Fostering Forgiveness

Thank you, Mike.

Awesome.

Hey, good morning, church.

Hey, I'm going to invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn with me to the book of Genesis, chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

Now I know the bulletin says we're off to Joshua.

That will actually be next week.

That's my fault.

The deeper I got into Joshua 1, the more bad I felt about leaving off Genesis 50.

We want to wrap up with this family this week that we've been looking at their dysfunctions, hopefully feeling a little bit better about our own dysfunctions, not just because we compare what we face and have done to what they face and have done and realize that actually our family is not really that weird.

Like that's part of it, but more importantly, to realize that if God can work through that series of broken people, he can work in our families too.

Amen.

So this past weekend, uh my wife and I, speaking of families, made this huge trip around the region down to Atlanta and back up to Charlotte to visit uh our children who are living in those areas.

And on the way through, we stopped at a little town called Helen.

Now, some of you have been to Helen, a little German uh town by Unicois State Park, beautiful area.

Um really the entire town is just like a great food court and t-shirt shop, is really what it is.

And so while we were there, I picked up this t-shirt and it really seemed to fit with the morning.

It says, My problem is I want to follow Jesus and slap people too.

I can tell by the way you're laughing.

I got to heard I heard that amen.

I see that hand.

I see that hand.

Yeah, listen, uh, that's a struggle, right?

I mean, people can be very frustrating.

And the reason that they can be frustrating is because they're sinful and they do sinful things like we do.

Now, the problem, of course, is that we can't love Jesus and slap people too.

It's not okay.

And the reason we can, that's what we cannot, is what we're going to be talking about this morning.

And specifically, that is this truth here.

God's judgment is not ours to carry, and his mercy is not ours to keep.

We have to be careful how we treat people, specifically those who have wounded us, because we are not in the place of God that we can judge people, that we can cast or proclaim or pronounce or execute judgment on them.

Thank God for that, right?

And more importantly, we cannot withhold from others the mercy, the grace, the love that God has given us.

We can't withhold from others what God has so lavishly given to us.

God has forgiven us, God has been merciful to us, God could have slapped us, but he didn't.

Instead, he allowed his son to be slapped.

He allowed himself, his very personage, to be slapped and beaten, and mocked and crucified for us.

Now, there's probably no greater story that illustrates this truth than what we find in Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

In fact, I'm going to tell you, I think this is why the Joseph narrative is actually in Scripture.

Because the Joseph narrative is a little awkward in the line of Old Testament teaching.

See, if you if you look in the Old Testament, most of the key stories, in fact, virtually all of the key stories, follow one string of family.

It starts with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the way down to the 12 sons of Israel, and then focuses from there in on one particular one of those sons, uh, the son Judah, and out of Judah comes the king of Israel, and we focus in on that line.

So there's like this unbroken line that goes from Abraham all the way out to the last descendants of Judah and the people who are around them.

Joseph is this very weird offshoot.

Because Joseph has two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and they become important later in Scripture.

But by the time we get to the New Testament, well, they they don't have a whole lot of content in the story.

And so theologians have often wondered the purpose for this whole, this all this offshoot of teaching in the Old Testament.

And the reason I think it's here is a number of reasons we could talk about, but primarily it is because it is a beautiful example of what it means to forgive people who haven't earned forgiveness.

So if you have your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 15, this comes at the end of, of course, the book of Genesis, and at the end of this conflict that had erupted between Joseph and his brothers.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

His brothers had sold him into slavery, you remember?

They were very angry at Joseph.

In fact, we're told they could not speak a kind word to him.

They hated him so much.

He wore this robe that his father had given him.

And it wasn't just a preferential garment to say, hey, here's a nice piece of attire that I want you to have and your brothers not to have.

It was about far more than what hung in one's closet.

It was a show of status.

It was Jacob's way of saying to the rest of the boys, Joseph is my favorite, and he is the one who is going to receive all of the preferential treatment.

He's the white-collar guy.

You guys are going out in the field, and he's your manager.

That's who Joseph was.

And they hated him for it.

