Learning to See: God is Gracious
To see all the posts in this series, click here.
As mentioned in one of the earlier posts, Redemption Church hopes that its presence changes the way people see the world. In particular, we want people to see God at work in the world.
One of the ways we do that is changing our expectations of God. What is God like? What does God like? What does God do all day? When does God respond to things? When God responds to things, how does He respond?
God is different than many of our expectations—He is much better.
Often we have wrong expectations of God, and what we expect Him to do is often the exact opposite of what He actually does. We could probably come up with various stories about this being the case in our own lives, or we could see this as a large part of what Jesus taught to the religious leaders He battled (they thought they knew all about God but didn’t even recognize when God’s Word that had created all things became human and entered into His own creation). But today I want us to look at a single story from the first book of the Bible to demonstrate this point.
We’re going to look at the story of Joseph that’s found in Genesis chapters 37 through 50 where Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery.
It’s worth your time to read the whole story, but since this is a blog post (trying to be brief!), we’ll just give a recap:
Joseph was his dad’s favorite, and everyone knew it. Because of this, none of his brothers could stand him. After tattling on some of his brothers and then receiving a special present from his father (the well-known coat of many colors), Joseph had two dreams. In both dreams Joseph’s brothers would come and bow down to him as king, and in the second one, even his parents would do so.
For some reason, Joseph decided to tell all his brothers about the dreams, and they responded by deciding to kill him. The oldest brother (Reuben) tried to talk the rest out of killing Joseph in hopes of returning him safely home, but another of the brothers (Judah) talked everyone into selling Joseph to a group of traveling traders. These traveling traders eventually sold Joseph in Egypt to an officer of the pharaoh.
If we stopped the story there, many of us would likely understand this as a lesson in humility—if you’re a jerk to your siblings, God might punish you like He did Joseph. But God wasn’t punishing Joseph. God was taking care of him and his whole family. (There’s a point to be made here about the danger in blindly trusting people who teach “from the Bible” because we can impose our own morals of the story so easily and convincingly, but that can wait until a later blog post.)
I have taught this story multiple times in the past year or so, and every time I have, I have stopped at this point in the story and asked what we think God is going to do to the brothers. So let me ask you:
What do you think God is going to do to the brothers for selling Joseph into slavery?
Every time I’ve asked this question, just about all of the responses I’ve gotten have been about some sort of punishment. We’re reading an Old Testament story (I guess that’s supposed to make some kind of difference in what we expect from God?), so people expect judgment and hellfire to be rained down on the brothers. Is this what you expect? What is God going to do?
Let’s get back to our recap to see:
After a number of years as a slave and then a prisoner, Joseph had eventually been named #2 in command behind Pharaoh, in charge of all the daily affairs of Egypt. God had told Joseph through another dream (this one was Pharaoh’s dream, but Joseph was the only one who understood it) about a coming famine years in advance, so Egypt was well prepared with storehouses full of food. When the famine hit, Joseph’s family that was still up north (near present-day Israel) began starving like the rest of the world. After hearing that there was food in Egypt, ten of Joseph’s eleven brothers traveled together to go buy food. Being in charge of practically everything in Egypt, Joseph was also in charge of selling the food they had stored up, so when the brothers came to buy food, they were buying it from Joseph.
Joseph initially did not tell his brothers who he was, and they did not recognize him because he dressed as an Egyptian and used an interpreter to speak to them. Joseph sold them food but told them not to come back unless they also brought the eleventh brother they had mentioned to prove they weren’t spies. At hearing this, the brothers lamented the fact that God was punishing them for what they did to Joseph (since they were speaking in Hebrew, they didn’t expect any of the Egyptians to understand). Joseph wept at their admission but locked up one of the brothers (Simeon) to force them to come back with their youngest brother. He surreptitiously loaded their bags with money, grain, and provisions and sent them on their way.
Like most of us, the brothers expected God to punish them for their crime, even when things were going well.
