Genesis 45 | Nothing Wasted, Much Forgiven

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible with me to the book of Genesis again as we continue our walk through the life of Joseph in Genesis chapter 45.

Genesis 45 · chapter mention

Now as we make our way there, I'd like to turn your minds to another setting.

You've probably seen on various television shows the sentencing hearings that take place in legal settings for someone who's been convicted of a crime.

Try to imagine that scene in your mind.

You have a courtroom, you have the judge seated up high behind a bench, and for the very first time, the victim's family gets to speak face to face with those who have hurt them.

They're not very far apart, generally.

And everyone in that courtroom knows what's coming.

Because there's been months, maybe years, sometimes decades, of grief and waiting.

And now somebody finally gets to speak directly to an offender who has often destroyed their lives.

But every so often the courtroom is stunned when the family expresses forgiveness.

What kind of person can completely forgive a guilty person who has wounded them deeply?

Genesis 45 shows us a man forgiving in that way.

And then he explains exactly what it is that enables him to make that move, to forgive those who have hurt him.

And I would suggest to you that if we can learn from his example, our lives, our theology, and our practice of forgiveness will be utterly challenged.

This chapter begins with 11 men standing in a room in Egypt, and they find out that the man that they are speaking to is the same one that they sold into slavery 22 years ago.

They're hundreds of miles away from home.

If something goes wrong, they are helpless.

They are standing in front of the second most powerful man in the world at the time, and he's just told them, hey, I'm your brother Joseph.

And from a human level, we know what ought to happen next.

This is the moment when Joseph finally gets his revenge.

This is the moment when the score is settled.

But that isn't what happens.

Instead, we see an incredible display of trusting in the kind hand of God.

For three chapters now, Joseph has tested his brothers to see what kind of men they are a couple of decades later.

Has anything changed in them?

Are they different people?

And last week at the end of chapter 44, we saw Judah, his brother, offer to become a slave so that Benjamin, the youngest brother, could go home to his father.

And what Joseph does now comes out of something that he believes about God.

You see, Joseph trusts in the kind hand of God.

And that means that nothing that his family has endured in the last twenty two years is wasted.

It also means that much can be forgiven.

The sentence has a ground and two things that grow out of it.

The ground is the kind hand of God.

Because that hand is kind, much can be forgiven.

But also because that hand is kind, nothing in life will be wasted.

Nothing is wasted, but much is forgiven.

From Joseph, then we learn first that we can trust that the kind hand of God directs difficult providences.

Verse 1 tells us that Joseph could not control himself before those who stood before him.

Now in chapter 43, verse 31, Joseph broke down in private.

He couldn't control himself, so he left the room into his private room, and there he wept.

But then he washed his face, he came out and he controlled himself long enough to eat supper with his brothers.

But now he can't control it any longer.

Apparently, Judah's speech about their father and Benjamin's presence has drained Joseph's willpower.

But before he weeps, he does something that you could miss.

And Webb, when he read this text for us, he highlighted it well.

Joseph clears the room.

He says, make everyone go out from me.

That means every servant, every scribe, every official that's there to support Joseph and his work, any attendant, potentially any other family member.

The second most powerful man in Egypt is standing alone and unguarded with eleven Hebrew men who once tried to kill him.

Why?

Why would Joseph send them out?

Why would he clear the room?

We don't know.

We're not told.

But I would suggest to you that it's because he is about to hear these men face the worst thing they ever did, and he's decided that no Egyptian will witness it.

So there's no Egyptian left to hear what's said.

There's no Egyptian in the room to record it.

Nothing can be used against these brothers later from an Egyptian perspective.

So Joseph uses his authority to protect those who hurt him.

He uses his authority to protect the reputation of those who sought to destroy his.

All of that to directing rain and directing events on international scales, all of those are providence.

Working out his purposes through evil is a part of God's providence.

Now think about the word difficult.

First, they threw Joseph into a pit.

After they took his coat off of him.

Then he became a piece of property to a caravan of strangers.

New Testament tells us he was put in shackles.

Then he was sold as a slave into a house where he worked his way up until a woman lied about him.

Then he was thrown into another kind of pit, a prison.

