at all. Knowing that we will one day see Him face too face motivates us to purify our lives in the present, even though what we accomplish in this life will always be imperfect..

How do we purify our lives? We confess our sins to God, as we do at the beginning of our worship service, and we turn our backs on the things in our lives that we know are displeasing to Him. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to make use of our prayer of confession in your own devotional life throughout the week. And spend time in God’s presence, cultivating a growing relationship with Him. Make regular use of the Psalms in prayer, and maybe pray through a hymnal or a prayer book. Spend unhurried time in God’s presence and invest some time in finding tools that will help you do this.

Something I’ve found helpful in the past and recently returned to is a prayerful way of reading Scripture called Lectio Divina, which is just Latin for divine reading. From what I’ve observed, Evangelical Protestants often limit their use of the Bible by only engaging in Bible study. I believe in Bible study and have spent lots of time doing it. But we need to do more than study God’s Word; just knowing what it means is not enough to purify our lives. So here’s a brief description of this prayerful reading of God’s Word.

Start by choosing a passage of Scripture, and after beginning with prayer for God’s help, read a short portion of it, maybe just a phrase or two. Go back and reread it several times, allowing it to sink in more deeply. Some people find it helpful to read out loud. If the passage is a narrative, visualize what is happening and imagine that you are there. If it is a teaching passage, think about how it might impact your life and how it connects with other things you know in the Bible. A friend of mine who was a psychiatrist once described meditation as worry; when we worry we go over and over in our minds what might happen in the future. So meditation on Scripture is doing this, going over and over different possibilities, what it might mean and how it might impact our lives.

By this time you may have become aware of things you need to pray about. If so, begin to pray in response to what you’re reading, and if not, just offer the words of the passage as a prayer and ask God to make it more of a reality in your life. And after you’ve done this just sit quietly in God’s presence, aware of the things you’ve been reading and open to whatever else He wants to say to you. You can go back and forth between these four steps and don’t need to proceed neatly through them. Start by doing this for a short time so you don’t wear yourself out, and tomorrow you can come back and start where you left off, or go on to another passage if you feel the need. The point is to interact with God in His Word and to give the Word time to impact your life in a deeper way.

But devotional practices are not the only part of purifying our lives. It’s very possible to have regular, strong devotional practices and yet be deceiving ourselves if our devotional life has no impact on the way we treat other people. Since God, in His grace and mercy, has shown such astonishing love toward us, He calls us to show love toward one another, especially those we interact with every day. Praying over God’s Word can be a place where He both makes us aware of changes we need to make and also gives us the strength to love others as He has loved us.

With all the noise surrounding us in our culture, we need to remind ourselves often of our true identity as members of God’s family. “What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to. But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own” (The Message). May God enable us to order our lives in ways that prepare us for the day when we will see Him face to face.

Disciplined Spiritual Growth, 1 Timothy 4:6-10

Shiloh Lutheran Church

State College, PA

A few weeks ago I was having coffee with a friend. He has schizophrenia and was on my caseload when I worked in the mental health field, but I always scheduled him for Friday afternoons, because meeting with him ended my week on a positive note, even when he wasn’t doing that well. More than anyone I’ve known, he has learned to manage his mental illness. He’s brilliant and I love talking to him about ideas and things we’ve both read. I enjoy spending time with him, which is why we were having coffee even though meeting with him is no longer part of my job.

He is having some health problems and was scheduled for major surgery in a few weeks, so he asked me, very pointedly, some questions about prayer, especially how to pray. So I made a few general comments and then talked to him at some length about a way of prayer called Lectio Divina, which is just Latin for Divine Reading. I’ll say more about this later in the sermon; he seemed very encouraged by the suggestion and we parted ways. But when I left I realized that I have not been practicing this form of prayer I recommended to him. Admittedly we can’t all do everything all the time, but this is really one of my favorite ways of praying, and I had not been doing it for some time. It had just gotten away from me, crowded out by other things. So, since that day I’ve been practicing this way of prayer nearly every day. I offered this suggestion as a help to him, but it has ended up helping me. It may have helped me more than it helped him. That’s the way it is when Christians talk to each other, and this is one of the reasons I dislike the image of ministers as religious professionals who run churches, who are somehow disconnected from the community of faith.

The passage we’re looking at this morning gives us a picture of disciplined spiritual growth, whether we are church members or those who are involved in vocational ministry. Whichever category we belong to, as long as we are living in this fallen world, we need to hold firmly to two opposite truths. On the one hand, the Church is highly exalted in union with Jesus Christ. In Him we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, and we are seated with Him at the right hand of God. This is a prominent theme in the New Testament and it‘s one of the things I‘ve been meditating on recently in my prayerful reading of Scripture. For example, Paul urges the Colossian Christians, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3). The Church is in union with Jesus Christ, and our true home is in heaven with Him. But, at the same time, we’re still living in this world which is continuing in rebellion against Him, this world that is dominated by spiritual forces of evil. We’re engaged in spiritual warfare, whether we like it or not. We’re living in a war zone and can’t escape from the conflict, no matter what we do. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). We’re living in a world that is dominated by powers intent on destroying us.