And so they sold him into slavery.

And you remember he was captive to the Midianite ban, and then went down and was in Potiphar's house, and then was thrown into prison, and then through miraculous circumstances, God lifted him up into this place of prominence, and the and nobody was aware except for Joseph until one day, whenever his brothers showed up begging for bread.

And Joseph, if you remember, he tested them.

Well, they passed the test, so to speak, and by the by the time we re arrive at Genesis chapter 50, Joseph is in charge.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

The boys are there and they're subject to Joseph, who's the second person.

He's like the vice president in Egypt at this time, and everything's going good.

But then their fathers, their father dies.

Jacob dies.

And verse number 15 tells us that when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said to one another, you know, it may be the case that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we had done, we've done to him.

They realized that they had forfeited their rights as brothers to receive forgiveness because of what they had done to Joseph.

And over the course of 17 plus years since they had moved to Egypt, it had not sunk in on them that Joseph had completely forgiven them.

In their mind, what they thought was that the only thing that restrained Joseph from executing retaliation, judgment on them for all the hardship that had been caused in his life by them.

The only thing that restrained them from receiving Joseph's wrath was Jacob.

And now that Jacob is dead, they're concerned that he's going to pay us back for all the evil that he's done because he hates us.

Now that word hate in Hebrew is the word satam.

It's a family word.

Now it's it's a Hebrew word for sure.

Everyone would have said it, but you know, in your own family, you have those particular words that are like family words.

If someone says it, then you are reminded of your father, your mother, your brothers, your sisters.

It just describes something about your family.

This is a family word.

It's the same word that was used when Esau was so angry at Jacob for stealing his birthright, his blessing, that he laid around all day and comforted himself with thoughts of killing Jacob.

The Bible tells us that he hated him because of the evil and wanted to pay him back.

It's sottom.

And so they're looking at their family heritage, they're looking at the way things are done in the world and thinking to themselves, this is surely what's coming.

Because this is all the pattern they have ever known.

If you go back and you read the story of the boys and the evil things that they did in retaliation to the people who had hurt them, you realize that they're simply looking at Joseph and assuming that Joseph is going to do what they would do if they were in Joseph's shoes.

You and I deal with people like this all the time.

People who have not experienced radical forgiveness.

People who have not experienced everlasting grace.

And so because they haven't seen it, the one thing they expect, the one thing they they anticipate they will hear is the family word of humanity.

Retaliation, repayment, get even.

That's what they expect to hear.

Now, you and I, as followers of Christ, children of the true Jacob, the true Israel, the true God of Israel, we've experienced something different.

And we, it's like it's our call, our mission to share that with individuals who only know that word.

So out of fear, these boys do the only thing they can do.

They go to Jacob and they attempt to manipulate him.

Now you would think they would be through with all this manipulation and lying, but people who are afraid and see no way out will cope the best way they know how.

So these boys, they didn't go themselves.

They're too afraid to go to Jacob on their own.

They go to Jacob, they send to Joseph a message.

They're too afraid to go to him on their own.

So they send a messenger to him.

And they say through the messenger, Your father gave this command before he died.

And here's the command.

Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgressions of your brothers and their sin because of what evil they did to you.

These are the three most prominent words that describe sin and evil in the Old Testament: transgression, sin, and evil.

This is the best confession you're going to see these boys make.

They are publicly acknowledging through a messenger, and I'm going to suggest to you through a lie that they've wronged Joseph.

We have transgressed, we have sinned, we have done evil against you.

And they're acknowledging it, but the problem is in the text is that there's no place where Jacob is recorded giving this command at all.

In fact, there are many conversations, several conversations between Jacob the Father and Joseph the Son, and none of them have this command inside of it.

Uh most uh commentators and theologians recognize this for what it is, and it's the boys trying to try trying to lean on the authority of a dead man so they do not have to trust the mercy of a live one.

So they say to Joseph, now please forgive the transgressions of your servants, the servants of the God of your father.

Now, what's Joseph's response to this?

Joseph's response is to weep.

