Sunday Worship – 17th September 2023

(All our songs this morning are from Hymns & Psalms (HP) and Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)

Song – H&P 16 or StF 88 – Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

The Story of Joseph     (Based on Genesis 37-50)

Joseph had 11 brothers and a sister.  I don’t know about the sister, but he didn’t get on with his brothers.  He was Daddy’s pet, and used to tell tales on them, and they hated him for it.  His father gave him a lovely multi-coloured coat, and he swanked about in it.

The family didn’t live in a town like us: they lived in tents and looked after goats and sheep and other animals.  That meant they had to find grass for the animals to eat, which sometimes meant a lot of travelling, and staying away with their flocks.

One day, when the brothers were a long way off with the flocks, their father Jacob told Joseph to go and see how they all were. The brothers saw him coming in the distance. They grumbled to one another about his tale-telling, and his splendid coat – oh, and his dreams about him becoming the boss of the family!  Well, with all this grumbling one thing led to another, and before they knew it they were plotting to kill him and throw his body into a pit. But Reuben, the eldest, who was responsible for them all, put his foot down.  ‘There will be no killing,’ he said. ‘We’re not having his blood on our hands. OK, he needs teaching a lesson. Put him in the pit and let him sweat for a while. But don’t kill him.’

So that’s what they did.  Reuben still had some work to do and he went off, but when he came back the pit was empty. He rushed into camp shouting, ‘He’s gone! He’s gone! What have you done with him, you idiots? What am I going to say to his father?’  But the brothers hadn’t killed Joseph as Reuben thought.  A camel-train had come past, carrying spices to sell in Egypt, and the idea had suddenly occurred to one of them, Judah, to sell Joseph to the traders as a slave. Judah laughed as he told the tale, and showed Reuben the twenty pieces of silver they’d got for him. 

It was all pretty evil.  And of course they didn’t dare tell their father what they’d done.  So they lied.  They killed a goat, and rubbed Joseph’s coat in the blood until it was soaked right through. They set off for home next day, taking the coat with them.

When they arrived they went straight to Jacob and said, rather gruffly to hide their guilt, ‘We found this on the way home. Is it your son’s?’ Jacob knew at once it was Joseph’s coat. He was heartbroken, for he thought a wild animal had killed him – exactly as the brothers hoped. They all made a great show of grief, and tried to comfort their father, but he tore his clothes and wrapped himself in sackcloth, as people did in those days, weeping and mourning the death of Joseph.

Meanwhile, Joseph had reached Egypt. He had been bought by one of Pharaoh’s officers called Potiphar, and was now in his household as a slave.

At first things went very well for him, because God blessed everything he did. He was promoted until he was the chief servant, in charge of everything.  But besides being clever, Joseph was handsome, and Potiphar’s wife took a fancy to him. When Joseph firmly resisted her advances she told lies about him to Potiphar, who became jealous and had Joseph thrown into jail.  But the Lord did not leave Joseph, and he did well even there. The jailor began to trust him, and eventually put him in charge of part of the prison.

Shortly after this, he found God had given him the gift of understanding dreams: first, with two fellow prisoners, and then Pharaoh himself.  Joseph saw that Pharaoh’s dream foretold a terrible famine, when all the crops would fail and there would be nothing to eat, but God had sent the dream to give them time to prepare.  No one else in the land had been able to tell him what his dreams meant, and Pharaoh was so impressed that he took Joseph out of jail and put him in charge of the country, building up stocks of grain ready for the seven years of hunger.

The famine turned out to be vey widespread, and people soon came to Egypt from far and wide to buy food. The news spread even as far as the land of Canaan, where Joseph’s family were still living, where there was famine too. 

When the brothers came to buy food, they didn’t recognise Joseph in this great Egyptian official.  And he decided to test them to see if they were still cheats like they were before.  It’s quite a story of how he went about it, and they passed.  But then, when the brothers found out who this great man in Egypt really was – their own brother Joseph, whom they had sold into slavery all those years before – they were appalled and speechless, and terrified in case he decided to get his own back on them now that he had the power. 

But Joseph didn’t take revenge.  He realised that God had used the brothers’ wickedness (and it certainly had been wicked) to provide a way to save the whole family in the famine. Instead of being angry he welcomed them all.  He sent for their father too, and the whole family.  They all came and lived in Egypt, with plenty to eat and Joseph to look after them and their little ones.  It’s a great story of trust in God.

Song – H&P 153 – Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear

Reading

Matthew 18:21-35

Let’s be clear about the scale of the debts that Jesus is talking about here.  The first servant owed 10,000 talents.  The margin of my Bible says that one talent was equivalent to about 20 years’ wages for a labourer.  If we use today’s minimum wage and a 40 hour week, then you could earn about £433,000 in 20 years.  That’s one talent, but the debt was 10,000, which works out at over £4 billion, at least!  There is no way you could ever repay such an amount. 

The second servant owed 100 denarii (a denarius was a day’s wage), ie, about £8,000 – substantial, but you could imagine repaying it.

