From the Pit to the Pardon

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[MUSIC] I know a name, that inside us, for we waste, I know a name, that gives me all the great, I know a name. This is the only name that saves, and it's worthy of all praise, I call you Jesus, I call you I call you healer, risen and reigning in power, something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you Jesus, I call you I call you singer, worthy of glory forever, something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you Jesus, I have a key, with a link and an overhead, we roll the keys, with His holy mischievous, with His lead. That is crushed as vermence in, our resurrection may I hear, I call you Jesus, I call you I call you healer, risen and reigning in power, something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you Jesus, I call you I call you singer, worthy of glory forever, something comes out of the grave. Every time I call the name, change, rain, try, close, wait. Every time I call the name, the case, of the shame. Every time I call the name, change, rain, try, close, wait. Every time I call the name, the case, of the shame. Every time I call the name. I call the name, as soon as I... We're all death is now your sleep. And we're all brave, you're big, you're big, you're big, you're big. We're all death is now your sleep. And we're all death is now your sleep. And we're all brave, you're big, you're big, you're big. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. Death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie, death is gonna lie in the name of Jesus. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] ♪ And to me it's all part ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] So as you know, interacting with people is a major part of life, having to interact with all kinds of different people. You are born into a family, and in that family you have parents, you have a mom and a dad, and you have siblings, and you are somewhere in that birth order, younger brothers and sisters, or older brothers and sisters, and you have to interact with those family members. And then when you get old enough, you go to school, and then you have teachers and classmates. And I think a huge part of school is learning how to socialize, learning how to get along with all kinds of different people. And in school you may be on a sports team, or you may be a part of the band, or some sort of club, and you have to interact with different people.

And then you get old enough, and you enter the workforce. And in the workforce you have employers, and employees, and customers, and people that you have to interact with. And then you have your own family, and then you have to get along with your spouse, and you have to get along with your children. So you are always interacting with people, and there are two situations in life that you cannot avoid. The first situation is needing to be forgiven, because we all mess up. We all have sin in our life, and we all have times in our life when we need other people to forgive us. And then of course the second one is needing to forgive. We have been hurt by someone else. Someone has done something to us, and it has hurt us, and then we have to forgive. And forgiveness is not easy. Forgiveness is hard. It demands a deep character to forgive. Have you ever been hurt or disappointed? Has anyone ever done something to you that you needed to forgive? Think about the person who hurts you the most, and you either have forgiven them or not. And if you haven't forgiven them, then resentment and bitterness has taken root in your heart. Forgiveness is very hard to do. C.S. Lewis said, forgiveness is a great idea until we have someone to forgive. The Bible gives us real life examples, people who face real hurt, and people who, because they face real hurt, they have a choice. They can be a victim to their situation and what's happened to them, or they can be a victor. They can be victorious in the situation they're dealt with. Today, I want to talk about I want to talk about Joseph. We've been studying Joseph in our Sunday school class and I just love Joseph and his life and the way that God just kept moving him along into these different stages of his life. I think we can learn a lot from Joseph. Joseph is one of the patriarchs. He's the fourth of the patriarchs. We have Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and in Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 through 3 there's this covenantal promise that God makes with Abraham telling him that he will be the father of this great nation

and that he will be blessed and his people will be blessed. And so we start with Abraham and then he has a son. Finally he has a son named Isaac. Very little written about Isaac. But then Isaac has Jacob. And there's a lot written about Jacob and not all of it is good. Jacob is the deceiver. Jacob messes up a lot. But then Jacob has his sons and one of his sons is Joseph. And Jacob sees something special in Joseph. But as we look at these patriarchs we see a lot of dysfunction. We see a lot of dysfunctional families. Anyone here come from a dysfunctional family? Yes, definitely I'm proud of that. No. Anyone here currently in a dysfunctional family? Don't raise your hand. Don't raise your hand on that one. Okay, here's the truth. We use this word all the time. A dysfunctional family, dysfunctional. Well, the truth is we're all dysfunctional. We all have dysfunctions. Why? Because we're all sinners. So we have sinners raising sinners. Sinners having sinners and then raising sinners. So there's all kinds of dysfunction. But in the patriarchs you really see some dysfunctional families. Joseph's family was no exception.

