The Better Way

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Sermon titled Today is simply the better way.

Would you say that with me?

Joseph, once powerless, is now in a position of power to pay back his brothers for the evil they did to him.

And it's something, let's be honest, it's something that you or I may have fantasized about.

Fantasize the person who hurt us most, but he actually is holding the remote.

Let me give you just a recap of Joseph's lives if you're new and joining the conversation.

Joseph's journey, it began with the birth of a dream.

God gave him this incredible dream that you're gonna rule, have impact and influence at 17 years of age.

He was the favorite of his father.

His brothers hated him, wanted to kill him, and instead they profited off him and sold him into slavery.

He sold into slavery, spends 13 years from the pit to a slave in Potiphar's household, to a unjustly accused and imprisoned.

13 years of his life, from 17 until 30.

And then unexpectedly, in a moment, his circumstances change.

Pharaoh has a dream.

Joseph interprets it, says there's gonna be seven good years of plenty and seven years of famine.

Find somebody who can lead us well.

And Pharaoh says, You're the guy, and he's promoted to second in command of Egypt.

Seven years go by, 20 years, by the way, since he's seen his family.

Two decades.

Widespread famine hits the ancient world, not just Egypt, but all the surrounding areas.

Word gets out that Egypt has food.

People from everywhere are coming, and now his brothers are coming to Egypt to get food.

And literally, this is think about this: a dream come true.

Maybe your dream to hold the power over someone, a dream come true.

Joseph the powerless now is in power.

His brothers who betrayed him are now groveling before him.

This is the way it says it in Genesis 42.

Then ten of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt.

Now Joseph was the governor of the land, the person who sold grain to all his people.

So when Joseph's brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.

Imagine this moment.

Put yourself in Joseph's place.

Two decades.

The very ones who betrayed you, who wanted to kill you, who sold you, are now bowing down before you, and you hold the power over their life.

And although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him.

Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, dun, dun, dun.

What do you do?

When you finally have the power to make someone pay for what they did.

I'll tell you what we do in our world today.

We live in a world that says cancel them, cut them off, get even.

I may not hold the remote over their life, but I'll block them, I'll ghost them, and I'll let everybody else know how terrible they are.

In fact, quickly becoming the motto of our day is actually Cobra Kai's motto.

Strike first, strike hard.

No mercy.

Do you guys not know Cobra Kai?

Have you like come hello?

Thank you.

Yeah.

No what?

No mercy, no mercy.

Okay, some of you, there's like a really popular show called Cobra Kai on Netflix, but even before that, there was this original show called Karate Kid.

Just go watch it, please.

That's your homework after this.

Good night.

No mercy.

They don't deserve it.

And here's what's amazing.

What makes Joseph's story so powerful, what moves the soul, what invites us in, what's compelling is not this rag to riches story.

That doesn't actually move the soul.

That might be something you go, like, oh, I want that to happen to me.

But what moves the soul is Joseph, who's in power, leverages his power not for revenge or retaliation.

He leverages his power to move towards reconciliation and restoration.

Those stories move the soul.

And here's the reason why Joseph understood something that we are losing or perhaps even lost in our day today.

He understood first that forgiveness is the better way.

If I actually hold the power and the control, the better way is to leverage my power and my control to give to you what you do not deserve.

Forgiveness is the better way.

Why?

A few reasons.

First, forgiveness is powerful.

Forgiveness is powerful.

Forgiveness, we're gonna see this, changes your life, and it also changes their lives.

But underneath our cancel culture, Ryan, is that forgiveness is feeble or foolish, isn't it?

Don't forgive them.

Extending grace to a wrongdoer is seen by many as letting them off the hook, minimizing the wrong.

One analyst puts it this way: in a culture that prizes outrage over reconciliation, forgiveness is increasingly seen as weakness, an outdated concept that fails to take harm seriously.

Really?

Forgiveness is powerful?

Yeah.

Let's talk about what forgiveness is and what it is not.

