Well, good evening. It’s good to be with you and be in the Word with you. Just a reminder that if you’re able, just a members meeting right after church. I don’t think it’ll be very long. I just wanted to go over a few things. So if you can hang around, that would be great.
Let’s go to Genesis chapter 45. Genesis chapter 45. We’ve been in the Psalms all summer.
But I want to preach this, and then we’ll do something different next week, and then we’ll finish. We’ll finish our series in Revelation after that.
Genesis chapter 45. It will be in verses 1 through 8.
It says, Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, Make everyone go out from 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 dismissed. But he was made at his presence. 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. 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, 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 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 of his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Joseph is really a character in the Old Testament to learn a great deal from.
I’ll entitle this Joseph, a vessel of grace.
C.S. Lewis once quipped, there are two people in the end, either people who say to God, thy will be done, or, God saying to the others, your will be done. And it’s a way of saying, people end up getting what they want. Those who don’t want to seek the Lord and those who don’t want to follow the path that God puts out for them, they in the end will not be made to do that. And there is eternal separation. But we see in Joseph, a very difficult, a very trying pathway in life, yet we see a man intent on saying with his life, with his actions, with his words, God, thy will be done. Even if, and it was, very bitter for Joseph at times. Very bitter. So I don’t want us to read ourselves into the story, but I do want us to glean from Joseph, some very important lessons in grace. And what does it mean to be a vessel for God to use, God to do his work in, to work through, especially when it’s a hard work. Especially when it’s difficult. Especially when we can’t see the other side.
So I want to make two major points about Joseph. And it’s that Joseph is a man resigned to the will of God. But under that first one, Joseph is a man who is resigned to the character of God. To the character of God. To do something of a quick recap of Joseph’s life, he was 17 and he was younger than his older brothers, the tribes of Israel, even though they’re not that yet. They’re still just boys under Jacob. Whose name was changed to Israel. And Israel loved Joseph more than the other brothers and treated him better. And he gave him that special coat of many colors. And Joseph, you know, maybe it was a bit of a tattletale and told his dad when they weren’t working as hard as they could be. And then of course, Joseph had these dreams. He dreamed that his brothers and then another, that his parents and the sun, moon, and star, everything’s bowing down. To him. So you probably wouldn’t like that if you were, you know, an older brother and your younger brother is saying this stuff to you. But Joseph is sent out by his father to check on the brothers who are in Dothan. And they say, let’s kill them. And Jesus says, no, let’s not kill them. Let’s just throw them into a pit. They throw him into a pit and they say, hey, let’s sell him into slavery. So here he is 17 sold into slavery. And he ends up in Potiphar’s house. Who’s a powerful man in Egypt. And that seems to be going well. He’s kind of in charge, kind of a lead servant over servants. But Potiphar’s wife tries to draw him into an adulterous relationship. And when he won’t do it, she lies about him out of spite and has him thrown in prison. And he’s in prison for quite a while. And only because of the dreams. Of a cup bearer who was thrown into prison because the Pharaoh was mad at him. He was able to interpret this dream. And eventually that cup bearer gets out. And Pharaoh, two years later, has a dream. And the cup bearer goes, oh, I know a guy in prison who can interpret dreams. And Joseph gets out of prison. And he becomes the second in command in all of Egypt. So that’s where we are here when Joseph’s brothers, come to him because there’s a famine. They come to Joseph not knowing it’s Joseph. They come to get food for the family back where Israel is. And there Joseph beholds his brothers and he puts them through a series of tests to see are these brothers the same guys they were? And he discovers they’re not. He discovers that they are different. That they love their younger brother who is Joseph’s blood brother because only the two of them came from Rachel. And he finds them to be different men. And it comes to this point here in 45 where we just read where he can’t take it anymore. And he weeps. He weeps over his brothers. And I want that to grab you here. That we have a weeping man. A weeping man. How can he be so soft and gentle towards his brothers after what they did to him? You would think this would be a hardened man. An angry man. A bitter man. A resentful man. Not only towards his brothers but towards God. If there’s a God, why would God have done this to me? Think about it. His youth, the best part of his life, is spent away from his father whom he loves. Away from his mother. Away from his home. He’s not 39 until he’s reunited with his father. So from 17 to 39 he goes through all of this. And then he’s imprisoned because he tried to be a godly man and keep from sin. So you would think you would meet this guy and you’d go, well, he’s pretty terrible. But, you know, if you heard his story you would understand why he’s so terrible.
