Genesis chapter 45 is where we are in the story, and we've now reached the climax of this riveting story. One of the things that we learn about Christianity is that Christianity is tied up in relationships. Your relationship to God, and then your relationship to your fellow men. And if your relationship to God is not right, your relationships on the horizontal will not be right. I always say to the ones who get saved, if your Sunday's not right, your Monday won't be right. If you don't get the first day of the week sorted out, then the rest of the week will not be right in your life. Likewise, if the vertical relationship is not right with God, then the home life won't be right, and the horizontal and your neighbor's relationship and your work colleagues' relationships won't be right. And in Genesis 44, Joseph took a long time to bring his brothers to repentance. and he sought repentance. But now in Genesis 45, having in chapter 44 sought repentance, he will show forgiveness to those who have repented. And that's always the biblical pattern. Always people say, oh, forgive and forget. It's not found in the Bible, that statement. Forgiveness is always patterned after God's forgiveness. And God only forgives those who repent and acknowledge their sin. And Joseph here takes time because he knows there can be no forgiveness and no reconciliation until there's true repentance by his brothers for their sins. Now let's read the chapter when the forgiveness is initiated by Joseph. It says, could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him. And he cried, cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph, does my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him, for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land, and yet there are five years in the which there shall neither be hearing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God. And he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt. Come down unto me, tarry not, and thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen. Thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast. There will I nourish thee, for yet there are five years of famine, lest thou and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. Behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. Ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen, and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither.' He fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. Moreover he kissed all his brethren and wept upon them, and after that his brethren talked with him. And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come, and it pleased Pharaoh well and his servants. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye, laid your beasts, and go, get you into, unto the land of Canaan. And take your father and your households, and come unto me, and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. Now thou art commanded, This do ye take ye wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones and for your wives, and bring your father and come. Also regard not your stuff, for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours. And the children of Israel did so. And Joseph gave them wagons according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of raiment. And to his father he sent after this manor ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she-asses laden with corn and bread and meat, for his father by the way. So he sent his brethren away, and they departed. And he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way. And they went up out of Egypt and came into the land of Canaan unto Jacob their father, and told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph which he had said unto them. And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. And Israel said, it is enough. Joseph, my son, is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die. The tension continues on from chapter 44 with the brothers nervously awaiting the verdict of the governor or prime minister of Egypt. And then Joseph suddenly speaks and says something which to their ears must have been extraordinary. Something they never would have imagined he would have said, because he suddenly says, I am Joseph. Wow. I am the one that you persecuted. And Joseph, were told he couldn't hold back his emotion any longer. And that just shows you and I that being in leadership doesn't have to make you a hard person. Coming through great suffering doesn't have to make you a hard person. And you often hear people make excuses for their temperament. They say, well, you don't know where I grew up. You don't know the circumstances that I was born into. You don't know what I've gone through. And we use that almost as an excuse to be a person that's hard-hearted. It's maybe rough, hard to get along with in the home, in relationships. And yet here's Joseph, who's come through more suffering in his 30 odd years of life. He's about 39 years old here. at this moment, because he was 30 when he became governor, seven years of prosperity, if you remember, and then the seven years of famine and the brothers came