Most of our enemy’s attacks are subtle, and if we’re not alert we won’t recognize them as attacks at all. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is full of insights in this area. It’s a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew, Wormwood, advising him on how to destroy the life of God in his victim. In one of the letters, the human victim has just experienced spiritual renewal and repentance. Here’s what Screwtape says about it: “The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel” (pp. 60-61). As long as he doesn’t do anything, as long as he doesn’t follow up on it, the “little brute” can wallow in his repentance all he likes and Screwtape will be pleased. As long as he doesn’t act on it, his repentance is imaginary, because true repentance involves a change of direction, turning around and going the other way.

In the fourth century, a monk named John Cassian compiled a list of 8 sins that are especially dangerous, to help his fellow monks in examining themselves. Two centuries later, Pope Gregory the Great reduced the number to 7 (what we now call Gregorian Chant is named after him). Here’s the list: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, lust and gluttony (David L. Hall, The Seven Deadly Sins, pp. 12-13). It’s not that these seven deadly sins are the only ones to worry about. But they describe conditions of the heart which lead to all sorts of other sins. That’s why they’re deadly; they lead us on a steady course away from obedience to God.

The one I’m interested in this morning is sloth. The sin of sloth is what Screwtape is talking about when he says: “Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will.” This isn’t the same thing as what we call laziness. Here’s a definition of sloth: “The root of sloth and that which makes it sinful lies in the will. Sloth is an infectious evil that poisons the will so that there is no motivation – no passion – to act. Sloth is the cause of the self being overly protective of one’s time and energy.... Sloth persuades the will to make no effort... expend no energy. Sloth says, ‘It’s not worth it.’ Sloth makes that which is of ultimate importance seem not worth the effort” (David Hall, p. 57). Sloth destroys our motivation to do that which is most essential. We may be workaholics, but we’re guilty of sloth if we’re using work to escape from other things God wants us to do. Sloth prevents us from acting in response to God’s call in our lives. We may go through periods where we feel bad about our negligence; maybe we go forward in a meeting from time to time and ask for prayer. But we never act on it, and year after year we find ourselves going nowhere spiritually. The longer we allow this pattern to continue, the more difficult it is to break. “Sloth is an infectious evil that poisons the will so that there is no motivation – no passion – to act.”

In the passage we’re looking at today, Paul urges Timothy to diligently train himself in godly living. He doesn’t want sloth to prevent Timothy from going forward spiritually. Listen to verses 7-10 in The Message: “Exercise daily in God – no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever. You can count on this. Take it to heart. This is why we’ve thrown ourselves into this venture so totally. We’re banking on the living God....” Paul wants Timothy to approach his spiritual life like an athlete in training, giving himself to the routine of daily exercise.

The first thing we can see in this passage is that discipline in our spiritual lives is absolutely necessary if we want to survive in this spiritual war zone. The central idea in this passage is in the second half of verse 7: “train yourself to be godly.” Timothy was ministering in a difficult place. The spiritual life of the church was being undermined by false teachers, and his job was to deal with the situation. We can see this in Paul’s words at the beginning of this letter: “On my way to the province of Macedonia, I advised you to stay in Ephesus. Well, I haven’t changed my mind. Stay right there on top of things so that the teaching stays on track. Apparently some people have been introducing fantasy stories and fanciful family trees that digress into silliness instead of pulling the people back into the center, deepening faith and obedience. The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love – love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God. Those who fail to keep to this point soon wander off into cul-de-sacs of gossip. They set themselves up as experts on religious issues, but haven’t the remotest idea of what they’re holding forth with such imposing eloquence.” The way to guard against the snares the enemy sends our way is to be diligent in spiritual discipline, to be diligently training ourselves in godliness.

If we don’t exercise diligence in our spiritual lives, we’re opening ourselves up to the attacks and delusions of the enemy. This shouldn’t surprise us. One of the effects of the Fall is that things tend to deteriorate when we leave them alone. What happens to your garden if you don’t carefully cultivate and tend it? It grows weeds, which choke out the things you’re trying to grow. And the same is true in our spiritual lives. If we neglect them, they’ll grow weeds which will choke out the life of the Spirit.
The word Paul uses in verse 7 means to exercise, or train. The word is gymnazo, which our word gymnasium is taken from. The author of Hebrews uses the same word in chapter 5 of his letter. The Hebrew Christians are on the verge of turning away from the gospel. They’ve been enduring persecution and difficulties, but now they’re ready to throw in the towel in the hopes of getting some relief. In chapter 5, the author rebukes them for their lack of maturity: “We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (5:11-14). They’re in trouble and are on the verge of turning away, because they haven’t exercised themselves, trained themselves to be godly. They’re in a perpetual state of spiritual immaturity. If they had been exercising diligence, they’d be mature by now and would have the spiritual resources to get through the crisis.