And it’s interesting to note that Joseph is one of the few characters in the Old Testament where we have no record of sin. And it doesn’t mean that Joseph didn’t sin. But in light of his awful circumstances it does really stand out that he endured so much and he didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t do something in the midst of his trials. He didn’t give up. And you think, well, trade-off. You know, he became second in command in Egypt at least. What person who’s a decent person considers that a trade-off? I lose the father who I love, the mother who I love, the brothers who he loved at the time in exchange for money and power. That’s not a consolation to a decent person, at least.
And Jesus, you know, even says in Matthew 19, 29, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or land for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. So Jesus makes it plain that what you lose in this life, for God’s sake, is not something you can get back in this life. He’s not going to get back those years in this lifetime. And then the further evidence that Joseph is a man who was faithful to the Lord, though we can’t find a reason, is the fact that he did refuse adultery. You could think, in sin, I have a right to be idle. Like, look where I am now. What do I have to lose? I’m kind of free. God’s obviously done with me, so why not be done with Him, right? I’m in this sour season of being angry with God. You know, you’ve heard people say things like that. You know, I’m mad at God right now. You know, I’m angry at God right now. You know, I have a right to be kind of cool towards it all right now. But that’s not Joseph. He’s just as nimble to stay away from sin, stay close to God, even when he, by human reason, has no right, you know, no great purpose to. So Joseph, through his great difficulties, think about it, he’s a tender-hearted, compassionate man that never stops. He’s very sensitive to godliness in all of his life. And the proof is that the weeping isn’t just that one time. Joseph weeps over his brothers, so, again, the brothers who were going to murder him, but decided, hey, let’s just throw him into slavery, ruined his life. He weeps over them one, two, three, four, five times. Five times he has to hide himself because he weeps for them. And it’s not weeping like, I can’t believe they showed up. I hate them so much. 43.30 tells us his compassion grows warm for his brothers. His weeping is not a weeping of resentment, of anger, of, oh, what I lost. It’s a weeping of love for the very brothers
that took his life from him, that took his father from him.
And you go, well, where’s the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude? Because don’t you think that you and I get a chip on our shoulder about a lot less? You know, we can find some very small reasons to think we’re justified and kind of keeping a very angry, I’m mad, nobody talk to me, right? Like your wife knows, your husband knows, like, ugh, don’t, ugh, right? And I have a right to kind of stay in this fit because what? What? Where’s the white-hot rage? Where’s the revenge? I mean, he’s second in command in Egypt. I mean, you could dream up how you could pull that revenge off and, you know, it would be grand. I mean, he could do some stuff. Where’s the pity party? Where’s victimhood? Talk about victimhood. Here’s some victimhood. But none of that stuff is in this story. And he’s a weeping, gentle man, not because he’s a sissy. You can’t be the second in command of one of the, or the most powerful nation at the time and not have an amazing amount of both wisdom and strength. So that’s not this. He can weep with compassion for his evil brothers because his heart is supremely sensitive toward the way that God has chosen to work out his plans of salvation. For him, personally, but for the nation of Israel. Joseph is compassionate and loving towards his brothers because it’s who Joseph knows God to be to him.
Joseph trusts the character of God despite what’s happening to him. And so we’re told the steadfast love and favor never left Joseph.
And when you get to the very end of the book of Genesis and you get to the end of the story, you get to chapter 50, verse 17, and their father has passed away. And what happens? They all go to him, very afraid, and like, hey, dad’s, you know, gone. What are you going to do to us? And what happens? Again, Joseph weeps. Why does he weep? He weeps because he loves his brothers, but they still can’t see grace through all of this. Joseph has been on the worst end of this whole deal by going into slavery and his life being ruined, yet he is gentler through it because he sees God’s hand in it. Yet the brothers, even after all this, they still don’t get grace. They’re still waiting for the hammer to drop. They’re still waiting for deserved revenge and retribution.