down on the second year of the famine. So you do the mass, he's about 39 years of age. So in those 39 years, most of them, he has suffered greatly and deeply and has been hurt and humiliated by his brothers in particular. And yet here he is, and he has a tender, warm, and loving heart. And emotions are not wrong, as long as they're expressed at the right place and the right time. And Joseph could have burst out in emotion and let it get out of control previous to this moment, but he was careful to keep his emotions and his natural affections for his brothers, particularly Benjamin, And his father, he kept it under control. But now the emotion is so strong that even the Egyptians can hear him weeping. And Pharaoh hears about it, of the strength of feeling of Joseph. And the interesting thing as you read this chapter, that it's only in verse 15 that his brothers begin to speak. You notice that? He can tell these brothers are absolutely stunned by what he says. It's just, as we would say, they were gobsmacked, blown away by the revelation that this is Joseph. And no doubt, they're not just blown away, they're terrified. What's he going to do? And we know that from reading this, that their sin has now been uncovered, and their conscience has been pricked, and they're fearful of the judgment of God. And suddenly they meet the guy who has the power to destroy them, and it's Joseph, the one that they actually hurt. And these brothers are thinking the way they would have thought, and they fear the worst. And some commentators have said it's a great picture, of sinners standing before God in the great day of judgment. And that is absolutely true. Every sinner will stand before the righteous judge and every sinner will be silent, will not know what to say. Every sinner will be terrified of facing the judgment of God. And when someone cries the way Joseph cries, They're either doing it out of anger or out of grief. That's the first suspicion. And his brothers don't know which one. He just suddenly bursts into this burst of tears. And Joseph sees that they're afraid and he says in verse four, come near to me, come close. Now there's clearly been a distance between them. He's the governor and he's dressed as an Egyptian, and they're the rough, coarse shepherds of Canaan, Hebrews, and he's the sophisticated governor of the Egyptian empire. And they're being at a distance. Now, Joseph, now come close, come close. You're my brother. There's no longer a gap between us. We no longer keep this pretense up that there's something significant between us. And Joseph is very tender. He says, come closer. No doubt they had fallen back almost in terror when they realized who he was. And he says to them, I am Joseph, your brother. And straight away, he nails the situation. You know, sometimes people like to cover up facts or cover over facts. And Joseph gets to the problem, the big problem, the elephant in the room. He slays it in the first second. He says, whom ye sold into Egypt. I know what you've done. And you know what you've done. And God knows what you've done. But rather than labour the point, he immediately moves to calm them. and deal with this, the fallout from this situation. He says, verse five, now, therefore, be not grieved. We've had enough tears. We've had enough fear. We've had enough concern over the sin. We've now dealt with the sin. You've brought the sin before God. You've acknowledged it. And now we're going to move on. We're going to draw a line in the past. A few weeks ago, we dealt with the subject, if you remember, in the morning service of King David, and how King David, after he heard of the death of Saul and Jonathan, he wrote that great hymn or poem of tribute to them. In that tribute, David drew a line on the past, and he never brought it up again. If you read 2 Samuel, David wasn't one to continuously whinge and whine about what Saul had done to him. He just left the past in the past. And you know, every Christian needs to learn to do that. I remember being in a house recently, nobody from this church and was listening. And this woman came, I didn't know her particularly, she's not in any way connected to me. And she began to tell this story of how a church she was in and she had to leave this church. And I never asked her why she left the church, but she felt the need to share it. And it was something very foolish and very stupid that happened 30 or 40 years ago. And she just went on and on and on. And I just thought to myself, what was the value in that? It's not therapy. Just to keep a Christian, someone who's mature, been a Christian for many years, just to continue to harbor a grudge and a bitterness and a chip, probably two or three chips on her shoulder, for 40 years. And she just wants to tell people about how she feels. She hasn't drawn a line in the past. And probably the people that did it to her, it wasn't a particularly serious thing or her family, they're now dead. So there's no value. Just leave it in the past. And Joseph says to his brother, don't be grieved nor angry with yourselves that you sold me hither. And this is why Joseph, can leave the past in