- Linked to August 20 Bible Study post, this draws on the stories of three people who ‘learned to turn’ and met God working in unexpected good ways. When we’re pressing on in our direction, we can miss what God is doing in His!
by IAN GREIG writing in THE LIVING WORD
WHAT HAPPENS when we change position, look around, and get a new perspective? We may meet God doing something we didn’t see before, and become open to HIS change in us!
That theme connects three Bible stories we’re looking at this week.
First is where Joseph, chief minister of Egypt, meets a delegation of his brothers from Canaan seeking supplies in the famine — and he reveals himself as the annoying sibling they sold into slavery more than 20 years before, leading to a wonderful reconciliation.
Then Jesus, away in a Gentile area by the coast, is approached by a woman desperate for His help. He gently questions her to see why she is asking Him — and her answer shows the faith He’s looking for.
Lastly, Paul teaches that God’s merciful salvation is for Jews and for Gentiles but both have to recognise their need of turning to Him through Jesus.
This is how we ‘Learn the Turn’ that connects us to God’s grace.
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WE’RE going to examine this whole life skill of ‘Learn the Turn’ now as we take a closer look at the teaching from Joseph’s story in Genesis, Jesus teasing out the heart of the Gentile woman who so needed His help, and Paul reflecting on his difficult turn and how it comes to us all, whatever our background.
As time goes on, two things can happen to us. One is that we become more set in our ways, more resistant to change, and more inflexible. The other is the opposite: we become more free to change our position, to try new directions, to accept correction. And we find that the way of making progress is not necessarily a straight line.
Now here’s a bit of background about a familiar word — but did you know its origin?
Old-time mariners knew all about zig-zag progress. They would use the term ‘repent’ to mean changing the heading of a ship across the direction of the wind. Our more familiar term for this manoeuvre today is ‘tacking’ which is a series of turns at an angle to the wind, because under sail power one cannot steer directly into the wind. The sailor’s term ‘repent’ came from the old French ‘repentire’, meaning to turn or change direction.
It was later on that it became used in the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer and was better known in the spiritual sense familiar to Christians today.
‘Repent’ can be a bit of a loaded word; it has overtones of some person judging us. But at heart, it means ‘turn’ — a change of perspective and a change of direction towards God and the rule and reign of His kingdom. John the Baptist called people to turn. Jesus at the beginning of His ministry, called people to turn — to perceive with fresh eyes that the rule and reign of God’s love and fairness had come close to them.
This is a principle we’ll explore through the stories of Joseph being reconciled with his brothers, Jesus encountering a Canaanite woman as he made a foray into Gentile territory, then Paul talking about his own journey from the rigidity of Judaism into finding a completely new perspective and how God’s mercy works.
The relationship between Joseph and his brothers had been badly fractured for 20 years since the day that, motivated by jealousy, they decided to get rid of him by selling him to traders to be taken to Egypt as a slave. So, suddenly, from being a privileged son of a wealthy family, he became a slave. Shortly after he found himself a prison inmate, jailed on false evidence. However, He knew that God was with him. He might have hit rock bottom, but Joseph’s faith was firm and growing,
Others in the prison and then in t he court, started to take notice because of the prophetic insights he shared. This came to the attention of Pharaoh himself because of a vision given to Joseph that, following some good harvests, there were going to be several years of famine.
Joseph was unshackled and put in charge of organising for crops to be stored all over the country in the good years, to stave off the famine of the lean years. When famine DID afflict the whole of the region, including Canaan, Joseph’s estranged family made a trip to Egypt where they had heard there was grain to purchase.
We pick up the story where a delegation from Canaan, consisting of Joseph’s brothers, makes their humble request to the highest and most powerful Egyptian official — who then reveals himself as the younger brother they had treated so cruelly. They are shocked, frightened, and then amazed as Joseph welcomes them, forgives them, and shows them the sovereignty of God in allowing it all to happen. _Reading from the Bible in Genesis 45:
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still living?” But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they were terrified at his presence.
Genesis 45:3-8
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
“For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no ploughing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
“So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.”
And so the turning of the brothers to plead their need, and the turning of Joseph from hurt and rejection to forgiveness, releases an amazing reconciliation to take place.
The former proud and bullying brothers had turned to God in their need to find food to stay alive. Joseph had turned to God in another way, from being the abused victim to being the one who had the power to forgive.
And God, who doesn’t turn, may however relent, as in this case, where His judgment against Joseph’s family was lifted and replaced again by his generous provision replaced it.
