The Chisel of Grace

Mosaic Boston - Sermons

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Church, welcome. I'm glad that all of you are able to be here to worship with us today. As I always like to say, it's great to hear all the conversation that's going around, and we are able to continue those conversations after service as well. So take that opportunity, remember that we still love and care about each other after service and talk to each other afterwards. But if you don't know me, my name is Tyler. I am the teens and hospitality director here at Mosaic Boston and as always, whenever I get the chance to be up here, it is my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver the word of God to us today. So as Pastor Andy mentioned, we are continuing our sermon series, Looking at the life of Joseph in the Book of Genesis. Today we will be in Genesis 45, but the sermon series that we are going through is called Graduate Level Grace. The reason for this is we're trying to have a deeper, better understanding of God's grace, what it is, how it works, and how it applies to our lives.

And so there's a bunch of sermons online, I encourage you to listen to them if you miss them or study the texts and the chapters that have come ahead. It is a narrative arc. It is historical events, real true stories, but it is an arc and so each chapter builds and builds on each other. So for the real quick summary, last chapter, pastor Andy preached on chapter 44, and we saw the story of Benjamin, the youngest brother, being found guilty of stealing a silver cup from this Egyptian ruler, who they did not realize was their brother Joseph, that they sold into slavery. And as he is being condemned for this crime and being forced to become a servant, his brother Judah steps in and pleads for his life and says, "Please take me instead, let my little brother go." And that was the cliffhanger we were left with last week. And we are going to see what is Joseph's response to his brother's plea for grace, to his brother's plea for mercy. So that's where our story picks up today, in Genesis chapter 45.

But before we read, will you pray with me over the preaching and reading of God's word? Heavenly Father, lord, we are so thankful and amazed that we get to be here and worship and praise Your name today. We thank You that You have lavish grace upon us that we do not deserve, so that way we can be in Your presence, have a meaningful deep relationship with You. So in this time, teach us from Your words, speak to us from Your scriptures, help us to better understand Your grace, Your love, Your compassion, and how it applies to our lives today, so that we thank You and we praise You in Jesus' name. Amen. Alrighty, so we are in Genesis 45, and as I mentioned, it is a historical story. It is real, but it is a narrative. And so as we read through Genesis 45, I want everyone to be paying attention to the story, to the characters, to the arts. If you look for a point in the story without understanding the story, you're going to miss some things.

So as we read, I want you to just pay attention to what is the story? Where are we going from here? So Genesis chapter 45 verse 1, it says this, "Then Joseph could not control himself before all of those who stood by him. He cried, "Make everyone go out for me." So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?" But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, "Come near to me please." And they came near and said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

For God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all the house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, 'Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me, you and your children, and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty.' And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here."

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all the brothers and wept upon them. After that, his brothers talked with him. When the report was heard in Pharaoh's house, "Joseph's brothers have come," it pleased Pharaoh and his servants. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Say to your brothers, 'Do this: load your beast and go back to the land of Canaan, and take your father and your households, and come to me, and I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you shall eat the fat of the land.' And you, Joseph, are commanded to say, 'Do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father, and come. Have no concern for your goods, for the best of all the land of Egypt is yours.'"

The sons of Israel did so and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the command of Pharaoh, and gave them provisions for the journey. To each of them, he gave a change of clothes, but to Benjamin, he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes. To his father he sent as follows: ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt, and ten female donkeys loaded with grain, bread, and provision for his father on the journey. Then he sent his brothers away, and as they departed, he said to them, "Do not quarrel on the way." So they went up out of Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father Jacob. And they told him, "Joseph is still alive, and he is ruler over all the land of Egypt." And his heart became numb, for he did not believe them."

Excuse me. I needs some water. Excuse me.

"But when they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, 'It is enough; Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.'" This is the reading of God's holy and error-infallible, authoritative word, may He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We are going to spend our time in two points today. Two points better than the three, because we'll get out of here in two thirds of the time. Well, we'll see how the Holy Spirit moves, I'm not promising anything. But two points today. The first point is Grace that Guts Guilt. And the second point is Grace that Corrects. So as I mentioned earlier, we start this story with the predicament. Joseph's brothers are guilty before him. What is Joseph going to do?

