Genesis: Seeking Reconciliation

So we've been walking our way through the book of Genesis.

And what we've seen is we've seen that the book of Genesis has an incredibly dysfunctional family.

And what we've seen as we've been talking our way through it is not only do we have a faith family heritage of dysfunction, but we are quite dysfunctional.

This is sort of what this reveals.

And that if we become honest, that all of us in here have dysfunctional families.

And in fact, uh Christian and I we all we always say that we're actually creating dysfunction in our family right now.

We're just not aware of what the dysfunction is, and we're going to realize it later down the road, and then will come the weeping and the confession to one another.

It's just painfully clear, right, that in life we can hurt each other.

And a lot of times the place we experience the most hurt is in the family.

It's just a few pages into the Bible that we start to see this dysfunction.

We start to see families fracture.

Adam has two sons, and Cain kills his brother Abel.

There's a great start for humanity.

Abraham has two sons and they're estranged for life.

Isaac has two sons, and Jacob steals from Esau, and Jacob steals from his dad, and then Esau vows to kill Jacob.

Tamar, remember this, tricks her father-in-law to sleeping with her.

That's interesting.

And then Joseph's brothers, we talked about last week.

Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery.

Right?

I mean, you talk about dysfunction.

I mean, so if you're feeling bad about your family, just read Genesis and you'll feel much better about your family.

I just really doubt it gets to that point.

But the thing is, is in Genesis we see how sin destroys people and how sin destroys families.

But we also see something else, right?

Like do you do you remember the scene in Genesis 33, verses 1 through 4?

Genesis 33:1–4

You have it in your bulletin.

And Jacob, right?

Jacob and Esau have been estranged.

And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with him.

So Jacob, you know, he's nervous at this point.

You see, brother with 400 men.

So Jacob divided the children among Leah and Rachel and two female servants, and he put the servants with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel, and Joseph, last of all, he himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother.

But Esau ran to him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Do you remember the scene from last week when Joseph, right?

He's down in Egypt and he's ruling and he's in power, and his brothers they come and they need food, they need grain, they've been estranged for somewhere around ten years.

Finally, they meet, and finally, Joseph gets to see Benjamin, his brother, and Benjamin was a part of that crew that sold him into slavery.

And we get Genesis 45, 14, and 15.

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept.

And Benjamin wept upon his neck.

And he kissed all his brothers, and he wept upon them.

After that, his brothers talked with him.

So maybe you're here, you go, Well, I know where this is going.

I can already see.

Or by your prayer, and then you reading that, I can already see where this is going.

But you don't know.

You don't know my dad, you don't know my mom, you don't know my brother, my sister, you don't know my situation.

I don't.

I don't.

What I do know is I do know there are horribly manipulative, broken people in the world that require unbelievable amounts of boundaries.

And so what I'm not saying today is that boundaries and relationships are not good.

No, I'm saying form boundaries, hold boundaries.

And maybe you're here and you say, well, that's all great, but you know what?

I just don't like my family.

Like when it comes down to it, we just don't have that much in common.

I just don't really like them that much.

We're just so radically different.

Like, I mean, if we don't get to pick our family, we pick our friends, right?

And your family doesn't have to be your best friends.

Now it's great if it works out that way, but they don't have to be.

They're your family.

It's just the different relationships.

It's great if it ends up being best friends, but sometimes they're just family.

You love them, you spend time with them, they're your family.

Maybe you're here and you truly don't have a family.

It's possible.

Like you had a you had a mom and then she passed away, or you grew up in an orphanage and you haven't gotten married.

I mean, that's possible.

And this is much more just has to do with friendships and relationships.

Last week could have been the last message in Genesis.

But this just kept these stories, especially this Jacob and Esau and Joseph and his brothers, just kept rattling around in me.

This amount of hate and words of hurt and all the distance that was in creating these relationships and then the brokenness and the humility and the crawl, literally the crawl back to each other.

When someone had nothing left, and they go back to the other one, and the other person is waiting.

But see, someone had to go, someone had to speak.

See, someone had to attempt to remove the wedge that had been formed.

So this is a splitting wedge.

Anyone know what this is for?

Okay, right?

Women, any women know what this is for?

Well, this cuts your firewood, is what it does.

It cuts my firewood.

I'm not using this.

I saw a neighbor use it one time.

That's about the extent of my use.

I can sit by a fire really well.

I'm good at that.

But here's how this works is basically you put this on top of a log.

On top of a log, you would have no ability to split with your bare hands.

You'd have no ability.