The word translated “strive,” in verse 10, is one that’s often used of an athletic contest. Paul uses a form of this work to describe athletes as those who strive in the games. “You’ve all been to the stadium and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You’re after one that’s gold eternally. I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got. No sloppy living for me! I’m staying alert and in top condition. I’m not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else about it and then missing out myself” (1 Corinthians 10, The Message). Paul’s motivation is that he wants to survive over the long term. He doesn’t want to get derailed by any of the enemy’s snares. He doesn’t want, in the midst of preaching to others, to lose the race himself. So he diligently trains himself for godliness, knowing that if he doesn’t do that, he won’t survive.

So spiritual discipline is necessary. But it’s not necessary like a bitter pill that we just have to swallow, even though we feel thoroughly miserable about it. Discipline isn’t easy. It isn’t the thing most of us would naturally choose on our own. But it’s profitable. That’s the second thing to notice here: spiritual discipline is profitable. It brings with it immense blessing, both now and in eternity. That’s Paul’s point in verse 8: “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

Godly discipline is profitable, because it enables us to live more and more in the way we were created to live. The false teachings that were being spread in Ephesus were producing pretty disagreeable people. Listen to Paul’s description in chapter 6: “These are the things I want you to teach and preach. If you have leaders there who teach otherwise, who refuse the solid words of our Master Jesus and this godly instruction, tag them for what they are: ignorant windbags who infect the air with germs of envy, controversy, bad-mouthing, suspicious rumors. Eventually there’s an epidemic of backstabbing, and truth is but a distant memory” (The Message). This is the kind of thing that is produced by their false teaching, because it doesn’t lead to godliness. It leads to an unprofitable, wasted life.

That leads to the third point, which is that spiritual discipline is motivated by hope. This idea comes across well in New Living Translation: “Physical exercise has some value, but spiritual exercise is much more important, for it promises a reward in both this life and the next. This is true and everyone should accept it. We work hard and suffer much in order that people will believe the truth, for our hope is in the living God....” Spiritual discipline, training for godliness, looks forward to eternity and finds motivation in the fact that one day soon this will all be over and we’ll be standing in God’s presence.
Spiritual discipline is necessary in this spiritual battleground that is all around us; it’s profitable both for this life and for eternity; and it’s strongly tied to our hope for the future. If we’re not motivated to cultivate godliness in our lives we’re either not thinking clearly, or we haven’t thought much about the fact that we will soon be standing in God’s presence, giving Him an account for how we’ve used our lives. Or we’re enslaved to the sin of sloth, which produces the qualities Screwtape was hoping for: “The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.” It’s easy to deceive ourselves. We can be working 16 hours a day and still be guilty of sloth, because we may be using work as a way of avoiding something else God is calling us to do. So we need to begin by repenting of this sin and presenting our lives to the Lord to use as He wishes.

So what is this way of prayer, Lectio Divina, that I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon? It’s very simple, and I’ve often gotten distracted by complicating it or expecting it to be something it is not. It’s not a way to experience an emotionally intense time in God’s Word. This may happen, from time to time, but this is not what Lectio is primarily about. It is simply a way of reading and meditating on God’s Word and being attentive to Him.

There are four steps. The first is to read a passage of Scripture. I normally just read a phrase or so. I’ve been meditating on Ephesians 1 for a few weeks now and am not even halfway through the chapter. Read a few words and allow them to sink in; reread them over and over again. The purpose is to allow them to sink more deeply into your heart and mind. The second step is meditation, which has probably already started to happen by this point. Think about what is being said and how it connects with other things you’ve read in Scripture and how it might impact your life. And just reread it, allowing it to enter your mind in a deeper way. Those are the first two steps, Reading and Meditation.

The third step is Prayer. You’ve been listening to God speaking in His Word, so now respond with prayer. Sometimes it will be obvious what you need to pray for, but if not just turn the things you’ve been reading into prayer. Prayer is responsive speech. You’ve received something from God’s Word, so now respond to Him with your own words, whatever comes into your mind. And then, the fourth step is Contemplation, which is not as familiar to many Protestants. But it’s really not very complicated. Just choose a word or two, or even a phrase from the passage and sit in God’s presence, being silent and attentive to Him. If your mind starts to wander, recall the word or words from your passage. The point is not to receive a particular experience, but simply to sit in God’s presence after having listened to Him speaking in His Word. I encourage you to try this, to let this become part of your training in godliness, and in doing so may you taste more and more the reality of “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” that God has given us in Christ.

