Better Vision

Genesis 50:15-21

October 21, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

There has been a commercial playing lately that asks a good question: would you let a blind man take you on a trip? Take a look…

That’s not intended as an endorsement of Subaru. I just find the story of the commercial intriguing, and I love the look on the young woman’s face when the blind man suggests he’ll take them to the place they’re looking for. We tend to prefer our drivers to have vision! But, of course, the point of the commercial is that there are other ways to see, other ways to have vision than with our physical eyes. And that’s certainly something we can agree with and something Joseph would have agreed with as well.

Today we come to the end of the story of Joseph, and to the end of this sermon series as well. We’ve journeyed a long way with Joseph over these past six weeks. Hopefully you’ve been reading along because we haven’t had time to cover the whole story here in worship. But six weeks ago, you may remember, we started with arrogant, seventeen-year-old Joseph, bragging to his brothers about his dreams. And we watched as the brothers thought about killing him but instead sold him into slavery in Egypt. He was purchased by Potiphar, an important government official, but then some years later, he ended up in jail because Potiphar’s wife falsely accused Joseph of trying to rape her. He spends time in the prison and then he encounters two other government officials—the baker and the cupbearer to Pharaoh—who got on the wrong side of Pharaoh. In his interaction with them, he has hope that he will be released when the cupbearer gets out, but that man forgets about him and he spends two more years in prison. Finally, when Pharaoh has a dream, he is released, interprets the dream and is given a place of high privilege. He becomes second-in-command of the most powerful nation on earth, and he manages to control the food supply during a time of great famine. And it’s that famine, which spread beyond Egypt into Canaan, that brought Joseph face-to-face with his brothers again. Last week, we talked about the difficult journey of forgiveness that Joseph had to take, and how his journey is also one we often have to take as well. It’s the hard path, but it’s worth the trip. Joseph somehow knew what we often need to learn, that forgiveness is not so much for the benefit of the other as it is for the health of our own soul. Because, as we’re going to see today, Joseph’s acts of forgiveness really affected his brothers very little.

So if you were to chart Joseph’s life, it might look a lot like a heart rhythm: ups and downs and not much in between. He’s been through a lot of really high highs and low lows. He has gotten married and had two sons. He has relocated his father and his entire family to Egypt and has had the privilege of his father Jacob pronouncing a blessing on each and every member of the family. Then, in chapter 49, Jacob dies. Jacob is, in his own words, “gathered to his people” (49:29). And Joseph, broken by grief, uses all the powers of his office to have his father embalmed (that was not a normal Hebrew practice) and taken back home to Canaan to be buried next to his wife Leah and his forefathers. (Jacob’s other wife, Rachel, was buried elsewhere.) He did this because he believed the promises of God: that the future of his family did not rest in Egypt, but in Canaan. Even though Joseph had no intention of returning to the promised land himself, he knew that someday his family would. That was their inheritance, and so he buried Jacob there as a promise of what was to come (cf. Briscoe, Communicator’s Commentary: Genesis, pg. 409). Then they all returned to Egypt.

But, somewhere along the way, the brothers began to wonder if Joseph was really telling the truth when he said he forgave them. Somewhere along the way, all of their deep-rooted insecurities came rushing to the top (Briscoe 409) and that’s why I say I’m not sure that Joseph’s forgiveness has really affected them. Time has passed, and they still don’t seem to believe he has forgiven them. In fact, they become convinced that their father was the only thing holding Joseph back from taking revenge on them, and now that Jacob is gone, Joseph will surely use his power and influence to do something horrible to them. So, somewhere along the way, they create a story, a lie, to tell Joseph, and it is a lie that is, as one author puts it, “laughably pathetic” (Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 178). When they come to him, Joseph knows they are lying. They come with a message from their father, but they don’t seem to realize that if Jacob had had such a message for Joseph, he would have told him directly. Still, you’ve got to give them points for trying, right? Come to the second-in-command of the most powerful nation on earth with a lie to try to protect yourself? That takes guts! So they tell him, basically, “Dad said to tell you to be forgive us and be nice to us. And since Dad said so, you have to do it” (cf. 50:17).