Now, I don't know about you, but there are I've got a list of people.

You guys keep a list of people who have hurt you, like a ledger of people who like, if I had an opportunity, man, would I what how I would repay them?

Or a list of people who like you feel like owe you, and once they apologize to you, maybe like you can move on in your relationship, but first off, they gotta own it completely, like a list of people.

Well, Joseph is for for for Joseph, Joseph does not keep a list.

He's not keeping a list, and he's weeping because he realizes they think he is.

The word um for the word for account here is the word for uh the word uh a gamal.

It's a Hebrew word, it's an accounting word, it's an idea of keeping a record, keeping a ledger, uh uh being transactional.

They're absolutely sure that Joseph is keeping a record of their wrongdoings and they have a deep deficit, and now that dad's gone, Joseph is going to collect on his debt.

Joseph weeps because he realizes the pain and sorrow and agony that they have lived under because they haven't received his forgiveness.

Verse 18 tells us that his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants, your slaves.

That's not just them acknowledging Joseph's superiority or being willing to say, Hey, listen, we're we're so wrong, we're so sorry, you can do whatever you want to us.

Sometimes we read this text and that's what it looks like.

But what they're actually doing is they're attempting to pay back Joseph, they're attempting to give Joseph back what they took from him.

Do you recall what they did to Joseph?

They were going to kill him.

And Reuben convinced him not to do that.

And instead of killing him, they sold him to the Midianites as what?

As a slave.

And so now they're saying to Joseph, Joseph, here's the deal.

Don't harm us, don't harm our families, forgive us, and you can do to us what we did to you.

And that seems to be the ultimate answer to offenses in our age.

To repay others.

If they hurt us, to hurt them back, if they insult us to insult them back, if they take from us, we take back from them.

But in the kingdom of God, this is not how God has set up his economy.

He has inspired us to forgive, but forgiveness is not easy, is it?

It's a holistic process.

And it's not one that you can just flip a switch and be done with.

It's it's a for most of us, it's a lifelong process.

And God allows you to feel the weight in his grace and his mercy and his judgment.

He allows us to feel the weight of the offense so that we never come to a place that we that we can't understand the hurt of other people.

Now, at the end of the story, Joseph speaks to the brothers, and woven into his response are some principles that will help us as we deal with people who have wounded us.

And so I want to give them to you very quickly.

They are they're very holistic, they involve the entire person because forgiveness is not just a mental accomplishment.

It's it's not just uh it's not just a spiritual uh endeavor, it is it is also a physical process.

In other words, it involves both uh it involves the spirit, spirit uh forgiveness doesn't involve the spirit, it involves the mind, and it involves the flesh.

Now, some of you may be there wondering, okay, why doesn't it involve the emotion?

If you're going to talk about the spirit and the mind and the body, forgiveness feels like it's an emotional experience.

It's something that I should experience emotionally, and I'm here to tell you the reason that emotion is not in our list is because emotion is not a driving factor.

It's not a controlling factor, should not be a controlling factor in our decision-making process.

Emotions are not the driver of our reality.

Emotions are the symptom, they're the consequence of these other things.

Now, I mentioned this to you because we live in a society now that is all about emotions.

If I ever how I feel, that's what I should do.

But I'm telling you, based on all of scripture, but also a great deal of human history and deep thinking, that our emotions are extensions of our spiritual awareness, our logical, our mental awareness, and our physical actions.

You're like, if here's what I'm saying to you, and I feel like this isn't coming across.

I just want to like drive this home real clear.

If you have an emotional problem with someone, you cannot bury that.

It's not like you can just swallow it and make it go away.

You overcome it by these principles that are spiritual, mental, and physical that you can see in the life of Joseph.

Here we go, very quickly.

Genesis 50, verse 19.

Genesis 50:19

Joseph said to them, Do not fear.

You can hear the pity in his voice.

He realizes the agony that they've lived under because of the stress of them looking over their shoulders, wondering whether or not Joseph was going to put hit out on them.

Don't be afraid.

Why?

Here it is.

Here's the spiritual aspect.