Joseph came from Jacob and so there was 13 children. He had 11 brothers and one sister. And there was four different mothers. Two were Jacob's wives and two were Jacob's concubine. And his mother, Joseph's mother, was his father's favorite. So therefore, Joseph was the favorite son. And because he was the favorite son, his brothers hated him. They had jealousy towards Joseph. You know the damage that that does when parents play favorites with their children. And there's many different reasons. There's many different possible reasons why a parent may have a favorite child. Sometimes a parent has a favorite child because of just guilt. Maybe it's a broken family. Maybe it's a blended situation. And so the parent feels guilty about what they've put their child through and so that child becomes their favorite because of the guilt that they have in their life. Maybe a child becomes the favorite because of-- they see that child and they see a lot of themselves in that child. They see a lot of similarities in that child. And so they have that child as their favorite because they see that child just like themselves. Or sometimes the favorite child is the one who is different than the parent. And so they see something in that child that they wish they had in themselves. They wish they had more of in themselves.

And so that child becomes their favorite. Another reason you could have a favorite child-- a parent could have a favorite child-- is you know, parenting takes work. Parenting is hard. It's hard work. And so if a parent is passive, they're getting kind of lazy and passive in their parenting. The easy child becomes their favorite. The one that takes the less effort becomes their favorite. So there's many different reasons why parents would have a favorite child. We believe that Jacob loved Joseph so much because of who his mother was, Rachel. And Jacob loved Rachel. And then later Rachel would give birth to Benjamin. And she died in childbirth. But you can see where having a favorite does damage to the sibling relationships. And so the brothers hated him. They hated Joseph. And so they threw him into a pit. And it doesn't end there. Then they sell him into slavery. Joseph is only 17. And he has sold for 20 pieces of silver. And then for Joseph, he's been sold into a pit, sold into slavery, and then things get worse. It's kind of like Murphy's law, right? Things just keep getting worse.

Whatever bad could happen, happens. That's Joseph's life. He became a slave for 11 years, and then he gets accused of rape. Even though he's innocent, he's accused, and so he's still thrown into prison. But God keeps working in his life. God is always working in Joseph's life, and eventually he becomes the prime minister of Egypt. And now he has this encounter with his brothers. His brothers are now at his mercy. He has all the power, and so he can do anything to them. So it brings up this question, what will Joseph do with his bitterness? What will Joseph do with all this bad stuff that has happened to him? Now he can take revenge. He has the power, he has the ability to get even, even the score, to take revenge. You know, bitterness, unforgiveness, can just sit in our heart and do so much damage. Someone has described bitterness as like rat poison. You drink the rat poison expecting the rat to die. Who's the one that really suffers? The person with the unforgiveness. And so we want to look at the story today at the end of Joseph's life. So there is more written about Joseph than any other of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, starting in chapter 37 all the way through chapter 50. But I want to pick up the story in Genesis chapter 50,

skipping down to verse 15. So if you have your Bibles turned there to Genesis chapter 50, beginning with verse 15, it says this. When Joseph's brothers had seen that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back in full for the wrong, which we did to him? So they sent instruction to Joseph saying, your father commanded us before he died saying, this is what you shall say to Joseph, please forgive, I beg you, the offense of your brothers and their sin for they did you wrong. And now please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father. And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers came and fell down before him and said, behold, we are your servants. But Joseph said to them, do not be afraid, for am I in God's place? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. In order to bring about this present result to keep many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid, I will provide for you and your little ones. So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. So that's how Joseph responds. So what I want to do now is I want to take a wide angle lens, I want to pull back a little bit and pull out some principles

from this great piece of scripture. Four things that we can do instead of having bitterness and resentment in our life. And so the first one is this, we can never play God, never play God. You know what that is? That's control. A lot of times we have a tendency, we have a desire to control things. We call it fix, manage and control. When something is wrong in our life, we want to fix it, we want to manage it and we want to control it. In verse 15 of this text, it says, when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong, which we did to him. Now, you got to understand that Joseph was already reunited with his brothers and his fathers. They had lived together at this point for 17 years. And Joseph already, when he had to forgive them. And long series of events, but he chooses to treat them with kindness and forgive them. But then his father, Jacob, has died. And there's something about grief. When we go through grief, when someone we love dies, that stirs up all this emotion. So Joseph's father, Jacob, has died,

and he loved his father. And his father loved him. They were very close. And now he has died. And so Joseph is thinking back. You could just imagine Joseph thinking about his life and thinking about all the time that he missed with his father because of what his brothers did to him. All that time missed out with his father. And so now the brothers, they knew that. And so they thought certainly revenge was coming. Go on to verse 16. It says, "So they sent a message to Joseph saying, 'Your father charged before he died saying, 'Thus you shall say to Joseph, please forgive, I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong. And now please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father." And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants." But Joseph said to them, "Do not be afraid. For am I in God's place?" And so we see confession from the brothers. And then we see Joseph's response. And it's so easy to kind of put ourselves in Joseph's sandals and begin to think,

what would we do? What would you do if you were in Joseph's sandals? What would you do if your brother sold you out like that? And then your father died and you didn't get all that quality time with him? What would you do if you were in Joseph's sandals? Never play God. Second principle is we can never forget that God is our provider. Never forget that God is our provider. So here's an important statement. Our beliefs always determine our behavior. The way that we believe determines the way that we act. That's why it's so important to have the right beliefs. So often, I admit to you so often, in my life, I have to repent of my own self-reliance. So often, I rely on my own strength. I take things into my own hands. I'm the first go-to. I think to myself, I can do this myself. I can take care of this myself. And I have that pull myself up by the bootstraps kind of mentality. Am I the only one that has that? So every day, I have to repent. I have to repent of my own self-reliance, relying on my own knowledge, my own power, my own strength. But what is the truth? The truth is that God is a better provider than me. God is so much more knowledgeable and more powerful than me.

The first part of verse 20 says, as for you, Joseph says, as for you, you meant evil against me. Notice how Joseph doesn't sugarcoat it. He doesn't make it flowery. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He acknowledges the hurt. He acknowledges the hurt that he has. He's been thrown into a pit by his brothers. He was sold into slavery. He was thrown into prison. All these things happened to Joseph. But then we get Genesis 50-20. Genesis 50-20 is the Old Testament version of Romans 8-28. We love Romans 8-28. And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. That's what Genesis 50-20 is. God working all things out. No matter what happens, God can use it for good. This is not some sort of lucky thing. This is God being sovereign. And I love that truth about God that He is sovereign. That's a great theological truth about God. God is sovereign, meaning that He's never caught off guard. He's never surprised. God is completely in control. Nothing that ever happens to us or choices that we make throws God off.

He's in complete control. He is sovereign. Never forget that God is our provider. Third truth is that we can never doubt God's plan. Never doubt God's plan. See, we always have this choice. It's God's will versus our will. And do we want more our will to be done? Or do we want God's will to be done? The second part of verse 20 says, "But God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to keep many people alive." What was being accomplished? God's plan. What God desired was being accomplished. And sometimes a bunch of things happen in our life. A bunch of situations come our way. And we don't understand why it's happening. In the moment we don't understand. But then we're able to pull back and some time takes place. And we're able to see what God was doing all along. The way that God was working all along. So here's my illustration. Our youngest daughter Emma, she is the baker of the family. So she's the one that loves to bake. And so she makes some really good banana bread. So I love having banana bread for breakfast. That's one of the best things that Emma makes. And she makes some really good oatmeal cookies. She knows that that's one of Daddy's favorites.

So she makes some good oatmeal cookies. And she's going to try something this week. This week's my birthday. And Emma asked, "What do you want for your birthday?" And I said, "What I want for my birthday is I want you to bake me a cake." And I want you to bake a chocolate cake. And I want you to put tons and tons of frosting on it when you're done. Because you know Daddy's sweet tooth. And that's what I want. And so she's going to try baking a cake. This week. I have a little bit of idea what she's going to do with that cake. She's going to have all the ingredients. She's going to put butter, sugar, a lot of sugar. Flour, eggs. She's going to put that all in a bowl. And she's going to mix it up in that bowl. And so all those ingredients are going to be in the bowl all mixed up. And then I'm going to come along and I'm probably going to take a spoonful of that. And it won't be good yet. It won't be good yet. It's got to be baked. It's got to be heated up. When it's heated up, the right temperature really heated up and being patient with it. And then put all the great frosting on it. Then it's good. See with our lives, we have all these ingredients. All these things come towards us.

And by themselves they're no good and we don't understand why they're coming into our life. And all these bad things are happening and we don't understand. But then it gets heated up. Comes under the fire. It gets baked, cooked, and then it's right. And we see what God was doing all along. That's Joseph's life. That's our life. You know, I love those t-shirts that say, "But God." You ever experienced that? Bunch of things, come your way, bunch of hard things, come your way, hard experiences. You don't understand why those ingredients are in your life. You don't understand what's happening. You may even complain a lot, be frustrated with it. But God. And you feel like, "Man, you're never going to get out of this situation. It's just so difficult and life is so challenging. It's so hard. But God, maybe you've experienced some great trauma in your life. You've experienced some really hard things. But God, look at what God has done in your life. Look how far God has taken you. Look at what God has taken you through. And I want to tell you, whatever trauma that you have experienced, whatever difficulties you have experienced, this is not your identity. This is not who you are. God has been in complete control. is bigger than your plan for you. So never doubt God's plan. Never doubt that God is working in your life, even when it doesn't make sense, know that God is working in your life. And then the final principle is that we can never question God's purpose.

Never question God's purpose. Purpose is a great word. I hear people all the time asking about purpose, wanting to know purpose, the why. Why we do what we do. What is my purpose? People ask me, "I want to know what my purpose is. What is my purpose for life?" You know what Jesus told us? What our purpose is. Jesus came, he lived a perfect, sinless life. He became the perfect sacrifice for us. And he taught us about life. And he taught us how to live our life. He taught his disciples. He said, "This is the greatest commandment. Out of all the commandments, this is the greatest one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is the greatest commandment. Love God and love people. That is our purpose, to love God and to love people. And then Jesus taught the great commission. We call it the great commission. Jesus said, "I'm commissioning you to go and make disciples." Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go and make disciples. I am commissioning you to go. So that is our purpose. To love God, to love people, and to go and make disciples. You want to know what you're called to do, what your purpose is, to love God, to love people, to go and make disciples. We're called to worship him. We're called to be a part of a church, of a body of believers. We are called to be discipled in the truth, to grow in Christ's likeness. We are called to minister to other people, to use our gifts to minister to other people. And we're called to evangelize, to tell others the good news of Jesus. Every single Christian has this purpose. The great commandment and the great commission sums it all up. And then individually, you want to know what you are called to do as an individual. We teach classes in our church called shape. John Triplett teaches classes called shape. And knowing your shape helps you to know what you're called to do. So S-H-A-P-E. You have spiritual gifts. Every single believer has spiritual gifts. And then heart. The H is for heart. You have passions. Things that you're excited about. Things that you're passionate about. And then A, abilities. You have skills and abilities that God wants to use. And then personality. The P is for personality. We all have unique personalities that God wants us to use in ministry. And then to me, the most important one is experiences. We all have different experiences. And especially our heart experiences. Our bad experiences. God wants to use those experiences for His glory to minister to other people. And that's what Genesis 50-20 is all about. That's what Joseph's life is all about. Verse 20, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to keep many people alive." See, God doesn't play

games with your life. He has a purpose for your life. Just like God had a purpose for Joseph's life, God has a purpose for your life. If you go back a few chapters into Genesis chapter 45, verse 7, it says, "So God sent me ahead of you." This is Joseph speaking to his brothers. "So God sent me ahead of you to ensure for you a remnant on the earth, to keep you alive by a great deliverance." See, he wasn't just trying to save his family. The purpose for Joseph wasn't just to save his family. He was setting things up for this group of people for the Savior to come. And so, Joseph, at the time as he's going through all these things, he didn't know the plan. He didn't know how it was all going to work out. "He had to go from the pit to the palace, "to the prison, to being this person of power. "But God was orchestrating the whole thing out." And verse 21, it says, "So therefore, do not be afraid. "I will provide for you and your little ones." So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Forgiveness isn't just a word that is spoken. Forgiveness is an action that is taken. It requires action. Now it's interesting as we look at Joseph's life and we see what God did with Joseph's life, Joseph had two sons of his own. And his first son was Manasseh. And you know how names in the Bible are so important. Names are there for a reason. And so Joseph's first son, Manasseh, the name Manasseh means to forget, to forget. Joseph didn't hold a grudge. He didn't look back at all the bad things that had happened to him, focused on God. And then Joseph had a second son. And that second son's name was Ephraim.

