R.C. Sproul
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And can you imagine the jolt to his soul this episode would have been?
But what Joseph does is to begin a program of play acting, of shrewd deception and dissembling.
again, which has provoked some to criticize Joseph and to see him as a simple liar.
He keeps calling what follows now in this encounter with his brothers an elaborately conceived game that Joseph is playing.
But Luther does not see in this a game of sinfulness or even a game of vengeance, but he likens it to the kind of game
that God often plays with us, with our own people.
The kind of game, I'm not sure game is the proper word for it, but the kind of manifestation that parents do when they discipline their children.
Every parent knows what it means to feign greater anger with their children than they actually have.
I know as a professor of students, sometimes when students do things that are wrong, it doesn't surprise me at all, and it doesn't upset my soul, but in a display of pedagogical extreme, I'll say, how can you possibly do that?
And I'll try to act with them like I'm really upset when I'm not the least bit upset.
But I am doing this in order to awaken them to the seriousness of the matter, just as we may do these kinds of games with our children in the process of disciplining them.
I know that sometimes parents paddle children out of personal anger and abuse them.
I can remember being told when I first got married, never, ever, ever discipline your children out of an expression of uncontrolled rage on your own part.
But think in terms of your love and your concern for the child.
And even as God tends to put on a frowning face towards the children that he loves, he chastens those whom he loves.
And insofar as God is chastening those whom he loves and shows us the divine frown, Luther calls this a sweet and just heavenly game.
Not game in the frivolous sense, but game in the sense that God is pretending to