And what we see Joseph's responses, 1 one through 3, where it says, "Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, 'Make everyone go out for me.' So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to the brothers." He's so emotional about what has just happened that he makes all of the Egyptians go out. He's like, "I don't want any of you here. It's just me and my brothers." If you're the brothers, you're like, "Oh, that's kind of scary. There's no witnesses. There's no one here to see what's about to happen." And then it continues, "And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it." He is uncontrollably weeping. If you've been in the presence of someone who's uncontrollably weeping, you're often like, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what's going on. I just got to be here and see what happens."

And then he says to his brothers, "I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?" This is the first moment that they recognize it is their brother Joseph, who has been ruler or leading the Egyptians and leading them for their food and supplies, And so what is their response, the brothers? It says, "But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence." Dismayed. The word literally means fearful, trembling. They are shaking in fear of what is about to happen. Why? 22 years ago, they sold their brother into slavery. And for 22 years, they lied about it and thought they got away with it. And then all of a sudden, "Oh! He's right here. We got caught." And not only did we get caught, he has now had 22 years to build up anger, to plan out his revenge, to think of the best way to torment them when they get back. But it's worse than that, because Joseph was their little brother, but he's not their little brother anymore. Joseph is the second most powerful man in the world.

At this point in time of history, Egypt is the most powerful empire. So much so that all the surrounding nations are in desperate need because of the famine and they're all flocking to Egypt for help, "Help us, help us, help us." And in our text it says that not only that, but Joseph is as a father to Pharaoh. What does that mean? It's a statement about being a highly esteemed, a really trusted advisor. So, what do you call the second most powerful man in the world who gets to tell the most powerful man in the world what to do and he listens? You call him the most powerful man in the world. And so what we see here is the brothers recognize their transgression. They recognize the predicament that they are in, they are caught in their sin. But now it's not their little brother, it's the man with all the power to do whatever he wants with them, that stands before them. It's kind of terrifying.

At a moment's notice, Joseph can say the word and they'd be killed. At a moment's notice, he could say the word and they'd be thrown in jail. Whatever Joseph wanted to do with them, he could do. And as we'll see throughout the rest of the story, what one of the main highlights here is that the way the brothers relate to Joseph is often how we relate to God. I don't want to make too much of this, but it is important. God is the most powerful, all powerful God of the universe. We have sinned against Him. We have done wrong. Scripture tells us the wages for our sin is death. So God in all His power could do whatever he wants with us. The question is, do we react like these brothers when that reality sets in? Are we dismayed? Are we fearful? Are we trembling before God because of His power, because of what He could do, because of our guilt before Him? Now I bring this up to say that we'll see how the story progresses because this is not the end.

But I want to ask if it wasn't you before God and it's just the brothers before Joseph, how would you hope that Joseph reacted to the brothers? I don't know about you, maybe you're better people than I am, but I love revenge. Revenge movies are some of the most popular and moneymaking movies that there are. There's something sinful, but it's natural. I think it's naturally sinful within us that we love revenge movies. After first service, I was talking to some brothers and sisters and our worship leader, Caleb, pointed out, I believe rightfully so, that it's a warp twisted view of God's justice. We want justice, but we take it too far and we make it vengeance. But anyway... And this is just so popular in our society and especially in media. And so recently, I had a week of vacation, where I got to travel and I was very thankful for that opportunity. And I had 11 hours of travel time, during which I was like, "I'll watch some movies."

And a movie that was recommended to me a lot, and just to be clear, I'm not recommending this movie, it was recommended to me, I was like, "Let me see what the hype is all about," it's called John Wick. I think a lot of you probably know that movie. But, spoiler alert for the first 10 minutes of the first movie that informs the whole series, but basically there's a guy, John Wick, whose wife dies of disease, I believe it's cancer. And she knows that she's the only person he's ever loved. And so he's going to have a hard time loving anyone after this. So she gifts him, in her dying wish, a puppy. She says, "This puppy is going to help you learn to love." Well, spoiler alert, and I'm sorry to have to say this, very soon after, a jerk comes in, beats up John Wick, and not only that, he kills his puppy. Know what I thought as I watched that movie? Go get him, John Wick. That's right, I wanted vengeance for this puppy.