First, forgiveness is not weakness, it is strength.

If I hold all the power, all the controls.

Imagine Joseph, by the way.

It does not take strength to hold a grudge.

It does not take strength to let bitterness have its way in your heart.

It does not take strength to enact revenge.

It's actually a strength to forgive.

To say, I hold all of this, but I'm not gonna hold it over you anymore.

It's not a weakness, it's actually a strength.

It's not forgetting, it's actually freedom.

See, sometimes we think, okay, yeah, to really forget, I uh forgive, I have to truly forget.

Joseph didn't forget what his brothers had done.

In fact, when he finally, you know, reveals himself to them, he says, uh, hey, I'm your brother Joseph, who you sold.

Let's get the facts out there.

It doesn't mean forgetting or pretending like it never happened.

And yet at the same time, ruminating on something, playing it over and over and over and over again, what they did to you, how could they?

Ruminating is literally practicing unforgiveness.

But forgiveness, when we give forgiveness, it's like releasing the cage of a bird to set them free, realizing it was us that was freed in the first place.

Forgiveness frees you from resentment, bitterness, hatred.

If we let hatred persist, we harm our souls far more than the perpetrator did.

Unforgiveness, as you've heard this probably before, is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.

Forgiveness.

It's not weaknesses, it's strength, it's not forgetting, it's freedom.

It's not condoning or excusing, it's healing and wholeness.

Forgiveness does not minimize what happened, it does not excuse abuse, betrayal, or injustice.

It doesn't say it's okay.

By the way, when someone asks for your forgiveness, don't say it's fine.

It's okay, it's nothing.

It was something, it was hurtful, it was painful.

And I forgive you.

When Joseph finally revealed himself, he actually addresses, he doesn't the what his brothers did.

He names the wrong, but refuses to let bitterness define him.

Now here's the interesting part science is catching up with the Bible.

Keeps doing it.

Did you know that forgiveness is actually good for your health when we're talking about healing and wholeness?

We're not just talking about emotional, we're not just talking about spiritual, we're actually talking about physical as well.

Stanford Forgiveness Project, people who practice forgiveness experience significantly reduced anxiety, depression, and hostility.

The Mayo Clinic, forgiveness is linked to lower blood pressure, stronger immune system, and improved heart health.

Friends, unforgiveness is literally killing us.

Forgiveness isn't seeking justice or compensation, it's releasing.

A good definition for forgiveness is simply this.

Forgiveness is releasing my right for revenge.

Forgiveness is letting my right to hold over you to pay you back.

This is one of the areas, this this one right here, this is the one I struggle with most.

I'm a justice guy.

I want you to get what you deserve.

I don't want to get what I deserve, but I want you to get what you deserve, right?

Like justice, like sometimes there's this tension of forgiveness.

I can't forgive them until they get it.

I can't forgive them until justice is served.

I can't forgive them until no, no, no, no.

Forgiveness is there, might be justice that needs to be served.

And certainly there are plenty of cases where that is true.

Forgiveness does not require justice to be served for you to give it to them.

And it doesn't let them off the hook for justice to be served.

But it's saying, This has had a grip on me.

I have a right, I'm holding something over you, and I am going to release my right for revenge.

Uh, Romans 12 19 says, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

Forgiveness is taking that right and that remote of what you've been holding on to and trusting it into the hands of God.

I can't hold on to this anymore.

I give it over to you.

I give them over to you.

And then finally, forgiveness is not reconciliation or restoration, forgiveness is a one-person decision.

Forgiveness always precedes reconciliation, but it does not require reconciliation.

In fact, Joseph's story is like one of these great case studies for us of those who have been hurt deeply wounded by someone who's betrayed you fundamentally and to the very core, and to be able to like really discover should I let that person back into my life?

Chapter 42, 43, and 44.

So chapter 45 is great.

It's where Joseph reunites, he reveals himself.

It's like this beautiful, like amazing Hallmark moment.

