Are you quick to forgive someone who has wronged you? Or do you lean toward holding a grudge, maybe even plotting revenge? Today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg explores radical forgiveness and explains why it should be a factor that identifies us as Christians, both as individuals and as a church. Let me invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me, if you would, to Genesis chapter 45. as we resume our studies there.
In the life of Joseph. We noted three things. One, that it was a demonstration. of human emotion. Secondly, that it was an illustration of divine providence.
and thirdly, that it was an expression of human forgiveness. And since, as is common, with my final point in a sermon. We really never did it justice at all. I concluded that it would be important for us to return today to this most. important and crucial matter of forgiveness.
because it is in the life of Joseph one of the most dramatic elements in all that unfolds for us. That this young lad, who at the age of 17 was hustled off into a foreign country. to live separated from his loved ones for the ensuing 22 years or so, should respond in the way that he did to these ugly brothers is really quite incredible. And therefore, upon reflection, I determined that since it was such an important point, we ought not to miss it. And so I want to think with you this morning particularly about this whole matter of forgiveness.
The unhappiness of countless numbers in our society today. can be traced to this singular root. Namely, that they have never experienced genuine forgiveness. Or in turn, that they themselves remain unwilling. to extend Forgiveness.
to those who seek it from them.
So that whether in the inability to receive it, or to grant it, Men and women's lives are held trapped And they in many cases have never understood that at the root of it all is this issue. Indeed, many who are attempting to help such individuals at the level of psychological counseling find themselves totally unable to crack the code. And the reason is that the root situation is a matter of spiritual dimension.
Now, one of the ways to test this is to say to myself, well, if I had a blank sheet of paper, write down there two phrases of three words each. That in common conversation and as an expression of human interaction, are Phrases which are hard to express, we would get a variety of responses. Out of all of them, I have a sneaking suspicion that if we were to engage in this honestly and not flippantly, then we would discover that there would be two recurring phrases which would appear on these sheets. Namely, I am sorry. And I forgive You.
Three plus three. Of the hardest words to get out of our mouths and really mean. in all of the English language. And every honest soul listening to me says, Gotcha. Because our pride is so Severe within our lives that we are reluctant, first of all, to ever admit to being wrong.
And at the same time, and perhaps even sadder, we are slow to grant forgiveness. to those who seek it from us. choosing instead to hold, we feel, some mechanism, some leverage over them whereby we may constantly be returning them to unforgiven indebtedness in our lives. To return evil for good said Archbishop Temple, is devilish. To return good for good is human.
to return good for evil is divine. And here in this 45th chapter of Genesis, we discover this expression of divinity. Here is Joseph who justifiably should be conferred with a master's degree in divinity. For here in this wonderful expression of divinity, he stands to the fore. He would have agreed, I'm sure, with John Stott's simple and pithy expression, forgiveness, says Stott, is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food is for the body.
Forgiveness is not some little extra, is not some little special dimension of Christian experience, it is at the very heart of it.
Now, what I'd like to do is to trace a line through this by noticing, first of all, the illustration. Then providing a word or two of explanation, and then finally making some points of application. The illustration is here before us in Genesis 45, and in order to set it in context, just for those who may not have followed the story, we should turn for a moment to Genesis 37. Because it is in Genesis 37 that we discover the jealousy of these brothers. being unleashed against their teenage brother.
17 year old boy. With a fairly fertile imagination. And also dreaming some pretty impressive dreams. Wearing A pretty jazzy coat that his father had given to him and didn't give to any of the others. And also reporting to his dad when his brothers were up to their tricks.
These things combined with others created within these brothers Such a spirit of jealousy and resentment and hatred that they determined amongst themselves that on the first opportunity they would seek to deal with this young upstart. And it is such an opportunity which emerges when Joseph is dispatched by his father to find his brothers and to greet them and then to return with a report of their well-being or otherwise to his dad. And in Genesis chapter 37, we're told in verse 17b that Joseph went after his brothers and he found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. Here comes the dreamer, they said to each other.
Come now, let's kill him. Throw him into one of those cisterns. And say that a ferocious animal devoured him, then we'll see what comes of his dreams. Not very much will come of his dreams. Clearly, dead people don't dream.
Now, this is mitigated by the intervention and subsequent conversation amongst the brothers, and the result of their Interaction reveals itself in verse 28 when seeing a group of Ishmaelite, Midianite traders come by, they decide on a compromise solution to be rid of him. They dig him up out of the cistern, and for 20 shekels of silver, which wasn't a particularly large amount of money, they sold him to the Ishmaelites who took him into Egypt. And as a result of ending up in Egypt, he finds himself on the slave block, and there he is sold into slavery. And for the last 20 plus years of his life, all that has happened to him, the good, the bad and the ugly, can be traced from a human perspective to the fact of the jealousy of his brothers.
