11-23-2025 - FORGIVENESS -YOU MEANT IT FOR EVIL, GOD USES IT FOR HIS GOOD - (Joseph Series) Genesis 44-45

 MESSAGE BY PASTOR ROB INRIG

FROM BETHANY BAPTIST IN RICHMOND, BC.

I invite you to pray together: O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need: We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servants for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon them with the eyes of thy mercy ( Vicky O, Nancy R, Tere G, Liz N, Stevie A, Socrates D, Sara's mom H, Margarita G,   Rosy Ch, Patricia L. Lina J.  Magda- Laci M.  Gloria F, Miguel A H. Silvia H, Brianda M, Alejandro M, Natalia M)   Comfort them with a sense of thy goodness; preserve them from the temptations of the enemy; and give them patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore them to health, and enable them to lead the residue of their life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally they may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

You can add names from family and friends who need prayer

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If there are two vitally important expressions that need to be heard in any great relationship, they are, I’m sorry and You are right, those words spoken more freely by wives than husbands.  Sad to say, when we men do say them, they often lack the full ownership they deserve.  We wanting the storm to pass and blue skies to quickly return.  

The truth is we often downplay our wrongs and violations, making them less than what they are.  Our inclination to tone down or shuffle away from blame, sometimes trying to take refuge in things like, Well, that’s not what I was trying to do or what I meant. 

Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom tells of her struggles with forgiveness when she wrote, “I wish I could say that after a long and fruitful life, traveling the world, I had learned to forgive all my enemies. I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me and on to others. But they don’t. If there is one thing I’ve learned since I’ve passed my 80th birthday, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior – but only draw them fresh from God each day.

Maybe I’m glad it’s that way, for every time I go to Him, He teaches me something else. I recall the time – and I was almost 70 - when some Christian friends whom I loved and trusted did something which hurt me. You would have thought that, having been able to forgive the guards at Ravensbruck (Nazi concentration camp), forgiving friends would be child’s play. It wasn’t.

For weeks I seethed inside. But at last I asked God again to work His miracle in me. And again it happened: first the cold-blooded decision, then the flood of joy and peace. I had forgiven my friends; I was restored to my Father.

Then, why was I suddenly awake in the middle of the night, rehashing the whole affair again? My friends, I thought. People I loved. If it had been strangers, I wouldn’t have minded so. I sat up and switched on the light. ‘Father, I thought it was all forgiven. Please help me do it’ But the next night I woke again. They’d talked so sweetly too! Never a hint of what they were planning. ‘Father! I cried in alarm. ‘Help me!’’

Help came in the form of a kindly pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. "Up in that church tower, " he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. Slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops.

Many years later, an American with whom I had shared church bell principle came to visit me in Holland and met the people involved. “Aren’t those the friends who let you down?” he asked as they left my apartment.

“Yes,” I said a little smugly. “You can see it’s all forgiven.”

“By you, yes,” he said. “But what about them? Have they accepted your forgiveness?”

“They say there’s nothing to forgive! They deny it ever happened. But I can prove it!” I went eagerly to my desk. “I have it in black and white! I saved all their letters and I can show you”

“Corrie!”  “Aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? And are the sins of your friends still etched in black and white?”

I did not go to sleep that night until I had gone through my desk and pulled out those letters–curling now with age and fed them all into my little coal-burning grate. As the flames leaped and glowed, so did my heart.

Corrie living out what CS Lewis observed, Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

If we were a, ‘Shout out loud, Preach it brother’ sort of church, I think Lewis’ observations would get many boisterous, Amens!  Because we know that despite a myriad of sermons exhorting us, forgiveness is a lot easier to do in principle than in practice.

Even as the forgiveness word is spoken, many are flooded with memories of wrongs done.

Hard places.  Unfair places.  Undeserved places.

Well welcome once more to Joseph’s story.  But this morning considering not as spectators –  filling notebooks with principles to believe and slogans to quote rather to sit at table in a reunion of brothers – with whom we break bread.  With those who have entered our lives and left us, not with warm thoughts but with scars.  

Practically, that as things come to mind we take note of and metaphorically show these to the Father. Notes we place in the Father’s hands for Him to take, allowing Him to do what we cannot.  That with God’s help, this might be our freedom day.  Not in concept but in fact.  

So where are we in the story?  10 brothers feeling good, their sacks full of grain and Benjamin, an unsuspecting entry in the drama playing out between brothers.  Only at this point in the story, much has changed.  The cast of characters is the same but the character of the cast is significantly different than what we’ve previously seen.  

But before Joseph can write the closing act of how he wants this story to end, he must know that his brothers are not who they used to be. This needed not merely to determine how he will respond but needed for God’s plan to unfold. Had his brothers fully owned the evil they had done, had they come to the place of repentance, not regret, not excuse, not justification? 