It's like, oh, this is awesome.

42, 43, and 44.

Joseph recognizes them, they don't recognize him.

He's speaking Egyptian, and he's using an interpreter.

Uh, the brothers, they're speaking Hebrew, they don't realize Joseph understands everything they're saying.

And what he does so wisely and well.

He doesn't see his brother and said, Oh, forget it, come on in.

He's like, You betrayed me, you wanted to kill me.

Has anything changed?

Has there been a heart change?

He actually puts them through two separate tests.

Encourage you, go read through it because he's gonna go, before we're gonna have this moment, I want to see.

Have you had a change of heart?

See, forgiveness is a one-person decision.

I can forgive you.

Reconciliation, I like how Lewis Mead says it, reconciliation takes two people to be reunited.

Takes one to forgive, it takes two to be reunited.

I can forgive you, but you may not be a safe person any longer.

It may be unsafe or unwise to be reunited.

But here's the thing I want to challenge us with because I think today we so cut people off, we cancel them so quick, we just immediately put, if they disagree with us or if they hurt us anyway, there we just label people unsafe.

There are plenty of unsafe people.

I'm not saying that.

Here's what I loved about Joseph.

Joseph forgave.

He had the heart for reconciliation, he went through a process to see if reconciliation was wise and restoration was possible.

Here's what I want to challenge us and encourage us with.

I think what happens for us is we have this forgiveness of like, okay, that's already really hard.

I don't have a heart to be reconciled.

I don't want to be restored.

In fact, I just want to be cut off from them.

The gospel is that you have been reconciled to God, and then so he has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

As far as it depends on you and me, Paul would tell us, live and be at peace with everyone.

As far as it depends on you, not on them.

It's a two-person deal.

And so I'm going to decide to forgive you.

We're going to talk about how do you do that in a second.

I want to have a heart to be reconciled.

And God honors this prayer, by the way.

Remember the person that you're holding the remote?

God, I don't really want to be reconciled.

I don't really want to be restored.

But I want people to want to be reconciled.

Would you begin to do that work in me?

God, the pain and the hurts and what they brought, and I'm going to go through the process.

I'm going to bring in wise counsel.

I'm not going to just jump in blind, but but there's just something in me I do want, because of what you've done for me, I do want to want it.

I just want you to begin the work in me.

Regardless of their response, I want you to do the work in me where I would want it.

So would you meet me in this space?

I want.

Forgiveness, it's powerful.

Then how do we do it?

I think we understand that forgiveness is a process.

But did you actually know that forgiveness is a practice?

We can, this is amazing.

This is really good news because if you could just fill this room right now, we're talking about deep waters.

And there's just a bit of us like some of our walls are up.

Some of like like the like we're just like wrestling with this right now.

Here's really good news.

Forgiveness is a practice which means you can grow in it and you can learn it.

Well, I'm just not a forgiving person.

I didn't come that way.

I just don't have it.

That's fantastic.

You can grow in it and you can learn it.

I want you to just see Joseph's response to his brothers, that hallmark moment, Genesis 45.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, Come close to me.

When they'd done so, he said, I'm your brother, Joseph, the one you sold out of Egypt.

Now do not be distressed, do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here.

Because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.

Oh, how do we become a people that 20 years later, in the atrocities and the pain that it shapes us so much that we see God through our story, we don't just see our pain in our past.

Forgiveness is the key.

So, how do we grow in forgiveness?

I want to teach you the reach model by Dr.

Everett Worthington.

Dr.

Everett Worthington is the foremost uh researcher uh on forgiveness.

He's a Christian psychologist, and he doesn't just research it, he knows it to the depths of one of the most painful experiences.

His mother was murdered in a home invasion, which started this whole process.

So this is not theory.

And this model actually has been researched and clinically tested as the most effective way for us to grow and learn to forgive people.

The reach model first is recall the hurt.

Not ruminate on the hurt, not play it over and over, but recall it.