And then a cupbearer walked out of that prison a free man, completely forgetting about Joseph for two more years.

That is what the word difficult refers to.

This is not merely an inconvenient life with a happy ending.

It's a difficult and painful life.

And the difficulty is instigated by his brother's hatred of him.

So we have providence, we have difficult, now kind.

Look at verse seven.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.

Understand what is at stake there.

There are 70 people total with the eleven brothers in Egypt now.

There are 70 people total living in Canaan.

And there's a famine with five more years left in it.

And everything that God has promised Abraham earlier in the book of Genesis is wrapped up in that one household extended family.

So when I say kind, I'm not describing a warm feeling that God had.

I'm describing a God who kept his promise by keeping people alive, by saving them from an expected death.

God is keeping his word.

And we need to handle that carefully because the various parts of difficult and kind get twisted unhelpfully.

So I'm not saying that the pit that Joseph was thrown into was good.

Or that his brothers did God a favor.

Joseph's just called it selling twice, right?

What I am saying is that a kind God was working out his purposes through some wicked acts.

Which means that God can be doing something kind through something wicked, evil, and hurtful in your life.

Most of us have difficult providences in our lives that we wish weren't happening or hadn't happened.

That's part of living in a sin-cursed world.

The question isn't whether those are hard circumstances.

They are.

They're difficult.

The question is, who's working through it?

And Joseph makes it perfectly clear that God sent him.

God's kindness to Joseph's family was at work even in the pain of his brother's evil.

Now, notice how trusting God's kind providence means that much can be forgiven.

It's sort of incredible that Joseph moves from this statement in verse 7 and 8 about God sending him to talking about furniture.

He does.

You just might not have noticed it.

He says, hurry, go home, get my father, and bring him here.

You're going to live with me here in Goshen.

Bring the children and the grandchildren, the flocks, the herds, and everything you own.

I said that fast because Webb said that fast.

But the way that Moses writes that is actually intended to make us slow down.

By noticing all of the things.

Look at that again.

Do this.

Load your beasts and go back to the land of Canaan.

That's at least a ten-day to two-week trip at the fastest.

And take your father and your households and come to me.

And I will give you the best of the land of Egypt.

And you shall eat the fat of the land.

Now that's Pharaoh.

Because there's something added up there.

Joseph has already said in verse 10, you shall dwell in the land of Goshen.

Hey Joseph, where's Goshen?

We're from Canaan?

I don't know the lay of the land here.

That's near me.

You're gonna be near me.

Bring your children.

And your children.

Okay.

Bring our families.

Bring your flocks.

And your herds.

Wow, that's that's gonna be quite the trip.

And all that you have.

So every stage, every comma that you read there expands and slows down the narrative to say, this isn't just come and visit.

This is you're moving here.

You're bringing everything.

But Pharaoh changes that a little bit.

Pharaoh says, don't worry about anything, because we've got the best of everything, and you're gonna have the best of everything.

In other words, it's just leave the furniture at home.

It doesn't matter if the mice get to it and eat the wood off the legs of the chairs.

You're gonna have the best of everything here.

Just come.

In fact, I'll send wagons down to help you.

Joseph's forgiveness wasn't just tears and a happy reunion.

Joseph's forgiveness included an address.

Lots of food, years of food, and a promise of continued provision.

This costs Joseph much.

And his brothers pay nothing.

Then he hugs Benjamin and he weeps.

He kisses all of his brother and he weeps over them.

And then Moses says that Joseph and his brothers talked in verse 15.

Don't miss that little detail because back in chapter 37, verse 4, when we started this story, it began with the statement that his brothers could not speak peaceably with him.

Now, 22 years later, they're having a fine conversation.

Joseph's not forgiving a petty little thing said in anger.

He's forgiving what amounts to kidnapping and potentially attempted murder.

He's forgiving years of slavery.

He's forgiving all of the hardships of prison in Egypt.

Much is forgiven in that moment, and Joseph can forgive because he is certain that a kind hand sent him.

Joseph's not gritting his teeth and being the bigger man.

He's not giving all of his brothers a hug and a kiss just because he has to.

It's because he understands there's an underlying element at work.

He genuinely trusts the kind, providential hand of God.