The name Ephraim means fruitful, fruitful. Meaning that Joseph was blessed. He was so blessed by the Father. God was working the whole time. Even though Joseph was going through all those things, God was working. And God is working in our lives. And so we can never question God's purpose because he knows better than us. Our job is to take care of our hearts and make sure that as we go through the trials of life that bitterness and resentment don't take root in our hearts. Have you ever really been hurt by someone? And then you knew you had to forgive that person. That happened to me. Someone hurt me real, real deeply. Real deeply. They crushed me in what they did. And it was devastating. And I knew that I had to forgive. And it took a long time. It took a long, long time. And there were times where I thought that I had forgiven that person. All right, I'm good. I finally forgiven that person. And then they would do something else. And that anger, that bitterness would come right back. And I never been so frustrated

because I thought I had gotten to a place of forgiveness. And then I would feel all these emotions again. And I knew there was still work to be done. Do you have anyone like that in your life where you've had to forgive them so often? We're ministering to people and we're talking about forgiveness. And they say, oh yeah, I've forgiven them. I've forgiven them. I've definitely forgiven them. You sure about that? 'Cause it's hard to forgive. If someone in your life right now that you need to forgive, someone that's hurt you deeply and it's just so hard for you right now to deal with it and forgive them. I want to give you, so this is kind of, I guess, my calling card. I guess I always having a cross stick. So I having a cross stick for you this morning. And a cross stick is reach. R-E-A-C-H. And so this is how this is a process that will help you to have forgiveness in your life. This was created by a man named E.V. Worthington. He had his father killed and so then he had to forgive the man who killed his father. And he spent his whole life studying, he has spent his whole life studying forgiveness.

And he came up with this a cross stick called reach. And I want to walk you through this as you think about that person in your life that you may need to forgive. So the R-E-A-C-H stands for recall the hurt. Recall the hurt. Why would you have to recall it? Because we don't want it to just be suppressed and just act like it didn't happen. We see with Joseph, we see reality. We see him dealing with reality. And so you can't just pretend like it didn't happen. So recall the hurt. Recall the pain that you have experienced. That leads to the E. The E stands for empathy. You work to have empathy towards the person that hurts you. Now notice it says empathy. It doesn't say excuse. We don't excuse the behavior of what's been done to you. But you can choose to have empathy towards the person that hurts you. Basically you put yourself in their shoes. And you remember the truth that hurt people hurt people. And then the A in reach and put my own version on this one, this is not what E.V. Worthington says, but this is what I say on this one. The A is for amazing grace, amazing grace. We constantly remind ourselves of the gospel,

the gospel message. You have to preach the gospel to yourself, reminding yourself what God has done for you through His Son, Jesus. And none of us are worthy of the sacrifice that has been made for us, the love that has been shown to us. And because of that grace that has been shown to us and that love for us that we didn't deserve, therefore we can forgive others. So constantly reminding that amazing grace what's been done for us. And then C is commit to it. You commit to forgive. And so you know that this is gonna be a process, and this isn't gonna happen overnight, this could take a long time, but you commit to it. That someday I'm gonna get to a place where I know there's true forgiveness. But in the meantime, I'm just gonna make a commitment. And so I like when people say, I'm gonna work on that. Someone apologizes to you, ask for forgiveness, you can say, I'm gonna work on that, or I'm gonna commit myself to do that. Don't give that cheap, yeah, I've forgiven you. And if it's not really true, commit to it. And then the H in reach stands for hold onto it.

Hold onto it. So in other words, when those temptations that get bitter again, when that anger starts to creep up again, hold onto that commitment that you made, that you had made this commitment that you will forgive. So hold onto the commitment that you made. And so that's reach. Recall the hurt, have empathy, amazing grace, preach the gospel to yourself, commit to it, and then hold onto it. Do you have anyone in your life that you need to forgive? Now we come to the most important question of all. Have you turned from sin and selfishness and given your heart and life to Jesus? Listen, if not, today is the day for you. Just pray this simple prayer from your heart. Lord Jesus, I need you. I know that I'm a sinner and I can't save myself. But I believe Jesus that you are God in the flesh. I believe you died on the cross from my sins and rose again from the dead. And right now, I ask you to forgive me and save me, come into my life, change me, make me the person you want me to be. I surrender my life to you. And I promise to follow you all the days I have left. Now if you pray that kind of prayer and mean it, the Lord will come in and your life will never be the same.

Listen, I would love to hear from you. So please contact me and share with me what's going on so we can pray for you. And if you are ever in the Texarkana area, we would love for you to visit us live and in person at FBC Texarkana. Listen, you really are important to God and you're important to us and we're here for you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]