Joseph accepted a spiritual truth.

He said, I am I in the place of God.

What's the answer to that question, church?

No, he's not.

And Joseph recognizes this.

He recognizes that judgment is a weight too heavy for him to carry.

And that as 1 Peter says in his first epistle, uh, second chapter, Peter says concerning Jesus, the example of our of true forgiveness, that when he was reviled, he didn't revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten in return, but continued entrusting himself to the one who judges justly.

Jesus trusted his father to do what was right, and if Jesus can trust his father to do what is right, so can you and I.

We are not in the place of God.

You know the reason why in this country we do not allow victims to sit on the jury or set as judge over cases that impact them.

It's because our system recognizes our inability to be objective.

To be objective, you need someone who is outside of the consequences of the action of the individual, someone who's able to rise above it and to do the right thing regardless of what it costs them.

That's what Jesus did.

Someone who rose above and in spite of the consequences to himself can judge justly.

Joseph said, I'm not God.

The spiritual truth that we must accept.

The more you and I come to understand that we are not in the place of God.

And Scripture tells us that He's the one who will judge, the more we will be able to accept the situation that we find ourselves in.

Number two, not only is there this spiritual truth that we must accept, there is this logical truth that we must accept.

Look at verse number 20, very familiar passage of scripture.

He says, as for you, you meant it for evil against me.

He doesn't minimize what they did, he doesn't wash it away, he doesn't launder it through some process of pretending like it doesn't matter, ah shucks, it really wasn't that bad.

He calls it what it is.

You intended evil against me, and here's the main word in this verse but for every action on earth there is a divine purpose that wraps itself around the wickedness of this world and works to accomplish the good and glory of God.

We can't always see that in this world, Joseph.

Had a chance to get a glimpse of it, although doubtless he also had questions.

But when you look at someone like Job, you realize Job went to his grave, never realizing the purpose for the sorrow that he experienced.

But just because you can't see it doesn't mean there's not a but God moment.

But God meant it for good to bring about that, bring it about so that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

He was able to look outside and see people who were living in the Mediterranean basin in the middle of a famine fat because of what these boys had done.

You and I will all not always be able to see God's direct fingerprints over the sorrows in our life, but we can look back and realize for everywhere that we can see, they're everywhere.

God is sovereign, and he's not necessarily guiding the process of wickedness in this world, but he is taking what the enemy meant for evil at every turn and working it for good, especially for those we're told, for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.

God's working behind the scenes.

Hey, how many of y'all like my new pulpit?

Man, I am a big, big fan of this thing.

Whenever uh Lynn Wood Boyd made this for us, and he brought it into my office last week and he set it up, and and I was looking at it, and I'm like, and he and he hadn't quite finished everything on it yet that he wanted to do.

Now, for me, it looked great.

But to an expert woodworkman, he he was it wasn't quite ready.

And I'm like, okay, so I could use it this week.

And Lynn's like, no, no, you gotta wait.

Like he's like I'm one of his grandkids.

He's like, you gotta wait another week.

And so here it is.

But here's the story behind this this beautiful piece of furniture here is uh for several weeks, we've been talking or months, we've been talking about getting a larger screen so that you know will help me.

I'm realizing that my memory isn't what it used to be.

And so I need uh a little more access to notes, a little larger screen.

And so the elders and I have been talking about this, and and we're like, and so I've been looking for some furniture that we could repurpose into a pulpit.

And and finally, Mike said, Why don't we talk to Lynn about it?

And I'm like, it's a great idea.

And so Mike went several weeks ago and spoke to Lynn and said, Hey, Lynn, we need a we're gonna need a pulpit for the church.

And he talked to Lynn about what we were needing, and Lynn reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and said, Let me show you a picture.

And Lynn showed Mike a photo of a pulpit that he had built years before and had been set back in the back of his shop for I don't know how long, and just 48 hours prior, Lynn had pulled it out of the back and set it up and said, I gotta do something with this.

And then Mike, was that a coincidence?

No, it was not a coincidence.