He sees behind the circumstances, through the circumstances, to God's working.

So forgiveness flows out of verse 8.

Forgiveness is the result of believing and trusting a theological reality.

It's like Charles Spurgeon once said, Joseph lived out the faith that he believes in the darkness.

Spurgeon said, I do not see God, but it is sweet to know that he is working for my good.

Never once do we see inside the mind of Joseph looking through his circumstances and saying, Boy, I hate this, but I'm so glad God's working.

We don't see that.

Instead, we see at this moment that he understands God sent me.

Yeah, you hurt me, but God sent me.

Then Moses widens the camera view.

Word reaches Pharaoh's house in verse 16, and it pleases Pharaoh and his servants.

Pharaoh issues his own invitation.

So we switch perspectives from Joseph's perspective to Pharaoh's.

The most powerful pagan throne on earth has become an instrument for carrying out what God told Abraham generations earlier.

God told Abraham in Genesis 15 that his descendants would be sojourners in a land not their own.

So Pharaoh, for his part, probably thinks that he's being generous to his valued official, and he is.

But God is working through Pharaoh to keep his word.

But there's a third perspective that we need to get here, too.

And that this was written after Abraham and after Joseph, at the end of Moses' life.

To a group of people standing on the Jordan banks, ready to cross over the Jordan River after 40 years of wandering in the desert.

And to those people, this is a painful memory of how slavery in Egypt happened.

Slavery came out of Pharaoh's generosity.

Remember, this chapter tells them here's how everything in Egypt started.

Israel was in Egypt because God sent a man ahead of them to keep them alive.

What does that tell you about all of the past hardships of your life and your family's lives?

God sent us there.

Yeah.

That's what Joseph says.

God sent a man ahead of them to keep the whole family alive.

Now, there are two details that we need to notice at this point.

One is the silver.

Maybe, like in my Bible, you have to switch pages for that.

Joseph in verse 19, we're come back to Joseph, is commanded to say, take wagons, take everything you need.

No, by the way, verse 22, he gives each of them a change of clothes, but to Benjamin he gives 300 shekels of silver and five changes of clothes.

So the brothers, ten of them, received 20 pieces for Joseph back in chapter 37.

Now Joseph hands Benjamin 300.

The clothing is another detail.

There's one set for each of the brothers, and five sets for Benjamin.

Five for the one favored son of Rachel at home.

Handed to him in front of the other ten.

Do you see what Moses is doing?

He's rebuilding chapter 37.

The favored son of Rachel receives a gift of clothing in the presence of the other brothers.

The last time that happened, it was a recipe for a murder plot.

This time nothing happens.

Nobody says a word.

But then in verse 24, as they leave, Joseph says, By the way, don't fight on the way home.

He knows them.

They have hundreds of miles of walking across desert ahead of them, and nothing to do out there but to argue about whose idea it was to get rid of Joseph in the first place.

And Joseph tries to head that off.

I think it's because Joseph knows that temptation is never far away.

He's experienced that.

And he knows that reconciled people can rehash everything the minute they leave the room from where the reconciliation took place.

Now, as we consider the impact of all of this on our lives, the easy question is: who do we need to forgive?

That's the easy question.

The harder question I think we pull out of this from Joseph's life is what if forgiving a person cost you?

Would you still do it?

Would you put your position and your life on the line in order to forgive?

Because Joseph didn't ask Pharaoh at first.

He just gave.

And Pharaoh added on to that.

He did the best he could for those who hurt him.

Joseph's forgiveness is shown in what he did for those who hurt him.

Now, on the other hand, your problem may not be the pain that you've experienced at the hands of other people.

It may be that you're not convinced that the hand behind your history was kind.

If no good force is directing the events in your life, then the hardships of life are pointless.

They're wasted.

And that wasted feeling then becomes an open soar that we keep picking at, and it never goes away.

Joseph could have been like that.

But he chose to trust that God's kind hand of providence was working in his life, and because of that, he could let go of the pain caused by his brothers and do much to forgive them.

That's why trusting God's kind hand in difficult providences is the key to forgiving.

I don't think there's any way that Joseph thought that his brother's sin was small.