the past. And what you're going to see in the next five verses, four times, and this is something you'll see all over Joseph's life, is why Joseph's able to move on, walk on without bitterness, because four times in the next five verses, Joseph invokes the name of God. That's what his eyes are. And when you think like that, when you see life like that, when you look at your circumstances like that, when you look at your past through God-centered spectacles, then you can see them for what they really are. And then you can move on. And what Joseph is doing in bringing God up in all of this discussion, clearing the air with his brothers, is he's letting his brothers know that Joseph and them, knowingly and unknowingly, were living out their lives under the sovereign will and plan of God. And he says, yes, you did wrong. Yes, you sold me as a slave. What a terrible thing it was to do. We said at the time, slavery was a fate worse than death. for a young man like Joseph. To be ripped away from his family and put into a foreign country with a foreign language and a foreign culture, and to be treated worse than a dog as a slave was a horrible, heinous thing. And it's even worse when it's done by your own brothers. Not because you're a nasty person, not because you've done wrong, but because you've done right. Because they're jealous of you. And yet Joseph says, you did this. But he says, God did send me before you to preserve life. And the key to reconciliation is to see that what has happened to you has ultimately been the sovereign will of God, that God has permitted this to come upon you. And it's Joseph's attitude and Joseph's focus is what got Joseph through this situation and the pain of it. And he goes on to say, for these two years hath the famine been in the land. And yet there are five years in which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me. He keeps emphasizing, keeps bringing it up. God was behind it. Yes, you were the instruments. Yes, you had the wrong motive, but God was working through it. And he says, to save your lives by the great deliverance. And he hath made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Now, what Joseph is saying here to the brothers is this, is that even at this moment in history, Joseph has already discerned that God had a higher purpose than his brother's purposes. And he picks out some of God's purposes. Now, he doesn't pick out all of them because Joseph doesn't know all of them the way you and I know all of them, or not all of them, know more of them from our perspective. But one of the big purposes Joseph has worked out, why God permitted him to suffer this great humiliation, this great rejection by his brothers, this great shame of being sold into slavery, and then as a slave being put into prison and humiliated there, is he says, God had a higher purpose. because God ultimately wanted to save the lives of my brothers, their wives, the grandchildren, and my father, Jacob. He says, I can see it. I can see it. That despite what you did and despite your motives, I can see one of the great purposes of God in putting me through all of this was to enable me to be the savior with a small S, the deliverer with a small D, of all of you through the famine, because if it wasn't for me and my position, you'd all die. Joseph has discerned this, and he's worked it. When you start to see what God was really doing through a circumstance, it helps you to take the bitterness away of the pain and the suffering. Now, I said we see more from the hindsight of our history than Joseph could see. You say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, we can see, for example, that God was using all of these trials to mold and shape Joseph, to make him a greater, a more gracious person, to demonstrate and draw out from Joseph the heart of forgiveness that you wouldn't have seen in previous chapters. You now see in this chapter, through the pain and then the repentance and then the reconciliation, we see all of the beauty of Jesus Christ in the life of Joseph. And of course, one of the great purposes of this story and the sufferings of Joseph, which Joseph never would have understood, but that we understood, what we understand today is this. The story of Joseph and the sufferings of Joseph, God had a higher purpose in enabling you and I in the 21st century and more to learn from it. He never knew that. He never knew that there would be people living in Lorne, going to Lorne Mission Hall 4,000 years later. that would be studying his life, and studying the sufferings of his life, and how God brought him through it, and how God made him a better man, not a bitter man, and how God taught him how to reconcile with his brothers, and then forgive his brothers, that you and I would learn from that, and then just, not just learn from it, take it and apply it to our lives. So all of us are being taught by Joseph. That's one of the purposes that Joseph didn't know, but that we know from our hindsight of history. that God was doing in bringing him through this terrible ordeal. And let me say this in passing. If you don't learn the lessons of Joseph and