Turn with me and your Bibles to Genesis chapter 45. I want to read just the first eight verses. Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, Make everyone go out from me. So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard it. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Does my father still live? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. And Joseph said to his brothers, please come near to me. So they came near. Then he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not, therefore, be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt." I read that passage as an introduction, I suppose, to the sermon. I'm not preaching just specifically on that text today, but more on some broader reflections on the whole story and one particular important message that we receive from it. So I want to talk about, first of all, some things we learn about the nature of forgiveness from the story. And then through that, through those things to see an important, a really important truth about humility and about dominion. The dominion that we all as the children of God are called to. So first, forgiveness. The story is about forgiveness in a lot of ways, of course. great demonstration of forgiveness in action through Joseph's actions. What do we see? We see some important things about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is something we talk about all the time. All Christians, of course, must be... Forgiveness is at the center of our self-identification as Christians, of course. And yet, Forgiveness can be tricky. What does it mean to forgive exactly in reality? Well, the first point I want to make is a thing that we see about forgiveness from our story is that forgiveness always requires that we deal in truth with things. That we call things what they are. You know, when God forgives our sins, when Joseph forgives his brother's sins, You never see the thing that we are often tempted to do when we just don't like conflict and we just want conflict to go away and so we say things like, oh, it's no big deal, it's fine, I'm sure you didn't really mean it or whatever, things like that. You meant well, whatever. You can't forgive. what you don't acknowledge truly. To simply dismiss or minimize or say, oh, that didn't really matter. It wasn't really any big deal. Something that really did hurt me. I mean, there are lots of things that really aren't big deals. You should just say they're not big deals. But when things are big deals and when things really do hurt you, when people really do sin against you, when you just say, oh, it's OK. It's no big deal. I didn't mind. I didn't really care. That's not forgiveness. That's refusing to actually deal with things. Forgiveness never comes out of lying about what something is. Joseph never says that. Joseph never says, you know, oh, you know, I was, you know, I was a jerk. I probably had it coming, you know, or it was, you know, or you didn't really mean that to happen, I'm sure, or anything like that. He says, no, you sold me into slavery. Speaks truly about what they did. But forgiveness always requires that we put away our desire for punishment. We have an inbred, a built into us, a desire for justice. We want to see wrongs punished. And yet that desire for justice gets distorted in us because of sin. And so we take upon ourselves what only belongs to God. God says, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. And so when someone hurts us, you know, there is so often that desire to make them feel somehow what they've done to me. So we might give each other the silent treatment and kind of stomp around the house, you know, and when somebody says, are you okay? Are you upset? And you say, fine, nothing, you know, like that. Or maybe on the other end of the extreme, we yell and throw things and swear. You know, we want someone to know, we want them to know, you hurt me and I want you to feel the pain that I felt. Nothing that Joseph does in this whole story is designed to punish his brothers. Nothing he's doing here is making them feel the pain that he felt, hurting them the way they hurt him. You never see any of that. It is not our job to punish people. It is not our job to inflict on others the pain that we think they deserve for what they've done. And in fact, if it is true that that is that sense of justice that we have, someone else, we want someone to pay, we want to hurt someone so they'll feel the pain we felt. Well, the just punishment for sin is hell. And that too is built into us, we know that. And so we're never going to be satisfied with the pain we inflict on someone else when we get that desire to punish. It's never going to be enough because only hell truly satisfies the demands of justice. But it's to make ourselves God. When I take it upon myself, Oftentimes parents mistakenly think that their job as they're called in the scriptures to discipline their children, to chastise, not to spare the rod and so forth, they mistake that for punishment and they think, well you hurt me, you disrespected me and so I'm gonna show you who's boss, I'm gonna punish you, I'm gonna inflict pain on you. That's not what parents are called to do. Discipline, chastising, that is to instruct and teach, is a very different thing than punishment. The motive is completely different. So forgiveness... requires up front initially. And we see that again, even though Joseph and his brothers aren't reconciled from the very beginning of the story, though, you see that his him putting away the desire for punishment, a desire to affect reconciliation from the very beginning in the story. And then along with that, then the putting away what that also requires in the putting away of malice, of bitterness, of resentment. When people hurt us, when people sin against us, and people are sinning against us all the time, we all sin against each other, anybody living with anybody else sins against that person and is sinned against by that