Forgive the Unforgiveable

 

Read Genesis 50

We take a brief excursion into the end of the first book of the Bible. It’s a big book, and we spent a year going through it.

It begins in the beginning. God told Adam to bring the creation into order and make it productive.

It doesn’t take long to get to sin and murder, and people turning away from the God who created them.

Then we get a big flood as God rebaselined the world.

People were once again sent into the world to subdue it. During this time, God selected one people by whom to show the world how to know God and live his way.  They were the Hebrew people. We mostly call them Jews these days and going back to the Babylonian Captivity.

These people were blessed to be a blessing, and through these people would come the Savior of the world.  He would come in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom we also know as Israel.

This last part of Genesis deals with the death of Jacob. It would be a mundane story if it were not for Jacob’s sons. They were not without fault.

So much so that most of them were going to kill Joseph, probably because he was his father’s favorite. C’mon, it’s not your fault that you’re the favorite.

But his brothers found him out in the fields on his way to them and they threw him in a pit while they decided what to do with him. As it turned out, there were traders headed to Egypt and Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.

Then they came up with a story for Dad. They didn’t say what happened, but realized that forensics were much to speak of back in the day, so they slapped a little animal blood on Joseph’s already colorful coat and handed it to Jacob.

So most of Joseph’s brothers had seized him, imprisoned him, sold him into slavery, or been a part of the cover up. There were no clean hands here, except perhaps for Benjaman.

Joseph went to work in Potiphar’s household and soon was running it. After Potiphar’s wife didn’t get what she wanted out of this young, healthy man, she set him up and Potiphar didn’t have much choice but to send him to prison, the main one that was where all of the political prisoners and those imprisoned at the whim of the sovereign were kept.

It wasn’t long and Joseph was running the joint. Eventually, what surely prompted all of his problems would get him out of prison.

Joseph had his own, and he eventually interpreted the dreams of others. Much earlier, he had one which seemed to mean that his whole family would bow down to him. That didn’t go over well with his older siblings.

But finally, Joseph came out of prison to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream, and the news wasn’t good.

Famine was coming and nobody knew what to do. The Pharaoh appointed Joseph to manage the crises. He did. He did it very well. He saved a lot of lives, including those of his own family.

But now, Jacob was dead and Joseph was the most powerful man in the world. And his brothers were worried.

Now that Dad’s gone, there is no way that Joseph is not going to pay us back for what we did to him.  There ain’t no way he can let that go.

But what happened? What actually happened?

The brothers hemmed and hawed over what to do and sent a humble message to Joseph. Joseph was heartbroken that his brothers feared him and his potential anger.

When they met in person about this, Joseph asked: Am I in the place of God?

Translation: Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, and I am not God. Joseph, for all he had been put through —starting with his brothers throwing him into a pit until they sold him —knew that revenge was not his.

If his brothers needed to be punished, that was 100% in God’s ballpark.

Joseph did not minimize his brothers' sins. He knew full well that they had gone well beyond brotherly fun into shameful, despicable actions.

What his brothers had done to him was unforgivable.

It was unforgivable!

And Joseph forgave them. Not only did he forgive them, but he did it as if there was no choice involved. He recognized full well how his brothers had sinned against him, and surely their father, and surely God; and yet, he forgave them.

It wasn’t really a choice. Joseph saw what God was doing through him and took this imprisonment stuff, this falsely accused stuff, this denied having some fun in his youthful days stuff, and just being betrayed by his own brother stuff, and moved it from the GET EVEN category to the COST OF DOING BUSINESS category.

There was no decision to be made. He forgave his brothers. God was at work here even in their evil intentions.

Joseph made two incredibly wise observations.

1.    I am not God, and only God gets to judge or condemn.

2.    Though I would not have written the script this way, I can see how many lives are being saved.

Joseph knew God’s place and his own place. God was and is sovereign. Joseph’s place was obedience, service, and trust.

If punishment was due his brothers, it would come at God’s hand, not his own. Realize that Joseph had saved the world’s bacon, and he could have gotten away with just about anything he wanted. He could have had his brothers skinned alive, beheaded, or made to watch Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.

Joseph forgave the unforgivable.

Joseph trusted that the good he was doing was worth the price he had paid. Joseph trusted God to be God and that he was God’s humble servant.

