Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 50:15-21

In Christ Jesus, who came down from His heavenly throne to save us by grace, and grace alone (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #226, v. 4), dear fellow redeemed:

Do you remember the dreams that the teenage Joseph had? The sheaves of his brothers bowing down to his sheaf in the field? And then the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him? His brothers hated him for this (Gen. 37:8). Those dreams were on their minds when they saw Joseph coming toward them in the field. “Here comes this dreamer,” they said. “Come now, let us kill him” (37:19-20). But instead they decided to sell him… as a slave.

By the time of today’s reading, more than thirty years had passed. For seventeen of those, Joseph’s brothers had lived peacefully in Egypt under Joseph’s protection and care. But now their father Jacob was dead. What might Joseph do to them now, and who would stop him if he decided to take revenge? They had sold him for twenty shekels of silver. How much do you think they would have given to undo what they had done?

A clean conscience is a priceless thing to have. You know that because of what a tremendous burden a guilty conscience is. Think back to when you were a child. At some point, you probably took something you weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was a cookie or some treat your parents told you not to take. You took it and ate it, but it didn’t bring you the satisfaction you expected. In fact, it didn’t take long before you wondered why you ever took it in the first place and wished you could go back and change your actions.

That is true of so many of our sins. When faced with a temptation, we tell ourselves it is no big deal. “I can have this, or do this. No one will find out. I can get away with it.” But then it eats away at us. We can’t get it out of our mind. We feel it sticking to us like mud or hanging around our neck like heavy chains. We expect that everyone is going to find out. And we almost hope they do because then we can stop trying to hide it. Then we can take the consequences and move on.

But there is also danger in being found out. If somebody you have to answer to finds out what you have done, you can’t control how they respond. You don’t know how bad your punishment will be. You don’t know how much you could lose, but you always imagine the worst. That’s what Joseph’s brothers did. They saw how much power Joseph had. They imagined how he might sell them as slaves like they sold him. Or throw them in prison and make their wives and children slaves.

So they decided to appeal to the words of their father. If Joseph did not respect them, he certainly respected their father. They conveyed the command from Jacob that Joseph forgive his brothers. Then they asked him to consider their common faith in God and forgive them. Finally, they bowed down before him (just like Joseph’s dreams indicated) and said, “Behold, we are your servants. We are at your mercy.”

And they were. We don’t know if Joseph ever imagined this day. I suspect he did when he was treated roughly and sold in Egypt, and when he wiled away the hours in prison. No doubt the devil tempted him to hate his brothers who dealt so severely with him and tore him away from his home and family. You also know what it is to be wronged. Maybe someone attacked you for no good reason. Maybe someone betrayed your trust. Maybe someone lied to you and hurt you deeply.

It hurt so badly that you may have wanted them to feel that pain, so they would understand what they had done. Then they couldn’t try to pass it off as no big deal, or that they didn’t mean anything by it, or you should just forget about it. No, you wanted them to know how much it hurt you. And you can dwell on that and hold on to that bitterness and anger, so that it consumes you and grows much bigger than the original offense.

Now in Joseph’s case, it was a terrible offense. Who can imagine selling off a family member to an unknown fate? This gnawed at his brothers. They could not forget. They probably imagined Joseph being treated as less than human in Egypt and maybe even being killed and left in some unmarked grave. They did that to him. Like Cain who killed his brother Abel, they let their anger overcome them. And now they had to live with what they had done. But it was too much for them to bear. The burden of guilt overwhelmed them.

You know what this burden feels like because each of us has done things we regret, that we wish we could go back and change and fix. Knowing what a guilty conscience feels like is one reason why you should be ready to forgive those who have sinned against you. You know what a gift forgiveness is. You receive it each week in church after confessing your sins to God. You hear these words which have the power of God behind them, “By the authority of God and of my holy office I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

What a relief it is to know that every sin is forgiven by God! He holds none of them against you, even if you have fallen into the same sin again and again. He forgives you because Jesus paid the penalty for all sin on the cross. Even if someone you have sinned against tells you that he or she will never forgive you, God still forgives you. He has every right to hold your sins against you since you broke His holy Law, but He refuses to do this. The blood of His Son was sufficient to cleanse you of all your sins (1Jo. 1:7).

His blood was also sufficient to cleanse others of the sins they have committed against you. Sure, Joseph had the power to harm his brothers. But then he would have sinned just as they had. “Do not fear,” he said, “for am I in the place of God?” In the same way, you may have the power to harm someone, but are you in the place of God? The inspired letter to the Colossians says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:12-13).

We are not called to take revenge. We are called to be toward others as Jesus is toward us. We are called to be gracious. If we are saved by grace, by God’s undeserved love, then that is what we want to pass on to our neighbors. This is not a lesson we learn from the world. We live in a culture of political retribution, of diss tracks that win the highest music awards, of bad behavior that gets publicly outed but never publicly forgiven.

The way of Christ is counterintuitive. It is countercultural. It does not seek to “get what’s mine.” It seeks to give. That is what Jesus did. He came to give His perfect life in the place of every sinful one. He came to undo every wrong by His life of righteousness. He came to wipe away every transgression, every wrong, every hateful and hurtful action.

He came to free the world and every human heart from the desire to wound as we have been wounded, the desire to treat others the way they have treated us, the desire to get the payment we demand for the wrongs that were done to us. The revenge game has no winners, only losers. Joseph could have taken revenge on his brothers. But he did the bigger thing instead. He forgave.

He also acknowledged that the goodness of God was greater and stronger than their wicked intentions. He said, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” God turning evil into good does not justify evil, as though we should sin however we want, since God will work good out of it. Joseph’s brothers weren’t about to pat themselves on the back for being the ones to get their brother in Egypt to carry out this good work.

But it is comforting to know that God does this redemptive work, that He can and does turn our times of greatest pain and suffering into blessings. Maybe we will never clearly recognize those blessings, but we can trust that God will bring them about somehow. We know that even though we have meant evil against God in our sins, He turned everything for our good. He sent His Son to redeem us, so that we do not have to fear His wrath and punishment but rest in His unchanging grace.

Our hymn of the month teaches this, that we are saved by God’s free and boundless grace. He will not punish us eternally for our sins, no matter how terrible those sins were or how heavily they have weighed on our conscience. As stanza eight of the hymn says:

By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation’s furnace tried—
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father’s heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure? (ELH #226)

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.

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(picture from “Crucifixion, Seen from the Cross,” by James Tissot, c. 1890)