Jesus’s point is that the first servant, having benefited from such incredible generosity from the master, should have acted similarly to the second servant – needing much less generosity that he had received himself.  And because he didn’t, the master cancelled his forgiveness. 

Jesus applied the parable to his hearers.  So, have we been let off a massive debt by God, one that we could never in a lifetime repay?  Perhaps it would be easier to be more forgiving towards others if we could see how big a debt we’d been let off.  It isn’t money, of course, but the consequences of sin – disobeying God.  So what have we done wrong that God sees as so very, very serious? 

The early chapters of the Bible tell us the consequences of disobeying God.  It’s the story of Adam and Eve living well in Eden, but then against God’s direct command, being persuaded by the devil and eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They chose to believe the devil’s lie rather than God’s truth, beguiled because the fruit looked good to eat, delighted the eyes, and offered wisdom. 

The effects were then spelled out by God (Gen 3:14-19).  On a personal level, they became distanced from God.  Where once he walked with them in the garden in the evening and talked things over, now they were banished.  Innocence was gone, and clothing was needed to cover their shame, and human death was introduced. 

Socially, marriage relations were distorted, with rivalry between the spouses rather than harmonious cooperation.  For the woman, the pain of child bearing increased greatly, and for the man, pleasant daily work became sweaty toil. 

And environmentally, the ground no longer responded fruitfully to the man’s tending, but yielded thorns and thistles.  Fruit would now come only with pain.  And discord was sown between humans and other creatures – later, after the flood, animals dreaded humans (Gen 9:2). 

So nothing now worked properly, and the cause was human disobedience arising from lack of faith in God, and being persuaded to go their own way instead of obeying God.  Not only does this show us how things have gone wrong in his creation, it also implies the uncomfortable truth that when we similarly disobey, we continue the damage, directly or indirectly, whether we see how or not.  So is that the ‘10,000 talent debt’ we can never repay or put right? 

And if Jesus has met the full cost of that vast debt by his death on the cross (and remember, he came to save the world), doesn’t that show how comparatively tiny are the debts that others owe to us, and that we are expected to forgive?  Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Prayer

Lord, please give us forgiving hearts, in gratitude for all that Jesus has done for us. Take away any inner resentment and bitterness we bear towards others for how they’ve treated us, or that we bear towards you for what has happened to us, remembering instead your wonderful steadfast love and mercy to us through Jesus.

Song – H&P 673 or Stf 495 – Dear Lord and Father of mankind

Reading

Genesis 50:15-21

The story of Joseph offers a quite different way of looking on forgiveness.  There is no doubt that Joseph was very seriously wronged by his brothers when they sold him into slavery (however irritating he may have been as a teenager), and they knew that.  But Joseph saw the bigger picture: he realised how God had used the brothers’ evil to bring about a wonderful outcome, whereby he was able to save the whole family from famine.  That let him to see his brothers’ treachery in a completely different light, and that enabled him to forgive them.

The story challenges us to look for the hand of God in all aspects of our lives.  We tend to credit God only when things go right, but Joseph saw God working through what had gone wrong too.  You might say that it was OK for him because he’d fallen on his feet, but the challenge remains.

The challenge is to believe in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord so completely that we can trust him whatever happens, good or bad.  So then we can thank God when things go right, but also praise him when they go wrong, in anticipation of the good he will bring out of it, though we can’t see it yet.   (See also the book: Prison to praise by Merlin Carothers)  

So if God has allowed bad things to happen to us, and chooses then not get us out of them or heal us, can we offer them to him and ask how we can use them for his glory?  And then follow where he leads us?  That’s the challenge, and the promise is that when we do, he will lead us by amazing paths, like he did with Joseph.  (Besides which, it’s a lot more positive than just moaning that life has dealt us a rotten hand, and likely to bring a whole lot more happiness into our own lives as well as others.)

It may seem very counter-intuitive, but it helps to remember that God is always active in our lives.  And this life is not all there is, so even if we don’t see things come right for us here, we’re guaranteed that they will in the hereafter.  And when we do praise God, we please him with our faith, and it does us good too.  (Misfortunes of others call first for our help, not praise.)

Song – H&P 13 or StF 83 – Praise, my soul, the King of heaven

Prayer

Let’s sit quietly for a moment or two and offer to God all that is wrong in our own lives, or in our church, and ask for the faith to trust him, as Lord of all, to bring out of them some good we cannot yet see […].   And to be shown how we may even use them for his glory […].

But Let’s also pray for others suffering misfortunes: 
For those who are ill and recovering;
For those who are ill and not recovering;
For those suffering lasting damage from accidents; 
For those facing problems at home, or at work;
For those anxious over money, or jobs, or loved ones, etc

Lord, please bless those we lift up to you with healing to their health, and a way out of their problems: and a very clear sense of your hand in their lives.  In their anxieties give them the lasting peace of your inner presence, peace which passes understanding, whatever you have planned for their lives.  And show us how to help in practical ways, if that is what you want us to do.  All of this we ask in the name of Jesus, our Saviour and Lord.  Amen.

Lord’s Prayer

Dedication of all our offerings

Song – H&P 216 or StF 345 – And can it be that I should gain

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.  Amen.