We stay in Canaan for the next part of the story because this is where Jesus has travelled, well outside his usual territory, to the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon. Here He is approached by a troubled Canaanite woman.
This story is prefaced in Matthew’s gospel by a short teaching by Jesus about how we know what is in a person’s heart by what they say — no one can profess to be righteous while their wrong actions and attitudes are defiling them. Then, as the story unfolds, Jesus is approached by a Canaanite, Gentile woman, begging Him to have mercy and to deliver her demonised daughter.
The disciples judged this an inappropriate request on several levels and urged Him to send her away — but instead he gently engages her in conversation and asks her some questions to test her heart. Reading from Matthew 15:
The woman came and knelt before Him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Matthew 15:25-28
It must have taken some courage for this woman to approach Jesus and lay her soul bare. In that culture, Gentiles did not generally approach Jews, and women did not approach men.
Furthermore, she was coming to Him on behalf of somebody else, admittedly her own daughter. But she recognised that God was working in an extraordinary way through this Jewish rabbi. So she plucked up her courage and stood her ground while He asked her questions, to see where she was coming from. What was in her heart, was revealed in her words. As we read: “And then, Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted.”
She turned towards God. And it seemed as if God had already started to turn towards her. And at that moment of turning, she encountered God’s love and grace.
In the next segment of this episode, we meet the insider-outsider question again, but this time we see it through the lens of Paul’s experience.
Brought up as a strict Jew, he had been proudly confident of his right-standing with God, until on his way to Damascus to arrest any Christians he found there, he saw Jesus in a blinding vision (that’s back in Acts 9). That encounter confronted him, broke Him, and then transformed him. He could see that his attitudes and actions had been evil — off the scale as a persecutor of followers of the Way of Jesus.
Before we look at what Paul sets out here, let’s go back for a moment to Jesus’ teaching in the earlier story, as Matthew set the scene for the Gentile woman’s approach:
…The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”
from Matthew 15:18-20
After that brilliant, blinding, life-changing encounter with Jesus, Paul saw his life and attitudes in a different perspective. He turned as he heard Jesus call to him and became shockingly aware of his own hypocrisy. And now, He reflects on the historic Jewish stubbornmess and God’s corresponding mercy, here in Romans 11:
I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew…
…For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.
from Romans 11:1-2 and 29-31
What Paul is saying here is that finding a relationship with God is the same — whether for God’s own people and their history with Him, or for the Gentiles of pagan background. Both have to recognise the sin of their independence and make their turn back to God — to trust Him, receive His mercy and follow Him.
At this point, the covenant relationship is established through Jesus, and that is the same for both Jew and Gentile.
Now, to put that into our context, we cannot claim through parentage or church attendance or church rituals that we have ANY kind of right standing with God — merely some steps in the right direction. That only comes by our pledging, putting our complete reliance on, Jesus as the One who has paid for our sins, giving our loyalty to Him as Lord of our lives.
As Paul has explained clearly in the previous chapter, faith rises up in us as a result of hearing God’s words. God’s word becomes real and alive within us, such that we respond in faith. And this is a response that we want everyone to know! The transition from the old life to the new is celebrated publicly in a symbolic death and resurrection together with cleansing, of water baptism.
That is where we announce to the world that we have made our first and most important turn to God.
Having found that relationship with Him through Jesus, we turn to God throughout life. And again… and again. We get on the wrong course, and God brings us back again. We face adversity, and spiritual opposition, and we have to work against that. It’s like being a sailing boat, always ready to alter course or set the sails differently and often making progress by tacking.
The Jews, as Paul reminds us, had become stubbornly set in one direction, and couldn’t turn from it. But when we have come to know God personally through Jesus, aligning ourselves with Him becomes our intuitive action whenever we sense we need new direction, to trim our sails to the wind of the Spirit again.
This is a lesson in spiritual life of the greatest benefit. This how we ‘Learn the Turn’.
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PRAYER
Lord God, we are so grateful that when we were far from Your kingdom, You revealed Yourself to us.
In our twists and turns of disobedience You pursued us with love.
We were outsiders but You called us is.
We were foreigners, outside Your covenant,
yet You called us, showed us Your love, and gave us Your Son Jesus;
You helped us to choose Him as our Saviour and make Him our Lord, and You showed us that we were included.
Thank You for giving us the joy of knowing You — together with all others, of any tribe, race or culture, who love You and are part of Your House of Prayer. Amen.
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OTHER MEDIA
This is part of The Living Word Podcast with Ian & Alison Greig, episode for August 20, which you can listen to as .mp3 audio
or as an audiogram (sound + captions).
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