And Joseph weeps because he’s trying to tell his brothers one last time, I’m for you. And he says, I’m for your children. Like, I love you. This is the God we serve. So I want you to understand this then. Okay? The life that God has for you to live, every bitter cup you drink, every raw deal you get, every unexpected tragedy, it’s going to push you in one of two possible directions. It’s going to push you closer to the heart of God, or it’s going to push you further from it.
The trials and the difficulties that God has laid out for you, they’re soft. They’ll soften and warm your heart to God’s goodness and love, or they’ll harden and embitter you against God.
So this is a weeping man, and he’s a mountain of grace for us to behold, how Joseph gets the brunt of evil in life. He experiences so much of a valley experience, yet he doesn’t doubt who God is and how much God loves him.
And we could say a parallel character, I guess, would be Job, right? Job has everything ripped away. And what does Job say? Naked I came from my mother’s womb. Naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And so Job’s wife says, curse God and die. Why are you still trying to maintain your integrity? And what does Job say? He says, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. So how do you get there? How do I get to that place where I don’t have to wonder if God brings this season into my life or this tragedy into my life or life becomes something that I hate? How can I know for sure I’m not going to abandon God and discover I don’t really love Him and I’m going to turn and go my own way? Like, can I know that God is that good? His character is that good even before, before the difficulty in trying? And that’s where the trial that God brings comes. And I think the answer is yes. And I think Joseph had a grip on it. And I think it’s a grip you and I have to have. If you and I would have a right view of God, we would have a right view on ourselves and then we would really understand suffering and difficulty in the proper context. So a proper view of God is God is holy. Right? God is, God is many things in His attributes. But God is holy. He’s without sin. He’s pure. And He’s good. And what is man? Man is unholy. What does a holy God do when there are unholy things in His presence, in His universe? He judges them and eternally so. That’s, that’s what God does to unholy sinners.
And you say, that’s how I deserve to be treated. If you want to talk about what you deserve.
Yet Joseph, Joseph can say then, because he knows a holy God has not eternally judged him. And even more particularly, Joseph knows that God has covenanted himself to his great grandfather Abraham. Right? So, so Joseph can know, I’ve never gotten what I deserve. Joseph’s holding on to the covenant of a God whose character is trustworthy. I want you to see that. Life cannot dictate who God is to us. Life cannot dictate whether or not God is trustworthy. God has already said to Abraham,
all the land of Canaan is yours for an everlasting possession. God says that the covenant He makes is an everlasting covenant.
So Joseph’s keen on compassion. He’s keen on kindness. He’s keen on mercy. Because the character of his God is so. Joseph has a heart that looks like the Father’s heart. Tender. Tender, because God has been tender. Loving, because God has been loving. Merciful and forgiving, because God has been merciful and forgiving.
And how much more can we say that that really points us straight to Jesus? Because Jesus, it says if we want to follow Him, it means that we also with Christ following in His footsteps, we don’t react and respond when we are wronged. To follow in Christ’s footsteps is to joyfully accept the difficulties of life because we know that God is perfecting us and He’s drawing us closer to Himself through His Son Jesus. The Apostle Peter says, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you. Leaving you an example so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.
Friends, that’s an easy sermon to preach maybe, but it’s a much harder sermon to obey, isn’t it? It’s a much harder work to walk through difficult and painful seasons that affect us in ways that we never thought we would be affected to have spiritual darkness set in in a way that, gosh, we’ve never known it before and yet still be able to say, God is good. God’s character is trustworthy. His love is steadfast. I’m a favored one of God. John Bunyan has said, you are beaten that you may be better. God has beaten you so that you would be better.
