Forgiveness As A Process

When I put it out last week that, in my personal opinion, one of the most moving scenes in
the story of Joseph is that scene where he finally reveals himself to his brothers.
The operative word there is the word, finally, because if you're familiar with the story,
you will know that even though he immediately recognized his brothers when they came to
him looking for grain, they did not recognize him.
And he was in no big hurry to tell them that he was their brother Joseph.
In fact, what he did is he put them through a whole series of tests that are described
for us in chapters 42, 43, and 44.
Those tests can perhaps best be summarized like this.
First of all, he accused them of being spies.
This is 42 verse 9, you are spies, you have come to see where our land is unprotected.
Three times in that chapter, if I add them up correctly, he accuses them of being spies
and then he throws them all in jail.
And there he keeps them for three days.
And when he releases them from prison and he sends them back home, he tells them to
come back with their younger brother Benjamin.
Remember now, Benjamin is Joseph's full brother.
He is also with Joseph the son of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel.
And just to make sure they come back with Benjamin, he takes Simeon and he keeps him back
as hostage.
And so they go back home with their grain, they prevail on Father Jacob, who is deeply
troubled that his second favorite son is now going to run the risk of losing his life.
Eventually they run out of grain and so they go back to Egypt with Benjamin in tow and
then Joseph throws them his huge feast and he arranges them all in order of their age.
Imagine the freak out.
That would give them because they have no clue what is going on.
Benjamin gets five times as much food as anybody else that makes me wonder how much of an
appetite that dude had.
Then comes the final test.
They get their bags of grain, their silver is again put in the bag as before.
That's all part of the narrative.
But then in Joseph's bag or in Benjamin's bag he puts his cop, his silver cop.
So sends them back home, no sooner are they out of sight than he turns to his steward
and he says go after them and find out in whose bag is my silver cop.
And of course you know the story, it's Benjamin's bag.
So the steward wants to take Benjamin back to Joseph while he lets everybody else go
on.
But his brothers now have learned their lesson, they all come tromping back to Joseph and
they refuse to sell out their younger brother Benjamin.
And it is in that context then when he has put them to the test.
And he knows they are changed men that he finally reveals himself to them.
He says in Genesis 454, "I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt."
And the purpose of this test then was to find out have my brothers changed.
Do they hate Benjamin as much as they have hated me?
And are they as careless about their fathers' feelings as they were when they sold me into
slavery?
And obviously they sustained the test, they demonstrated that they were changed people.
And so now Joseph could no longer contain his emotions and he reveals his true identity
to them.
And from that is I think a second lesson that I want us to learn this morning from the
story of Joseph and that is this, forgiveness and reconciliation that you are not the same
as perhaps will have occasion to see, but forgiveness and reconciliation are both a process.
That is to say it takes time to ensure that it has been properly completed.
Perhaps you will have discovered as I have over the years that forgiveness for a lot of
God's people is problematic in the sense that we know it is a Christian virtue.
We know that we are to extend forgiveness to one another in those places where we have
been injured.
We know that God in Christ is supposed to give us grace to do that.
And as best as we can, we often say that we forgive, but truth of the matter is it is remarkably
difficult, isn't that true?
It is remarkably difficult to let bygones be bygones and to let forgiveness truly be completed.
I will never forget, first church I passed there, we had two men who were at odds with each
other and every time communion came up because they knew that they were supposed to walk
in forgiveness, they would shake hands and make up and then as soon as communion was over,
they went back to hating each other and this went on for years and years and years.
And the reason for that is that forgiveness is in fact a process.
What I want to do in the time that we have this morning is try to walk you through this chart.
There is a copy of it in your bulletins.
I want you to take that out of you please.
It's got today's scripture reading on one side, the chart is on the other side.
You have to have pretty good eyesight to be able to read that, but I want to take some
time to walk through it. It's one of the most helpful charts I have ever seen in terms
of walking out the process of forgiveness.
If you have been reading my book on Joseph, you will know it's reproduced there.
It's also in a couple of the other books that I've published earlier.
But it's very helpful to understand how forgiveness works and how you can tell that forgiveness
has really been accomplished.