person. And that causes pain. And out of that pain comes resentment, bitterness, anger, you're building up of offenses and all of those things. The spirit of forgiveness calls us to put those things away. Now sin causes a lot of damage. To sin is to work against God's natural order. That always causes damage. Sometimes it causes a lot of damage for a lot of years. Sometimes after sin there's work to be done to fix the damage. And forgiveness doesn't mean you don't address problems. It doesn't necessarily even mean you can't protect yourself from dangers. We see again in the story that Joseph, even though there is that spirit of forgiveness there from the beginning, he also has responsibilities to the nation, to himself. And so he's seeing, he's testing to see whether the brothers are changed or whether they're dangerous, whether they're still evil, wicked men. And that's not at all contrary to a spirit of forgiveness. And so if my employee steals from me, I might forgive him, but I might not let him work the cash box for a while. And that's not inconsistent with forgiveness. Now, there are layers and there's different aspects to the whole subject of forgiveness. And this is why it's complicated. A story like this shows us sometimes how complicated forgiveness can be, that the spirit of forgiveness was there in Joseph from the very beginning. Even before there was any acknowledgment of guilt and any recognition of what they, any sure confidence on Joseph's part that they were actually repentant. Nonetheless, malice, resentment, bitterness, he put those things away and was striving towards reconciliation. You note Joseph's words in the text that we read today and later on when we get to Genesis 50 and we kind of get to the final statement there. In both of those times we see the same thing. What is the basis for Joseph's forgiveness? He never says he forgives them because he is convinced they are truly repentant. He never says that. He never says he forgives them because they have made amends somehow, because they have changed. It's never what he says. Joseph's forgiveness always flows out of his conviction of the sovereignty of God. In Genesis 50, he says, am I a God over you? And here too, he says, no, God did good. God, it was God actually, ultimately, that was responsible. God brought me here. And God did good through bringing Joseph there. And it is on that basis that Joseph says he can forgive his brothers, that he's not holding resentment and anger against them, not because of anything in them, but because of who God is. The spirit of forgiveness flows out of the knowledge of the sovereignty of God, that God is in charge of all things, that God is always good in all that he does, that it's God alone that judges. And if we believe all of those things, then how could we ever hold malice and resentment and bitterness against another person for what they've done to us? That is truly the basis of forgiveness. Now, full reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers, that does depend on repentance. That does depend on the realization that they have truly changed. But that's not the basis of Joseph's spirit of forgiveness and desire for reconciliation towards his brothers. That comes out of the sovereignty of God. If God is sovereign over all things, if God is good in all that he does, and if it's God alone who has the right to judge others, and the right for vengeance, then a spirit of forgiveness, grace towards one another, must flow out of those truths. But this spirit of reconciliation that we see in Joseph, this is necessary to the Christian life. The gospel is called in places the gospel of reconciliation, the gospel of peace. Paul says in one place that Jesus is reconciling all things to himself, or that the Father is reconciling all things to him in Jesus. In Ephesians, To be part of the Kingdom of God, if you are part of the Kingdom of God, if the Kingdom of God lives within your heart, then a spirit of reconciliation must be part of that. It must live in your heart as well. Sin always separates. It always divides. We hear a lot today about love and real love and what true love is, contrary to the Word of God. And what we always see is that the love, the quote-unquote love of the world, does not unite. It does not bring together. It divides and separates and destroys. It alienates. The gospel reunites, brings things back together. And so, holding grudges, malice against others, hatred towards others, no desire to mend broken relationships, all of that, that spirit, that spirit of alienation, that spirit of hostility towards others, it is simply inconsistent with the Christian spirit. It cannot live in the same heart as the Kingdom of God. Paul says in one place, in as much as it lies within you, live at peace with all men. And that will be seen in the way that the Christian comports himself in the world. Now it doesn't always lie within us. Sometimes we can't have peace with people. Sometimes we can't have relationships with people. That's why Paul says, inasmuch as it lies within you, there will be alienation, there will be broken relationships. There will be hostility. But that should not be coming from us. That should never be our choice. Our desire ought always be to restore relationships, to reconcile. We see this glorious vision of the eternal kingdom all the way through scriptures. Presented in its early form in the garden. And seen again at the end in that vision of heaven and earth. Heaven which has been separated from earth. God's presence which has been alienated from earth. Coming down and being restored. God dwelling with his people. This is the covenant promise from the very beginning. I will be your God and you will be my people and I will dwell in your midst. What a beautiful picture of harmony. Peace. That's what the Bible means by that word, shalom. It means peace. It doesn't just mean the absence of conflict. It means everything working together in harmony as