The Message of True Freedom, Galatians 5:1-15

Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
June 30, 2019

A few years ago I worked with a man in his 50's who had spent more than half of his life in prison. At one point, he decided that he wanted to go back to jail, so he started doing things to get arrested. Because he had a serious mental illness and was in the mental health system, the process started by him being picked up and considered for an involuntary commitment to the hospital, but because he was still on probation, police officers were sent to take him to jail. I was with him at the emergency room when he got this news, and he reacted like a kid at Christmas. He said to me, "I'm going back to prison, where I belong," and he was visibly excited about this. This kind of thing is not as unusual as we might think prison is a lousy place, but many prisoners learn how to function there; it becomes a place of security for them, and transition to the outside world is extremely difficult: “The first days and weeks of the free life are perilous. Many do not survive them. Recidivism is extremely high among discharged prisoners. They do not know what to do with their freedom. They have been conditioned by another way of life. After a few attempts and failures, they often relapse into old ways and return to the security of the prison” (Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 137). We want to be free, but we also want security, and often these two things come into conflict. Freedom doesn’t always feel safe, and sometimes we’re willing to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of security and safety.

That’s the appeal of legalism. The Galatians were departing from the freedom of the gospel because the legalistic religion of the Judaizers gave them safe, secure answers. It told them what to do, and as long as they did these things they could be assured that everything was fine. They didn’t have to struggle with what it means to live a free life in Christ. They were bringing themselves into bondage, but bondage felt more secure than freedom. Slavery is what we’re used to. We’re used to living in bondage (although we don’t usually see the reality of our condition). The gospel is a message of freedom, and when we’re first set free by turning to Jesus Christ it’s wonderful. But what do we do then? How do we live with our new freedom? “The first days and weeks of the free life are perilous. Many do not survive them.” Slavery is what we’re used to, and unless we’re careful we’ll very quickly end up living as slaves again, like the Galatians were doing. When Christ sets us free, He calls us to follow Him in learning to live as free people. Disciples are learners, people who are learning to live a free life in Christ. And part of that is resisting the enemy’s attempts to draw us back into the slavery of legalism.

The first step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 1-6: be determined to preserve your freedom in Christ. Be jealous in guarding your freedom. Of course, that means that we need to understand the truth, that the gospel is a message of emancipation. If we’re fuzzy about that, we’ll be easy prey to his deception. The gospel is not a message about what style of clothes to wear, or what kind of hairstyle we’re to have, or what kind of music to listen to. There’s a place for discussing some of these kinds of things, but this is not what the gospel is about. The gospel is a message of deliverance. Here’s what Jesus said at the beginning of His public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). Or Colossians 1:13: “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” The gospel is a message of deliverance to people who are in slavery.

We need to understand that faith and law are mutually exclusive. The temptation is to do the sort of thing the Galatians were doing. We present the gospel and get people in the door by faith, then we present them with a list of demands, and as long as they keep within these boundaries we assume everything is fine. But if they step over these boundaries we question their salvation. I’ve sometimes heard American Christians express admiration for C.S. Lewis, but then bemoan the fact that he smoked and drank alcohol; he was also committed to liturgical worship and was at least open to the possibility of purgatory as a time of cleansing and perfection after death. He doesn’t fit into categories that many are comfortable with, and I’ve known some Christians who had real trouble with that. We believe in the necessity of faith to get in the door, but then we often expect people to order their lives in the same way we do (I’m not talking here about sin, but cultural, theological and liturgical differences). If they don’t, we often doubt the genuineness of their faith. Surely if they really believed they’d live and worship like we do.

The law and the gospel are mutually exclusive. The law brings us into bondage, whether it’s the law of the Judaizers or the law of the North American Christian subculture, whichever part of it we identify with. If our position before God is determined by obedience to the law, we’re going to end up in bondage. Listen to verse 4 in The Message: “The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.” Once we step into the realm of law, we’re in a place where absolute perfection is demanded of us. (That’s one reason why churches are so often guilty of shooting their wounded. We’re living under the law and we expect perfection. We’re not willing to live by the gospel of free grace and mercy, especially mercy toward those who have openly demonstrated their imperfection). The bondage of the law is a bondage of guilt; we’ve broken the law and there’s nothing we can do to make it right. So we determine to do better next time, but nothing we do can erase the condemning power of our guilt. The gospel speaks to us in our guilt. It addresses us as people who’ve been disobedient to the law. It acknowledges the worst about us and then grants us forgiveness. The gospel is a message of freedom from the bondage of guilt before the law. We need to know that and resist all attempts of our enemy to talk us out of it.

The second step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 7-12: refuse to listen to false teachers. Too many people fall under the influence of false teachings because they think, “I’ll just listen awhile and see what he has to say.” I’ve had friends who came under the influence of false teaching for awhile, friends I thought should have known better; many of these teachers are very deceptive and manipulative, and it’s easy to get caught. If you’re not adequately prepared, it’s easy to get in over your head. It’s not that these teachers have the truth; it’s that they’re able to present their ideas in a very persuasive way. It sounds good when you’re listening to them. So Paul wants the Galatians to stop listening. We don’t owe everyone a fair hearing.