Now, if we had been on the receiving end of that, what do you think would have happened on the day that we saw them come into our eye gaze? It is this which is so striking about the events that are before us. Because here in verse 21 and following of chapter 45, we have the actions on the part of Joseph. In response to the actions on the part of his brothers, he says to his brothers, Come close to me. And in the section there in the 21 through to 28, he gives them carts, he gives them provisions and clothes, and he gives them cash, and he gives them counsel.
Warning them against quarreling on their way back down to Egypt as he recognized how prone they were to get involved in all kinds of battles with one another.
Now what's happening here?
Well, it is simply an illustration of a forgiving heart. Admittedly, a dramatic illustration of a forgiving heart. For it is not difficult for us to conceive of a situation where if we had found ourselves there, we might have been prone to say to these guys, listen, you stuck it to me for the last 22 years. I haven't seen my dad in all this time. I haven't been able to speak my own language.
I haven't been able to see some of those girls that I remember in my mind's eye from my teenage years. I haven't known any of this, and so you will pay.
Now you're going to find out what it's like. And so some of you will die in prison. After all, you deserve it. in relationship to the way in which you treated me. But there is none of that.
None of that. In fact, if you look at verse 4, Joseph said to his brothers, Come close to me. Come close to me. Can you imagine when he said that? Do you think they all stepped up?
Yeah, okay, Joe. Here we are, man. I don't think so. I think they're going, okay, you go first, Ruben. You got us into this.
Simeon, get up there. You're the come on, get up. I'll just wait to the back. Go on. Because they didn't know what he was going to do when he said, come close to me.
He marriages. gave one of them each on the nose just when they came up. Take that. Come close to me. They could never have anticipated.
That he who had been reviled by them would ever want to be close to them again. And yet he says, I want you to come up here. And when they get up close, he says, I don't want you to be distressed. Can you imagine them looking at one another? Not only mystified by the fact that this guy in the Egyptian outfit.
is actually their brother. And as he takes off his robes and as he reveals himself to them, they are mystified by this, but even more, they are mystified that he would speak to them with such tenderness. Indeed, not only did he speak with tenderness, but he embraced them. And in verse 15, it says that he kissed all his brothers, and he wept over all his brothers, and he talked with all his brothers. This is dramatic.
The last 44 years of my life, I've seen some family feuds. Mercifully, not in my own family, but I've seen some family feuds, and I've listened to tales that would make your ears curl. She did this and she said that, and he wrote there, and he didn't return this, and he never paid that, and I gave him that, and this and that, and so and on. And you're dealing with some of the most embittered, sad, lonely people that you ever met in your life. And they are hanging on to these circumstances, and they flat-out refuse to forgive.
And they are chained. Enslaved. Not Joseph. In fact, Joseph, all these years before Jesus ever spoke the words, is a living illustration of what Jesus says in the Beatitudes and what Paul quotes in Romans chapter 12. If your enemy is hungry, Feed him.
If he is thirsty, Give him something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil. but overcome evil With good. This is a revolution. This is the Jesus Revolution.
He revolutionizes lives with his forgiveness in order that forgiven lives might be revolutionary in their impact. This is the great impact that the church is to make in the world. We're not supposed to be shouters and ballers and sign writers and marchers and shooters and protesters and aggravational people. We're supposed to be the forgiving gang. Do you honestly think that conservative evangelicalism in America is conceived of by the rank and file of the American culture in terms of this kind of forgiveness?
Not a chance. Not even close to it. They have us pegged as a special interest group. They have us set in a little economic and political box. And we have largely done it to ourselves.
Because, irrespective of our economic prowess, irrespective of our political convictions, Jesus did not come to set up a political economic kingdom. He did not come to reclaim America for Jesus Christ. You understand that? These people on the radio keep telling us we're going to reclaim America for Jesus Christ. America never was Jesus Christ's.
At any point in his history, How can you have any nation full of sinners? that belongs to Jesus Christ. Oh, I understand. We would like it to be more like this and more like that. And those are justifiable concerns.
And we would like these people to stop doing these heinous abortions. And definitely we would. And we want everybody to know, and so we should. But have you ever considered what would happen if we tried to overcome evil with good? See That's what Jesus was doing with the lepers.
That's why everybody was going, Lord, don't do that, Jesus. Goodness gracious. That's why the guy's got a bell. Don't you understand? We're the guys with the bells now.
We're ringing them to keep these people away from us. Overcome. Evil With good. Let your light so shine before man. That they will what?
See your Good. Deeds. Deeds. Not that they will hear your erudite doctrine. Not that they will immediately understand your world view.
Not that they will come on board with your view of the nation, but that they will see your good deeds and so come to glorify your Father who is in heaven. And that is exactly what's happening in Genesis 45. The brothers see the carts. They see the clothes, they see the cash, they hear the counsel, and they are mystified. That they who have offended so greatly against this.
Boy. should be on the receiving end. Of such a dramatic illustration, tangible illustration. I'm genuine. Forgiveness.
That's the illustration.