And you put this on top, and you get it on top, and then you get the back side of your axe or whatever, and you kind of tap it in, and it at first it just just barely bothers the log, right?

And then over time, with ongoing force, it goes deeper and deeper into the log.

And slowly, this this thing that you you would have no ability to split.

It splits in two.

I mean, this is incredibly powerful.

And words do this, favoritism does this, neglect does this, abuse does this, addiction does this, uh, cr criticalness does this, demand upon demand upon demand upon demand does this.

And this wedge goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

And and a wedge can be a horrible, horrible event.

Like a really monstrous, awful event, or a wedge can be that one sentence that was said, and you just never went back and apologized.

Right?

Like you said that one thing, that one thing is said to you, or you say that one thing, and then that person never came back, or you never went back, and and and then you know you're just too proud, or maybe time's gone by, and then the other person distanced themselves, and then you're too proud to go back at this point, or they're too proud to come back, and there's this cycle, and then there's this distance, and and then at some point maybe some bitterness starts to form, and then you you almost don't even sometimes even remember like how did we even get this far apart?

Like, how did this log even split and it just started?

Christy and I had we have we have family that have entered this downward cycle of division because of bad communication and sensitivity, uh pride, and literally certain people will only come to certain events if certain other people don't come.

Anybody?

I'm not recording it.

You could have raised your hand, it would have been okay.

I've entered this sort of cycle before where I said something and then I was too proud to go back to apologize, and then the other person distanced themselves.

And it's not that the relationship all of a sudden became toxic, but there was just a distance that wasn't there before.

It was a wedge.

I I have a friend who, on a more serious level, uh perhaps who he keeps forming uh relationships with women, and then they get serious, and then he cheats on the women, and then he uh will even duck out of child support, and then he'll want his family to support him.

I mean major wedges in relationships.

Another friend of mine he says this he says, People will fight with family, or they will fight for family.

Now, no one's perfect, even when you hear those two things, you probably go, well, I actually do both of those.

Well, we do.

We do both of these, right?

And even in Genesis, we see this.

At times, Jacob fights with his family, right?

He steals from his brother and then from his dad, and Esau fights back looking to kill him, and then Jacob fights for family.

He returns, bowing, weeping.

We see Joseph fights with family, bragging about that dream not once, twice, and his brothers fight back and sell him into slavery.

And then we see how each of them breaks and the pride ends, that fight for self and that bitterness that drove them has turned to forgiveness, and literally they crawl back to each other and they're not explaining away their actions.

They're weeping.

So, how does this happen?

How does reconciliation happen?

Well, Ephesians 4, 31 through 32 gives us a little bit of insight into what's going on in Genesis and these relationships.

And I could probably have picked a variety of different passages in the New Testament with giving us a glimpse of what's going on.

This Ephesians one really shines a light on it well.

Verse 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

Be kind to one another.

Tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

So verse 31 is everything wrong that's going on in these relationships in Genesis.

And then verse 32 is everything wonderful that's happening when people finally crawl back and weep their way back to each other.

So let me make two clear points.

Number one, reconciliation takes humility.

Right?

Jacob and Joseph are weeping.

There's no pride left here.

They are broken.

They want the relationship to be reconciled.

They're not interested in arguing their point anymore.

They're not worried about being right anymore.

Jacob is bowing.

The brothers are bowing, they're weeping, they're embracing.

Tim Keller has a paper on reconciliation.

Here's a long quote.

It's in your bulletin insert.

It's fantastic because, and I'm going to read it, just I can't say it, I can't teach it any better than this.

You can remain bitter towards someone only if you feel superior, if you are sure that you would never do anything like that.

To remain unforgiving means you are unaware of your own sinfulness and need for forgiveness.

When Paul says he is the worst among sinners, he is not exaggerating.

He is saying that he is as capable of sin as the worst criminals are.

The gospel has equipped him with emotional humility.

At the same time, you can't be gracious to someone if you are too needy and insecure.

If you know God's love and forgiveness, then there is a limit to how deeply another person can hurt you.

He or she can't touch your real identity, wealth, and significance.

The more you rejoice in your own forgiveness, right?

That's like verse 32 of that Ephesians 4.

The more you rejoice in your own forgiveness, the quicker you will be to forgive others.

You are rooted in emotional wealth.

See, we see humil humility in the reconciliations in Genesis.

These are not stoic postures.

What has that given us?

What has stoicism given us?

Gospel postures are postures like are bowing and crawling and embracing and weeping.

It's honesty, it's being true and broken and forgiving and loving.

So that's point number one.

Reconciliation takes humility.

And the gospel is what humbles us because it says to you, hey, you are like them.

