Today we’re finishing off the book of Genesis. How’s it going to end? What are going to be the final words? The final three chapters of Genesis are filled with final words. The final words of Jacob, the final words of Joseph, but these are also the final words of Moses as he closes this book of beginnings. It is not the final final words of Moses, obviously, he wrote four more books, the five together we call the Pentateuch; however, he write them not as one book, but as five books, and here we have the conclusion to his first book, and so the final words here both sum up some of the key theme in Genesis, and prepare us for the next book and indeed the rest of the storyline of the Bible, which would to be developed out in writing over then next 1500 years by 40 different authors guided by the Spirit of God, and would be carried out in history even to this day until Christ returns. And so, what is the Spirit of God in Moses going to leave us with at the end of this first book?
We find here the final of three sojourning principles: how are we to live in light of the fact that we are not residing in the land of promise, nor has God brought about the fulfillment of his promise, but we dwell in a nation, and among a people as citizens of another kingdom, seeking a promised land.
We’ve seen that the great theme that runs through Joseph’s life is the providence of God. We’ve considered how the doctrine of providence is a comfort in suffering, as Joseph learned as his brothers sold him into slavery and he suffered through unjust imprisonment. We’ve considered how the doctrine of providence can allow us to keep our composure when everything in us screams payback, as Joseph was able to do when his brothers unknowingly presented themselves at his mercy, and he had the motive, power and opportunity to destroy them. And today we are going to consider one more benefit to the reality of God’s providential rule of the universe - the doctrine of providence can provide for us fertile soil in which forgiveness and reconciliation can bloom.
Canadians know about personal financial debt. A report this winter revealed that household debt levels higher than any other country. Statistics Canada reported that the ratio of household credit-market debt to disposable income rose to 171.1 per cent last fall. We’re deficit spending. We borrow from one to pay off another. We put the balance for our loans on our credit cards and fold them into our mortgages. Many people simply feel they can never keep up or are a step from financial ruin. The word “debt” in the Lord’s prayer suggests that we are in a state of moral deficit spending. That we owe God our perfect love, our perfect allegiance, our perfect righteousness, yes we fall short, we cross that line daily. And so we say, I know I fell short today, but tomorrow I’ll make it up and do better. But tomorrow comes, and we’re no better than we were today, so we just add to that deficit. We have accumulated a debt of sin that we can never pay off. It bears down upon us, and so we do with our moral debt the same thing that some people do with our financial death, we deny it and ignore it and bury it until the collector comes and we have no choice but to face financial ruin. And the reality of life is that each of us will have to stand before God and give an account of what we have done in our life to love and glorify him, and we will all be crushed under the weight of our moral debt.
That is the prayer of “And forgive us our sins” - I recognize the weight of my sins and my need for the grace of God. This is the forgiveness offered in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God has promised us that for the sake of the life of his son, he will offer to freely forgive any who come to him in repentance and faith. That through Jesus, death and resurrection, he has secured for us an eternal inheritance greater than the debt we owed.
Today we’re looking at a second truth to fix our life on, namely, salvation by grace alone. Ephesians 2:1-4 is one of the most beautiful passages of scripture. It speaks of our complete hopelessness in our state without God - we were dead, we were completely lost following the ways of this world and the desires of our flesh, under the influence of Satan and under the wrath of God. And you have that great contradiction in verse 14: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together - and the entirety of our hope is summed up at the end of verse 5: by grace you have been saved. What a passage! What a promise! What more needs to be said? We can go home!
Yet the powerful truth the resounded out of the reformation was not merely “salvation by grace” but “salvation by grace alone”, and so all week I’ve been trying to understand, what difference does that little word make? and does that little word still matter? And if it does still matter, what does that mean for us?
