The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Genesis 30:22–24 “Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. So she conceived and gave birth to a son, and said, ‘God has taken away my disgrace.’ And she named him Joseph, saying, ‘May the Lord give me another son.’” (NASB)
God promised Abraham saying, “I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore.” (Genesis 22:17) Thus the promise was given and now God would go on to fulfill it – easy peezy right? If God was doing it, then the fulfilling of it should be easy to spot and to believe, right?
After all just ten weeks ago we celebrated the birth of a baby—the Savior who is Christ the Lord. Angels sang about His birth. Shepherds hurried down the hill to His manger. Wise Men came from the east and found Him. Jesus came to save His people from their sins and we all sang, “Joy to the world!”
And it is not only the birth of the Christ Child that brings joy. That’s how it should be whenever a baby is born. It’s to be a happy occasion—a cause for celebration. Victor Reinhardt Augustus Atkinson’s birth on February 4th was announced on social media with an “!”
What a moment of great joy, preceded by great pain. And that brings us back to Abraham who was given a promise– a descendant that would lead to countless other descendants. From Abraham and Sarah’s perspective though, God was rather slow in taking the first step in this long journey. You know the story. Abraham and Sarah had to wait a very long time for the birth of the son of the promise. It took so long, they decided God needed some help. That didn’t go well.
Then eventually it happened. Isaac was born, only to have the Lord God tell Abraham several years later to offer his only begotten son to be sacrificed. You know how that ended up too.
Isaac took a wife named Rebekah and they had two children. The older was named Esau and the younger Jacob. Both grew to adulthood and you likely know that Jacob coached by his mother stole the birthright from his older brother Esau. That made Esau very angry, leaving Jacob fleeing for his life. While on the run, he stops at a well to get a drink.
It was love at first sight when Jacob first saw a beautiful young shepherdess watering her father Laban’s flock. Jacob worked seven years for Rachel, only to be deceived by his father-in-law into marrying Rachel’s sister, Leah. If Jacob still wanted Rachel as a wife, he’d have to work for another seven years. So it was.
But the birth of Joseph was still a long way off and for Rachel it was an utterly joyless wait. Oh babies were being born left and right and Jacob was the father of this ever growing tribe, but Rachel, Rachel lived in sadness and longing.
Jacob and Rachel were together as husband and wife, but there were no babies born to Rachel. Her sister, Leah, had babies, seven in all—six sons and one daughter. To make the whole situation worse, Rachel’s maidservant and Leah’s maidservant each gave birth to two more sons for Jacob. Eventually, eleven babies had been born to Jacob through three separate women before even one, a son of the promise was born to Rachel.
But those first eleven births, understandably so did not bring joy to Rachel. They were a source of heartache, jealousy, and strife. Those other babies were an ever present reminder of what she didn’t have.
Rachel in ability to conceive a child became a spiritual problem, a faith problem. Children are a gift from the Lord, and Rachel hadn’t received that gift. It was understood in the day as a sign of the Lord’s displeasure.
Like Abraham’s wife Sarah, Rachel too tried to take matters into her own hands. Rachel gave her maid to Jacob, thinking that her maid could have children whom Rachel could count as her own, raise them as her own.
When God takes too much time, or when our lives take an expected or unwanted change of course, or God takes something from us that we so badly wanted, we come to share in Rachel’s pain, anger, and heartache. We all know how painful it can be when our heartfelt prayers go unanswered. We all know how endless the wait can seem waiting for the Lord—when the hoped-for healing doesn’t come. We all know the progression from sadness to bitterness, and from bitterness to anger, and from anger to despair.
We too often take matters into our own hands. After all, we think we deserve better. That’s what the world tells us so we go about creating our own sinful solutions in the hope we find relief from our pain. We’d rather ignore the Lord’s will, than wait for or yield to the Lord. It is hard for sinners to say and live as Jesus did, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.” In the end, we are often left with a sin-filled situation like Rachel’s—a dysfunctional debacle fueled by a desperation that is absent faith.
It was a very long wait for Rachel, but two words from tonight’s text changed everything for her and for us.“Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. So she conceived and gave birth to a son…” The two words “God remembered.” “God remembered Rachel” (v 22). When all hope had dried up and faith was just barely alive, God remembered Rachel and listened to her. It seemed like God’s remembering came late.
But when the time was right Rachel conceived and bore a son. Not just any son, a son unlike the other eleven who had been born. This son would fill a unique and crucial role in God’s plan of salvation. Joseph’s birth came at just the right time. The beginning of a chapter in human history that would ultimately deliver God’s people and point to Jesus.
In the lexicon of the Bible remembering is more than recollection. When God remembers, He acts. He acts in grace and not just for the well-behaved who wait patiently in faith. God remembered Rachel in desperation and though she sinned. God remembers those who feel forgotten and forsaken. Rachel was one of them. “He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13).
God remembered and Rachel gave birth to a son. They named the boy Jospeh. Joseph means “may he add.” Choosing that name was a form of a confession of faith and a prayer. “May the Lord add to me another son!” (v 24).
That other Son, would take a very long time, as human beings measure time. But it is th “other son” that has brought you here. God remembered Rachel and gave her Joseph and eventually Jesus. The Lord God has remembered you and has given you His only beloved Son, Jesus.
In His Son He has end of your shame and desperation. He is acting to heal your heartaches. In His Son, God remembers the forgotten. He has given His Son, your sin and your guilt. He has given your pain, you anger, and your heartaches.
His Son, Jesus, was forsaken on the cross so that God will never forsake you. God has remembered you; God has acted on your behalf, for your eternal good, in his Son, Jesus, the Christ.
When God remembers He acts in grace toward you. Now when God forgets He does the opposite. He does not act. Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
Hebrews 8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” In His forgetting, the Lord God does not act against you. His justice and anger toward you is stayed. He remembers your sins no more.
These forty days of Lent are a time of remembering. We will remember our sins and confess them—recounting all the ways that we have wandered from God’s will, rejected His commandments, and refused to wait on Him in faith.
We will also remember the people and places of our Lord’s Passion: Judas’s betrayal, Peter’s denial, and Pilate’s pandering. We will remember Rachel’s son Joseph, the betrayal of his brothers, his wait on the Lord, the challenges to his faith, and most of all the ways Joseph foreshadows the coming of God’s own Son, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
But the heart of this holy season is not our remembering, but God’s. God remembered Rachel. God remembered Joseph. And in his beloved Son, God remembers you. In Jesus, God is acting on your behalf. He remembers you right here, in the preaching of his promises, in the cleansing cadence of Holy Absolution, in the life-giving splash of Holy Baptism, in the bread that is his body and the wine that is his blood. Here God remembers you in his Son, in the power of his Holy Spirit. Here the power of his Passion is applied to you personally: forgiveness for your sin and deliverance from disaster, including those of our own making.
Tonight, we begin a Lenten journey with Joseph. And our journey, like Joseph’s journey begins with God’s remembering one thing, the atoning death of Jesus Christ, and forgetting the rest, all of our sins.
AMEN
May the peace that surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.