Paul says three things about these false teachers in vv. 8-10. 1) Their teaching is not from God: “That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you” (v. 8). Paul spent considerable effort, in the early part of this letter, establishing that he had received the gospel directly from Jesus Christ. The teachers who’ve been leading the Galatians astray got their ideas from another source, and the church needs to stop listening to them. 2) This false teaching will increasingly permeate the life of the church if they don’t get rid of it: “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” (v. 9). The harmfulness of the teaching will increase over time. It will work its way through the teachings of the church and bring corruption into every area. And it will do harm to more and more people over time. They can’t afford to let it remain in their midst. 3) Those who are spreading this false message–who are undermining God’s message of liberty–are going to face a penalty: “The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be” (v. 10). False teachers are going to be judged; if the Galatians don’t want to fall under the same condemnation they need to stop listening and following these people.

The third step in resisting the enemy’s attempts to lure us back into slavery is in vv. 13-15: Resist the temptation to misuse your freedom. Here’s v. 13 in The Message: “Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.” When we misuse our freedom, we end up destroying it in the end. We celebrate our freedom from the bondage to the law by doing whatever we want. But then we find that we’re in bondage to our own desires. We’re not free at all; we’re just in a different kind of bondage.

The freedom Paul is talking about in Galatians is not the freedom to do whatever we want. It’s the freedom to live as God created us to live. We weren’t created to live without boundaries. God created us to live in obedience to His sovereign lordship. When we refuse to submit to His lordship, we put ourselves into bondage to something less than God. That’s the point of Bob Dylan’s song, “You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody:” “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” The gospel sets us free to be human, to be the kind of people God created us to be.

Paul is especially concerned about the way they’re acting toward one another. When we abuse our freedom, when we try to live by doing whatever we want, whatever we feel like doing, we end up cultivating selfishness, which brings us into conflict with one another. The churches in Galatia may be experiencing two different extremes. One the one hand, there are those who live as strict moralists. They think they’re keeping the law, but there’s a hard edge to their spirituality. They’re self-righteous and look down on those who are less strict in their behavior. They can’t tolerate such people in their midst. On the other hand, there are those who recognize that legalism is contrary to the gospel, but they go to the opposite extreme and say: “in Christ we’re free to do whatever we want.” So they freely indulge their desires. Both of these extremes lead to disunity. Those who think they’re obeying the law need to hear this word: “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” And those at the opposite extreme need to hear these words in verse 13: “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.” And then, in verse 15, Paul points to what is actually going on in their midst: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” Both extremes, legalism and unrestrained libertinism, result the destruction of community. The freedom they’ve been given in the gospel is the freedom to “serve one another in love.”

The gospel is a message of freedom. Paul made that clear back in chapter 1: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age” (1:3-4). In Christ we’ve been set free, by sheer grace, to live the kind of life we were intended to live. Charles Swindoll says “I know of nothing that has the power to change us from within like the freedom that comes through grace” (The Grace Awakening, p. 5). And because the message of freedom through grace is so wonderful and transforming, Satan will do everything he can to undermine it. Let’s determine that we will, with His help, stand firm in the freedom Christ bought for us, that we’ll refuse to listen to those who come to us with different “gospels,” and that we’ll resist the temptation to misuse the freedom God has given us.

The Parable of the Loving Father, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA

When I was five-years old, my family lived in Santa Rosa, California. We had nice sidewalks, and I remember riding my tricycle around the block, mostly standing on the back platform with one foot and pushing myself with the other. One day my mom came out to tell me it was time for a nap, and since I wasn’t ready to go inside I took off around the block. She didn’t chase after me, so I thought I was home free. But when I passed our house to start my second lap, she was waiting behind a hedge and grabbed me by the ears and escorted me inside. I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was; I had three older siblings, and my mom knew there was no need to waste energy running after me.

Being a responsible parent involves not giving too much freedom to a five-year old. But one of the difficulties of being a parent is knowing when to give up that kind of control. My mom did a good job of handing control over to me as I got older, but I’ve seen a lot of parents who haven’t been willing to do that. I used to attend church with a guy who was intent on protecting his kids from the influence of the world, even after they reached adulthood. He refused to have a computer or internet access in his home, and he pulled his kids out of any classes in the Christian home school co-op when he wasn’t comfortable with the reading assignments. He’s not intellectually curious, which is OK. But he’s also not comfortable allowing his kids to be intellectually curious. He inhabits a very small, restricted world and he wants his kids to do the same. But maintaining this involves exercising lots of control over the choices his children make as adults. I’ve seen a similar tendency among Christians who want to help others in need but, at the same time, are concerned that their help isn’t misused somehow. I vaguely remember a story about Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland saying that helping others involves some risk that we’ll be taken advantage of or that people will use our help in the wrong way. But he decided that it’s better to err on the side of taking that risk than on the side of dehumanizing people and robbing them of their dignity by trying to control how they make use of the help we provide.

The problem is that when we’re dealing with adults there’s always the possibility that they will do things we don’t agree with and don’t approve of. And when we help others, we give up control over the choices they make afterward. We are called to help others, whether as parents or as fellow human beings, but we’re not called to exercise control over them. In this parable we see a man parenting two very different sons and yet treating them both with dignity, grace and mercy. He gives them the freedom to not follow his plans and wishes, and then he shows patience, mercy and grace when they misuse their freedom.