Jessica’s dad came down a few weekends ago and when he comes down, he usually buys, you know, the kids something outrageously, you know, something just to surprise them. Once he bought them a teddy bear that was the size of me, which I’m like, well, that’s cool, but what do you do with a teddy bear that’s the size of a human? You know, so it just kind of lived in half of, you know, a room for a long time. But he took them out and he bought them, you know, genuine leather baseball gloves this time and a softball and a baseball and, you know, they wanted to go home and use them. But he also bought, the oil you put in a glove. And more than that, he ordered a mallet. It’s a special mallet. You know, it’s like a huge handle and there’s like a giant softball on the top and you’re supposed to sit there and bang, bang, bang this thing. It’s really, would be a great like medieval weapon or if someone broke into your house. But you’re doing this because when you buy a glove, it’s not really usable the way that it is. It’s too stiff. It’s so hard. You can’t open and shut your glove the way that you should be able to. It’s not pliable. The leather is not what it needs to be. What do you have to do to that leather? You got to beat the fire out of it, man. You got to beat the fire out of it. And, you know, they were beating the fire out of it. But is it there yet? It’s not there. It’s not there yet. And you see, God does the very same thing with us. He beats us that we may be all the better. He works hard lessons in us that we may by grace grow stronger and purer and more trusting. Not that we would realize how great we are or that we would become in and of ourselves something holy unto God. But when God puts us through it and shows us our weakness and our smallness, I see how good and wonderful Jesus is. So the more I’m not saying I’m so much better than I was yesterday, I’m saying rather, I see how much more wonderful Jesus is today than I did yesterday. I find myself clinging to Christ and in that clinging faith to Christ, I find more of Christ filling me.
So ask yourself the question fairly regularly, what do I deserve? What do I deserve? If we started with what we deserved, we’d have a very different time thinking about our difficulties. We would have it in a proper gospel perspective. And it would spare you a lot of grief and a lot of wasted years, you know, feeling sorry for yourself and wondering why God did this or wondering why this happened rather than releasing yourself to the character of God. Releasing yourself to the goodness of God. Can we say we’re resigned to do God’s will? Am I resigned to God’s will? Jesus taught us to pray thy will be done. And then I do want to make a special note here to men and especially to husbands. I think there is a call for each of us to be tenderhearted and compassionate men.
Tenderhearted and compassionate men. Being a strong man is not the opposite of compassion. Passion and gentleness. It’s not at all. We find in Jesus someone who is supremely gentle and tender. You don’t find a harsh, rough, you know, sharp man in Christ. You don’t see that in Joseph. So my manhood is not threatened when I choose to be kind and gentle and loving to my wife, to my children, to others. In fact, it is a proper godly masculinity that understands self-control over my sinful impulses to be angry, to yell, to scream, to throw things, to flex my muscles and be a jerk. That doesn’t make me manly. It makes me a monster. And so take this also as a special lesson to you to practice tenderheartedness towards your wives. Take this as a special lesson to learn what it means to be compassionate to those who maybe don’t seem to deserve compassion. Learn what it means here to be kind. Not some general kindness, but Paul tells us the fruit of the Spirit is kindness. Kindness.
Second thing that Joseph is resigned to, he’s resigned to the purposes of God. He’s resigned to the purposes of God.
Look back in chapter 45 there, verse 4.
So Joseph said to his brothers, Come near to me, please. And they came near, and he said, I’m your brother Joseph. 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. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.
So Joseph has here what I guess we call the long game. The long game. This is Joseph kind of saying to his brothers, Look, you’re seeing this one way, but I’m seeing this a completely different way. This isn’t like, Hey, God just brought me here so that when this famine came, right, when this famine came, we would live. So now y’all got some grain. We got grain. I can come back home and everything goes back to normal. And that was the whole point of this was just to survive this terrible famine. And that’s not the case at all. They were to survive the famine so that Israel would survive, which is to say God’s purposes would survive, which means God’s Messiah would still come. Because if you go back to chapter 38 in Genesis, it’s like this side story. You know, you got Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the brothers and then you get the Joseph thing. There’s like stuck in that this story about Judah. It’s a weird story and you can go read it sometime. But it’s a weird story about Judah who has a child and that child is the one who carry the covenant promises and through him on down to Jesus. And you can trace that lineage from Jesus all the way back up to Judah.
If Joseph hadn’t been sold into slavery, he wouldn’t have ended up in pod for his house, which means he wouldn’t have been falsely accused and thrown into prison. He wouldn’t have interpreted the dream for the cupbearer. He wouldn’t have been forgotten about by the cupbearer for two years. He wouldn’t have been remembered by the cupbearer when Pharaoh had a dream that nobody else could interpret. So he wouldn’t have been the ruler over Egypt, which means he wouldn’t have been able to use his God given wisdom to save the known world from famine and death. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his own family alive. He wouldn’t be able to keep Judah alive. He wouldn’t be able to preserve the promise of God to send a savior to the world.