So let me walk you through it piece by piece beginning in the bottom left hand corner
with the offensive event. An offensive event is that place where we do anything to one
another that produces hurt or anger. It's a place where we sin against each other.
It can be a major thing such as you killed my child or you burned down my house or you
caused me to lose all my possessions. It can be a relatively minor thing such as I walked
into the room and you didn't acknowledge me or you didn't say hello to me or you hurt
my feelings by that particular remark. It can be real or it can be imagined.
Real is if the event actually happened and I really did to you what you think I did
to you. Imagine of course there are many things that people think people are doing to them
that don't in fact happen at all. It's just totally coincidental and it's not aimed
at you at all. I'll never forget. Years ago one of my elders first church I pastored
was furious with me because I had passed him on the road and I had not waived to him.
Reality was I didn't see him. I was trying to keep my eye on the road thank you very much
but he thought I slighted him and deliberately ignored him which wasn't true at all. Whatever
the case offense produces hurt and it produces anger. Let's have that slide up. Hurt and
anger and the degree to which hurt and anger happen in light of an offense and this is
really important is determined. Keep that slide up please. It's determined by two additional
factors. One on behalf of the offended person and another on behalf of the offender and
at the risk of belaboring this I think this is just so important and so helpful. I'm going
to take a little bit of time this morning and walk you through each of the four factors
under each one of those beginning then with the offended factor. Let's begin with the
fact that one of the first conditions the determines the degree to which we are wounded
by the actions of another person is our respective commitment to the relationship and as a general
rule it's safe to say that the closer we are to each other the greater is the power to
hurt each other. Strangers at least emotionally seldom hurt us in the way that a loved one can
and the reason for that's not hard to figure out the closer you are in relationship the
more open your hearts are to each other. The less your defenses are up the more you know
each other and the more you know exactly what buttons to push to get a rise out of the
other person isn't that true? And so if you look at your life and the lives of people
around you most conflicts that produce hurt and anger are in close relationships and
I would include in that family, business relationships and I would add to that church
community because you see in church community we're supposed to be family. We open up our
hearts to God, we open up our hearts to each other and the result is that not infrequently
we step on each other's toes. How many of you here would say that at some point in your
life you have been offended by something somebody in the body of Christ said or did to you?
Can I have a show of hands? How many of you think you might have stabbed somebody in that
process? Well we're honest, we're honest. I'll never forget years ago the Lord gave us the
slogan, "Marinath, I place the belong." Remember that? In the old building we had big poster hanging
up front, beautiful poster. Never imagined the emotions that would stir in the hearts and
lives of some people because what it did in retrospect it connected with the deep longings
that so many of us have to belong and to be part of community and it raised levels of expectations
of what that was going to look like and then when sometimes those expectations were not met
because we are sinful people living in a sinful world it produced hurt and in some cases produced
anger. You see the degree of hurt and anger is determined by the closeness of the relationship.
My wife can hurt me much more than my male man ever can. So that's a condition that's very
important to understand. Second one in that list is a thing called ego strength. And ego strength
is what we talked about last week in connection with Joseph. Ego strength is not only having
is not just having a thick skin that makes you immune to criticism. Ego strength is all about
how solid you are at the core of your being. And Joseph because he was loved by his father
and knew the presence of God in an unusual way Joseph was solid to the core of his being.
And the more solid you are the less you are influenced by people around you the less you are
impacted by what they say and by what they do because you know who you are you know who's you
are and you can stand before God. And the opposite is true too. The lower your ego strength the more
you are at the mercy of people around you. And people who grow thick skin are often very sensitive
people who have learned to build walls around them so they will not get hurt by the hustle and the
bustle of life and relationships. But get past those walls and you discover that we live in a
world where many many people are fragile. So the more fragile you are the more you take to heart
what is being said and done and the greater will be your hurt and the greater will by times be your
anger. Third one on the list then is decision to forgive. Forgiveness never happens automatically.