The first thing to notice in this parable is that the father gives his younger son the freedom to ruin his life. The son approaches him and says, “Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.” The father is under no obligation to give in to this request; his son is saying, “I want my inheritance right now. I don’t want to wait until you die.” The father is taking too long to die, and the son wants to get on with his life. But his father give him his share (which would be 1/3 of the property, since the oldest brother received a double portion.

Then the son sells all the property and leaves for a distant country. He shows some degree of shamelessness in asking for his inheritance, but he’s still not willing to live the way he wants to in the presence of his family. So he leaves for a distant county. We often see the same kind of thing when people join the military or go off to college. They end up doing things they wouldn’t do when they felt the social constraints of being near family members.

So he does all the things he wanted to do when he was living at home. There’s no reason to think he was miserable the whole time. No doubt he had a lot of fun and enjoyed himself. But in the end, he ran out of money and was reduced to poverty. Then, having spent his whole inheritance, he had to hire himself out to make a living, and the only job he could find was feeding pigs (a very degrading job for a Jew, since pigs are unclean animals). But his job didn’t provide enough to really live on and he found himself wanting to eat the food he’s been giving to the pigs.

Getting what we want is often the worst thing that can happen to us. A song from The Eagles has this line, “What can you do when your dreams come true And it's not quite like you planned?” Things often don’t turn out in reality the way we imagine them. The younger son’s dreams have come true and it’s ruined his life. At this point, he has no hope for the future. He selfishly asked for his inheritance early and then wasted everything his father had worked for. His inheritance is gone and he has no reason to hope for anything more in the future. He’d probably made friends when he was freely spending money, but they’re all gone now. None of them are offering to help him in his poverty and hunger. He’s alone and poor in a distant country.

The second thing in this parable is that when the younger son returns – having ruined his life and hoping only to find work for his father as a hired servant – his father welcomes him back into the family. Up till now the son has been in survival mode, just trying to stay alive in this bad situation. There’s no evidence till now of real repentance. But Jesus says he “came to himself.” In being alienated from his father he has not really been himself, and he hasn’t been able to see things clearly. He’s been blinded up till now, but he comes to himself and realizes that he doesn’t need to remain where he is.

He sees his unworthiness and the foolishness of the choices he’s made. He realizes that he’s squandered everything that was given to him, and yet he knows that servants in his father’s home are better-off than he is, so he decides to return and ask to be admitted as a servant. John Newton’s great hymn “Amazing Grace” says “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” The younger son has been blind, but he comes to himself and is awakened to the truth of his condition and sees that he would be better-off as a servant in his father’s house than to remain where he is.

So he makes his way back home with a prepared speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” But his father sees him from a long way off – it seems that he’s been waiting and watching all this time – and runs to him, embraces and kisses him. So the son launches into his speech, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But that’s as far as he gets. His father isn’t even listening to what he says. Before he can ask to be treated as a hired servant, his father says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.” All of these things mean that he is being readmitted as a full member of the family. None of these things would have been given to a paid servant.

And then he calls for a celebration, “bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” This son had ruined his life and had lost everything and yet his father received him with joy and welcomed him back into the family. But then the older brother returns from working in the fields and hears the commotion. So he asks a servant what is going on, and when he learns the truth he refuses to even enter the house.

The third thing to notice in this parable is that the father responds with patience and grace even to the jealousy of the older son. This son doesn’t come out looking very good in the story. Listen to how it reads in The Message: “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!”

He’s been dutifully serving all these years, but there’s no joy in it. Have you ever known people like that? They’re concerned to maintain correct behavior, but there’s something lacking. There’s no joy in it. It’s not very attractive. He’s been building up resentment and anger and it all comes out at this point. He doesn’t even identify the younger son as his brother; it’s “this son of yours.” He points out that the younger brother has wasted the father’s property on prostitutes, but we’ve never actually been told that this is the case. It may be true, but it also may be true that this is how the older brother imagines things. Maybe this is what he would have done if he overcame his grim commitment to doing his duty. But in reality this man knows nothing of what his brother has gone through; he knows nothing of his brother’s genuine repentance. He’s like the Pharisees, whose grumbling led Jesus to tell this parable.

But the father responds to him also with grace and reminds him that the younger son is his brother. Here it is in The Message: “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours – but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” “All I have is yours,” because when he divided up the inheritance the older son would have received his double portion, 2/3 of the property, and that has not been spent.

He reminds the older son of who he is; he’s not just a son who hasn’t gotten everything he wants, and this should not be the thing that defines him. He’s the older brother of a man who has been lost to the family until now and has been through an extremely difficult experience. Yes, it’s through his own fault, but he’s returned in genuine repentance and this man needs to acknowledge him as a brother, a part of the family. So the father reminds him of who he is and reminds him of the importance of his relationship with his younger brother.