And we can do that same sort of tracing, you know, all over the Bible, how God is working in God’s way, some way that seems off the wall sometimes, but God is accomplishing His purposes through weird, weak, strange, unforeseen ways. God’s working. God’s working. And this is a special passage also because you have the first usage of the word remnant. The word remnant. And it’s an important word because that’s a very important theme in the Old Testament and it’s a very important theme when you come into the New.
Joseph goes on to make his brothers promise that when they come up out of Egypt, at that time, they will take his bones back to Canaan. So he does not want to be buried in Egypt. He wants his bones to go back there. And then when you go forward in Exodus, you read what does Moses do when he takes the people out of slavery? He takes Joseph’s bones with him to bury Joseph’s bones in Canaan. And it’s not sentimentality. It’s not like, well, that’s where my family’s buried, so I want to be buried. It’s faith. It’s faith. He wants his bones to be the place where he knows God is taking the family of promise.
All throughout the Old Testament, you get remnant. And remnant is like posterity. It’s like your line. It’s a bit of your line. And a lot of times, it’s not like this happy thing. Oftentimes, it’s, in spite of the Israelites, that God still allows a remnant. It’s often something like, you all don’t deserve to even be alive, but because I love you, I will preserve a remnant. I will preserve a remnant. You see that over and over again. In Amos chapter 5, to the people who have been rebelling, he says, seek good and not evil, that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you. As you have said, hate evil and love evil. Love good and establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. Very specific. And what does that do? It harkens back to what Joseph is saying here. That God’s doing all of this so that His purposes won’t be thwarted.
All throughout the Bible, we see a God who isn’t working out His good purposes for good people. We don’t see a God who’s holding up those who deserve to be held up above everyone else. We don’t see a God who’s holding up an entire nation. We see God talking about a remnant. When you go to the New Testament, Paul uses the same phraseology in the book of Romans in two places. In chapter 9 he says this, kind of explaining what Isaiah meant. Paul says, And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved. Romans chapter 11 verse 5. So too at the present time there is a remnant. Chosen by grace.
If I’m resigned to the character of God, friends, certainly let us also be resigned to the purposes of God. Because God’s purposes through everything that’s really weird and upside down, and through the evil and the bad that God allows, there is this promise for you and for me that God is working for His remnant. For those few people who don’t deserve to be called the remnant, but by His grace He’s just saying, I have a supreme, steadfast love on you, and so I’m going to keep you. So I’m going to work through you. So I’m going to save you. That word remnant should really strike a sense of wonder into you. To realize from all the people who’ve ever existed and ever will exist, I can sit here in this room and I can say that in the grand story of God in human history, I’ve been called out to be a part of this remnant. I’ve been called out to be used by God for His purposes. I’ve been called out to be shaped into the image of Christ. I’m among this blessed, chosen, small remnant.
And it’s micro, like the big story, but wow, it’s micro, down to every day of your life.
I once had a Greek class. I think I told this story many years ago. I don’t think I’ve told it in a long time. But I was taking this online Greek class and I didn’t have to do that at Bible college. I wanted to take Greek and I was taking this online Greek class. I was taking this online live class with Bill Mounts. Bill Mounts is one of the big writers of Greek curriculum. So I’m taking this live class with him and I wasn’t very good at it, to be honest with you, but I’m going to this class online and it’s like the Brady Bunch. You know, you got all the little squares, everybody, like the students, and he’s in the middle there. And he said, Chad, you look really upset and down today. And like, you know, do these Brady Bunch squares. And I’m like, I said, well, I said, yeah, I said, you know, I’m like over like all these groups at my church. I’m a discipleship pastor and nobody wants to do anything. I try to get people to be leaders and I try to get people to serve and do these things. And sometimes it’s just really discouraging. You just can’t fucking get people motivated to do what they’re supposed to do in church life. And he kind of just paused and he looked back at me and he said, Chad, if you’re going to stay in gospel ministry, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that you’re not going to spend eternity with the majority of the people you serve in your church.
And of course, everyone’s like that. And he said, it’s always a remnant. And you got to get comfortable with that. In the Christian life, in the local church, it’s just a small number that really are going to do it and go for it and live by grace that God’s calling in. And that really obviously kind of shaped the way I think about a lot of things in the Christian life and smallness and what’s it mean to be faithful, how God’s working.
