Well, let's go now to the Old Testament and let's go to our sermon text here in Genesis 45. If you'll turn back there with me. Genesis chapter 45, we're going to be looking at the entirety of the chapter tonight. Sorry, I take that back. We're not. We're actually looking at just the first 15 verses of the chapter tonight. I'm so used to preaching through these entire chapters at a time here in Genesis. But tonight, no, we're just going to look at verses 1 to 15. Last week, you'll remember, in Chapter 44, we looked at Joseph's cup, his silver cup, that was planted in Benjamin's sack of grain, and we noticed that we are to be quick to repent of our sins because of the grace that is available to us in Christ. And tonight, finally, we get to the point in the story where Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, kind of one of the highlights of this Joseph story. So let's give our attention as I read now God's Word, Genesis 45, 1 to 15. 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. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, thus says your son Joseph, God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen and you shall be near to me, you and your children, your children's children, your flocks and your herds and all that you have. there I will provide for you, lest you and your household and all that you have come to poverty, for there are still five years of famine. And behold, your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you. So you shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt and of all that you have seen. and you shall hurry and bring my father down here.' Then he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brothers and wept over them, and after that his brothers talked with him." Let's pray real quick for God's blessing. Lord, tonight we thank you for your word. We pray that you'd give us humble hearts to receive your word with care and attention. We pray that we would not just be hearers, but we would be doers. So we pray, Holy Spirit, apply your word to us now, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. I remember earlier on in my ministry, the very first time that I did premarital counseling, thinking to myself, what kinds of topics should we cover with this couple? What are the kinds of things that an engaged couple needs to learn before they become husband and wife? And of course, many different things came to mind. You need to know about the institution of marriage, how God ordained it, and some of the basic theology. of marriage. Of course, you also need to go over the individual roles and the responsibilities that the husband and the wife have in marriage. You need a lesson on finances, a lesson on intimacy, as well as on communication. And perhaps most of all, you need a lesson on conflict resolution. Because as I've heard another person say before, when you put two sinners together, sparks are bound to fly. This is what happens. It's an inevitable part of life and it's an inevitable part of marriage. There is conflict when you put two people together and they become husband and wife. And so if the marriage is to last, which of course it is, then they need to know how to deal with this conflict and how to resolve it appropriately. But of course we know it's not just in marriage where there are sinners and where sparks fly. Of course it's in all of the relationships of life, even within our relationships here in the church. This is also the case because we are a group of sinful individuals and sadly that means we sometimes sin against one another and cause there to be a rift in our relationships with one another. And so just as it is with an engaged couple, we all need to know how to resolve our conflict. so that it does not drive a wedge between us, so that it does not divide us, but rather so that we would deal with it in order to preserve peace and unity and love between us. And thankfully, here in Genesis 45, we're given some of the instruction we need on how to resolve the conflict and how to preserve peace in our relationships with one another. It's not everything there is to know by any means. but we're given a lot of what we do need to know. And what we'll see tonight is that when people sin against us, we need to remember two things in particular. And that is we need to remember God's sovereignty in our lives. And we also need to remember as believers, God's forgiveness of our own sins. And because as we remember those two things, we will then be helped to be reconciled with other people and forgive them of their sins as well. And so that's the main point I want you to see tonight. When people sin against you, remember God's sovereignty and His forgiveness so that you will be encouraged to forgive others when they sin against you and to be reconciled to them. Let's look here at our first point. God wants you to be reconciled to one another. As we've seen in the past, before Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, he put them through three tests. And the third of those tests we saw last week, when he had his valuable silver cup placed in Benjamin's sack of grain, because by getting Benjamin into trouble, Joseph wanted to know if the brothers would treat him as they had treated him, would treat Benjamin as they had treated him in the past. So would they, for instance, give up Benjamin for the sake of their own freedom? as they had with Joseph, or would they stay with Benjamin and speak up on his behalf? And if you remember, the brothers passed the test, because after Benjamin was found to have the cup, Judah approached Joseph and pleaded for Joseph's mercy. And most of all, Judah offered himself as a slave in the place of Benjamin. And what we're told here then at the beginning of our passage tonight is how Joseph responded to Judah's pleading on his brother's behalf. And so look again here with me at verse one. Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him. And he cried out, make everyone go out for me. So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. So it's a touching scene, isn't it? Here we have Joseph. He had just seen Judah's great love for his father as well as for his brother. And Joseph, we're told, could not restrain himself anymore. Remember, he had been withholding his identity for quite some time, and now he couldn't take it any longer. He was bursting at the seams. And so now that he was going to unveil his identity to his brothers, he sent everyone else out of the room. And yet before he could say the words, I am Joseph, what happened? He broke down and wept. In fact, he wept so loudly the Egyptians in the house of Pharaoh heard it. Moses tells us, and I don't think that means necessarily that Joseph's sobbing was so loud you could hear it all the way across town. We're not entirely sure how far away Pharaoh's house was from his at the time, but it seems to mean that the servants who were outside of the room, they heard Joseph sobbing and reported it to Pharaoh's house. But why was he crying? What was going on here? Well, it was for the same reason that he had broken down and wept twice before this. If you remember from chapter 42, when Joseph heard the brothers express their regret for what they had done to him in the past, he turned away from them and wept because he was so moved by their admission of guilt. And then in chapter 43, When Benjamin finally made it down to Egypt and Joseph saw him, we're told that his heart yearned for his brother. He so desperately just wanted to give his brother a hug, but he couldn't do that yet. And so he quickly left the room and went to a secret place where he could weep. And so we see then, leading up to this, that every time Joseph wept, it was because he loved his brothers, and he desperately wanted to make himself known to the brothers. And it's for the same reason that we see him weeping here in Genesis 45. He was done with the testing. He couldn't take it any longer. He just wanted them to know who he was, and he wanted to be able to give them a hug. In a word, Joseph wept because out of great love for his brothers, he wanted to be reconciled to them. Even though there had been years, at least 20 years, of separation and enmity between them, he wanted their relationship to be restored. Because again, he loved them, and he wanted there to be peace and unity between them. And friends, that's what God wants in our lives as well. Because we too can have broken relationships. We can have them in our immediate family. We can have them in our extended family. As I said earlier, we can have them even here in our church family. We can also have them in other spheres of life as well, such as at work or in the neighborhood. And when we have these broken relationships, there's usually or at least the tendency to have other things like enmity and strife and anger, maybe even hatred and bitterness and resentment. And yet what we learn here in our text is that that's not how God wants any of his creatures to live, especially not his covenant people like you and me. If you look on the back of the outline I've given you at Matthew 5 verses 23 and 24, here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks about the importance of reconciliation. He says, therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. It's striking. Jesus says reconciliation is so important that if you're in the middle of worshiping Him and realize at that point that you have sinned against someone else, you need to stop worshiping God and go be reconciled with your brother. That's how important it is. In fact, Jesus goes on later in the book of Matthew, chapter 18, verse 15, to say, moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. So if you put those two passages together, what do we get? Now what we're told then is that whether you have sinned against someone or you know that someone has sinned against you, Jesus says either way you have the responsibility to be reconciled with that person. Again, that's how important reconciliation is to God and how important reconciliation should be to us as well. I once heard about a husband and a wife who came to their pastor for marriage counseling. And when the pastor sat them down, he asked, he said, OK, so why are we here? What do you need help with? And the wife pulled out a long list of all the things her husband had done wrong to her. And I can't imagine being the pastor in that particular counseling session. But here it was, apparently, that instead of dealing with the problems, instead of resolving the problems, this wife had written down all of the problems and was holding onto them in resentment. And we'd be lying if we didn't say that was tempting for us to do as well, because when we're sinned against, it hurts. And when we're hurt by someone else, we often want the other person to be hurt too. We want them to experience some kind of pain. But what does the Bible tell us? Both here in Joseph's example, as well as in the teaching of Jesus, as we just read. It says we're never to hold on to the wrongs that other people have committed against us, but rather we are always to be reconciled. And it's always our responsibility to make sure that happens, whether we committed the sin or whether we were sinned against. So problems are going to happen. That's assumed. But when they happen, what are we going to do? Here we learn we can't ignore the problems. We certainly can't exacerbate the problems. but instead we need to resolve the problems so that there is peace and unity between us. That's the first thing we need to see here. Now as we come to our second point on the outline, in order to be reconciled, we have to forgive each other. That is a necessary requirement. So let's look again at the text. And desiring to be reconciled with his brothers, we see that Joseph then finally went on to reveal his identity to them. And so this is what we see here in verse 3. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Does my father still live? Now, we have to put ourselves in the brothers' shoes here because this would have been incredibly shocking to them. I just want you to think about this for a second. For one, up to this point, Joseph had been speaking to them in the Egyptian language through an interpreter. And yet here he is now speaking to them in the Hebrew language. Remember, there's no one else in the room at the time. This would have gotten their attention. What's more, not once had the brothers revealed the name of their brother who was no more. Remember, they kept talking about their brother who is no more. That's Joseph who had died, but they never said that his name was Joseph. There's no one else in Egypt who understandably would have known that his name was Joseph either. And yet here he says, I am Joseph. This would have been shocking, again, because this would have been undeniable proof that this really was their brother. And so as the rest of the verse tells us, the brothers couldn't say a word of response to Joseph's question because they were dismayed in his presence. They're absolutely terrified, and they became even more terrified when Joseph went on to say that, I'm your brother whom you sold into slavery. Because again, no one knew what they had done with Joseph many years in the past. And so this really was proving to them that this was Joseph. He really was here. And now the tables are turned. Joseph is the prime minister in Egypt, and they are his servants. And so they're wondering, how is he going to respond? Is he going to retaliate now? Is he going to take vengeance upon them for all that they had done to him in the past? At least to some degree, the brothers had to be thinking these things. Who wouldn't be thinking these things? But look at what Joseph did in response. After revealing his identity to them the first time, Joseph said in verse 4, please come near to me. Again, shocking. He didn't banish them off to prison. He didn't cast them out of his presence in anger. No, he urged them to come closer to him, and he welcomed them into his immediate presence. And then, sensing their fear, he went on to comfort them. Now look at verse five. 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. We'll say more about the second half of that verse in the next point, but notice that as Joseph revealed his identity to them, he did not retaliate against them. He comforted them, he welcomed them, and putting it all together, he expressed his forgiveness of them. If you look closely here at the text, nowhere does Joseph speak a word of reproach to them for their sins. He doesn't chide them. He doesn't correct them. Nowhere does he get angry with them. Nowhere does he punish them for their sin. These are all the things they would have expected, we would expect, but instead what are we told? He welcomed his brothers. He encouraged his brothers. And most of all, he hugged and kissed his brothers. Look at verses 14 and 15. Then he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. Moreover, he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Why? Because Joseph wasn't holding their sin against him. Against them. And so he had no intention of retaliating. On the contrary, he wanted to be reconciled with them. And that's exactly what happened. You look at the end of verse 15, Moses says, And after that his brothers talked with him. which is a way of helping us understand they were no longer at enmity with one another. Now, yes, they had a lot of explaining to do, they had a lot of catching up to do, but they were now at peace with each other. They're hugging, they're talking, their relationship had been restored. In fact, as we'll see next week, all of Joseph's brothers would soon come down to live with him in Egypt. Because again, they were reconciled to one another. And that's because for one, they had come to see their sin against Joseph and repent of it. We've said a lot about that in the last couple of weeks, but it's also because Joseph chose to forgive them of their sins when he could have retaliated against them. And you see, that needs to be true for all of us today as well. If we're to be reconciled with one another, as God says we should, then we must forgive one another. even if we don't feel like it. We read in Matthew 18, 21 and 22. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. It's kind of funny, Peter thinks he's being generous. If I forgive someone seven times, wow, that's got to be enough, right, Lord? Jesus says, no, Peter. You need to forgive a brother 70 times 7. And by that he doesn't mean forgive up to 490 times. He means always forgive. Always forgive. Forgiving your spouse, forgiving your children, forgiving your fellow church members should be something you do all of the time and without hesitation. That's the point he's making here. As people have asked me to forgive them in the past, I have to admit that I sometimes experienced a bit of tension within, and I'm sure you've experienced this too, where there's a part of you where, yes, you want to forgive the person and you want to be reconciled to the person, but there's also that part of you that says, you know what? No, I'm still angry. I want you to suffer for a little while because you hurt me. And yet Jesus says here, that is a temptation we have to resist. That is a lie we have to throw away. We cannot justify our withholding forgiveness from another person. We can't come up with excuses like you hurt me or I was right all along for holding a grudge or for letting our problems linger. No, Jesus says in no uncertain terms, if your brother repents and asks for your forgiveness, You have to grant it. Every time, no matter how many times, He asks you for it. Now, of course, that doesn't mean we should ignore sin and not deal with it rightly. Jesus says otherwise in Matthew 18, 15 to 20. Nor does it mean there aren't any consequences for our sin. The life of David teaches us otherwise. But what Jesus is saying here is that when someone sins against us, the tenor of our hearts should always be that of compassion and love towards the other person, and never retaliation or retribution. Because that's the only way sinners can be reconciled. It has to go through the step of forgiveness. So reconciliation happens only as we lovingly and compassionately forgive one another of our sins. That says we deal mercifully with one another and we let the sin go. Promising never to dwell on the sin again. Promising never to bring up the sin again in a condemning manner. Promising never to share the sin with another person. And if we are to be reconciled, this is the step that has to take place. It's a hard step. It's a difficult step. We have to forgive one another. And as we see thirdly here on the outline, You will be encouraged to forgive others when you remember God's sovereignty in your life. So look with me now here at verse five. 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. Remember, Joseph very kindly here is trying to comfort his brother's terrified hearts, and so instead of getting on them for their sin, he encouraged them, told them not to be grieved or angry, which is a way of saying, don't be mad at yourselves for what you've done, and because Joseph had forgiven them. But he also said these words because it was ultimately God who brought Joseph down to Egypt, not his brothers. That's what he went on to say, for God sent me before you to preserve life. In fact, Joseph went on to say this three more times in our passage. In verse seven, he said, and God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. Then again in verse 8 he said, 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. Even in verse 9 he said it one more time, Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not tarry. So in Joseph's mind, the brothers shouldn't be mad at themselves or at each other because they were not the ones who ultimately sent him to Egypt as a slave. It was the Lord who ultimately did that. Using the brother's sin, it was God who brought him to Egypt to accomplish his good purposes in the world. As Joseph said here to the brothers, God sent him to Egypt to preserve life. He had been sent to preserve a posterity, literally a remnant for his brothers in the earth and to save their lives. This is why in verses nine to 12, Joseph told the brothers, go back, get our father, get the rest of the family and come down and live with me here in Egypt because there were still five more years of famine and Joseph was going to provide for them. This is what God was after. So you see, to quote the later words of Joseph in Genesis 50 verse 20, the brothers, yes, they meant it for evil, but God was at work through it all, meaning it for good. As we sang earlier from Psalm 76, God made the wrath of man to praise him. This is what we see here. Of course, this wasn't the first time God would do such a thing. The greatest example is the cross of Christ. where according to Acts 2, 23, Jesus was put to death by lawless man, but it was done in accordance with the predetermined plan of God. That's how God operates. He does not sin, He's not the author of sin, but in His sovereignty, He uses sin to accomplish His purposes. The sinner is still guilty, the sinner is still held responsible, but He overrules the sin to bring about His redemptive plan. As we've seen with Joseph, he used the brother's sin to later save the brother's lives, because God had made promises to Jacob's family, hadn't he? That he was gonna make them a great nation, that he was gonna give them the land of Canaan, and most of all, that he was gonna bring about the birth of the Savior through their seed. So as Joseph understood, the brothers shouldn't be angry at themselves, because they were not the ultimate cause. God was at work through it all. And what I want you to see is that that is why Joseph was able to so freely and generously forgive his brothers. It's because he saw the hand of God at work in his life through their sin against him. And that's what we need to do as well. If we're ever gonna forgive one another and be reconciled to one another. Because the Lord's providence is at work in our lives today as well. We've discussed this a lot in our studies recently. And so when someone sins against us, that means the Lord is also overruling that sin for good in our lives and in the lives of other people. He's using that sin to bring about his good purposes and plans for us. That's always true. That's true when your kids sin against you. That's true when your spouse sin against you or your employer. Boys and girls, that's true, and your parents sin against you. In fact, no matter what the sin is, no matter who committed the sin, that is true. God is overruling it for the good of his people. And you see, just like Joseph, if you know that to be the case, then it can be a little easier to grant forgiveness, to put away your frustration, to put away your anger, and to put on love. to put on compassion towards the person. Why? Because you know that God has a greater purpose for what's going on. It's reminded me of our staying at home for the past couple of months. The government did not shut down everything to make our lives miserable, did they? Now, they may have made our lives miserable to some extent, but that wasn't the reason. They weren't just out to get us. No, the reason was to slow down the spread of the virus in order to preserve life. And if we remembered that, even if we didn't agree with it, but if we remembered that, it did make the frustrations of staying at home a little more bearable. Because we knew that there was something bigger and hopefully better going on. The same thing is true when other people sin against us. There's always something bigger going on and we have to remember that. So though it's difficult to grant forgiveness, remember God's sovereignty. He is at work to overrule it for your good. And then fourthly and finally here on the outline, I want you to see that you will also be encouraged to forgive as you remember God's forgiveness of your own sins. This evening we've been approaching the text as being a picture of fellow sinners forgiving each other and becoming reconciled to one another. But what we also need to see is that this text presents a beautiful picture of how God has forgiven us as believers in Christ and reconciled us to himself. And so when we think of Genesis 45, we don't just wanna think of ourselves as being Joseph in the story. Now we are Joseph in the story, but here's the thing, we're also Joseph's brothers in the story. Because yes, while we do, are sometimes sinned against by other people, we are always the ones who sin against the Lord. Just think of your own life this past week. How many times have you transgressed the law of God? How many times did you fail to love God with all of your heart and to give him the worship he deserves? If you're like most people, if you're like me, it was many, many times, more times than you can probably count. Because the truth is, we're just like Joseph's brothers. Our hearts are full of selfishness and hate, just like theirs were. And so we say things we shouldn't, we do things we shouldn't, we yell at our kids, we speak harshly to our spouse, we disrespect our parents, we're rude to other people. And yet, how does the Lord treat us as his people in Jesus Christ? Like Joseph, he welcomes us into his presence and he forgives us of all of our sins. We don't deserve this. Like the brothers, we stand before God guilty and condemned. But every single time we sin, this is what happens. We're treated in kindness and in mercy. We're not banished from him, but we're dealt with in love and compassion. We're hugged and kissed, if you will, by the Lord when we should be cast out and killed by the Lord. And that's because just as he used the sin of Joseph's brothers to bring about a great deliverance from physical death, so he used the lawless hands that crucified Jesus to bring about a great deliverance from spiritual death. He brought about the great deliverance for his people from the guilt of our sin, from the power of our sin, from the penalty we deserve for our sin. And so if you're in Christ this evening, Ben, even though you've committed many and great sins against the Lord, you've been forgiven of them. You've been completely forgiven of them and you've been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. And you see, not only is the Lord's forgiveness of your sin to be the manner by which you forgive other people of their sins, It's also, biblically speaking, to be the motivation for why you should forgive another person of their sins. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4 verses 31 and 32, Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. In other words, the one should naturally lead to the other, Paul says. If you've been forgiven by God, then that should drive you to always Be forgiving those who sin against you. You might remember Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant. In the parable, one of the king's servants owed a debt of 10,000 talents to his master. That is the equivalent of 200,000 years of wages. So just think about that. If you lived for 200,000 years, all the money you would make in that time, that's the amount of money this person owed to his master. It was a huge debt. In fact, it was a debt this man would never be able to repay. And so knowing that he was going to be punished for not paying it, he begged the king for mercy. He pleaded for a little more time to pay off the debt, and the king was so moved with compassion for the man that he didn't just give him more time, he removed the debt from him entirely. And so in a moment, there was this servant who went from owing an astronomical amount of money to the king, which he could not pay and deserved to be punished for not paying, to being completely forgiven of his debt in full. It's a wonderful story of God's grace. And yet as the parable goes on, when that same servant went to collect a debt from someone who owed him money, a much smaller amount, only 100 denarii, which would be the equivalent of 100 days of wages, he wouldn't extend any mercy for him not being able to pay, but instead threw him into the prison And if you remember, the point of the parable is we are just like that servant. We owe an infinite amount of debt to God for all of our sins, a debt so big we can never pay it, no matter how hard we try. And yet we've been graciously forgiven by the Lord of every single penny. And so when others sin against us, though it may be painful, here's the thing Jesus wants us to consider. We of all people, then, should be so quick to grant forgiveness to others. Why? Because God has forgiven us of something far greater than anything someone could do to us. And that's what we see here in Genesis 45. We are like the brothers. We are guilty and condemned. We deserve damnation and death. And yet, we are received by the Lord, forgiven by Him, because of Christ, who paid our debt for us. So not only then will we be encouraged to forgive others as we remember God's sovereignty in our lives, here we learn we'll be encouraged to forgive others when we remember God's forgiveness to us. And so the next time someone sins against you, whether it's in a small way or a big way, God says you need to remember some things. Remember his sovereignty. He's at work to overrule the sin for good in your life. and remember his forgiveness, that the sin being committed against you at the moment is nothing compared to the sins you have committed against God. And yet all of those sins you've committed against God have been forgiven and full. And so how quick then we should be to grant forgiveness to our brothers and sisters in Christ as we remember these things. We will be encouraged to do that. And so when people sin against you, remember God's sovereignty and remember God's forgiveness so that you will be encouraged to forgive others and to be reconciled to them. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we do pray that as opportunities arise, even if they arise this week, where reconciliation needs to be pursued, we pray that we would take that higher path and we would be willing to grant forgiveness and do what is needed to preserve the peace and the love and the unity between us. Lord, we pray as we prayed earlier this morning, that even now amidst the coronavirus and even now amongst the various disagreements we may have about how to proceed and move forward and so forth, we ask, oh God, that you would join our hearts together and give us a strong unity with one another, even if we disagree with each other. Now we pray, Father, that though we have been separated from one another now for a couple of months, that you would be bringing us closer, that we would remember what you taught us in Ecclesiastes, that we are to live in community. And that may be harder for us to do right now, but that is no less true right now than it was two months ago. And so we pray that we would be building our relationships with one another. And as there are sins committed between us, we pray, help us to do what is right. Help us to grant that forgiveness in light of your wonderful gift of forgiveness you've given to us. Help us to remember your sovereignty as well, so that we will be reconciled. Lord, thank you for teaching us these things, not just in words and in propositions, but also in pictures and examples to help us learn from them. Lord, help us to apply your word to our lives this week, even if needed. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.