Joseph didn’t have to figure out who the Potter was and who got the role of the clay. Long before Jeremiah penned similar words, Joseph knew who was Sovereign.

Know that Joseph was very good at everything he did, but he never put himself in the place of God, like we often do.

Yeah, right?  When? When do we put ourselves in the place of God?

Whenever we don’t forgive, that’s when.

Remember what Jesus reiterated at the end of the Lord’s Prayer?  He said that you have to get this forgiveness stuff right. There is no wiggle room here, nor should there be.

For us to truly put our Master’s words into practice, we must forgive not only the minor trespass, but the unforgivable one as well.

Not to forgive is not to trust God. That dog don’t hunt.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When the Jewish leaders and the Roman governor dealt with Jesus and nailed him to a cross, Jesus asked his Father in heaven to forgive the people who did this because they didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

Jesus, hanging on the cross, forgave those who were responsible for the torture that the Son of God would endure a bit longer.

Jesus forgave the unforgivable.

God has forgiven our sins.

We are forgiven.

How can we claim to be any different from the ungodly, unbelieving world if we cannot forgive? How? Really?

The answer is that we cannot. We are just like the pagans who do fine in the tit-for-tat business, but don’t understand the mercy, grace, or generosity of the Lord.

The pagan world, gentile world, ungodly world still knows love and forgiveness, but it’s all give and take. It’s all a part of the secular negotiation that is life among the godless.

Are we different from those who do not know God?

You know that I’ve got to go here. Where?

The plank-in-the-eye obstacle to modern Christianity is to acknowledge God, acknowledge Jesus died for our sins, and acknowledge that God’s own Spirit lives within us, and then live unchanged lives because we hold our own understanding in such high esteem.

Joseph did not have Christ’s sacrifice. That was yet to come. He did not have the Spirit of God as we know the Spirit today. But Joseph knew that he could not live an ordinary life. He belonged to God and God put him on an incredible journey. That journey saved many lives.

Long before Paul noted that he considered the present suffering of his time insignificant to what was to come, Joseph saw that his hardships saved lives. He was uniquely prepared to do what he did. He had gifts from God that he put into practice, and everywhere he went, he was putting things in order and producing good fruit.

So, this morning, I have taken you to the end of the beginning. At the end of the first book of the Bible, we see Joseph forgiving the unforgivable.

It wasn’t like his brothers hid his coat. That would be mean.

It wasn’t like they abandoned him in a hole in the wilderness. That would just be hateful.

It wasn’t like they photobombed his phone. That would just be brothers being brothers.

They sold him into slavery to people headed out of the country. Joseph was as good as dead to his older brothers. How could they redeem him even if they changed their minds? What was done was done.

In the scale of one human abusing another, selling your own into slavery has to peg out the meter. Yes, it has competitors, as far as the bad things we do to each other go, but this one definitely falls into the unforgivable category.

And Joseph forgave his brothers, took care of them, and loved those who, by all rights, should have made themselves lifelong enemies.

Joseph forgave the unforgivable.

He looked at the situation and noted, “What you intended for evil, God used for good.”

I’m sure that Joseph would not have scripted his life this way, but he saw with his own eyes what God was doing through him. In that perspective, the wrongs against him paled in significance. In these ancient times, Joseph was the savior of much of the known world.

But evil is evil!

What was unmistakably evil is still evil, but God used it to save so many lives. How could Joseph not forgive? How could he not redeem his brothers? How could he not be governed by love?

Joseph forgave the unforgivable.

And so must we.

Our sins have been forgiven, and God didn’t pick and choose which ones to forgive. He didn’t say, “Oh, that one’s an exception. That one is just too horrendous. No way that I am forgiving that.” God forgave them all, even those that we consider unforgivable.

Whether God has a taxonomy of sin or not is a good Bible study. There is scripture to make this more challenging than it might seem, but as far as we are concerned, all of our sins are forgiven, regardless of what categorization we give them.

God has forgiven all of our sins.

And so must we forgive those who sinned against us in any way, even if we think it unforgivable.

Joseph trusted that God knew best how to use him, use his talents, use his life to bring glory to his name.

And so must we.

And so must we.

Amen.