It is a choice that we need to make and we need to make it again and again and again. This
and I've often said whenever we are in a situation where somebody has hurt us or where we have become
angry we are confronted by one of two choices. We can hold on to that hurt and anger and we can
nurture it. We can dwell on it. We can amplify it. We can brood on it. We can bring other people
in on the picture and the more we do the deeper it will go and the more we will become captive
to Satan's power because Satan's strategy is to try to get us lost in injustices so that
we think we are righteous in our cause and we are justified in our actions. And that's why the
Apostle Paul talks about that. In Ephesians 426 and 27 he says be angry but do not sin. Do not
let the sun go down on your anger. And then that last phrase give no opportunity to the devil.
Unresolved hurt and anger opens you up to the enemy who comes in like a flood and when he comes
in like a flood it's extremely difficult to get rid of him and all you need to do is look at
your own life if you have allowed unforgiveness hurt or anger to fester it begins to taste
mightily good and you take the light in feeling the way that you're feeling and before you're
very far down that road you are convinced that you're right everybody else is wrong and you're
waiting for the whole world to come and yield at your feet to say that it's okay is that true? Yes
am I the only one that ever feels that way? No no this is how humanity works and so the other
option that I have is to forgive but forgiveness has to be rooted in the fact that this is what
God desires for me and this is what God has extended to me and therefore I in turn can also forgive
and that robs the devil of that groundwork that he lays in our lives to take us captive. Second
Corinthians chapter 2 10 and 11 Paul says what I have forgiven I have forgiven in the sight of
Christ for your sake in order that Satan might not out with us for we are not unaware we are not
unaware of his schemes. Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning this in doesn't mean pretending
that we haven't been injured it doesn't mean saying that it is okay now it is following the steps
of God in saying that ultimately God is the judge of the living and the dead it's not my job
to play God judge or jury in somebody else's life that is God's domain God wants me to forgive
and it's interesting in that connection that here in chapter 50 when Joseph's brothers come to
him the second time just absolutely petrified that now that Jacob is dead they're afraid Joseph
is going to come after them all together and of course you have Joseph weeping and then he says
these words don't be afraid am I in the place of God he knows it's not his job to judge
because you see God knows the heart and you and I when we enter into this process in our own
strength and in our own wisdom we just make a mess of it in fact we start a cycle of retribution
and I did a study one time of all the trouble spots in the world where you have these intractable
wars that take place and do you know that at almost every instance it is based on some sense and
historical sense of injustice that has not been resolved and that has not been forgiven and
that becomes the fuel from generation to generation everybody loses and Satan's power is released
in the destruction of vengeance and hatred so the decision to forgive makes a big big difference
in terms of how deep our hurt and our anger goes and the fourth one is a personal history
of giving and receiving forgiveness that is to say our ability to forgive others is in direct
proportion to how much forgiveness we have experienced first of all from God and secondly from
other people around us if we have experienced forgiveness we know the freedom that comes along with
it and how that can restore relationships if we have never experienced forgiveness if we have
grown up in a family where you got to pay for every mistake and every error and every slight
then we become vindictive don't know what forgiveness looks like think of forgiveness as weakness
rather than strength and so we pride ourselves in the fact that we are strong and we are never wrong
and the hurt goes deeper and deeper and deeper so that's one element in terms of
the factors on the part of the offended party Paul says this about it bear with each other
and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another forgive as the Lord
forgives you as I said the more we know that we have been forgiven the less judgmental we are of
others because we know what lives at our own hearts and the easier it is for us to extend forgiveness
as God has also forgiven us all right moving on then to the offender and on the offender's part
there are also four qualifiers that determine how deep the hurt and the anger will run and the
first one of that is the severity of the injury or the severity of the offense that is committed
against me let me put it this way some of you here are housewives and let's suppose that you
are a fastidious housewife I mean you like the place neat and you're married to a slump
because we all know that opposites attract right and besides that he's probably subconsciously
rebelling against your neatness freakness and so he goes out of his way to leave his stuff all over
the place so you know the wet towel is on the bed and the underwear is all through the bathroom
and the toothpaste is not properly rolled and squeezed and Lord knows whatever else now if you're
that kind of wife chances are that in your household a few tears have been shed about this because
why you take it personally if he really loved you then wouldn't he take your feelings into
consideration so yes it causes hurt causes anger and probably more than one or two little fights
as the years go by now that's bad enough but that doesn't begin to compare to if you discover that
for the last ten years he's been carrying on an emotional or a sexual affair with your best friend
behind your back in the light of that his dirty underwear pay rules in significance wouldn't you
say or let's suppose you have a kid and has gone to you know high school or college party and
and come home sloshed and you're not accustomed to your kid losing control like that and as a
parent you're not entirely happy and you can take that personally because you know you're
it's not only bad for you but you're making me look bad because I'm your parent
doesn't begin to compare when he drinks and drives gets into an accident and kills somebody
and now is charged by the police so the severity of the injury makes a huge difference in how easy
or difficult it may be to to forgive how deep the hurt goes or how deep goes the anger
second one there is acknowledgement of wrong saying sorry doesn't always immediately fix every
situation but saying I'm sorry and meaning it from the core of your heart goes a long ways in
making it easier to forgive let me tell you a deep dark secret I don't know if I've ever told
this story it's the story when my wife and I before we were married got into big trouble
with the preacher and here's how the story goes the year was 1970 I had finished my first year
seminary and got sent out on summer assignment as many of you know to Frederick to New Brunswick
where I met my wife Michelle was on a team of four or five girls from the Niagara Peninsula
who were part of what was known as summer workshops in ministry program that time sponsored by the
youth movement in our denomination known as swim for short and most of you know the story
of when I saw her come down the plane I said that's going to be my wife took her three days to
know that I existed but eventually we went out but remember dating was not allowed and so the
challenge during those six weeks that we were together was to not let anybody know that we were
interested in each other because that would upset the teen dynamics with all the other girls right
to me you got to be wise and careful about that so we did really well until the last night of the
last week the last week we were in charge of a youth camp and all of us had a cabin of kids I had
a cabin of boys she had a cabin of girls and so did all the other team leaders mostly kids from
the community and I don't know how this happened I really don't but somewhere along the line we got
the idea that the last night of camp was a free for all that nobody went to bed and everybody ran
wild so what did we do we left the kids in their cabins alone and she and I went off for a walk
into the woods now you got a picture of this this is all very innocent just so you're clear
but we're out in the woods and our kids are raising havoc in camp they are all over the place
so much so that the preacher has to herd them back into their cabins asks the other counselors
where are John and Michelle and the answer that he gets is they've gone off into the woods by
themselves not a good answer he was leave it and to my shame I have to confess that we actually
saw him looking for us with a flashlight we're not so stupid as to come out of hiding at that
particular point in time and so eventually he got all the kids quieted down and you know
whatever else and we snuck back into our cabins and slept a very peaceful sleep until very early
next morning he comes walking into my cabin like an army drill sergeant and he says I want to see
you in my cabin right now I knew what was coming so with fear and trepidation I go
reporting to my drill sergeant and he gives it to me up one side and down the other
how could you leave these kids alone they come out of bad families what kind of model are you
demonstrating by going out and making out in the woods and all of that kind little over the top I
thought honestly but he was really in case you haven't got it he was really mad and this went on
for quite a period of time and honestly I had no defense I mean what are you gonna say you know
so I just stood there and when he was finished I said you know you're really right I was wrong
and I'm very sorry took him a while to get over himself but it went a lot better
than if I had said to him here's my 10 reasons why I did what I did and I'm justified in my action
sometimes you just have to you just have to know when you're at fault and own it and I love
the way Jesus puts it in the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5 25 and 26 he says
subtle matters quickly with your adversary who has taken you to court do it while you are
still with him on the way or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over
to the officer and you may be thrown into prison I tell you the truth you will not get out
until you have paid the last penny saying I'm sorry and saying it as many times as you need to
say it helps diminish the hurt and helps diminish the anger then the third one in that category is
intentionality was it done on purpose or was it done accidentally I remember when
we were kids at home and we'd get into a situation where we broke something of mothers in the kitchen
or we made a big mess and spilled whatever else and of course our response was always
we didn't do it on purpose right I mean it was an accident which typically would be true
and I'll never forget my mother's saying in each of these situations and you'll you'll have to
forgive my my Dutch here but her response would be when we would say listen I didn't do it on
purpose she would say that sell at an albaimut in Coleman oak loosely translate it it's very
difficult because it's idiomatic that would be adding insult to injury in other words it was bad
enough that it was accidentally that we did it but if we did it on purpose that would have been
a thousand times worse and we all know situations I would say that most of the time when people hurt
each other in most situations it's accidental it's thoughtless it's careless it's it's whatever
but you know as well as I do that there are particular situations where particular people do
particular things that are intentional and if you've ever been in a situation where somebody does
something to you intentionally then that is much more difficult to forgive because there's
an intent behind that that can really go deep because that becomes a personal rejection all
right moving on one more in that list and that of course is frequency does it keep happening
if my spouse is unfaithful to me once that is bad enough and maybe hard to work through
and hard to forgive but it is very different from repeated infidelity or if my spouse
overspends one time and abuses the credit card that's very different if it is a repeated
process because repeated processes destroy trust and so you've got all of those factors working
together determining how deep the hurt goes and how deep goes the anger and let me say again
it's very important to understand this because what it does is it explains why two people
can live in virtually identical situations and have an entirely different outcome and an
entirely different response I often heard the question I've often heard it said for example
take two kids raised in the same broken family one turns out to rise above it all and does well
in life and isn't significantly or negatively impacted by it but another just goes down and down
and down you know families like that I know families like that they grow up in the same nest
but one somehow rises above it and the other is overcome by it and sinks down under the load
while those eight factors that we've just been talking about are definitive in determining
what happens to me in that particular situation and that's why it's so important to understand this
because I know parents over the years who have justified their actions towards their children
by pointing out to the one kid who did well and that becomes proof that I've been a good parent
never mind that there are seven others or however many who have gone down the tubes
different people react differently because of the dynamics and the factors involved are different
you with me so far two more things that I want to mention before we wind up this morning
and that is this first of all notice that this whole process consists of a cycle
you'll notice that the offensive event produces hurt which produces an anger and produces
information gathering Lord willing we'll come back to that in more detail next time information
gathering means that you are trying to find answers as to the how's and the why's of what has
happened and why it has happened but then notice the arrows go backwards also after information
gathering you're back to anger and you're back to hurt here's a really important thing to understand
all right let's say that your husband who has really hurt your wife and you've been gracious
enough to say I'm sorry and you're hoping that has fixed it but she keeps coming back to it again
and again and again and you're frustrated because you said listen I've already told you I'm sorry
I can't undo it why can't we let the matter rest doesn't that a good typical male response
it is a cycle the hurt produces anger produces questions I get answers to my questions
and now my anger doesn't diminish it increases because now I know what you really did
and now I am really mad at you for what you've done to me and as I get angrier I feel the hurt
all over again and so this goes through the cycle however many times it needs to happen before it
is finally totally released and it is here that God's people tend to short circuit the process
thinking that once is good enough it seldom is depending on how deep it runs do you understand
what I'm saying part of forgiveness is giving each other the space to let that process do the job
until every question is answered all the anger has been bled off and all the hurt has been released
only then can the rest of forgiveness truly be realized so that's one thing I want us to notice
the second thing I want us to notice yet is that there is a major obstacle to this whole process
and that obstacle is called denial denial means refusing to acknowledge either the hurt
or the anger how many of us haven't found ourselves in situations where we have seen somebody
a hurt by somebody else and we try to be sympathetic and we say to them well you know
that must have really hurt and very often what do people say no didn't bother me at all
and then there are people that we know are angry and we try to point out that maybe they should
deal with their angry and they come at us and they say I'm not angry that's your imagination man
and then of course they go on and they tell their tale of woe to the next 10 people that they meet
but they're not angry and they're not hurt well denial is refusing to be in touch with your hurt
and refusing to be in touch with your anger and there are multiple reasons why denial