then apply them to your own life, you're the foe, aren't you? It's not Joseph's to blame. It's not God to blame. You're to blame. If you come to meetings like this, or there may be people listening online, and they're downloading this series on Joseph, and they're saying, well, that's really interesting, and I really admire Joseph, and it was a real blessing to my soul to listen to how God used him, and how God changed him, and how God molded him and shaped him. And then you just close your Bible, and you go out that door, or you switch off the machine, And you say, well, I won't forgive. I won't reconcile. I won't move on. I'm going to keep being bitter and harboring resentment and anger and refuse to do what Joseph did. Then you're the fool. You've made the wrong choices. Remember the Bible says this repeatedly, he that have ears to hear, it's one of the great statements of scripture, he that have ears to hear, let him hear. In other words, pay attention. That doesn't mean just physically hear, it means hear and obey is the idea in the Greek of that word. He that have ears to hear, let him hear, let him listen carefully to what the spirit has to say unto him and go and do it. Now, Having made that statement, a great theological statement, Joseph then turns to his brothers with the solution. He's thought it all through. He says, verse nine, haste ye, hurry up. And he says, go up to my father. And tell him, thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down unto me, tarry not. And you notice, even as he sends the word to his dad, I mean, there was an awful lot for Joseph to be proud of it. He had come to Egypt as a slave. And 22 years later, He's now the governor or prime minister of the world's greatest empire in history to that moment. Now that's some story, isn't it? And many as a parent would be very proud of their son or daughter, and we understand naturally they are, if they succeed in life. And Joseph could send words to his dad, he says, go tell my father that I've made it, that I've got to the top. that all the things that he saw in me and hoped for me have now materialized. He could have talked like that. But even in the excitement and sending this message to his father, Joseph's really careful to invoke God's name and God's hand and God's purpose, because he says, tell my father, verse nine, God hath made me. It's all about God. To God be the glory. That's what Joseph is saying. God has lifted me up, put me in this great possession place in Egypt. And he says in verse 10, I now shall dwell in the land of Goshen. Joseph had thought through all these things. It shows what a wise man he was. Not only thought through all the ways to lead his brothers to repentance, all those tests, all the aspects of those tests, But he'd already thought through, this was not something he'd stumbled on haphazardly, he'd thought through prayerfully, no doubt had asked God for wisdom, how to reconcile with them, then how to forgive them, and then having forgiven them, how then to bless them, and how to keep them as a separate people. He understood that they were a people that had to be separate from the Egyptians. They were God's people, they were a holy people. They were special people with a special destiny and purpose. And Joseph recognized all those things and had thought through all those things. And when he spoke to his brothers, he says, you come down and I'll be used of God to keep you alive. But you're not going to integrate into Egypt. I've already identified the place you'll live, Goshen. And he says in Goshen, thou shalt be near unto me. I really find this amazing. Because one of the things that people often do to those who have hurt them and hurt them deeply and hurt them over many years, they say, well, I forgive you, but you keep out of my sight. You don't think like that, don't you? We even get people say, well, she and I have had words, or he and I have, we've had to say, we've accepted the apology. Now we move on, but just keep your distance. You go to your church, I go to mine. We're now Christians, but not too close. But notice what Joseph said. He says, you go down to Goshen, and he says, thou shalt be near unto me. I don't want you far away. despite what's happened. When I said, I forgive you, I really mean it, Joseph says. The relationship is back to what it should have been, at least from my perspective. I fully forgive you. And you know, that's because God does this. And that's why Joseph had the heart of Jesus beating in his heart, because the Bible says you and I were Christ's enemies. that he has brought nigh, brought near by the blood of Christ. When he forgives us, he makes us immediately part of his family, never to leave us, never to forsake us. That's what grace does. And Joseph here is the picture of Jesus in not only forgiving, but extending grace upon grace. And he says, you stay near to me. You're not my enemies. You're not a threat to me. I don't want to hurt you. And he says, thou and thy children and thy children's children and thy flocks and thy herds and all that thou hast. And then he says in verse 11, and there will I nourish thee. I've