To determine this, Joseph sets the stage where Benjamin, the only one who justifiably can claim innocence, is presented as guilty while the 10 who rightly bear guilt are presented as innocent. His condition, With whomever of your servants it (Joseph’s silver cup) is found, let him die, and we also will be my lord’s slaves. And he said, “Now also let it be according your words; he with whom it is found shall be my slave, and you shall be blameless.”  44:9,10

The staging is brilliant, an innocent wrongly treated; the undeniably guilty this time actually acting as honest men.  The temptation before them? if they wanted to be rid of Rachel’s side of the family putting to rest dad’s obvious favoritism, this was their moment.  The brothers Joseph had known would have jumped at the opportunity - leave Benjamin and walk away.

The scene is powerful.  When asked to open their sacks in search of Joseph’s missing cup, they did so with confidence, knowing their hands were clean.  A 3-day stay in prison had seen to that, stripping away any pretense of being ‘good’.  Their look at Simeon, bound and abandoned, had seen to that, stripping away layers of deceit.  God had broken open their lives, and their hiding places were done. What is this that God has done to us?  

So when time came to open the sacks, they put everything on the line, If you find any of us to be guilty, let him die! :9  This, a statement of assurance, not guilty of what you ask while God desired to reveal their far greater guilt. How assured they must have felt as bag after bag was opened.  Until Benjamin’s bag was untied – this they hadn’t accounted for. 

Now look at the response – They tore their clothes and returned to the city.   The previous piece of torn clothing we read of was ripped and shredded.  Goat’s blood, mixed with dirt, was angrily ground into the fabric.  Their plan required it. Their hate demanded it. If they were going to remove their brother from their lives, if they were going to give away his life and send him far from them, they had to remove all evidence.  And tearing his robe that satisfied both their anger and their need was the great coverup in which they hid. 

But notice, this time, their robes were torn.  This time their hearts turned not to concocting a story but to rescue.  

What can we say?  What can we speak?  How can we justify?  GOD has found out the iniquity of your servants:16.  This is kind of an interesting statement, don’t you think?   Really, do you think all this time, you have been able to hide your sin from God?

If you want evidence that these were changed men, here it is.  We will give our lives for him.  Don’t take him, take us.  We are the guilty ones!  God has made it known.  God has made it clear.  They discovering what we also need to know that when we hide our guilt, we become imprisoned in its lies. The truth is God won’t step in to forgive what we refuse to admit.  

For a moment, let’s unpack that statement.  When we repent and ask Jesus to forgive our sin, God immediately places His Spirit within us and we are made His children.  In that moment, I have forever, Been set free from the law of sin and death Rom 8:2.  That is, the death penalty I deserved for my sin has been paid by Jesus.  I am free but being set free is not the same as living free. The chains have been unlocked but they continue to have a hold on my life because I keep the chains close, their rattle convincing me I am still bound. When we hide, refusing to admit our guilt, Increasingly that rattle is  heard in the foreground, lessening the volume of the far more important, In the power of Jesus’ blood you have been set free.  

In Joseph’s brothers’ case, it took prison to change the sound they were listening to. Before prison, the brothers’ encounter with God was paper-thin, but now in this crisis event, Judah does the unthinkable – offering his life to save Benjamin.  He is no longer hiding from his sin. No, giving the best account, and as Joseph listens, he hears the account that was given to his father. Surely he was torn in pieces:28.

I want you to notice something else dramatically different from the brothers’ first encounter with Joseph. It’s not in what you read, but rather it’s in what you don’t read.  Not once in Judah’s entreaty for Benjamin’s life does he say, We are honest men.  In chapter 42 We are honest men is referenced 5 times.  Not now.  Now the brothers are under no illusion who they are before God.  There’s no hiding, no excusing, no justifying – just transparency. Transparency as God convicts them of their sin. So in 33, when Judá pleads, Let Benjamin go – I will be the price, he is fully aware of his sin and theirs.  As a result, when these men come before Joseph, they beg for mercy, not justice.  Finally they understand – they don’t have a righteousness on which they can stand.

You have to understand, as Judah tells the story, he has no idea if Benjamin is innocent. But his confession isn’t given for Benjamin’s sin; it’s given for his sin that he can no longer deny.  Hearing what Judah has to say, Joseph breaks.  Finally, he hears what he has needed to hear.  And with this, his brothers are about to hear the incomprehensible.

But not before Joseph first clears the room.  He’s aware of the words he will speak and the reaction those words will bring. Words about an evil done and the justice that should be given. This confrontation between those who have wronged and the one who’s been wronged yet this time will be private. No audience to keep the offence alive. No audience to have others know how we’ve been wronged.

There are so many reasons Joseph’s actions serve as an example of forgiveness.  He wasn’t prepared to draw others into sin.  He didn’t want to infect others with attitudes of judgment. By his actions, he was doing his part to make sure payback wasn’t going to be part of his world, nor would he allow it to be the world of anyone else that surrounded him.  

Hard? - You bet.  Courageous? - in the extreme.

With God’s help, Joseph gives us a picture of what forgiveness is to look like.  

1^st, forgiveness protects. It doesn’t broadcast wrongs. It doesn’t go out and rally others for numerical support.  Forgiveness releases what we want to hold onto, and as it is released, we are set free.  Forgiveness that is given:

PRIVATELY - you before God and where the situation calls for it, you with the other   AND

DECISIVELY – not something done when we feel it’s right but something we do because we know it is right.  God knows it’s not easy and often that it will take time and sometimes is a process.  He also knows that we will give it to Him and then take it back again but His assurance, Cast your cares upon Him for He cares for you 1 Pet 5:7, Ps 55:22.  Our model is a far greater than Joseph who tells us to, Forgive one another just as Christ has forgiven you Eph 4:32.  Jesus who took our sin knowing that it is the only way we could know life.  