And when he hears this, Joseph weeps. Before, back in chapter 45, when he wept at seeing his brothers again, he went and hid to weep. He didn’t want anyone to see him, though they certainly heard him. This time, though, he weeps right in front of them. Now, why does he weep? I think it’s because his heart is broken. All this time has passed and they don’t understand that he has forgiven them. And I think he also weeps because he knows or can sense that the brothers are just fearful for their future and not really sorry or contrite for what they did to him. Even after all this time, they don’t get it. They don’t understand what forgiveness is all about. So here they are, asking him (again) for forgiveness. That becomes even more astonishing when we think about what the original word in the text actually means. The word has the original meaning of “carrying.” It means to take the burden off of someone else, to carry it for them. When Abram asks God to forgive Sodom, he literally asks God to “carry their sin” (Genesis 18:24). For Joseph to forgive his brothers means he took the burden away from them. They no longer were in danger of punishment for what they had done because he refused to let their actions have the effect they intended it to have. He’s moved beyond what happened. And Joseph can say that because he allowed God to get involved. Somewhere along the way, he allowed God to melt his heart and change it so that he was willing to carry the burden for his brothers. That’s what he says to them after he weeps: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:20). This is Joseph’s better vision, or what I have learned to call 50/20 vision.

Optometrists tell us that best vision you can have is 20/20. I have not had 20/20 for a very long time; I first started wearing glasses in third grade and began wearing contacts in fifth. Now I wear both! But anyway—when you go to the eye doctor, the goal is always to get you close to 20/20, but in the spiritual life, I would argue that 50/20 is better than 20/20, based on this verse, Genesis 50:20. 50/20 Vision says this: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” Joseph had 50/20 vision, because he could see beyond the circumstances to what God was doing. He saw the bigger picture, beyond the now, the present suffering, the hurt, the pain and even the intent of a person to the way God had, could and would use it for good. Dr. David Seamands says 50/20 Vision is a combination of sight, foresight and hindsight. Sight—he could see what was happening and what had happened to him. Foresight—he could see what all of those things would lead to. And hindsight—he could understand why it happened as he looked back. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” We may not understand why we’re going through a difficult time right now. It may not make any sense at all when we’re in the midst of it, but as we look back, we can begin to see the hand of God working and we will begin to understand. We may not ever understand completely this side of eternity, but we will begin to get a glimpse of God’s purpose as Joseph did. In fact, Joseph saw even beyond his own circumstances. He realized that God was using his situation not only to help him, but to save the nation of Egypt as well and anyone else who came there for food. And here’s the amazing part of it: God used this situation to also help even the brothers, the people who intended harm to Joseph. That’s 50/20 Vision: seeing beyond the now and glimpsing the hand of God at work (Seamands 149).

Of course, this gets into all sorts of thorny theological questions, matters that surround what we think and believe about God’s providence. “Providence” is one of those words we use more often to describe medical facilities than to talk about God’s work. My cardiologist is at “Providence Medical Group.” It’s an old word, and it generally refers to God’s care for his creation. One of the dictionary definitions says providence is also “timely preparation for future eventualities.” And so sometimes we put it in these terms: “Everything happens for a reason.” You’ve probably said that. I know I have, in times past, but that’s really bad theology. If we really take time to think that through, we’ll realize that, because you have to ask yourself if the God we worship really is the kind of God who kills babies and children. By the way, don’t ever tell a grieving parent that their child died because God needed another angel; that’s even worse theology and it’s just about the least helpful thing you can say. You also have to ask if the God we worship causes hurricanes and typhoons, destroying cities and ruining people’s lives. Does the God we worship desire genocide and holocaust and plague and famine? Does he directly cause those things for some sort of reason? Does he cause people to commit suicide? Does he cause terrorists to fly planes into buildings or behead Christians or kill and mutilate a journalist? On a deeper level, does God desire people to go to hell? Does he choose who is saved and who is not? Is everything that happens in God’s will? Or is it possible that “providence” means something else?

You see, when we say “everything happens for a reason,” we’re saying God directly causes bad things to happen to us. We’re saying that the God we worship is really cruel, petty and mean. And we’re saying something other than what Christian faith has taught for centuries. Listen carefully to what Joseph actually says: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (50:20). What Joseph says it this: the brothers made a clear choice that God then worked in and around and through that choice to bring a good result in spite of their intentions. That’s what Paul also says in the letter to the Romans: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” (Romans 8:28). Paul doesn’t say everything that happens is good; neither does Joseph. What they both say is that God is big enough that nothing we can do will throw him off. He’s not sitting up in heaven saying, “Wow, I never saw that coming! What will those silly little humans think up next?” No, the doctrine of providence says God is working in, through and in the midst of every situation and he will bring good out of it. It might be today, it might be tomorrow, it might be years from now, but that rotten thing you’re going through now, that hurt and that pain you still have from your past, that wrong that was done to you—God will bring good out of even that. There is nothing God can’t use. 50/20 Vision says this: “God is…the Lord of history. Although He is is certainly not the Author of everything that happens, He is the Master of everything, and will use it to work out His purposes in history” (Seamands 152).