explained this before. There's a difference between mercy and grace. Mercy is where a person doesn't get what they deserve. That's mercy. And Joseph had extended mercy. These brothers deserve to die for what they have done. They deserve to be punished and humiliated. And Joseph says, I forgive you. In mercy, let's move on. But grace goes further than mercy. Grace is where you don't just not get what you deserve. You are given the very opposite of what you deserve. See the difference? And that's what Jesus Christ does to you and I. He extends us mercy and he says, you won't go to hell. You're forgiven. You're washed. But he could say, that's mercy, but you keep away from me for all of eternity. You become slaves for me for all of eternity. But in grace, what does Christ do? He not only forgives us, extends mercy, he lifts us and makes us his children, joint heirs with Jesus. He says, you're my children. You're going to be with me for all of eternity. You're going to have the blessings of heaven for all of eternity. That's grace upon grace. That's the very opposite of what we deserve. And Joseph does this to his brothers. That's why so many see the heart of Christ in the heart of Joseph, and the right to do so. Because Joseph is so like Jesus. In his attitude, he not only forgives and extends mercy, but he then extends grace upon grace upon grace. And let me put it in a very simple, and maybe a very blunt way this evening. If Joseph could do that, Maybe I shouldn't even use that statement. Since Joseph did that, I laugh about it. Since Joseph, by the grace of God, was able to extend mercy and then abundant grace to his own brothers who had hurt him so deeply, who had betrayed him so deeply, who by their own admission said, we have done this great sin upon him. Since Joseph was able to do that, why are you not able to forgive? Why are you not able to be merciful? Why are you not able to show grace to those who have hurt you? And of course the answer is, you should. And Joseph did all this without the Bible. He did all this without the story of Joseph. You and I have the story of Joseph. He did all this without a group of Christians encouraging him and praying with him and counseling him and saying, Joseph, you need to forgive and you need to move on and you need to be merciful. These brothers have repented and it's time now to Joseph to draw. He didn't have anybody to help him through that. Yet he did it. And if he could do it, what's your excuse? Well, there isn't one, is there? That's why the story's in the Bible, not just to entertain you, not just so that you can sit back and say, well, that guy, Joseph, he's a real saint. A lot of churches and schools and everything in this country, St. Joseph's, right? And we say, well, that's St. Joseph, and he's just, A real model and he's just an amazing person, but I couldn't do what he did. Why not? It's just flesh and blood like you and I. Isn't he weeping? He's got natural emotions. He's not a Superman. Did he not say he was hurt? Yeah, he talked about his pain. In fact, he called, you remember, his son Manasseh. Why did he call his son? Manasseh, chapter 41, verse 51, he says, And Joseph called the name of his firstborn, Manasseh. Why? He says, For God hath made me to forget all my toil, and all my father's house, all the pain, what I lost. And then he calls his second son, Ephraim, verse 52. He says, for God had caused me to be fruitful. And notice why. In the land of my affliction, in the land that I suffered. Joseph felt the pain. He felt the betrayal. He felt the humiliation. But he forgave. And ultimately, and with this we finish, we'll finish off this chapter next time. Three weeks time. Because we're not here for the next two weeks. But why did Joseph forgive? Why was he able to forgive? Was it natural? He had all the power in the world here. He could have taken their lives and nobody would have cared in Egypt. In fact, the Egyptians probably would have applauded him. He said, you did the right thing. Take vengeance on those who had hurt you. But why did he forgive? Why was he unable to forgive? because Joseph knew something, that God had forgiven him far more. And when you see yourself in light of God's great forgiveness to you, then you say, well, I can forgive this. If God can forgive me all my sins, if God can make me a child of God and give me a home in heaven, then I can forgive this, surely. and he was willing to forgive, and God enabled him to forgive. And if he can do it, you can do it, and I can do it. May God help us to do it, let us pray. Father, we thank you for the story of Joseph. And all of us have our own stories in our own lives of relationships that have hurt us. And none of us in this room could say that we've been hurt more than Joseph, betrayed more than Joseph, suffered more than Joseph. And if we read this story, Lord, give us the courage and the grace to say, I need to move on like Joseph moved on. I need to have the heart of Joseph because if I have the heart of Joseph, I have the heart of Jesus in my life. and in my relationships. For we ask these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen.