Today we are talking about Forgiveness and even as a young pastor I have come to realize that most people are uncomforted with Topic.
We don’t like to think that we need forgiveness.
We can’t bare the thought of letting those hurtful unchanged people off the hook.
When we talk about forgiveness we are talking about something deep down in our souls. We can hide our un forgiveness for almost everyone, but it is the cancer of the soul. Mutating and breaking you down on the inside.
Mark 11:25-26
25"Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. 26["But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions."]
He is a little road map for tonight. Let me say my prayer is that God will begin a healing work inside of us tonight. We will be talking about Seeking Forgiveness, Finding the way to Forgive, and offering Forgiveness.
Our temptation is always to cover up, minimize and rationalize sin rather than confronting it, confessing it and be forgiven.
Back in November a you man came to my door selling candy for his school. You have all answered these door bells, and I always feel compassion for their efforts. So I ordered some chocolate, and the kid had me pay up front. Which after telling this story a few times I have realized that no one pays up front. So Christmas and then January rolls by and I am pretty sure I have been had, no chocolate. My compassion for the door to door candy kid is going down. Then a few weeks ago I find some chocolates and a letter on my door.
Read the Letter of a Boy who I bought Chocolates from Well before Christmas
Not many people would hope to apologize face to face. Unless they knew. Unless they understood the healing power of confession.
Seeking Forgiveness
Joseph is relentlessly testing his brothers. They had already sold Joseph to down the river to make their lives easier. When push came to shove they had left their brother Simeon in Prison. Now would they do the same thing with Benjamin. Take the grain and run, sorry buddy you got stuck with the silver Cup.
But then something powerful and unexpected happens. Judah steps forward, the same Judah who stepped forward to explain the bloody tunic to his Father. He steps Forward and says…
24 When we went back to your servant my father, we told him what my lord had said.
25 Then our father said, ’Go back and buy a little more food.’
26 But we said, ’We cannot go down. Only if our youngest brother is with us will we go. We cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’
27 Your servant my father said to us, ’You know that my wife bore me two sons.
28 One of them went away from me, and I said, He has surely been torn to pieces. And I have not seen him since.
29 If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my grey head down to the grave in misery.’
30 So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life,
31 sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the grey head of our father down to the grave in sorrow.
32 Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ’If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’
33 Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers.
34 How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come upon my father.
It is Judah’s complete change in attitude that stirred up great emotion in Joseph offering himself in place of his brother Benjamin.
Judah has gone from the one holding the bloody tunic to a man of self sacrifice for Benjamin and His Father Jacob.
We have talked allot about repentance as “a turning away from sin.” And this is true Judah has turned away from selfishness and turned to self sacrifice. But repentance also means “to change our thinking.” Judah had been thinking about himself, but in this moment he repents he changes his thinking to “how will this effect my Father.”
In this story Judah doesn’t realize he is asking forgiveness, but there is no doubt that he is repenting of his old actions; thinking and acting in a new way.
This act of repentance blows the situation wide open, Joseph can’t contain himself. He is literally bursting with emotion. That sickness of un forgiveness is being healed. That damn that was stopping up his love and trust of his brothers has been broken open.
That is the healing power of Confession and asking for forgiveness.
Can anyone here tonight affirm this healing in relationship through repentance and confession?
Finding and Offering Forgiveness
Now we come to finding a way to forgive others, and it may seem that after hear Judah’s confession that Joseph could not help but forgive. I would like to challenge that assumption. I think Jesus and later Paul speak over and over again about un forgiveness because it is a hard cancer to cure.
Jesus speaks of a man being brought before the King and owing million of dollars. He begs for mercy and the Kings shows him mercy. The servant no sooner feels the freedom of forgiveness than he turns to another servant who owes him a few thousand dollars and has him thrown in prison. Even after tasting forgiveness we can deny it to others. The King is not ok with that.
Joseph has allot of pain and hurt to work through, and I know that he is just a snapshot of what allot of people have to deal with in broken and harmful relationships.
I was talking with a divorced woman about the need to forgive her husband. I read this verse.
Ephesians 4:32
32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
And she flat out told me it is not that easy, you don’t understand, he has hurt me so deeply, I can’t forgive him. When I hear that my heart hurts because I know she is not alone.