The point of this parable is to correct the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling because Jesus associated with sinners. Their perspective on God is primarily legal, and they see themselves as people who are in God’s favor because of their legal observance. They’re like the older brother; there’s no joy in their obedience and they can’t even recognize it when they see others repenting or their sins. A.W. Tozer said, “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than low or unworthy conception of God” (“God is Easy to Live With,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 13). They have a low, unworthy conception of God which is twisting and deforming their souls, but even so Jesus, in this parable, offers them grace to return in repentance to a loving and merciful Father.

Tozer goes on to say, “Much Christianity since the days of Christ’s flesh has… been grim and severe. And the cause has been the same – an unworthy or an inadequate view of God. Instinctively we try to be like our God, and if He is conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be” (p. 14). Both the younger son before he left and the older son as he remained home had an unworthy view of their father. The Pharisees and scribes have an unworthy view of God, which is why Jesus tells this parable. Tozer says this about God: “God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and loves us still” (p. 16). During this Lenten season, let’s remind ourselves often that God is like the patient, loving father in this parable and let’s cast ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections.

Joseph, His Brothers, and God, Genesis 45:3-15

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

State College, PA

One Sunday after worship, in the church I pastored near Philadelphia, I found a note on my desk from a church member. Donna and her husband attended most Sundays but I really didn’t know either of them well (except I knew that she loved our black lab). The note told me that she had received a very frightening diagnosis that week and asked for prayer. So that week a few of us from church went to her home and prayed with her. Then, in the following months I saw her regularly, first in her home and later in the hospital.

After many weeks in the hospital, she told me that she had never been baptized. She had grown up in the church, but this denomination only saw baptism as a public testimony and nothing more; so it had never seemed terribly important. But now she found herself wanting to be baptized, so we had a baptismal service in her hospital room. That night, knowing that she had been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, she went to sleep and never regained consciousness; she was kept on life support for some time at her husband’s insistence, but really this was the end for her; once the life support was removed, her heart stopped. But knowing that she had been baptized enabled her to stop fighting and let go.

When she first received the news of her cancer diagnosis she was terrified. But God was with her and was preparing her for the end of her life. God was present with her in ways she didn’t expect, in ways she never would have chosen for herself. This is the thing we can see clearly in the story of Joseph: God is at work in ways we can’t see, even in the midst of difficult and overwhelming experiences, things we would never choose to go through.

The first thing we can see in this passage is that Joseph shows mercy and grace to those who have wronged him. Joseph had plenty of reason to take vengeance on his brothers and was in a position to do anything he wanted to them. But he didn’t.

His brothers had hated him growing up, first because he was his father’s favorite (and his father made no attempt to disguise this). Genesis 37:4 says “when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.” Then, to make matters worse, Joseph had a series of dreams in which the other members of his family bowed down to him (and for some reason he thought it was a good idea to report these dreams to them). His brothers respond, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” And the author says “So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words” (37:8).

He was the favorite, and his father sent him into the fields to check on them and bring a report back to their father. But when his brothers saw him coming they conspired to kill him. They said, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams” (37:19-20). So they grab him, take away the special robe his father gave him and throw him into a well. Later a band of Ishmaelites comes by and they decide to sell him to them as a slave and then dip his robe in blood to convince their father that he has been killed.

Joseph is taken to Egypt, where a rich man named Potiphar buys him. And the author says “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man” (39:2). He ends up running the household until Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him and then lies about it, telling her husband that he tried to rape her. So, even though the Lord is with him, Joseph is thrown into prison, where the author reports again, “But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer” (39:21).

This story doesn’t sound like the kind of thing we expect when we hear that God is with someone. Joseph certainly wouldn’t have chosen for his life to go in this way. But later, through his ability to interpret dreams, he ends up being taken out of prison and becomes second only to Pharaoh, and in our passage his brothers have come to him for help, not yet having any idea who he really is. And then, when he makes himself known to them they are, with very good reason, terrified. It’s been years now since they sold him into slavery, and they have no reason to expect anything other than vengeance.

How could Joseph forgive his brothers after all they’ve done to him? If he, in all the intervening years, had been cultivating a spirit of resentment and hopes for vengeance, this is what he would be reaping now. Instead, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s presence and blessing in his life despite all the things that have happened to him. So when the moment arrives when he could take vengeance, he does just the opposite and shows them mercy. Caesarius of Arles, writing in the early 6th century, says this: “When he saw his brothers, or rather enemies in his brothers, he gave evidence of the affection of his love by his pious grief when he wanted to be recognized by them…. He did not recall that pit into which he had been thrown to be murdered; he did not think of himself, a brother, sold for a price. Instead, by returning good for evil, even then he fulfilled the precepts of the apostles that were not yet given. Therefore, by considering the sweetness of true charity, blessed Joseph, with God’s help, was eager to repel from his heart the poison of envy with which he knew his brothers had been struck” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament volume 2, p. 292).

The second thing in this passage is that Joseph recognizes the importance of the community of faith, the people of Israel. He’s not only thinking of himself and his own plans and priorities. His concern about the community of faith affects the way orders his life and makes decisions. He recognizes that God is using him in his present position to preserve his people. He says “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (v. 7).

