Forgiveness

Last week’s message hit home for a lot of us here.

Many folks in our church family are going though tough circumstances that we want to see God redeem for his glory and our good. We may be dealing with tough people whose hearts we are praying for God to work in.

Joseph’s story is such an encouragement for us because we see God taking Joseph’s circumstances and changing them into something that allowed him to glorify God and save lives.

I asked you last week if you are willing to let God use the unjust actions of wicked people to change you and put you where he wants you to be.

As we continue in Joseph’s story, we are going to lean further into those pain points.

How are we supposed to respond to the wrong things people have done to us?

Joseph’s brothers sinned against him. They almost murdered him and instead sold him into slavery.

In the accounts we are covering this morning, Joseph is going to see them for the first time in 20-22 years. His response models for us what you and I need to do with those who have hurt us: When someone sins against us, we need to forgive.

I know that as soon as I say it, there are probably some folks in here who winced.

You have been deeply wounded, and the idea of forgiving seems too unfair, too unjust, too hard.

Because of how loaded this topic is, I want to take some time to unpack what I can about what forgiveness is and is not.

By the way, for those of you wondering if school is doing anything for me, this is a direct result of the paper I just had to write—I had to write a ten-page paper on forgiveness, and I want to try to summarize the best parts of what I learned with you this morning.

All that is going to make this morning’s sermon different than most. We are going to read a few verses and summarize the events in Genesis 42-46. Then, we are going to unpack what we can learn about forgiveness from Joseph’s example and the rest of Scripture.

So let’s pick up the story.

Last week, we learned that God was going to give Egypt seven years of abundance with their crops. Those years would be followed by seven years of severe famine.

When he was exalted to second in command over Egypt, he did what he could to store the excess and prepare for the famine.

When we pick up in 42:1, the years of abundance are over and we are into the famine.

The famine went beyond Egypt and stretched all the way into Canaan where Joseph’s family still lived.

Pick up in verse 1-4.

Jacob is over 125 years old this point and too old to travel. He sends ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain.

Notice that he refuses to send Benjamin. Jacob had two wives, and since he thought Joseph was dead, Benjamin was the last remaining son from his favorite wife Rachel.

The brothers arrive in Egypt to buy grain, not realizing they are going to be buying it from Joseph.

When they got to Joseph, they didn’t recognize him.

However, the Bible tells us that Joseph recognized them right away and began to put them through a series of tests.

The Bible never comments on these tests. It doesn’t tell us Joseph’s motives or whether these tests were cruel or gracious or what, so we have to draw our own conclusions.

As I look at what Joseph’s doing, it seems like he is trying to figure out if his brothers are the same murderous thugs they were 20 years before or if they had grown and changed.

He accuses them of being spies and questions them about their family. He finds out that his dad is still alive, and so is Benjamin.

After some back and forth, Joseph takes Simeon into custody and holds him until they come back with Benjamin.

They get back home and tell Jacob everything that happened and that they need to take Benjamin back so they can get Simeon and Jacob refuses to let them take Benjamin anywhere.

As we get into chapter 43, we see that the family has run out of food again.

Jacob tells them to go back and buy grain, and they finally convince him to send Benjamin with them.

They eat a meal with Joseph, although he is still separating himself from them as if he were an Egyptian.

When he sends them away this time, he slips his favorite silver cup into Benjamin’s bag.

The brothers leave and Joseph’s steward chases them down.

He accuses them of stealing the cup and says that whoever has the cup in his bag will be Joseph’s slave.

Pick up in 44:12-13.

Keep in mind the transformation here.

These same men who were close to murdering their own brother are now distraught over what will happen to Benjamin.

When they get to Joseph’s house, one brother in particular speaks up: Judah.

Why is that significant? Because he’s the one who had the idea to sell Joseph. He’s the one who God humiliated through the events in chapter 38, and now we see that God has done a tremendous work in him.

He reminds Joseph of everything that transpired and tells him that if Benjamin doesn’t come home, their father will die.

Pick up in verse 32-34

That is what Joseph needed to see. The very brother that caused the suffering he and his father endured was now willing to take the punishment on himself because he couldn’t hurt their father anymore.

Now, let’s read 45:1-8...

Can you imagine the shock the brothers must have felt? Joseph had been speaking through an interpreter, and suddenly he addresses them directly in their language and reveals his identity.

The statement in verse 5 tells us just how deeply God had worked in Joseph.

He wasn’t bitter, and he didn’t want them to grieve or be angry with themselves!

We are going to come back to this in a minute, but let’s finish out the story.

The rest of the chapter and the next detail the process of the brothers going back to Canaan and bringing the entire family to live in Egypt.

God reassured Jacob that it was okay to go to Egypt and that God was going to bring him back.

All of this is part of the fulfillment of God’s words to Abraham in Gen 15:13-14.

That’s the main point here: God is telling the Israelites in Moses’s day the account of how he brought them to Egypt in the first place and all that he did to keep his promise. If he was with them then, he would be with them in the wilderness and when they came into Canaan.