Seemingly everything that goes bad here is blamed on God—twice within eight verses (chapter 42, verses 21 and 28), the brothers comment that something bad is God punishing them. What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that one of the “bad” things happening to them is actually a very good thing. In addition to getting what they paid for, they got all their money back so that all their famine relief food was free. But when they realized this they didn’t praise God, they blamed him.
Back to the recap:
The famine continued for seven years, so when brothers ran out of food, they found themselves in need of Egypt’s help again. They returned again to visit Joseph (whom they still didn’t recognize) and buy food. They returned the money that had mysteriously showed up in their bags, but they were informed that their God must have put it there.
Only the Egyptian had a right expectation of God.
These brothers were the sons of Jacob, whose other name is Israel. They were supposed to be the one family on Earth with a special relationship to God. But when God gave them free money, it took an idolatrous Egyptian to point out that the money might have been a good blessing from God.
Let’s wrap up the recap:
Upon seeing his brother Benjamin for the first time, Joseph almost wept once again, but again he sold them food and sent them on their way. Just like last time they had extras secretly put in their packs, but this time it was a valuable cup from Joseph’s table. The Egyptians chased them down hunting the “stolen” goods (Joseph had put it there), and the brothers swore they didn’t have it. Eventually it was found in Benjamin’s pack, and they were arrested and returned to Joseph.
Joseph threatened punishment to Benjamin, but one of the older brothers (Judah, the one who instigated the selling of Joseph) pleaded to be able to substitute himself instead of the guilty party. At this act of self-sacrifice, Joseph was finally unable to hide his compassionate weeping from his brothers any longer. He sent everyone else out of the room and revealed his identity to his brothers. They all wept and celebrated, and Joseph sent them away with fantastic gifts to go and get their father—they were all moving to Egypt and receiving the best of the land, courtesy of Pharaoh himself. But even with this Joseph had to reassure them not to tremble with fear (45:24; many translations have this as Joseph telling them not to quarrel, but it seems to be a more accurate translation and also truer to the situation if we understand it as a command not to fear that Joseph wanted revenge).
They moved to Egypt and settled as a big, happy family, but once their elderly father died, the brothers once again decided that Joseph was going to take revenge on them. At hearing this, Joseph again wept and promised that no such punishment was coming their way. The story closes with the famous line that what the brothers had meant for evil, God had meant for good.
Here’s the bottom line: The brothers deserved judgment but got the best of the land of Egypt—they got immense grace.
Over and over and over the brothers expected God to be a God of vengeance. They thought everything bad happening was punishment from God, and they thought everything good happening was God getting ready to punish them. They even expected their godly brother to take revenge on them—and it took years and years of them living off the best of Egypt before they were convinced otherwise.
Over and over and over God did everything He could to show that He is a God of grace. But the brothers were stubborn and wouldn’t recognize this. And we are stubborn and often don’t recognize this. Even with the Bible being full of stories like this, we still don’t think that God is characterized by routinely giving people better than they deserve. Instead, when we asked the big question earlier about what God was about to do to Joseph’s brothers, most of us expected God to rain down some fury.
Will you open your eyes and see God as He really is?
Let’s take this as a challenge to open our eyes. Let’s start seeing God the way He really is. Let’s see Him the way He describes Himself. Who is our God? What is His name? What is He like? “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands …” (these are the beginning of God’s own words about Himself to Moses in Exodus chapter 34; they are recited another half dozen or so times throughout the Old Testament).
It is a terrible shame that the way God wants us to know Him is not the way we see Him. Instead of seeing Him being gracious all over the place and instead of listening to His own description of Himself, far too often we make up our own definition of who He is and what He is like. It's a shame that we think this way about Him so often that everyone knows what it means for God to "go Old Testament" on someone, and it's a shame that we're still teaching many of our kids to see Him as a God who's constantly waiting to spank them. But mostly it's a shame that many of us spend our lives running from Him in guilt and shame, always expecting Him to be someone He's not.
He is good. He is gracious. And over and over and over He gives us far better than we deserve. Let's read the Bible and look at the world like this is who God is.