It’s easy, in a story like this where we’re only given an outline of events, to think things were easier for Joseph than they were, to think that his godliness and awareness of God’s presence in his life somehow kept him from feeling the pain we’d expect if these things happened to us. But we’re given a few glimpses that help us see he has not had an easy time, that he hasn’t just sailed through, smiling and rejoicing in God’s constant care. When his brothers are talking among themselves, before he makes himself known to them, they say “Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen” (42:21). They saw his anguish; he pleaded with them not to do what they were doing.

While he’s in prison he tells a fellow prisoner “I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” 40:15). Then, even after he’s been released from prison and is second in power to Pharaoh, he names his first child Manasseh, “’For’, he said, ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’” (41:51). His second child he names Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (41:52). Joseph has experienced overwhelming loss and sorrow in the years since his brothers sold him into slavery, and even now as one of the most powerful people in the world he sees Egypt as the land of his affliction.

But even so, through all these years of suffering, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s priorities and of His love for His people. That’s why, in this moment with his brothers he is able to say “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.”

The third thing here is that Joseph knows that God is at work even when he can’t see it. “So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (v. 8). Those dreams Joseph had been given when he was young, still living with his family in Canaan, were fulfilled despite years when it looked like the exact opposite was happening. His brothers had said, “let us see what becomes of his dreams,” but they were powerless to prevent God’s purposes from being fulfilled. John Calvin says this, commenting on these verses: “This is a remarkable passage, in which we are taught that the right course of events is never so disturbed by the depravity and wickedness of men, but that God can direct them to a good end” (Commentary, vol. 1, p. 377).

This is commonly called the doctrine of providence, the idea that God is sovereignly working out His purposes in the world despite the intentions of His creatures. Paul has a clear statement of God’s providence in Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Not that all things are good, but that God, our great King, is able to so overrule and work in all things that He is able to bring good even out of evil things. Joseph’s brothers were guilty of a great crime in selling him into slavery, and yet Joseph is able to see God overruling their evil intentions and bringing good out of what they did to him. Joseph is able to forgive them, but they are still guilty before God unless they turn to Him in repentance, crying out for mercy.

I once heard George Verwer, the founder of the mission Anne and I worked with in the late 70’s and early 80’s, preaching about God’s providence. He said he had been reading The Mystery of Providence by the 17th century Puritan John Flavel when he tried to enter the train station and found the door was locked. His response was “oh great, some jerk isn’t doing his job and now I have to walk all the way around the station and I’ll probably miss my train.” So he started walking and encountered a young man who saw a book he was carrying and said “hey, I know that book.” Well, the book he saw happened to be one written by George himself and it turned out that they ended up having a very good and profitable conversation. But they wouldn’t have had that conversation if some jerk hadn’t forgotten to unlock the door; God was at work providing that young man with a conversation that he needed at that point. But George pointed out that his first reaction was to completely forget what he had been reading in John Flavel’s book. Joseph had been cultivating an awareness of God’s providence, and because of this was able to say to his brothers, “do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life…. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

So how can we respond to all this? First, know that God calls us to show mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us. We see Jesus doing this even as He’s being crucified, when he says “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” We see the same thing with Stephen when he is being stoned. Knowing all that God has done in forgiving us, we’re called to forgive others in the same way. This doesn’t come naturally and we can’t do it by an effort of our will. But what we can do is be aware of what kinds of seeds we’re sowing, what we are cultivating. If we cultivate resentment and bitterness, we won’t be able to forgive when the time comes. I knew a man several years ago who exemplified this. He was angry at life. He had been obsessed with Elvis and then Elvis had died. Later he had been obsessed with Dale Earnhart, who was killed in a racecar accident. I actually heard him say once, “they took Elvis and now they’ve taken Dale away from me.” I didn’t ask who “they” were, but during the time I knew him he was shriveled and turned in on himself. The things he had been cultivating had diminished him as a person; if he had been in Joseph’s place I don’t think forgiveness would have even occurred to him. He’d been sowing bad seeds all his life and was reaping the fruits of them. We need to be aware of what we’re cultivating in our lives.

Next, God wants us to recognize the importance of the community of faith. We live in a very individualistic society, and this kind of thinking doesn’t come natural. We read instructions in the New Testament as if they were written to us individually, but most of the things written in the Epistles are written in the second-person plural, addressed to groups of believers. We need to remind ourselves that God is at work in the Church preparing a bride for His Son.

And lastly, we need to cultivate an awareness that God is at work in ways we can’t see, that He is even doing things we could never imagine. The things that happened in Joseph’s life were horrible, and when he was going through them there’s no way he could have seen how it would all turn out. We need to remind ourselves of this often, that God is doing things we can’t see and that His purposes are good.

All these things, showing mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us, recognizing the importance of the community of faith, and knowing that God is at work in ways we can’t see, flow from a living encounter with Jesus Christ. In Him we find mercy for our failures and grace to grow and become the people He has called us to be. And in the presence of Jesus, we’re enabled to believe and trust that He is working in all things to fulfil His purposes.