So what can we learn from Joseph that will enable us to have 50/20 Vision? We need three things, three qualities of spirit, to see the world as Joseph did. The first is a realistic spirit. When we first began to walk with Joseph, he was having those dreams about being important and almost worshipped. He irritated his brothers and even his father with those dreams. But as we’ve walked with Joseph over these years, his spirit has been tempered by reality: the pit, slavery, prison, being forgotten. Joseph hasn’t spent that time continually referring back to his dreams; in fact, we haven’t heard him talk about those dreams at all since chapter 37. The situations in his life as it played out are what he had to work with, and I sort of imagine at some point Joseph has realized that it was spouting off about his dreams that got him in the situation he’s in. Not that the dreams didn’t come true; they certainly have. His brothers and his father have bowed down in front of him, as have thousands—perhaps millions—of other people. But Joseph has not spent his time living in the clouds or in his dreams. He has taken the world as it is, as it was, and lived into the dreams God gave him long ago. 50/20 Vision does not waste time with the “if onlys” of life; 50/20 Vision always asks, “How can I serve God best in this place, in this time, with what I have in front of me?” Someone with 50/20 Vision has a realistic spirit.

The second quality is one we discussed at length last week, and that’s a forgiving spirit, but I like what Dr. Seamands says: “The eyes of a resentful and vengeful heart are never able to see God at work in all things” (163). Have you ever been so mad or so hurt that you said you couldn’t “see straight”? That’s what Dr. Seamands is referring to. There are times when we have been so hurt, when the wound is so deep that we can’t imagine that anything good can ever come out of it. Darryl Burton knows all about that. In 1984, he was arrested for the murder of a drug dealer, despite the eye-witness physical description of the murderer not even being close to Burton’s physical appearance. He was 5 inches taller than the murderer, for one. But the justice system pushed on and Burton was put in jail, assigned a public defender who spent an hour with him before the trial, and convicted in less than an hour. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and assigned to the Missouri State Penitentiary, where upon arrival, he saw a large banner reading, “Leave all your hopes, family, and dreams behind.” Burton maintained his innocence, and as he served time for a crime he did not commit he learned that two witnesses who identified him were actually men awaiting trial; they had been promised a lighter sentence if they testified that Burton was guilty. He also learned of a different confession, where one of the witnesses told the police later that they had the wrong man, but that evidence did not come out for twenty-four years. For twenty-four years, Darryl Burton was punished for a crime he did not commit. He described his experience this way: “I lost all hope. I hated the place, the system, and anyone that had anything to do with it. It was hell on earth—filled with violence, evil, and hate.”

His anger grew as he served time and could see no way out. He wrote over six hundred letters to various officials, nonprofit organizations, government organizations and even to Oprah Winfrey, asking them to help him. But it wasn’t until he allowed Christ to come into his life, until he allowed God to do a work of forgiveness in his heart that he began to see a better way. After twenty-four years, after the other evidence came out, Darryl Burton was finally set free from prison, but he had already been set free before that from the prison of unforgiveness. Once he left prison, he enrolled in seminary, became a United Methodist pastor, and now shares freely about the love, grace, mercy and forgiveness found in Jesus (https://www.darrylburton.org/about). Only when he found a forgiving spirit was he able to see God working in the midst of it all. God didn’t send him to jail, but God was able to use it and is still using it for his glory. 50/20 Vision requires a forgiving spirit.