Now let me go to a word of explanation concerning it. There is a great danger in speaking in this way. There are multiple dangers in speaking in this way, but one of them is. that it can easily be responded to on the part of some as a form of moralism. In other words, as you listen to me speak, you think that you understand me to this point, and what you hear goes something like this: I've been a generally irreligious kind of sort, I haven't really done the sort of things that would have been best to do, but I have recently plugged back into religion and I'm trying to find out what it is you're supposed to do.
And what I hear you telling me to do is one of the things I need to do is to be a forgiving person, and I want to thank you for that. I'm going to try very hard to do that, starting right now. And I'll let you know next Sunday how I'm getting on. Absolutely flat-out misunderstanding of everything. That is moralism.
That is externalism. That is not the gospel. That is what people are listening to every Sunday in churches, and it drives them absolutely nuts. They don't want to come to church and be told again to do something that they know flat out they can't do. Pull your socks up.
Be a nice person. Stop being resentful, try and be a little kinder, be good fellows and girls, and have a great week. And out the door they go and say, How in the world am I supposed to do that? You see, that's the issue.
Now that's why we read from Matthew chapter 18 and I'd like you to turn there because this is a wonderful explanation as to the nature of forgiveness, both in receiving and in bestowing forgiveness. The question in verse 21 that is asked by Peter is a good question, and you can imagine that Peter thought it was a good question and was really quite proud of it. He usually was. And I can only assume that he thought this was a good one. Then Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me up to seven times?
You just imagine Peter wanting a pat on the back for being able to make it known to Jesus that he knew that he should forgive his brother. Hey. Good. And also, I know that in forgiving my brother, I'm not just supposed to do it once, I'm supposed to do it multiple times. And Jesus, I was wondering if seven would be okay.
So that I could kind of write the people's names at the top of a page, I could put check marks down the side, forgive them seven times, and then just take care of them from there. Would seven be all right? And Jesus says, listen, forgiveness is not a matter of calculation, it is a matter of the heart. You don't forgive your wife or forgive your children on the basis of how many forgivenesses you're giving out on any given day, do you, I hope? We don't love on that basis.
Now let me see. The battery here is running down. I've only got a small capacity left for the day. We don't do that. It's not a matter of calculation.
It is a matter of hard attitude. And so Jesus responds and he says, I tell you, it's not seven times, but it's 77 times. Or in the Varian translation, it is seven times 70. I say somebody 490 times. That's good.
I like that. I'll start from now because I got a few people that are up in the high 300s already. And I've only got about another 127 to go with most of them. And then I can be done with that as well. That's not the point.
It's not an issue of is it 488 or 491 or 497. Jesus takes seven, which is a perfect number in biblical terms, takes another perfect number, which is 10, multiplies them together, which gives them 70. You're tracking with me. And then he multiplies 70 by 7, which gives them 490. And it's simply a picture of forgiveness on an unlimited level.
He's saying this. Hey, Peter. If you really understood forgiveness, you wouldn't even be asking the question. You wouldn't be asking if you could limit it to seven times. He says Let me tell you what it's like.
The kingdom of heaven, he says, is like a king who wanted to settle accounts, and then you have the story right there before you. It's a wonderful story. A guy who owes an incalculable debt is set free. And then he goes out and finds a friend of his who owes him a few dollars, and he says, Hey, give me the money. The chap says, I can't repay you, so he starts to choke him.
And then deciding it wouldn't be a good idea to choke him, presumably because he'd never get the money, he hasn't thrown in the jail. until he can wait for his money. Despite the fact that he had been forgiven an incalculable debt, he's going to choke somebody to death for a few bucks. Oh, I can't imagine that, can you?
Now forget the money for a minute. In Christ we have for been forgiven an incalculable debt, right? You gotta choke your brother or your sister? For a few offences? The lesson here, the primary lesson, is simply this.
That is in Matthew 18. an explanatory statement on Genesis 45. Let me give it to you in as few words as I can. prompted by gratitude. The forgiven sinner must always do everything in their power.
To forgive whoever has offended against them. That is the principle stated.
Now in seeking to unpack that principle or that lesson, there are, if you like, subsidiary lessons which are part and parcel of it. Number one. We are all God's debtors. You want a verse beside that? Put Romans 3, 23.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We have all failed to make the pass mark? We have all missed the mark in terms of the target of his righteousness. and we have all overstepped the boundaries of his moral law. If you doubt that, take the Ten Commandments and read them through and see if you can get past number one without having to acknowledge that you followed it up.
That's the first thing. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg. We'll learn more about forgiveness tomorrow. You know, it's a privilege for us at Truth for Life to teach God's Word every day to millions of listeners all around the world. If you have partnered with us prayerfully or financially, your support is what makes this global outreach possible, and we are grateful for your faithfulness.
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Thanks for listening.
Sometimes forgiveness can feel impossible. Maybe the wound is just so deep or long-standing you can't seem to forgive. Tomorrow we'll learn why we should not give up trying. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