it's supposed to. I used to fix computers back in Lyman. I did that. I still work on computers a lot there. It's fun. Fixing a computer a lot of times is about Restoring relationships. Say the keyboard is not communicating with the CPU. The CPU is not communicating with the hard drive or the memory. What are those paths, those cables, those lines? Why isn't the computer getting power from the wall or getting the signal to the monitor or whatever? Those are all relationships. Or think about fixing a car. What is the relationship between the engine and the wheels? That's a very complicated relationship with lots of belts and gears and all those relationships have to be functioning properly for the power of the engine to be communicated to the wheels. And fixing a car in a lot of ways is about understanding those relationships and restoring them. Or medicine. Think about medicine. Think about all those pathways and connections of tendons and ligaments and blood vessels and nerves and all those things that communicate from one part of the body to another. And a lot of illness happens when those relationships break down for some reason. And the world. The world is relationships. It's relationships of one person to another, marriages, families, communities, nations, and relationships between man and the earth. Man was created to be in dominion as a steward over the world. That defines a relationship between man and the physical creation. And the covenant which defines the relationship between man and God. And sin breaks all of those things. Distorts and corrupts all of those things. So all of those things are not working right. And that's why the gospel is all about reconciliation. It's all about restoring broken relationships. First of all, restoring the relationship between God and man, and then restoring, as an outflow of that, relationships, all the other relationships that flow from that. And that's what Shalom is. Again, not just the absence of conflict. but the restoration of harmony. Harmony between God and man, between man and man, between man and creation, all of existence working together as it should. And so to be a Christian, and this is why this story of Joseph is so beautiful, because what we see from the beginning is that desire to reconcile, to be restored, for his family to be healed again. And to be a Christian, then it is vital. An absolutely vital aspect of sanctification, of growing in grace, is to start to understand relationships. Start to understand how relationships between people work, what our relationship to the physical creation should be, and how to restore those things. And that requires humility, and it requires forgiveness. And I want to talk more about that in a second. But Joseph had a dream. You remember, let's go all the way back to the beginning of the story. What was it that started the alienation between Joseph and his brothers? What kicked it off was that dream. A dream that Joseph would rule over his brothers. Now this dream was being fulfilled. It was being fulfilled. Joseph's brothers were under his rule. but dependent on him. The dream is being fulfilled, but probably not the way Joseph thought that it was going to be fulfilled. Not the way the world would normally expect that dream to be fulfilled. He had the power. He had all the power, of course. He could compel their obedience. You know, he could bring his soldiers in and force them to their knees. He could throw them in jail. He could do anything he wanted to. At this point, he had power, plenty of it. But then Joseph would have been just like the men of the world. Just like the Pharaoh, just like countless other emperors and kings and rulers. How is the prophecy fulfilled? How is it that Joseph actually achieves rule over his brothers? Through his humility. Through his grace. Through his forgiveness. That's how he gains dominion. Humility because he sees his place in things. Remember back to what we said at the beginning of the sermon. That it was Joseph's understanding of the sovereignty of God. That's where his forgiving spirit flowed from. That requires humility. To recognize his place in things. Not to be all focused on me. See, pride would have driven Joseph in a very different direction. When it's pride, then it's all about me. It's all about how you hurt me, you disrespected me, you didn't give me what I deserve. Me, me, me. That's what pride would do. If pride was driving Joseph, then Joseph's great concern would have been, and legitimately, it would be hard not to have sympathy for him. Joseph had experienced a tremendous amount of suffering. over the last couple of decades. But his humility drove him to see God's will in it, and God's purpose in it, and therefore not to hold resentment and malice towards his brothers for that. He recognized that his suffering, his pain, was not the most important thing in the world. As we are tempted to think, it's our natural state to think, my suffering, my trauma, whatever, that that's the most important thing and that all our attention goes on that. Joseph's attention is on the will of God. It was on seeing that God's will was done and therefore desiring that God's will continues to be done. That's humility. That's what qualifies Joseph to fulfill his dream. That's what qualifies Joseph to have the rule over his brothers. Not power, not dominion, not wealth. physical force, any of those things, any of the kinds of things that the world looks at to think this is what makes a man a ruler over other men. It's his strength, it's his muscles, it's his voice, it's his ability to command attention and to rally the troops and to inspire men to fight and die for him, those kinds of things, or wealth or whatever. None of those things were the things that actually qualified Joseph to rule. It was his humility. and His grace and His love. Judah, too, as we'll see later. Judah gains the birthright. As we know, of course, Judah's line is the royal line. David comes from