So are you willing to live through it? Are you willing to live through it, whatever the living through it is? I don’t know. I could make up a million scenarios of what could happen to you tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. I could make up so many scenarios of how Satan could attack you and pull you down and cause you to doubt and cause you to wonder if God’s good or God’s real. And again, we could come up with actual names of people we know who did walk through it and they bounced on God, right?
But grace is like a tether, you know? Grace is like a tether. And God tethers Himself to the ones He loves. And I don’t know that it’s so much always like I’m running like I should be as much as it is like God’s pulling me in on a rope. And God’s good to keep me on the straight and narrow and to keep you on the straight and narrow and to show us how good He is to us in spite of us. So God has fingers and those fingers are all over your past and your present and your future. All over it. You gotta believe that even when you can’t see it.
And if you go all the way to verse 24 we’ll kind of close here. If you go to verse 24 when he sends his brothers back to go pick up dad and bring him back to Goshen and life’s gonna be great, right? We get to live in Goshen for free and Pharaoh loves us. It’s not gonna be like that for very long. But in this story, life’s great.
He sends the brothers away and as they departed, he said to them, do not quarrel on the way. So he says to these brothers, do not quarrel on the way.
Now you know if you’re of these 11 brothers, there’s gonna be a temptation on the way back to go,
Reuben, you’re the one who said this. You said that. I told you we shouldn’t have done it. It’s a terrible idea. And you could see them infighting and kind of consuming themselves. But why does Joseph say that? Because he’s saying, if you do that, you’re living outside of the grace that God has given us. He’s saying, walk away from here, not like you deserve to, like miserable sinners who’ve done horrible, shameful things, but walk out of here as people who’ve been shown the undeserved means and the unmerited grace of God. Don’t quarrel about it. Let it go and just walk in the grace of it. And how hard of a time do we have showing that grace to ourselves and showing that kind of grace to others? Unfortunately, the answer is often, isn’t it? Because we lose this glorious mentality of grace that is all over this story, and Joseph seems to get so well. And for that reason, I’m envying Joseph. I’m envying this man who takes the worst of it, who’s treated so horribly, yet he just has a mind of love and forgiveness and grace because he sees God doing it, and it’s for God’s purposes, and God’s doing a greater thing, and it’s going to be better than it’s ever been. Don’t look back. Don’t stick your toe in it. Don’t do that. Just go get Dad and come back, and it’ll be great. That’s hard, isn’t it? Because I have like a personal sense of justice. Like, no, I need to be beaten. And you need to be beaten too.
Friends, this is a call to just walk in the grace of the Lord Jesus, to be a vessel of grace, to be resigned to the character of God, to be resigned to the purposes of God. Trust Him for His goodness and grace, His unexplainable mercy and love for sinners.
And we’re called to do that every day. Every day. Preach the goodness of the gospel to yourself every day. Why? Because you forget the goodness of the gospel every day, right? You got a real leaky head and heart, don’t you? Like, real leaky. You get like these moments where I’m like, wow, the gospel and Jesus and love and grace and forgiveness. You’re like, I’m never getting off this mountain. And then a week later, you’re like, oh, I’m so terrible. God hates me. Friends, what are we doing that for? Come back to this unexplainable grace of this God who loves sinners because that’s just who He is. That’s just who He is. Look to Jesus. Look to the cross. Let’s pray together.
Father, would You widen, would You deepen our faith in Your love, our faith in the power of the cross to wipe away every sin, to lift all shame.
Let us look to the cross to find all power and grace to endure the valley.
Lord, give us the joy that is ours in Christ Jesus when all is black and dark around us.
Lord, let us, all the more and more,
remember Your steadfast love and Your promise to keep us, to never forsake us, to work good for us, to give us an eternal home with You.
Lord, I pray just for every heart and every mind. Lord, we may feel like we’re kind of just floating, just kind of suspended, maybe spiritually, and we need to be grounded again in just the story of grace, just the simplicity of being loved by You undeservedly.
So, Lord, let Your Word dwell in us richly and let the roots grow deep and let fruit be born from that. Lord, that we may be like You in all things and show by our love who You are to others.
Well, friends, take a few minutes and meditate upon what you’ve learned and maybe some things God is showing you in His Word.