And thirdly, 50/20 Vision requires a trusting spirit. We’ve also talked about trust in the last couple of weeks, because I told you then how hard it is for me. But trust, in this sense, is believing that God can take the very worst things in the world and shape them into something good. Trust believes that in the midst of what seems meaningless, God can bring meaning (Seamands 164). Trust says the worst thing is never the last thing, and we can be trusting people because of our faith in Jesus and his resurrection. This is where the whole Joseph story overlaps with the Jesus story. The Gospel story is that forgiveness is available through Jesus because of what he did on the cross. To use the language we discussed earlier, he “carried” our sin. Jesus came and walked among humanity, taught us how to live, and then we in turn did the worst we could to him. We crucified him, nailed him to a cross, though he had done nothing deserving death. But in that moment, as something horrible was done to Jesus, God did something good for other people—for all of humanity, to be exact. The horrible thing that happened to Joseph benefitted his family; the horrible thing that happened to Jesus benefitted everyone (cf. Goldingay 179).

Before the cross, Jesus showed us what a trusting spirit looks like on that last night, when he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember the first part of his prayer that night? “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” His human self didn’t want to go to the cross; no one would. But as Jesus submitted his human will to God the Father’s will, he took on a trusting spirit and was able to pray, “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Trust says there is nothing so evil that it cannot be redeemed. Trust says God can take the evil in this world and even the evil that happens to you and recycle, reshape, refashion and redirect it for his purposes and his glory (cf. Seamands 164). The trusting spirit chooses to say, “I’m going to trust you, even though it seems like everything is falling apart. I’m going to trust you, even when every instinct is telling me the opposite. I’m going to trust you because I know you are good, and that your plans for me are good as well.”

A realistic spirit. A forgiving spirit. A trusting spirit. These three characteristics enabled Joseph to live into and believe in 50/20 Vision. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (50:20). Many, many times—maybe most times—we have to step out in faith and believe that to be true even if we can’t see it. Having 50/20 Vision doesn’t mean we know how everything will work out. It means we believe that God ultimately has good plans for this world and for our lives. I have some good friends who have some of the strongest faith I’ve ever seen, and I think it’s so strong because it’s been tested and pushed to the limit so many times. Their daughter was in a horrible car accident and left in a state of being awake but not really aware; I don’t know what you call that. Not too long after that, he had a massive heart attack and lost the function of most of his heart. Though he survived the heart attack, he was unable to work after that, so he began looking for what he could do with his life. Another friend invited him to go on an Emmaus Walk, and at the end he admitted he’d never really made time for God or for church, so someone invited him to come to church with them. He did, and a few months later, his wife came to talk to me. How could she trust in a God who would let so many horrible things happen? We talked about that for a long time, and the next Sunday she showed up at church—hesitant and uncertain, but present. They became very active in the church and in the Emmaus Community—then one January Sunday after worship, she was headed home on the highway, hit a patch of ice, spun out and was thrown through the windshield into a field of ice. For him, it was like what they had gone through with their daughter all over again. When I saw her at the hospital that evening, I wouldn’t have given her much hope for survival, to be honest. She spent six weeks in a major hospital far from home before she could have surgery, then spent many months in rehabilitation. Now, there may have been times, days, hours when he or both of them yelled at God and questioned why these things had happened to them, but I never saw it. What I saw was faith and trust that no matter what life threw at them, God could be trusted to bring good out of any situation. Today, they have faced other trials and challenges, but they are still leaders in that little church and still following Jesus as best as they can. How did they make it through all of that and more? I don’t know that they would put it this way, but I can say that they have 50/20 Vision. They believe that no matter what, God is good and more than that, he is working for good.

So, let me ask you: what challenges, what trials, what dungeons are you facing today? Is there someone you are struggling to forgive, an area of your life where you need to step out in faith and trust? I want you to get a clear picture of that “who” or “what” in your mind. Picture the person or the place that is your greatest challenge right now. Get that in your mind. Do you have it? Can you see it? Now, together, we are going to pray this verse out loud as a statement of faith. I want you to picture saying this verse to your problem, your situation, your challenge. Ready? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” One more time: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” As Christians, we believe there is power in speaking truth to the lies in our world, and so when the situations around you try to tell you that you are going down, that there’s no hope, that it’s all over, I want you to remember this verse: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” Let’s become people who live with 50/20 Vision, and so to do that, let’s memorize this verse, get it in your heart and in your mind so that you will have it in your spiritual toolbox when those challenges come. Because they will. When you least expect it. Joseph didn’t have time to make a plan when he was thrown into the pit, but he had a God to turn to who, slowly but surely, taught him that whatever happened, God could bring good out of it. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” May we become more and more people of 50/20 Vision. Let’s pray.