I was hurt.

This hurt.

As best as you can, just get to the facts.

We tend to jump to the emotives of the other person and why they did what they did, but simply recall the hurt to heal.

You have to first face the fact that you've been hurt.

Make up your mind not to be snarky, nasty, hurtful, not to treat yourself like a victim or not to treat the other person as a joke, uh, as a jerk.

Joseph, he names the betrayal, he recalls the pain because healing starts when you stop hiding the wound.

And for many of us in the room, we go, yeah, that they can't hurt me.

That didn't hurt.

I'm fine.

No, you're not, my friend.

You have to name it first.

This hurts.

Second, and this is gonna be hard, empathize.

Empathy is the ability to step into someone else's story.

It's putting yourself in the other person's chair.

Not to excuse what they did, but to understand what might have led them there.

It's seeing the humanity in the other person who hurt you to understand their brokenness.

One practice that Dr.

Worthington gives us says this, and you might want to try it.

Pretend that the other person is in an empty chair across from you.

Talk to him, pour your heart out.

Then, when you've had your say, sit in his chair.

Talk back to the imaginary you in a way that helps you see why the other person might have wronged you.

This builds empathy, and even if you can't empathize, you might feel more sympathy, compassion, or love, which helps you heal from the hurt and allows you to give what's most important, an altruistic gift.

Altruistic just means selfless or unselfish.

Forgiveness is a gift you give not because they deserve it, but because you've already received it.

Give forgiveness as an unselfish, altruistic gift.

I'm giving this.

I'm putting down my right.

You don't deserve this, it is a gift.

That's why give is in the middle of forgiveness.

And then C, commit.

Forgiveness, Dr.

Worthington will talk about, is two types of forgiveness the decision.

Forgiveness and then emotional forgiveness.

Commit, you make a decision.

I forgive you for.

In fact, write it down.

Who's the person that you're holding the remote control?

Write it down.

I decide.

You may not feel like it yet.

You have this decisional forgiveness.

And as you decide and you choose, what happens is your emotions begin to follow your decisions.

What happens to us is we wait until we feel like forgiving and we'll never get there.

You commit.

I make a commitment.

I put down my right of revenge, my right for control, my right to have this power over you, my right to feel this way about you, my right to hold bitterness and contempt and hatred.

I put that down today, this day, this Sunday, I decide to forgive you.

You may need to just write it on your notes right now.

Who is that person?

And then hold on to forgiveness.

And this is the process of forgiving.

Because what inevitably happens, especially the deeper the wound, the deeper the hurt, the deeper the pain, is we pick it back up, don't we?

We forget that we decided.

We go like, well, I picked up my right again.

I picked up my revenge, my anger.

That's why writing it down is so powerful.

It helps us remember why.

Oh, that's right.

I decided.

No, I'm gonna put it, hold on to it.

Joseph, years and years later, we're gonna conclude with this next week.

His father died.

And his brothers were like, okay, you hold the remote, and are you gonna pick up the power and the control again?

But Joseph said to them, do not be afraid.

Am I in the place of God?

Only God holds that power, should hold that power.

Am I in the place of God?

You intended to harm me.

Yes, that's true.

We're not gonna skirt around the facts, but God, my favorite, like two words in scripture right there.

We're gonna preach two words next week, but God, because when God enters your story, he changes it.

But God, you intended this, and friends, forgiveness is the pathway for you to experience and look back and see the but God moments of what he's doing in and through your story and stop reliving your past and your pain and living it and being defined by it.

But God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Hold on, reach, recall, empathize, altruistic gift, commit and hold on.

And here's the reality: I know it.

I can hear it, I can actually feel it from you.

But Ryan, not but God, but Ryan, I can't forgive them.

You don't understand what they've done, the pain they've caused.

What they did was inexcusable.

And it's precisely because it was inexcusable that it needs to be forgiven.

Forgiveness will always feel costly until we remember what it costs Jesus for us.

Forgiveness is powerful, forgiveness is a practice.

Forgiveness, friends, is the Jesus way.

It's not just the better way, it is the Jesus way.

Jesus' first words from the cross.

Jesus' first words from the cross was, now you're gonna get it.

I'm gonna call all of the heavenly realm and have it unleashed on you.

How could you?

What were you thinking?

The creator steps into the creation and you crucify me?

Are you kidding me?

How could you not get it?

Jesus' first words from the cross.

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

Father, forgive them.

One of his twelve betrayed him twenty-four hours ago, or less than.

The other disciples deserted him.

The crowd that once cried out, Hosanna, Hosanna, now cried out, crucify him.

The religious leaders who were supposed to know and recognize God, they knew the word of God.

They're the ones who plotted his murder, unjustly accused and tried him and sent him before Rome and called for his execution.

And Rome pulled it off.

And his first words were, Father, forgive them.

Forgiveness is the Jesus way.

Jerry Sitzer, in his book A Grace Disguise, writes this: Once we see ourselves as people who need God's mercy, we will be more likely to show mercy to others.

Again, Jerry Sitzer, fantastic book.

On a night driving home, a drunk driver creamed into their car, killing his mother, his wife, and his daughter.

Two other kids as a single father.

This is not theory.

The gospel is that our standing before God is that He has placed everything, the remote, the power, and placed it onto Jesus that we might have freedom and forgiveness.

And the reality is the hardest person for you to forgive may not be out there.

It might be the person that's looking you in the mirror.

That you've been holding the remote over yourself, replaying regret, shame, failure.

And it's time to hand that to God.

It's as simple as simply this.

I admit, I admit my brokenness.

I admit, yeah, that recall to hurt.

I did that.

I meant my shame.

I meant my regrets.

I admit my sin, my brokenness.

And I believe you, Jesus, hung on the cross and you spoke a better word over my life.

You didn't speak the word of shame and condemnation.

You spoke the word of forgiveness.

Forgive them.

That your standing as a follower of Jesus is not somehow eking your way towards God, somehow trying to be good enough.

Your standing is fully forgiven, daughter and son of the King Most High, because he took it all for us.

I admit, God, this is where I'm at.

And I believe you came for me and you died for me and you rose to new life that I might have life in you.

Scripture says, anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

You cry out, Jesus, would you be the leader and rescuer of my heart, of my life?

And he answers that every time.

See, this isn't just a gathering.

We forget this.

This is a gathering of the forgiven.

This is a gathering of those who have experienced the depths and the beauty and the mercy of Jesus.

And the reality is, is forgiven people forgive people.

Because forgiveness is the way of Jesus.

It's the better way.

That's why the Apostle Paul said this: be kind and compassionate to one another.

Forgiving others.

Just as in Christ, God what?

God what?

As we close, we're going to partake in communion together.

And I want to invite you into a moment of release.

I want you to take a moment.

Who's on the other end of the remote for you?

Whose name still holds power over your peace?

And before we take communion, his body broken for us, his blood poured out for us, the bread and the juice represent that.

I want you to take a moment of God, I decide in this moment to release my right for revenge.

I'm going to just begin that step.

God, I'm in this moment.

I want to want to even think about the possibility of reconciliation.

Jesus, thank you for forgiving me.

Thank you that my identity isn't in what I've done or where I've been or what's been done to me.

My identity is what you have done for me.

And what you say is true.

But take this moment.

And allow the healing work of Jesus through this powerful practice of forgiveness take place.

Jesus, I pray for my friends as we remind ourselves of your great love and sacrifice, your forgiveness.

Would you overwhelm us with that reality as the wounds and the hurt and the pains in this room and the remotes that we've been holding?

God, some of us have been holding on to them for years and decades.

And so Jesus made us in your grace and your love and your forgiveness.

Draw us to your feet.

Help us.

Help us to forgive.

In Jesus' name.

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