You are capable.

As the worst criminals are.

Number two, a life of reconciliation takes moment by moment living in the gospel.

Now I say a life because this is not something that just happens, right?

It takes perseverance, right?

It takes time for healing to occur.

And you have to do this over and over and over again.

Because you know what?

You will hurt people over and over and over again, and people will hurt you over and over again because you're a sinner and they are sinners.

We're not looking to do it, but it's the reality of life.

You say something, it came out the wrong way, you say something, didn't intend it that way, or maybe you did intend it that way.

You do something, wish you didn't, you do something, didn't mean to.

And so it is a life of reconciliation.

And it takes moment by moment living, living in the gospel.

This is what equips us to be able to do this.

Here's what I was reminded this week.

Um, somebody had mentioned this book.

Um, I've read it years ago.

I love it, I've read it several times, but then this week somebody reminded to me, and I went back and read some parts, uh, Elise Fitzpatrick's book, and Because He Loves Me, a couple quotes here which help us to understand.

What is it that equips us?

What is it that equips us to be humble and to want to reconcile?

God loves us so much that he crushed his son so that we might be his and that this love isn't based on our worthiness or performance.

His love doesn't fluctuate from day to day.

It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.

The gospel tells us that our new identity is found in Christ alone, but we forget that we are sinful and flawed and don't deserve respect.

We also forget that we've been loved and welcomed by the only person whose opinion really matters.

We've forgotten God's love for us in the gospel.

Our fundamental problem is not our history, our environment, our brain chemicals, or even our bad choices.

Our problem is that we've got a functional identity that flies in the face of gospel truth.

We've ignored and disregarded the fact that Christ has given us his identity.

He is our life.

So if we take this understanding of the gospel and we think back to Ephesians 4, here's the point we get.

It's this the more you grow in your awareness of how secure you are in Jesus, verse 32 of Ephesians 4, the freer you are to humble yourself and to love someone and the put away the divisive ways, verse 31.

I'll say it again.

I said a lot.

The more you grow in your awareness of how secure you are in Jesus, verse 32 of Ephesians 4, the freer you are to humble yourself and to love someone else, the putting away of the divisive ways that are in verse 31.

See, do you get it?

Do you see it?

See, Jacob's no better than Esau, Joseph's no better than his brothers, you are no better than that other person, and yet you are completely, freely, unconditionally loved by God.

You are secure.

You, even you cause wedges, and he loves you.

Though you fight with family, he fights for you.

There are no guarantees here.

You may humble yourself and you may go to that person, you may humble yourself, you may crawl back and you may weep, and they might not care at all.

They may be cold, they may be indifferent, they may be hateful.

See, there's actually not real possibility of reconciliation until both parties want to reconcile.

That's what we see in these Genesis stories.

We see both parties crawling, bowing, weeping, embracing.

So there are no guarantees, but you but you can be the first.

And here's why you can be the first, because you no longer have to justify your value or your strength by being right or by being stoic.

You have a secure place in a new family.

So you can risk it.

You can go to family, you can go to that friend, you can risk it.

You can risk the humility of it.

Because you're already valued, you're already loved, you're already strong.

So maybe there's a conversation you need to have, maybe someone to reach out to, or maybe for today there's not a conversation to go have.

Maybe it's for you to know that though you have caused wedges, or maybe there is a wedge and you're not ready for that step, that you know what?

In that, you are secure, you are whole, you are righteous, and you are free because of what Jesus did for you on the cross.

One of my favorite movies, you're gonna think I'm insane when I even say it, because it's just sounds like a meathead movie.

It really does.

Um, and I'm gonna ask for hands because if anybody's seen it, you will validate me in this moment, and I desperately need it because I'm feeling very insecure admitting.

Has anybody seen The Warrior?

The MMA movie?

Okay, thank you.

Back there.

Yes, yes.

All right, so it's but I said MMA movie.

So some of you are like, what?

Was that what I thought?

Mixed martial arts movie?

Yeah.

So it sounds like a meathead movie, right?

Yet it's this profound movie about hurt and wounds and reconciliation, and uh you should see it, even though I'm about to sort of ruin the end of it for the point.

Earmuffs, if you need to put earmuffs on, you can do that.

Uh it is unbelievably profound when it comes to reconciliation.

And the story is this it's about a family, and the father is an alcoholic and he's abusive.

And so there's two sons.

There's an older son, Brendan, and a younger son, Tommy.

And eventually, when Brendan's 16 and Tommy's younger, they decide they're running off.

