The Life of Joseph: Repaying Evil With Good

Genesis 45-50 Repaying Evil with Good Introduction: We’ve been looking at the story of Joseph for a few weeks now and we’ve been considering these two ideas: suffering and the sovereignty of God. I think this leads to another subject that surprisingly isn’t usually referenced when looking at the life of Joseph. What I’m referring to is forgiveness. Joseph is a perfect picture of how the Christian is to suffer injustice, and to repay Injustice with Good. Some of us have already suffered great injustice at the hands of friends, family, and people in general. Some of our offenders were believers in Christ or at least claimed to be and others were not. I wonder, what if you had the opportunity to repay them for what they did? What if you had an opportunity to avenge yourself, to clear your name, by dragging their name through the mud. I’m not talking about taking it to the next level; I’m not talking about revenge that would be over the top. I’m talking about evening the score. Would you do it? Do you think about it still? Does it eat at you that they seem so at ease, so happy, and you still suffer from what they did? So what do we do with injustice? What are we to do with the sins committed against us? 1. What did Joseph do with injustice? a. Joseph’s story is the perfect setup for a story on revenge. Joseph is the favorite son of his father Jacob. Jacob sets his affections and future hope on Joseph. Joseph is a dreamer, He dreams of grandeur, he dreams of a prosperous future with him ruling over his whole family. Joseph’s brothers hate him for jacob’s favoritism and for Josephs dreams. They seek to kill the dreams by killing the dreamer. Filled with some sort of conviction when the opportunity comes the brothers decide to sell him into slavery instead of killing him. b. Joseph is sold by his brothers for 20 pieces of silver and sent down to Egypt where he is bought by a man named Potiphar. Now what will become of Josephs dreams? After many years of hard work and faithful service Joseph is made the chief servant in Potiphar’s house ruling over all that he has. Around the same time Potiphar’s wife began to notice Joseph and set in her heart to have him. She daily solicited Joseph for sex. Day after day Joseph refused here offer because of his fear of God and respect for his master. One day she takes hold of his clothes and says, “lie with me”. With that Joseph runs from her leaving his garment in her hands. Potiphar takes this opportunity to bring revenge on Joseph for denying her what she wants. She falsely accuses Joseph of attempted rape and Joseph is thrown into Pharaoh’s prison. Joseph again after many years of hard work and faithfulness because the chief servant in the jail and oversees the whole operation. Through random circumstance Joseph interprets the dreams of two of the Pharaoh’s servants both of these dreams are fulfilled exactly as Joseph said they would be. c. Two years later Pharaoh has a dream and no one can interpret it. At that time Pharaohs servant remembers how two years ago when he was in the prison a young hebrew interpreted his dream exactly. Joseph is called forth from Prison by Pharaoh and he hears Pharaohs dream and tells him the meaning. Seven years of prosperity will be followed by seven years of famine and devastation. Joseph instructs Pharaoh on what he ought to do and Joseph is then put in charge of overseeing all the land of Egypt; he is made second to Pharaoh. Over the course of time Joseph’s ten brothers who sold him into slavery come to Egypt seeking provision because of the fierce famine. It is Joseph that they must buy provision from. The evil brothers who sold Joseph into slavery, that made him suffer undeservedly, are right where any avenger would want them. They are far from home, far from security, in a foreign land, country bumpkins in the big city, they are in subjection to their powerful brother Joseph and are subject to his every whim and wish. i. This is the perfect setup! The perfect opportunity for payback, for revenge. ii. But through a series of test Joseph continually shows them grace, kindness, and forgiveness! iii. Yes, Joseph forgave all the injustice that was committed against him. 2. Why did Joseph do it? a. Joseph was fully convinced of God’s sovereignty over his life for good or evil. i. Genesis 45:5-7 “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” 1. Three times in Joseph’s conversation with his brother’s he says...it was not you, it was God! b. He left judgment in the sovereign hands of God. i. Genesis 50:15-21 read. 1. “Do not fear for am I in the place of God?” 2. Joseph knew that although he was innocent and had suffered injustice it was not his place to repay.Joseph knew that God alone is judge who will judge in righteousness and truth. a. Romans 12:17-21 “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” i. But how can we overcome evil with good? 3. How did Joseph do it? a. Joseph did not repay evil with good, instead he absorbed it! i. Tim Keller, in his book The Reason for God in the chapter “The (True) Story of the Cross”. He speaks of forgiveness and how we really have two options. First we can seek ways to make perpetrators suffer for what they have done. Revenge. He concludes: revenge may bring some satisfaction, but brings hardness, coldness, self pity, and self absorption to your own life. It can also bring in a cycle where no the friends and family of that person feel they must avenge them and so now we are caught in a cycle of revenge. “When we get revenge we don’t stop evil it doesn’t disappear. Instead it spreads, and it spreads most of all into you and your character”. ii. The second option is, you can forgive. Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay for what they did. At the same time, to forgive is to suffer. Resisting lashing out is an agony. So you not only suffer the original offense but now you let go of the opportunity to comfort yourself with revenge. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself instead of taking it out on the other person”. He says, “It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death”. He answers, “Yes, but a death that leads to resurrection instead of the life long living death of bitterness and cynicism.” iii. He goes on to say that this doesn’t mean that we don’t confront, to stop evil in the future, -that would be loving to them and to others. It does mean that we do not seek revenge. iv. “Forgiveness means bearing the cost instead of making the wrongdoer do it, so you can reach out in love to seek your enemy’s renewal and change.” - Tim Keller 1. But why would we do this? Why would we suffer double for a sin that someone committed against us?? a. Because, this is what God has done for us in Christ. i. “When God determined to forgive us rather than punish us for all the ways we have wronged him and one another, he went to the cross in the person of Jesus Christ and died there. As Bonhoeffer said, everyone who forgives someone bears the others sins. On the cross we see God doing visibly what cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone, though on an infinitely greater scale.” b. “God did not inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself. Therefore the God of the Bible is not like the primitive deities who demanded our blood for their wrath to be appeased. Rather, this is the God who becomes human and offers his own lifeblood in order to honor moral justice and merciful love so that someday he can destroy all evil without destroying us.” c. “The only way to triumph over evil is to go through the suffering of forgiveness. Bonhoeffer again, testified that, “it was Jesus’s forgiveness of him on the cross that gave him such security in God’s love that he could live a life of sacrificial service to others.” - Tim Keller b. Corrie Ten Boom’s own story. i. Corrie Ten Boom was placed in a Nazi concentration camp with her sister and her father who she never saw again. “It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s (her sister)pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. c. The only way I can forgive is by Christ alive and at work in Me. i. Genesis 49:22-24 “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall. The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely, yet his bow remained unmoved; his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob Conclusion: In a world that knows nothing of true forgiveness what a powerful witness we can have as we forgive the wrongs done to us, and repay evil with good, all because our God has repaid the greatest evil with the greatest good, (we killed his son and he through that offered us forgiveness of sins and eternal life) and we are his children and his spirit lives within us, and as Corrie Ten Boom said, “When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself.”