He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His faithful love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us  Ps 103:10-12

As Joseph shut the door, he was flooded with forgiveness that not only was felt, now it would now be spoken.  Through uncontrollable tears,  I am Joseph.  Though we often read this as a, ‘isn’t this a great’ moment, I doubt the brothers saw it this way - they're backing away, trying to position one brother in front of another as they slink closer and closer to the door.

• ¿Well, how about that? Guess you really nailed it - with those dreams of yours.  You are standing there, and we are bowing before you. Who knew? 

• About that coat and the pit -  it was so terribly hot, and we, dehydrated and not thinking straight, weren’t ourselves.  

2^nd forgiveness doesn’t hide or minimize the offence.  Joseph is clear - You sold Gen 45:4,5, and once again, You meant it for evil Gen 50:20. From the first words of hate to later actions resulting from that hate, WHAT YOU DID WAS EVIL.  Joseph positions his forgiveness as something that is offered with an eye wide open look at the offences done.  His actions weren’t in any way a dismissive ‘move on’, ‘Just forgive and forget’.  

In some cases, forgiveness will mean that a greater justice still needs to be served. Consequences may justifiably come.  But our hand of judgment is removed.  Our grip on the executioner’s sword is released.  Why? Because He doesn’t ask us to play God, He asks us to please God.  Any required justice is for God to determine, not us.  

It’s interesting that as Joseph forgave, he was given the ability to see God’s purposes in what happened. In Gen 45, Joseph observes: God sent me and made me:5 & 8, and God has made me. :9 With this said, he had 13 years of waiting before he could more clearly see what God had been doing.  The truth is, often this side of heaven, we may never know.   

 But God’s presence in the events he experienced is what allowed Joseph to live free, despite circumstances that could have destroyed him.  I get it - surely there must be a better way to get me to the place where I will fully enter into a life of joyous adventure with Christ?  Perhaps, but difficult people and problematic events are often what God uses to get our attention. God often does not do what I like to get me to be the person He wants me to be.

To be clear, I am NOT saying that God brings evil into our lives.  He does not!  Evil is not in His character.   But He will come in to heal what the enemy shouts is untreatable.  He will come in to break what the enemy shouts is irreparable.  He will come in to redeem what the enemy shouts is irredeemable.

3^rd  In our granting of forgiveness, God may want to do the miraculous 

Living in the freedom of forgiveness, don’t miss what Joseph can say in 45:7, God sent me before you TO PRESERVE A REMNANT IN THE EARTH.  

These words are prophetic, just as the dreams given to him years before were prophetic. Joseph would see the first part of this remnant fulfilled, the preservation of Joseph’s family, he to them and they to him.  What he didn’t see was how, despite their failures, this remnant of brothers would become God’s chosen ones, the 12 tribes of Israel,, whose descendants we know as the nation of Israel.  Like his brothers, their descendants will still mess up, will still disobey, will still do wrong but make no mistake, Israel is prominent in God’s plan for what has been seen and what is still to be seen in the future.  

There’s another part of this remnant that Joseph couldn’t possibly have known - that you and I are the beneficiaries of this promise.  This remnant speaks of you and I who have come to faith in Jesus and because of that we have become partakers in the everlasting promise God made to the Jews – Through you all the nations will be blessed Gen 22:18.  Paul tells us in Romans 11 that Gentiles have been grafted in, not to replace Israel and what God promised to the Jews but we with them as, partakers of the God’s promises. Consider what we read in the opening words of the New Testament:  The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.  Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers  Matt 1:1-2.

Is this amazing or what?  God is taking Judah and his brothers and doing the miraculous.  God takes the broken and messed up.  God takes the damaged and the undeserved. 

This lineage transformed, leading to a King, the King above all kings.  Jesus Messiah.  Coming through the line of Judah, a man who in so many ways seems unqualified, but a man who, having tasted forgiveness, was transformed into a man who stood in the gap, offering his life as a sacrifice for Benjamin.  In chapter 49 we see Judah’s prominence in Jacob’s blessing of Judah, The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the staff from between his feet, until Shiloh Messiah comes and the allegiance of the nations is his :10.  In Revelation when John speaks of Jesus, our reigning and conquering King, the connection to Judah is clear, Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”  Rev 5:5

Those chosen by God as His forgiven ones who He in His love and abounding grace, makes new.  The truth is when we forgive, we have no idea what that may mean not just for us but for the other as well.  We have no idea how God will unfold His plan through you or through someone else.  Our part to trust in God’s goodness to do all things well.  Our granting of forgiveness steps into what God may want to work in our lives as well as in the lives of others.

Forgiveness - messy?  You bet.  Hard?  Almost always.  Undeserved?  Probably.  

But in the mess, God is doing His greatest work

As in us and through us He brings new beginnings and new lives.

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