Mom and the two boys are going to run off, and at the last moment, Brenda decides to stay back with the abusive father because he's in love with a girl.

And so Tommy and the mom move off, and they didn't know this at this time, but they would never speak again.

Brendan moves on with his life.

He gets married to that girl, they end up having a couple kids and sort of have what you would consider a normal life.

Tommy, on the other hand, is filled with bitterness.

He is filled with hate, he's filled with rage.

He goes into the service, he moves off.

Years later, he moves back, and he's going to enter this tournament, this MMA tournament, five million dollar purse.

There's nobody better to train him than his dad, because his dad had been a boxer.

And so he goes to his dad and says, I'm not interested in reconciling.

I mean, he's so filled with hate and bitterness and rage.

He's like, but I want you to train me.

And now at the same time, Brendan, the older brother, the little girl has needs open heart surgery.

He needs money.

The only thing he knows how to do to produce money is fight.

So this sets him on a collision course, the two of them.

And Tommy fights the way he feels.

He wounds people.

He brutally punishes people.

He is fueled by wage, rage.

And the wound is abuse, and that the brother left him.

And Brendan tries to apologize and he pleads with Tommy over the course of the movie, and Tommy's cold and indifferent, but both men finally, you know the story, right?

They end up in the finals, right?

Of course.

And Tommy just unloads on him years of pent-up bitterness and rage.

And it's it's not a fight, it's revenge.

And it it is it is harsh.

It is difficult to watch.

And Brendan just takes this beating.

I mean, it leaves you wondering when you're watching, like, how much can a person actually take?

How much can this guy actually take this beating?

It is painful.

And for three rounds, he's just getting pummeled by Tommy.

He's just getting absolutely crushed.

And at one point in like round three or something, Brendan's down on his back, and Tommy is just, he's, he's, he's killing him.

He's absolutely crushing him.

And all of a sudden, Brendan wraps his legs around, does some grappling move, and gets his arm and he twists, and he he breaks his shoulder.

And and and Tommy gets up, the round's over, his arms dangling.

I mean, this this fight's over.

And there's this moment as Tommy goes back and he's sitting on the stool in his corner, and he is fueled even more by rage.

Even more anger.

He he cannot give up.

He will not give in.

He will not tap out.

He won't throw the towel in.

See, see, there's bitterness can actually define you to the point where you're scared to let go of it.

Because you you wonder if you're not defined by bitterness or anger, then what are you going to be defined by?

And Tommy's hitting that point.

He's afraid to let go.

And the next round starts, and Tommy's arm's dangling, and he can't fight.

He's out there trying to fight with one arm.

And Brendan's begging him it's over.

Like, Tommy, it's over.

It's over.

It's over.

And Tommy won't quit.

So Brendan pummels him in that round, and still Tommy won't give up.

He will not let go.

And at this point, it's real clear that this is much more than a fight.

This is a metaphor about reconciliation and about hurt and about wounds.

And the next round, finally, they end up on the floor.

And Brendan is behind Tommy, and Tommy is fighting and fighting.

And Brendan has him in a chokehold.

And Tommy will not stop.

He will not stop fighting.

He's so angry.

And he won't stop.

And Brendan's behind him, choking him.

He won't tap out.

He won't stop.

And Brendan's begging, right?

I mean, he's begging him.

He's saying, I'm sorry, Tommy.

I'm sorry, Tommy.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Then finally he says, I love you, Tommy.

And when he says that, Tommy relaxes.

And he taps out.

And they're lying on the floor.

MMA tournament.

And they hug.

They're embracing.

I love you.

Those were the three words his heart needed to hear.

See, it's what our hearts need to hear.

We need to hear the incarnate word of God.

Jesus.

Love incarnate.

It is the only word that will break our pride, the only word that will break our self-dependency.

The only word that can help us to go back into some relationship and to apologize or attempt to make something right and risk it all, whether it happens or doesn't happen.

It's the only word that can do it.

It's the only word that we must rest in that we might ever speak humble words of reconciliation to our father or mother or brother or sister or friend.

As I pray, I want to pray over you.

I want to pray that we would have hearts that are reconciled to the Father because He fought for us.

And I want to pray that we would have hearts that live in the gospel, that we might seek out reconciliation with other people.

Let's pray together.

God, we confess that we fight with family and we have been fought with.

We have wounds, we have been wounded, and we have wounded.

We have said things that have caused distance and we have distanced ourselves.

Give us great wisdom for people who cause hurt.

Would you also equip us in your great love?

Would you give us such security that we can risk humility?

To apologize for things said, things done, that we might be a people of reconciliation.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.