Judah. When Joseph blesses the brothers, he passes over Reuben and Sibion and Levi, the first three of his sons, and lands on Judah. He passes over Reuben because Reuben took his concubine. That, by the way, was a common way in those days in the ancient world that a son or an underling or a servant would try and take the rule from his master. would take his wives. That was a symbol of an act of rebellion, trying to take over the kingdom. You remember that's what Absalom did when he was in rebellion against David. He took David's concubines. Reuben is passed over. Simeon and Levi, men of violence. Men who resorted to the sword to avenge wrongdoing. Because of it, they are also passed over. But it's Judah who receives the birthright, who receives the royal wine. And again, what was it about Judah that qualified him for that? What in the story? That he humbled himself. And he let go of his bitterness and resentment against the wrongs that father had done him, and out of love for his father, was willing to sacrifice himself for his brother. It was his humility that qualified him for dominion. And both of them, in their slightly different ways then, are pointing us at Christ. They are Christ figures, both of them. And Christ, as we read in John 13 a few minutes ago, He is a ruler, He is a king. He says, you call me Lord, and rightly so. He says, because I am a Lord, and He does command, He does instruct, and He does expect obedience. But what is it that qualifies Him for that rule? And once again, we see that it is his humility, his willingness to suffer and die for others. You read at the beginning of that chapter, it makes that point very clearly. It says, Jesus, knowing that he was from God, knowing that the Father had given him all things, knowing that he was going back to the Father, his humility is not flowing out of a position of weakness and thinking, oh, he's not important and he doesn't matter. No, Jesus matters more than any human being in the whole world has ever mattered. Jesus is very, very important. What humility is, is Jesus recognizing His place, recognizing that He is there to serve the Father, to do the will of the Father. And so, knowing that all things had been given to Him by the Father, knowing the glory that He'd received, knowing His status, His equality with God, He humbles Himself. And He girds Himself with a towel and kneels down and washes their feet. Because it is precisely out of the sense of His great dominion that He humbles Himself. The kings of the world, they wanna show their power. They do the opposite, don't they? They clothe themselves in all these gorgeous robes and surround themselves with palaces and troops and guards and they drive through the town in their motorcade and their great, all that show. That is, they clothe themselves with glory because they need that. They need that to impress on others just how important and strong and powerful they are Jesus, the most powerful man that ever lived and ever will live. Jesus, the one whose every knee will bow and every tongue will swear. How does he demonstrate his worthiness, his qualification for rule? Through service, humility, and love. And his rule and dominion, as it says, says that God is glorifying me. How did God glorify Christ? By putting him on the cross. He says that himself, he says, that when the Father lifts me up, then all men will see that I am He. And John says, he said that signifying how he would die. That the cross is Jesus' great humiliation, great defeat, great shame, or that's how it looked, but was in fact His great glory and triumph and reign. He came to forgive. He came to serve. He came to reconcile all things. And He didn't come to do that by force. He didn't come to do that with great displays and acts of power. That's what His disciples wanted Him to do. That's what the crowd expected. And he's perfectly capable of violence. Jesus, when he comes back at the end of the age, he will come with violence. He will come with a sword and destroy all those who will not bend the knee. Destroy all those who will not repent and accept the offer of reconciliation and forgiveness. But His highest rule is in this, is that He is the servant of God. He does the will of the Father. He does not pursue His own agenda for His life, but His Father's agenda. He's not seeking His own glory. He's not seeking that everybody respect Him and show Him what He wants, to treat Him the way that He thinks He ought to be treated. You'd think if there was ever a man that walked on the face of the earth that had a right to demand respect, it would be Jesus. But no, He comes to do His Father's will, to become a servant, to lay down His life. And that act of humility, that restored, that reunified, reconciled everything. And it was His great glory. Therefore, as Paul says in Philippians 2, therefore the Father has raised his name above every name that every knee would bow and every tongue would swear that Jesus Christ is Lord. And the scriptures tell us that this mind would be in us as well. that Jesus calls us to be like Him, to humble ourselves under the rule of the Father, to serve each other, to forgive each other, and thus to be like Him. If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him. We were made for dominion, for rule, all of us. Made in the image of God. Sons and daughters of God. Made to have dominion over everything that God has made. To be in the image of God is to have dominion. To have authority. It is inescapable. Inevitable. As a human being, you have rule. Different kinds of rule, different networks and layers. You have authority over other people, perhaps. You have authority over your own body. You have authority over physical possession. You have authority over animals. You have power, you have influence. How do you use that power? How do you use that authority? Use it in pride? Aggrandize yourself? serve your own interests, and every one of you has it. Every one of you has power. Even little