For us, though, let’s turn back to Joseph’s reaction to his brothers.

While the term isn’t used until chapter 50, what we see in Joseph is a heart that has forgiven his brothers.

So let’s talk about forgiveness.

There is so much we could say about this topic that we could probably spend three weeks on it.

This morning, I want to organize our thoughts around three major contrasts that we need to draw between what our culture thinks forgiveness is and what God’s word says it is.

As we talk about all of this, I will keep bringing us back to what God has done in forgiving us.

God’s forgiveness forms the basis and the model for the forgiveness we extend to each other.

1) Forgiveness isn’t forgetting—it’s choosing not to remember.

I feel like I don’t hear people say this as often as they once did, but I am sure you have heard the idea of “forgive and forget.”

I think I understand what they are expressing with that sentiment, but it isn’t the best way to say it.

Let’s think about what we are seeing in Joseph at this point. It sure doesn’t seem like he has forgotten what his brothers did to him, does it?

No; in fact, in 45:5, he tells them not to be upset because they sold him to Egypt.

It’s crystal clear that he hasn’t forgotten it—there are some experiences that you will never forget.

However, in forgiveness, we are choosing to do what God does when he forgives our sin: we choose not to remember it against the other person anymore.

Here’s how God describes himself:

Jeremiah 31:34 CSB

No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

Keep in mind this critical truth: God knows everything that can be known, so whatever this means, it can’t mean that God forgets our sin. He can’t “unknow” what we have done.

However, when he forgives our sin, he chooses not to bring it back up to us.

Think about this for a moment: When God forgives you of your sin, he doesn’t hold it in his back pocket to pull out at some point to rub your face in it.

He doesn’t hold that memory over your head and jab you with it to get under your skin.

No; if you are saved today, he nailed it to the cross with Jesus; it’s gone.

Other promises in Scripture talk about how he casts it as far as the east is from the west or into the deepest part of the ocean.

God doesn’t forgive and forget; he forgives and chooses not to remember.

Do you see the difference?

You may never forget the actions someone did when they sinned against you.

However, forgiveness is the choice not to remember them—not to bring them up, not to dwell on them, not to talk to other people about them.

If that’s how God forgives us, then it is how we should forgive others.

When Joseph reconciles completely with his brothers, he doesn’t keep bringing up what they did wrong. He chose not to remember it against them.

Each of these clarifications builds on the other, so hang with me.

If I don’t bring it up again, though, doesn’t that mean I am letting them off the hook?

2) Forgiveness isn’t excusing—it’s releasing the claim.

Don’t misunderstand forgiveness to think that it is excusing or dismissing what the other person has done.

We aren’t downplaying their sin or saying it wasn’t that bad or we’re just going to sweep it under the rug.

Instead, forgiveness is saying that I am releasing the relational claim I have to punish this person for what they did.

It isn’t saying that what they did is okay; it is trusting God to handle the ultimate outcome.

That’s what God did when he forgave us. He didn’t just look at our sin and say, “You know what? It’s no big deal. Forget about it.”

No; it was such a big deal that it had to be paid for. If you are in Christ today, though, you know that he loved you enough that Jesus paid for your sin on the cross.

He didn’t dismiss it; he paid for it completely.

The ultimate price has been paid, and justice has been satisfied.

God took care of it.

That means that whatever someone else has done to me, God will take care of the ultimate consequences.

If that person never surrenders to Christ and receives his forgiveness, they will be judged for what they have done.

If that person is a Christian, then their sins have been paid for by Jesus just like yours.

That isn’t to say that forgiveness means there won’t be any consequences moving forward. If someone stole from you, forgiving them means you are going to seek to restore the relationship to a healthy one. However, that still may involve them paying you back or making restitution for what they took.

It also doesn’t mean that the relationship will automatically go back to the way it was before.

In fact, I was talking with a friend this week about a relationship he is seeking for God to repair. He said something really powerful when he told me, “I don’t want the relationship to go back to what it was before. I want it to be what it should have been in the first place.”

If there is a need for forgiveness, there likely was something about the relationship that was unhealthy to begin with.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean we ignore that; instead, forgiveness means we strive to reconcile in such a way that the relationship is actually what it should have been.

That includes setting boundaries and taking time to earn back trust and those kinds of things.

However, forgiveness means I am releasing the ultimate consequences and going to do what I can to reestablish a healthy relationship with this individual.

It is releasing the resentment and the desire to get even. If there is more that needs to happen, that’s up to God.

Remember what Paul told the church at Rome:

Romans 12:18–19 CSB

If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God’s wrath, because it is written, Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.

Forgiveness says, “The ultimate consequences for this action are in the Lord’s hand. I am going to release my claim on him or her and seek to rebuild a healthier relationship with this person.”

That’s incredibly difficult, but as others have said, refusing to grant forgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

You will only hurt yourself if you pursue revenge or fail to release your claim on them.

Let God take care of what needs to happen to them. In the strength God alone supplies, you need to forgive.

All of this takes time. We don’t know when God helped Joseph understand what he was doing and brought Joseph to a place to forgive his brothers, but it had been 20 years since he had seen them.

Our last contrast talks about that...

3) Forgiveness isn’t a moment—it’s a process.

This is one of the places our forgiveness and God’s forgiveness differ.

Jesus paid for our sin on the cross, and when we confess our sins and receive the gift of eternal life, we are instantly given complete forgiveness.

For us, there are times when it doesn’t work quite like that.

There are times when either God works in an extraordinary way or the offense was relatively minor or something like that where everything happens at once, but I will say that forgiveness more often works itself out in a process like this:

A. I have been forgiven.

We have mentioned it already, but we forgive others out of the forgiveness we have received.

We don’t have time to look at it this morning, but Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 6:14-15 and 18:21-25 that God expects believers to forgive others the same way Jesus has forgiven us.

As JD Greear and others have said, we start by remembering:

“I am a sinner first before I am sinned against.” (JD Greear)

Before we can forgive, we need to remember and rest in the reality of God’s forgiveness.

With that understanding, we can say:

B. I forgive.

At some point, we have to rest in God’s grace and make the decision to forgive the other person for what they have done wrong.

Forgiveness starts in the heart before it is a statement or an action.

When I commit to forgive them, I commit not to bring the matter up in a harmful way:

To the offender

To others

To myself

I release my claim, my resentment, and trust God to hand out justice where it needs to be.

You can think of this phase as wrapping forgiveness up in a box and committing to give it to the other person when they are willing to acknowledge their need.

Notice that I said “in a harmful way”—that means I am not going to gossip to others about it, I am not going to use it in my relationship to the other person in a vindictive way, and I am not going to let my thoughts and emotions keep dwelling on it.

There may be a time, though, when I need to confront the offender in love and say, “You sinned against me when you did this.”

When you do that, you aren’t being mean; you are actually loving them enough to do what the Bible tells us to do and confront others to help them see where they have sinned.

When the other person is willing to acknowledge their sin, forgiveness becomes a transaction where I give them that gift.

As God works, there will hopefully come a time when the person who hurt you says, “I realize I sinned against you. Will you forgive me?”

This is different than the usual, “I’m sorry”/ “It’s okay” cycle most of us are used to.

When the other person acknowledges their sin and seeks forgiveness, you are able to give them what you already committed to give.

Let me be clear: there are going to be times when you are not going to be able to reach this stage.

The offender may have died, you may not have a way to contact them anymore, or they may be unwilling to acknowledge that they sinned against you.

If you have done what you can (not just what you want to do, but what you can do), then forgiveness is complete for you. You can keep moving forward with a clear conscience, even if the other person doesn’t acknowledge their need.

Once you have made that commitment and hopefully had the opportunity to extend that to the other person, you move to a phase where you can say...

C. I am forgiving.

You may have genuinely granted forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean you are immediately and permanently feel better and everything will be fine.

Remember, when we chose to forgive that person, we chose to release our claim, our resentment, and not dwell on the actions, words, emotions, and all that accompanied what they did.

When the feelings and memories come up, I seek God’s help to carry out the commitments I have made.

This is one of the ways where reading the Bible and memorizing passages can help you tremendously.

The more you study the Bible, the more you are going to start to see your own sinfulness and see God’s goodness.

As you learn it and memorize it, according to Romans 12, God is transforming you by renewing your mind.

That applies in a lot of areas, but as time goes on, he can begin replacing the pain you feel with joy over who he is and what he has done and perhaps, you might find yourself like Joseph, able to see how he redeemed the painful circumstance and used them in some unexpected way.

When those thoughts and emotions begin to surface, come back to the commitment you have made. Ask God for the strength to release the residual pain, and seek to replace those thoughts and emotions with God-honoring ones.

Over time, God can work in great ways, and you may find yourselves able to say:

D. I have forgiven.

As time goes by, you may find God working to help you think about the pain less. You may see joy in that relationship again in ways you never thought possible.

You may reach a point where you can genuinely say, “I have forgiven this person for what they have done. I have released my claim; any further injustice is God’s to sort out. I don’t harbor ill will.”

How can you tell when you get to this point?

Again, Romans 12 is helpful here. God commands us in that chapter to bless our enemies, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. He tells us to feed our enemy and give him something to drink.

We know God has worked forgiveness in our hearts when we can weep with those who were our enemies and celebrate with them when things go well; when we can pray for them or when we can bless them in spite of the pain they caused.

Isn’t that what Joseph did? He could have arrested or possibly executed all his brothers, but instead he provided for them and moved them to some of the best land Egypt had to offer.

More importantly, isn’t that what Jesus has done for us?

If there was ever anyone who had the right to withhold forgiveness, it is him—he created us, and we turned our back on him.

Instead, he loved us so much he would give his own life for us and when he was raised, he now gives his own life to us.

He adopts us into his family, he makes us citizens of his kingdom, the Holy Spirit of God lives in us—he has been far better to us than we ever deserve.

If he can do that for us, then we can forgive others.