So now we are going to look at Joseph’s act of forgiveness because it gives us a picture of how he arrived at a place of forgiveness.
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, Come close to me. When they had done so, he said, I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!
5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be ploughing and reaping.
7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
8 So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.
9 Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ’This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay.
10 You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me— you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have.
11 I will provide for you there, because five years of famine are still to come. Otherwise you and your household and all who belong to you will become destitute.’
12 You can see for yourselves, and so can my brother Benjamin, that it is really I who am speaking to you.
13 Tell my father about all the honor accorded me in Egypt and about everything you have seen. And bring my father down here quickly.
14 Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping.
15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterwards his brothers talked with him.
Joseph understands what I am coming to believe is the center of right relationships with people and God. Joseph understands that
We need to see our life through God’s eyes
In order to extend forgiveness Joseph sees what God is doing in his Life. He recognizes that he is not a victim of circumstance He is not a victim of his brothers will, he is not a victim Potiphars wife, he is not a victim of the cupbears poor memory. If he can see his life from God’s perspective God is always with him through his trails and moving him to a better destination.
Ill – I have an aunt in Idaho who is one of the best story tellers I have ever met, and she has three boys so she always has a story. When I was just a entering grade school she married a cowboy (yes we have cowboy’s in ID). My Uncle has actually been a professional roper, Auctioneer, and Realtor. Unfortunately each career change was accompanied by an affair and unfaithfulness to my aunt. The last time it was with her best friend. Everyone in her life was telling her to leave him. Take the boy’s and go. Even by Biblical standards she had a clear case. The affair came out in the open. The Husband of her best friend beat my uncle black and blue and left him on the side of a country road.
My aunt is a strong woman, and she has a unshakably clear sense of what God is taking her to. She would not let the mistakes of her husband destroy her life or the life of her 3 boys. God allowed her to see that forgiveness would bring her to a better destination than righteous separation. She has worked for reconciliation with sweat and tears to keep her family together, and in the last year my uncle (broken by her love) has begun to seek God.
We need to see others through God’s eyes
Joseph comes up to his brothers and wants to bring them into his forgiveness, but also bring them into God’s plan.
Too many times when I am offering forgiveness it is all about me.
• I just wanted to write you this note to tell you that I forgive you for being a wicked and nasty person.
• I was praying and God told me I needed to forgive you even though you don’t deserve it.
If you haven’t done that I imagine it has been done to you. Now listen to Joseph.
do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
Joseph seeks to offer his forgiveness and usher in God’s forgiveness. He has already made peace with what his brothers did and he wants them to see where God is taking them to.
If this sounds crazy when applied to your situation then we are on the right track. Only by God Spirit can we see the good he has for those who have harmed us.
John 13:34
34 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
So we have been doing allot of talking about forgiveness now I want to walk you through a time of prayer.
1. I want you to think about a conflict you have with someone
2. I want you to identify the emotions and the pain that this situation stirs up
3. In the situation are you the persecutor or the victim
4. If you are the victim I would ask you if you have allow this person to take the place of God in your life. Have you let them decided your future or how you feel about yourself. If you have made this person God I would invite you to repent and as God to be the Lord of your Future and how you see yourself.
5. If you can; ask God to show you how he sees you and what he has for your future
6. Now if your where the person who needed to be forgiven I would ask you to think about how you took the role of God in the relationship. If this is true I would invite you to repent and ask God to be Lord of them and you.
7. If you can ask God what the relationship would look like if he was in control.
8. Now if you haven’t don’t this yet I would invite all of us to ask God to help us see what he really wants for the other person in the conflict.
Pray – Father we want to be relationship healers like Joseph. We want to forgive others, and bring others into your forgiveness and Plan.
Gen. Robert E. Lee
General Robert E. Lee was asked what he thought of a fellow officer in the Confederate Army who had made some derogatory remarks about him. Lee rated him as being very satisfactory. The person who asked the question seemed perplexed. "General," he said, "I guess you don’t know what he’s been saying about you." "I know," answered Lee. "But I was asked my opinion of him, not his opinion of me!"