Somewhere in the back of your world is this piece of furniture, and you're not sure why it's there.

You know, you worked hard on it, and and here it is, or maybe you suffered.

I mean, Lynn probably got a splinter for making this thing, or you know, it nearly cut off a finger.

I don't know what kind of woodworkman he is, but you know, you go through those times.

And somewhere in the back of your shop, the shop of your mind, there's this piece of furniture, and you don't know what it's there for.

I'm here to tell you it's there for a reason.

One day you're gonna pull that thing out, and you're gonna wake up one morning, and like that thought's gonna be in your mind, it's gonna be there and you're gonna be wrestling with it.

And then later that afternoon, or just a couple of days later, like you're gonna see, oh, this is at least part of what God is doing in my life.

Acts chapter four, whenever the disciples are confronting the Jewish leadership, they they say to them, Look, you know, God, God used you to crucify the Son of Glory.

But it was according to his own divine purpose and what they meant for evil, what they intended for the most hateful, God-killing anger, God turned to divine love.

And if he can do that at the cross, there is no place.

I know you've been hurt, I understand that.

But I'm just saying to you, if God can do that at the cross, there's no place he cannot flip sorrow into glory for his good name.

Accept this truth spiritually, we recognize it logically, and then we carry it out practically.

Look at what Joseph did in chapter, in verse number 21.

Joseph says to them, So do not fear.

Look at these next words.

I will provide for you and your little ones.

I think they would have been happy if Joseph would have said, Okay, you can be my slaves, you can be my servants, I'll take care of you, but you're on the hook for the rest of your life.

Like that would have been a pretty good deal for them.

I think they would have been happy for Joseph just to stop at verse number 20 and say, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not into this, guys.

I'm not God, I'm not gonna do it.

I'm not retaliating.

What you intended for evil, God meant for good, and then just walk away.

Now, you guys go tend to your sheep, do your business, it's gonna be fine.

But instead, Joseph goes over and above, inspired by the work of God in his own life, and says, Not only am I not going to hurt you, I'm going to help you.

There's a reason why Jesus tells us to put our treasures in heaven.

It's because where your treasures is, that's where your heart's going to be also.

Now that doesn't mean that, like, if you have a heart for something, then you're going to be putting your treasure towards it.

Like that's there's some truth to that.

But what Jesus is saying is cast your treasure towards the higher mark of God.

Cast the treasure to heaven.

Put your treasure there because wherever you put your hard work, wherever you put your investment, wherever you put your the work of your hand, that's where your heart's going to be also.

You know what I have found?

One of the easiest ways to get over a hurt with people is to follow Jesus' command, to do kindly to them, even though they've done harshly to you, to repay good, uh evil for good.

That's not just a good spiritual principle.

That's that's good therapy, people.

Because whenever you invest your life back into someone who has wounded you, and I'm not telling you to give the person who has wounded you deeply, like your next, you know, your next car.

I mean, like sometimes giving people incredible gifts, letting them off the hook financially, may be the worst thing you can do for them.

But I'm saying from a retaliation standpoint, we stop retaliating and we start attempting to restore.

We help them.

Why?

Because this is what God in Christ did for us.

This is the most beautiful piece of this story.

See, God did not just let us off the hook from our sin.

That would have been good.

If God would have said, hey, listen, I'm going to fix this human problem and then like I'm just going to leave you down there on that planet and you guys go and do you, but don't bother me anymore.

I don't want to be around you.

Like that, that would have been, in many ways, a better solution than the judgment which we all deserve.

And yet, God did not do that for us.

God forgave us, God promised us a home that restores us to his original plan for us, separated from sin, and then called us sons and daughters.

It's tremendous that he's done this.

And so, for these elements here to accept this spiritually, to recognize it logically that God's working on something, and then to execute it practically, I'm I'm telling you, this is how Joseph was able to get to a place where he's able to look at these brothers of his who had wounded him so deeply and to say to them, Not only am I not going to hurt you, but I'm going to help you.

Because he recognized that God's judgment is not his to carry and his mercy is not his to keep.