children, there are younger children, even little children, you have your own bodies, you have your toys, you have possessions. A man, the husband might have the greater power of physical strength and aggressiveness and financial power and the wife of that same marriage will have the power of influence and emotional power and those very different and yet still very real kinds of power. How do you use your power? How do you use your dominion over others? How do you use your power over your body, over your money, over your physical possessions, over the plumber that you hire to come over and fix your toilet? How do you use your power? The right way to think about our authority, our power, always is as the term we use is vice-gerent or vice-regent. One who has given rule under another ruler. A great biblical example is Herod, King Herod, who ruled over Judea in the days of the birth of Jesus. And King Herod was a king under Caesar. Herod had petitioned Caesar to give him the kingship, to give him the rule. And as long as Herod exercised that rule under Caesar's authority and at the behest of Caesar, then Herod could keep that authority and Herod had great authority in Judea as long as he was submissive to Caesar. If he rebelled against Caesar, then eventually he would lose that rule. So it is with us, and even more so. Man was created in the image of God to reflect the rule and dominion of God. And every human being has some element and aspect of that rule and dominion. And it was Joseph, again, it was Joseph recognizing that God was sovereign, that any power and authority he had was only under the power and authority, the much greater power and authority of God that gave him humility and gave him the desire for reconciliation and forgiveness. He could have crushed his brothers, humiliated them, tortured them, killed them, made them his slaves, whatever he wanted to do. And the world would have applauded it. No doubt Caesar would have, Pharaoh would have totally supported his decision. That's the way the heroes, that's the way the guys like Achilles and Hercules and the great heroes of the world, that's the way they would have done it. And he would have made them his enemies. He might have gotten their outward superficial bending of the knee just because they had to. But he would not have gained the loving, willing submission of his brothers as he did. He forgave them, He loved them, He did good for them. And thus they willingly submitted to His rule. And that is the way God exercises His rule over us. Through love, through grace, through forgiveness. And that's the way He calls us to exercise our authority and our dominion as well. So consider this, wherever you have authority, and again, you may not think you do. Maybe you're a kid, maybe you're young, you don't think you have power. Everybody has power. Every human being made in the image of God has some kind of power. How do you use it? A big part of being a Christian is learning to exercise your power, learning to exercise your authority in submission to God's Word in a way that promotes reconciliation and reunification. In pride, you use your power for self, for advancement of your agenda, for satisfaction of your physical desires, for me, me, me. And if that is the case, then you are like that king under the Caesar who rebelled against him and starts keeping all the tax money for himself and won't support the emperor. And it might take a while, but sooner or later, the emperor is going to get his armies together. He's going to march down there and he's going to kill that king. and that king will lose his power and authority, and so it is with us. If you exercise your power, if you exercise your dominion as a child, as made in the image of God, simply for self, simply to advance your own agenda and your own purposes and do what you want in your life and satisfy your own physical desires, God is gracious and God is long-suffering, but the time will come when he will come and take that dominion away from you, and you will be left with nothing but death and hell. But when you exercise, when you learn, when you repent of your pride, and you learn to exercise your authority in humility and in love, and to serve others, then to the power that you have now will be added far, far more. The one that had five talents was given rule over five kingdoms. So serve God. Humble yourself, love your neighbor, do good for others. Don't seek self-aggrandizement, advancement of your own agenda. Learn to forgive, learn to seek reconciliation in as much as it lies within you. Seek peace with all men. And you will be the sons and daughters of your Father in heaven, like Christ your brother, and you will be given a rule and a kingdom with him. This is the promise of the Father. This is the Kingdom of God. Amen. And let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord, that You have given us a rule and dominion, even though that rule and dominion may be small in this life, compared to what we were made for. Yet, Lord, we pray that You would grant us that humility to trust You, to repent of our pride and our selfishness and to seek to use whatever influence and whatever power we have for your good, for your truth and for the good of those that are around us. Lord, teach us to be humble, teach us to recognize your sovereignty, teach us to bend the knee to you in recognition of how good you are and how loving and how kind and how gracious you have been. So that we will be prepared through that training to receive a far greater kingdom than we can even imagine. To share in the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in eternity. For as you taught us through your servant Paul, if we suffer with Him, if we humble ourselves in Him, we will be glorified in Him. and with Him. We thank You and praise You for all these things. We pray that You would send Your Spirit to us to work these truths in our heart. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.