And it starts and launches a four movie series where John Wick kills 439 people, all because someone killed his dog. And you know what? I loved it. I was like, "That's right." I can recognize it's not actually right. It is wrong. But there was something, again, I said sinful, within us, that's like, "Yes, give them what they deserve." And that's exactly what Joseph could have done in this story. He had all the power to do it the same way. That's what God could have done in our story. He had all the power to do it. But what happens instead? This is verses 4 through 8, it says, "So Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come near to me please.' And they came near. And he said, 'I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep a alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.'" See, Joseph sees that his brothers are distressed. He sees they're fearful, trembling, "What is Joseph going to do to us? Is he going to exact revenge?" And Joseph, he comforts them, says, "Do not be distressed or angry." He recognizes what they did. He recognizes that they wronged him. But he says, "Don't be angry or distressed about it." But the most important thing he says is the very first thing he says, "Come near to me please." This is a very impactful statement, "Come near to me." It's a sign of forgiveness. It's a sign, more specifically though, of the relationship that he is seeking with them. This idea of coming near is saying, "I don't want there to be a distance between us because of the sin. I don't want there to be any hindrances, barriers between our relationship. Come near to me. I forgive you." And this is a phrase, that throughout scripture, is used for God's relationship with us.

The Gospel of John specifically highlights this phrase. I'll just bring up three verses where it says it. In John chapter 14, we're doing a reverse search through John, John 14:6, it says, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.'" Jesus is saying if you want to come to the Father, come to the Father, but you got to come to Jesus first. You come to Jesus and He restores, He redeems, He reconciles our hurt and broken relationship with God the Father. In John chapter 6, verse 37, Jesus says, "All that the father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out." This is a really powerful verse; come to Jesus and he will not cast you out. How often are we like the brothers, where our guilt and shame of our sin kind of paralyzes us? It keeps us in fearful, trembling and we say, "I don't know if I can go to Jesus." Jesus responses, "Come. Come. I forgive you. I will not cast you out."

How many times do we say, "Yeah, but you don't know how bad the sin is"? Or, "You don't know how long I've been sinning. It's been 22 years of sinning and covering it up. Maybe it's been longer. It's really bad. If I go to Jesus, he's not going to want me. He's going to reject me." Well, Jesus says He will not cast you out. So we need to take encouragement from this grace that there is no sin, there is no shame, there is no guilt so great that when we come and run to Christ and ask Him to forgive us and want to seek and restore a relationship with us, He will never cast us out. There is nothing so great that we can't do that, come to Him. John chapter 5, verse 39 and 40 says, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."

Jesus says study Scripture, that's good. Scriptures are important, they bear witness about Him. But it's not about studying Scripture, it's about the relationship with Christ. If we want life, if we want forgiveness of sins, if we want eternal life, we need to go to Christ. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian or maybe you're just trying to understand what Christianity is about, I want to preface all this by saying it's about relationship. This is the gospel that we not only hurt, we broke our relationship with God when we sinned. We rejected Him, we rebelled against Him. And God did not keep it that way, He sent His son to save us for our sins, to redeem the transgressions that we have done. And He came near to us first, and just ask that we draw near to Him. Just says, "Just come to me." It's not that difficult, it's just, "Yeah, Jesus, I'm wrong. I have sinned. I'm going to You. I need You. I need Your forgiveness. I need Your grace. I need You." That's what Christianity is.

And He promises to forgive us and not forsake us. But in this text, we learned two really important things that I want to highlight about forgiveness in general. The first thing is what I would call preemptive forgiveness. What do I mean by preemptive forgiveness? If you read the text, the brothers never confess, the brothers never repent. They never acknowledge their sin before Joseph, yet Joseph already forgave them. Joseph already forgave them. And this is how we, as Christians are called to forgive. Not just because Joseph did it, but that this is how Christ forgives us. Romans chapter 5 verse 8, "But God shows His love for us, that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us." God didn't say, "Get your life together, then I'll send Jesus and then he'll forgive you of your sins." No, he said, "You're in sin. You need a savior. I'm going and I'm doing." And so Christians, we need to forgive like that.

Are there brothers or sisters in the church? Are there friends, family that you are holding unforgiveness against? It is your job, your responsibility, to forgive them. Why? Not because of anything they do, not because they repent and come to you and say how sorry they are, but because Christ forgave you and gave up His life for you, and we are called to give that grace to others. Now, to be clear, this does not excuse those who are in the wrong. When we sin, that doesn't mean we get to say, "Well, it's your job to forgive me." No, we still are called to repent. Scripture is clear that as soon as you recognize that you have sinned against a brother, you are going and repenting and reconciling with them. But here, we're talking about when you are the one who is wronged, it is your job to forgive. It is our job, when we are wronged, to forgive.

Well, that's a lot easier said than done, right? When you get hurt, you don't want to forgive. And if they don't say they're sorry, you don't believe that they're sorry, and so why would you forgive them? Well, the second thing that we learn about forgiveness from this text is how we are able to forgive like that. And I call it heavenly perspective. We need to have heavenly perspective and able to forgive like Christ and forgive like Joseph. Three times in this text, Joseph says, "It's not you, it's God. Sure, you sold me and you were trying to do your purposes and gain from it, but God was the one who sent me here, and He brought it about for good." Now, that's hard in the moment, right? This verse comes at the end. Joseph isn't in prison, being like, "Oh, it's all good." I mean, maybe he was, we don't know. But it's hard. It's hard to do. It's difficult. But if we want to be able to forgive as we are called to, we need to recognize that God is in control, that God is sovereign over all things.

He can do whatever he wishes and we hope and wait and trust in Him, that He will bring it about for good. That we can see maybe not all the ways that God is working in the situations, but that we can trust even where we don't see Him moving that He is moving. And that's the only way Joseph is able to forgive so quickly, his brothers. Then the story continues in verse 14 and verse 15, where it says, "Then he fell," Joseph fell, "Upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that, his brothers talked with him." Two really important things. One thing that I just love about this verse, it's a group of men being emotional. It's really refreshing, you don't get to see that very much. But that's here. All the brothers are hugging and kissing and making up and forgiving one another, it is emotional. But if you notice, this is the reason why the brothers accept that Joseph truly forgave them.

When Joseph said, "Come near," they came near, but they were still scared. It wasn't until this that it says, "After that, his brothers talked with him." After this, they said, "Oh, okay, he really forgives us. He's not just messing with us. He's not just toying with us. He really forgives us. We can work on this relationship. We can talk with him. We can have a relationship again." And what this speaks to is a common saying and an idea that we all know, is that actions speak louder than words. Someone can say, "I forgive you." And then in the back of their mind, you know that they don't forgive you and you know that they're holding it against you and they're waiting for you to mess up so they can bring it up again. And it's not actually forgiveness. Actions prove that Joseph has forgiven his brothers, and in the same way, that's how God works with us.

God doesn't just shout from heaven, "I forgive you. Now come into my presence and see if I actually forgive you." No, God says, "I am going to forgive you and how you'll know, I am sending my son, Jesus Christ, into the world, to die for your sins, to prove with action that I forgive you." And that should enable us to actually trust God forgives us. When we sin against God, we know that He forgives us not just from words, even though God gives them and they are true because He is the Lord and He is honest and true, but He proved it with action. He proved it with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I think that this speaks to a lot of the ways that we have a warped view of our relationship with God. When we sin, maybe, again, for the first time you come to Christ, you are forgiven and you say, "Does he really forgive me?"

I remember as a kid, about once a week, I would spend my nighttime prayers just praying for God to save me, because I didn't know if He actually saved me or not, or if my sins from the past week, nullified it. And Scripture tells no. When God saves you, He saves you. You are forgiven. He will not reject you. And so do we view God as that? Do we trust that He actually forgives us when we sin? Or are we worried in the back of our mind that He is holding it against us? He does not. I think that we often have a very weak view of forgiveness because we view it as a transaction, or we view it as a business deal, right? "I did wrong, I repented, now we're even." Or, "I did wrong, this person wronged me back, we're even, we're good." Or, "The number of sins that I did versus the number of times I repented and good things I did, we're in a good space." Forgiveness isn't a transaction. Forgiveness is about relationship.

God is not keeping a ledger saying, "This is how many times you sinned. So this is how many times you need to repent. And if you don't do enough good things, then I'm not going to forgive you." No, it's a relationship. He's a loving father. Jesus is a loving friend and brother who wants to forgive us. He wants to. It's a relationship. Naturally, when you sin against someone you care about, it hurts the relationship, right? It takes work to restore and redeem that relationship. But being good and holy and gracious, God doesn't hold that against us and he does the work to redeem the relationship for us. He is the one who redeems and saves us. And the last thing on this point that I want to point out is I did not forget the emotionalness of the brothers. I think that's really important, because did you know that God has emotional responses to us too? Not in the same way that we have emotions. God is holy, He is perfect, He's not thrown about by whims, but He does have emotions.

And two of my favorite verses in all of Scripture, Luke 15:7 says, "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." All of heaven rejoices when we repent. Yes, this is true when for the first time you repent and say, "Jesus, I need you to save me from my sins," for the very first time, yes, all of heaven rejoices. But it's not because they're like, "All right, plus one to our totals, we got another one," No. It's because God genuinely cares and loves you and desires for a relationship with you. And it's a rejoicing because He says, "This relationship is restored. We're working on it. We have right relationship again." And it's the same for us as Christians. It's not just the first time we repent, it's every time. God rejoices when we repent of sin. It's not, "Oh, you're a Christian." We all know we're not perfect, we still sin. And then it's like, "Well, God doesn't care anymore. It's just all tallied up in that one party that..."

No, God loves when we repent of our sin. Why? Because He's a good father. He loves repentance because it heals and it brings closer, the relationship we have with him. And this is why, all of this together compounded, is why the first point is called This is Grace that Guts Guilt. It's not just for alliterative purposes, even though anyone who stands up and preaches loves alliteration, it's actually very meaningful to me. So recently, I started enjoying fishing. I'm horrible at it, I'm not good, but I love it. And I specifically like fishing for striper. So if you know anything about fishing, they're a little bit harder to catch. Not very easy, but one of the tastiest fish you'll ever be able to taste if you like eating fish. But one of the things I had to learn when I was fishing is you can't just catch a fish out of the ocean and then throw it on a grill and eat it. There's this kind of gross, disgusting process that's called gutting a fish.

It's actually very important for the sake of eating and enjoying the fish, so hold on with me for a second. The guts, the longer they sit within the fish, basically pump iron and other minerals into the meat of the fish, which is why it gets what a lot of people call that fishy taste that they don't like. It's the iron and the minerals that are being brought in. And so if you really want to enjoy the best, freshest fish, you got to remove the guts as soon as you possibly can. You remove it so that way none of the minerals get pumped into the meat and then you get to enjoy the beautiful reward of a delicious fish. Well, in this analogy here, our sin, our shame, our guilt, are the guts of the fish. They are things that the longer we let sit, the longer we let persist, will try and infect, I would say warp, our view of the reward. Well, what is the reward? It's not a tasty fish, it's relationship with God.

So the longer our guilt, sin and shame sits within us, we persist in our sin, we refuse to come to Christ, the more it will warp the way we view our relationship with God. You say, "God, I know you say I should trust You, but I've been hurt so many times by sinful people in this world. I can't trust You." You say, "God, You love me and you'll forgive me no matter what, but I've experienced people who won't forgive me, so I can't trust You." These are all ways in which we can warp our view of our relationship with God. And so what is the solution? We need the exacting, sharp knife of grace to come in and remove the guts of our sin, guilt and shame from us, so that way we can enjoy the reward of right relationship with God. But the greatest news of it all is that God is not just a filet chef. When He removes it, He does not hurt the filet at all. He doesn't nick and chop up and make the meat...

It's a beautiful, perfect filet, but He is also the all powerful mighty God of the universe. So wherever those minerals and that fishiness has come in and taken over the meat of the flesh, God is powerful enough to remove it and you would never even know it was there. This is the true reward, the reward of perfect, peaceful, blessed relationship with God, our Father, through the work of Jesus Christ. And if we want to get rid of that guilt and shame that prevents us from running to God, that prevents us from really experiencing true forgiveness, it takes grace. We need grace. Run to Him, accept the grace that He gives. Point number two is that this grace doesn't just remove the guilt, it also corrects. And I don't think we often think of correction as grace, but it is. And so we see this in verse 24 of our text where it says, "Then he sent his brothers away, and as they departed, he said to them, 'Do not quarrel on the way.'"

Joseph sees the brothers in he's like, "Oh, they're about to start fighting. I'm going to preemptively jump in and be like, 'Please don't fight.'" Well, how does he know that they're going to start fighting? Three chapters earlier, when the brothers did not realize it was Joseph, they thought it was an Egyptian man who did not speak Hebrew, Ruben says, in chapter 42, verse 22, "Ruben answered them, 'Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen to me. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.'" When one of their brothers is arrested, seemingly unrelated to the events of Joseph as far as they know, because again, they don't know it's Joseph, Ruben immediate is like, "This is all because you guys did this to Joseph. I told you not to do it, you did it." And if you're like me, you could hear the natural response if you've ever argued with siblings or friends, it's, "My fault? We wanted to kill him. If we killed him, this wouldn't be a problem. It was your idea to throw him in the pit."

And then Ruben's like, "Well, it was my idea to throw him in the pit because I wanted to save him before you guys could do anything. But then you went and sold him into slavery." And you could see how it all unfolds. And Joseph sees it and he lovingly, gracefully, corrects them. Why is this correction grace? It's because it's about the relationship. Joseph is working on redeeming and restoring a 22-year broken relationship. He says, "You sinned against me. It is my job, I forgive you. So don't fight about it on the way. It's forgiven, it's done with. Let's work on building this loving relationship." And in the same way, God corrects us. It's with grace. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11 says, "For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Yes, the discipline, the correction may seem painful rather than pleasant, but the point of is it's a yield peaceful fruit, so that there's no more hurt in the relationship.

If you keep on sinning against someone, you're going to keep on hurting them and creating distance in the relationship. And so God corrects. He disciplines us so that way we can have a right and good relationship with him. Proverbs 3, verses 11 through 12 says, "My son do not despise the LORD's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father, the son in whom he delights." So when God disciplines us, it's not this judgmental God that I think we often get our warped view of relationship with God with. We think that God is this guy who just hates us and hates what we do and just says, "No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that." No. God is a loving good father who, like a good father, disciplines because He loves and because He knows it's good for His son, for His children, for us whom He delights in. So, practical points real quick. There's been a lot of practical, but practical... Parents, do we correct our children with grace?

Some parents might need to hear the first part. Do you correct? I'll pause there. A lot of times now it's a very popular idea to let the kids do whatever they want, they'll figure it out. But actually, Scripture tells us, if you love your kids, you will correct them. You will discipline them. Why? Because if anyone spent any time with kids, you know that there's only pure evil in the bottom of their heart. No, okay, they're not pure evil, but they're sinful. They are warped. And so they need guidance, they need correction. But do we do it with grace? It's not overbearing, demeaning, but can we do it with grace? This reminded me of something. In undergrad, I had a minor in criminal justice, but with behavioral analysis. This is why I work with teenagers, I study why criminals are the way they are. No, I'm just kidding.

But, there's basically four different types of parenting that they all categorize in, and there's only one that they say is generally successful, and it's the one where they have guidance, they have rules, but they also are reasonable and they explain why and they tell the kids why, and they build a relationship with the kids so that when they discipline them, the kids are like, "Yeah, you're right. I deserve that." But anyway, that's kind of side point. So parents, do we correct but in a graceful way? Where you love them and where the kid knows that, "Yeah, my parents love me." Yes, this is hard, but you genuinely want to see them repent. I think a way that graceful parenting would look is that when a kid comes and confesses sin or repents of sin, you have grace, you rejoice over the fact that they have the ability to recognize sin in their lives and you are thankful for it. That doesn't mean no punishment at all.

I remember my parents always said, "If you tell us ahead of time, the punishment will be much better than if we have to find out much later that you've been lying about it." And that's something that I think TV and media tell all the kids and all the kids know that, but it's a different thing when you actually experience it. It's a different thing when as a kid you go to your parents and you confess sin and your parents are like, "Thank you for telling me, I forgive you. You need to correct this, here's how we're going to correct it." And it's like, "Wait a second. That's it? You actually forgive me? There really is a lesser punishment for this?" That is grace. And then another thing that my parents did really well with me that I always appreciated was that they explained why they were disciplining me.

As a kid, I was a liar. I lied all the time to the point that my parents sat me down one day and were like, "Tyler, we can never trust anything you say because you lie so much, you're going to have to build our trust back." I was like, "I didn't realize I could actually lose the trust of my parents." That was new. And they were like, "This is why it hurt me. Because you say this here, so how can we trust you over here? How does this relate to this? It hurts us when you lie to us." And it was like, "Wow. I never realized I had the power to hurt my parents. I guess I do need to work on some things." And that was really a pivotal moment that I remember in middle school when my parents sat me down, I was like, "Wow, this is going to change me. I got to work on it." And so parents, correct your children, but do it gracefully. Then on the flip side, children, do you recognize your parents' discipline and correction as grace?

Kids here are all like, "Yeah, I got the parents. Now it's my time." Kids, when your parents correct you and discipline you, it's because they love you. It's because they care about you. It's because they want what's good for you. They are trying to prepare you for the life ahead and help you grow into the person that you were meant to be. So kids, recognize that grace your parents are having on you. That doesn't mean you're going to sit there when you're corrected and be like, "Thank you mom and dad, you did a great job correcting me." I understand emotions are hard, but recognize the reality that your parents do love you and have grace for you. But it's not just a grace that corrects in the sense of discipline, it's a grace that corrects in the sense of making wrongs right.

This is, in our text in verses 27 and 28, where it says, "But when they told him all the words of Joseph telling Jacob their father, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said, 'It is enough; Joseph, my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.'" Again, 22 years that Jacob has been dealing with the lie and belief that his son is dead. And clearly it made him depressed. Why? Because he needed his soul revived, meaning his soul was not revived for these 22 years. It's a long time, but even still, God works to restore and redeem the wrong that had been done to Jacob in this lie, and revive his soul, bring him hope. When I see this, I think of Psalm 130, verse 5 through 8, it says, "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, and more than watchman for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities." God wants to redeem and reconcile all the wrongs that have been done in this world, to reconcile all the hurt, pain, sin, guilt, shame in this world. And what is our response as we wait for that to happen? It's to wait on the Lord. I love it, as a watchman of the morning, as a watchman for the morning. Think about it, if you don't have a clock, if you don't have a watch, you have no way to tell time besides the sun. It's night, so the sun's gone, you're like, "Okay, I got to watch for morning. I have no idea when it's going to be." And you know how sometimes a minute feels like an hour and sometimes an hour feels like a minute. So you really have no idea what time it is. All that they know, the sun's going to come up. It will be morning.

In the same way we are called to wait for the coming of the redemption and reconciliation that God himself can bring, we have to know with certainty that it will come. Sometimes it might take longer than we think, or it might feel a lot longer than we would like, but we know that it is coming. Why? Verse 7, "Hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and plentiful redemption." I love that, "Plentiful redemption." This is what God wants to do. He wants to lavish the world with redemption. We see it happen for Jacob here in his life. Sometimes that total complete redemption only comes in the perfection of eternity with God, but God's desire is to lavish redemption on all. The last verse I'll talk about as we close is verse 22. Actually jumping back a little bit, this is my favorite verse In this section of text. In verse 22 it says, "To each and all of them, he, Joseph, gave a change of clothes, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five changes of clothes."

I love this verse because it shows that grace doesn't only correct in making wrongs right, grace over corrects, it makes the wrong even more right than we could ever imagine. What is going on here? Remembering last chapter, Benjamin is the one who stands guilty before Joseph. He is the one who needed an intercessor, someone to stand in his place and say, "Forgive him." And yet he here is the one who receives the greatest reward. Friends, dear Christians, this is us with the gospel. We deserve nothing. We do not deserve this grace that God has given us. We rightfully deserve his wrath and punishment, but because of the one Jesus Christ who stood in our place, the reward that rightfully should have been bestowed upon him is given to us, more than we could ever hope for or ask or even imagined. We are given the greatness of God's grace, His love, and a pure right relationship with him. This is the kind of grace that leads to rejoicing.

So as I close in, will you pray with me over our further time of worship and rejoice in the Lord's grace for us? Heavenly Father, Lord, You are good. You have bestowed more grace upon us than we ever deserve or could imagine. Help us not to cower from You because of sin, shame, or guilt. Remind us of Your steadfast love, of Your plentiful redemption, of Your relationship with us, and that You gave up everything to have relationship with us. Help us to run to You when we are stuck in sin. Help us to run to You when we feel the weight of guilt and shame. Help us to run to You when we want to rejoice and praise You for all that You have blessed us with. And help us to learn to forgive like You have forgiven us, to truly love and have grace for those around us. We thank You and we praise You. In Jesus' name. Amen.