What was unique in Joseph is that he could see someone greater behind the evil in his world.

So we learn from Joseph that we can forgive because nothing will be wasted in God's kind providence.

At this point in our story, there's one person who's not heard any of what's happened in Egypt.

And he's been grieving for 22 years.

So the brothers load up all the wagons, they travel the 150 to 250 miles home across the desert.

And when they arrive home, they tell old Jacob what they've discovered.

First, Joseph is still alive.

Second, he's ruler over all the land of Egypt.

And Moses tells us Jacob's heart became numb.

Because he did not believe them.

Twenty-two years earlier, these same men came to their father with a bloody coat and a lie, and Jacob believed it on the spot.

Now they come to him with the truth, and he struggles to believe what they say.

Long grief will do that to a person.

Makes it hard to believe the truth.

And if any stretch of time in this account looks wasted, it's Jacob's 22 years of grief.

22 years of mourning a son who was alive the whole time.

He refused comfort for two decades.

And he kept telling his family that he would go to his grave like that.

Sounds joyful to be around, right?

Look at the second to last verse of this chapter.

When they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he, that is Jacob, saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.

So hearing what his sons had to say was one thing.

But seeing what Joseph sent confirmed their words.

So look what happens.

God sent Joseph to Egypt, and now Joseph is sending for his father.

We can now see how Joseph is extending the same kindness God extended to him, to his family.

And that way we see that even Jacob's two decades of pain is not wasted.

The kind hand of Providence was gracious to Jacob through Joseph's pain.

Joseph sent those wagons.

Verse 27.

Moses uses that word to teach us theology through this family.

Three times Joseph said, God sent me.

God sent me before you.

It was God who sent me here.

Three times and four verses earlier.

And now here it is, one last time, a cart sent to bring an old man to see the son he believed was dead.

God sent a man who then sends a wagon.

I'm certain that the kind hand of God was pretty invisible when Joseph was in the bottom of that first pit.

Now, twenty two years later, the kind hand of God is seen in something that Jacob can climb into and ride to see his son.

Now notice what Moses does in verse 28.

All through the Joseph account, this old man has been called Jacob.

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob.

And then in this last verse, it's and Israel said, It's enough.

Joseph, my son, is still alive.

I will go and see him before I die.

You remember that Israel is the covenant name that God gave to Jacob when he wrestled with him in the middle of the night.

The covenant name comes back into the story the moment that Jacob believes the kind hand of Providence.

In chapter 37, verse 35, Jacob swore that he would go down to Sheol, to the grave, in mourning over his son.

Now he says he will go down to Egypt to his son.

Both journeys were down.

But only one reveals the kindness of God.

My friends, nothing will be wasted.

Jacob and Joseph waited 22 years through some pretty tough times, not always able to see God's kind hand.

And some of you have been waiting longer.

Some of you may not even see the fulfillment of God's kindness in your lifetime.

It will come in the next.

I cannot promise at all that God will show his work and his kindness on your schedule.

But I can promise you that God's hand is kind.

And that he is working in the lives of his people.

And from Joseph, we learn that he directs the events of your life with his kind hand.

And he will not waste any of it.

And the reality of that should change who you are.

Joseph's brothers sold him.

They sold him.

For a few pieces of change.

And yet, through that, by God's kindness, decades later, many were kept alive.

Nothing was wasted.

Much is forgiven.

Because the kind hand of God was working through it all.

And isn't that really a kind mercy of God for us?

Maybe Joseph deserved to be thrown into the pit.

Maybe he was just an irritating little brat.

The text kind of seems to indicate that some of that was true.

Did he deserve slavery?

Did he deserve death?

Maybe not.

But friends, the Bible tells us that we all deserve death.

We have earned death for our sin.

And instead of giving us what we deserve, the invisible kind hand of God holds back and redirects evil to produce his good purpose to save many.

That's something to rejoice in.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, help us to see your kind hand.

Humble us as necessary.

Help us to see our sin and to recognize that you're working.

Cause us to rejoice in your work, to know your grace and your mercy always pursuing us, always working out your purpose.

Cause us to trust in you as we turn our hearts to your kind hand.

For it's in your name that we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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