is such a powerful tool to keep us from resolving conflicts one reason is because we're not in touch
with our emotions or it takes time to be in touch with our emotions I don't know about you
but there are days when I feel a certain way after a certain thing has happened and I'm out of
sorts and I don't quite know why I am out of sorts anybody here ever feel that way it just
you're just in a bad mood you know you want to kick the dog in the cat and slam the door
and if somebody says to you you know what's the matter with you you don't know because you really
don't know and it takes time to get in touch with feelings because feelings are incredibly
complicated and for Christians they're really complicated because for Christians there is a lot
of shame associated with negative feelings is that true we know we're supposed to be kind loving
and forgiving and so dog-goned if I have to kill myself to be that way that's what I will try to be
but you can force yourself to being something other than what you are and Christians need to
realize that we have this treasure in earthen vessels and Christians bleed just as easily as non-Christians
do and they hurt just as badly as the pagans do and frankly they get just as mad and just as angry
as the worst of the worst because we share a common humanity and being a Christian doesn't mean
that you're going to have a stiff upper lip all the time doesn't mean that you can pretend all
this didn't bother me or I'm not really angry when everything inside me says I'm angry part of
being a Christian is that God is big enough to handle our emotions if you don't believe that
read the Psalms and you discover how miserably authentic the Psalmist is in the middle of conflict
and pain and confusion but there's still a third reason why denial is such a powerful coping mechanism
and that is because the human psyche can only handle so much pain and when that pain level
is overloaded we disengage and we shut it out and we all do that in varying degrees
we do that by not thinking about what has hurt us in my situation when there is something that
really deeply pains me and I'm trying to get in touch with my feelings I have to process it for
two or three days before I can even afford to let my mind go there and much as we see that explains
why you've often heard the story of veterans that have come through war and they've experienced
horrors beyond description and they they'll never talk about it because it is simply too painful
to put into words and I've worked over the years with lots of people that have gone through
childhood sexual or emotional abuse and people who are really quite intelligent and creative
who systems have been overwhelmed by pain at a very early level in life have learned to
shut it out to such a degree that very often they don't even remember what has happened they just
push it all away and life goes on and everything looks to be okay until something triggers their pain
and they have to come to grips with the fact that all is not well in this house so
dealing with that is incredibly painful it's often the last thing that God's people want to do
but you see every place where you and I shut down we lose the ability to give the positive
to the other people in our lives and you've often heard me say if you don't want to deal with your
crud for your own sake then do so for the sake of your children or the sake of your grandchildren
because they're the ones who have to live with the fact that you're not living fully and aren't
able to give expression to the deepest parts of your life and so it is that when we come to faith
in Christ particularly when we say Lord I want to grow up and I want to be like Jesus
God takes us at our word he breaks down the walls of dissociation he breaks down the walls
of denial and we begin to connect with the hurt and we begin to connect with the anger
and the questions start coming to the foreground that is not a bad thing that is a good thing
because God is trying to release the poison he is trying to conform us to the image of Christ
and the image of Christ is that we should walk in love even as he does and so you can be
assured that if you're serious about following Jesus if there are unresolved places of hurt
or unresolved places of anger they're going to flush out when God triggers those memories
and all of a sudden you find yourself back there in ways that you could not possibly imagine
you see somebody mistreating a child in the grocery store and all of a sudden you're back
to that beating that you received when you were three years old or you see a scene in a movie
nobody else catches it but it goes through all your defenses and it hits a spot deep inside you
and you are undone paralyzed unable to move because the Holy Spirit
is cleaning it out the beauty is that God is very good at what He does
and in all my years of helping people or trying to help people walk through this I have never seen
anybody repeat the same thing twice it often feels like it but they're always deeper levels
until all the toxin has been removed and we can freely love and forgive
the way that God in Christ has forgiven us
, just as I am with the one thing but the Bible was shared for me and the way that I was
used to come to the land of God I come, I come, I come.
just as I am I'm waiting not to read my soul, I'm wanderplough to the who's part and cleanse
each spot of God I come, I come.
just as I am, don't trust a God with many a call, flicked many a dirt
findings and fears within without a limb of God I come, I come.
just as I am with the one thing but the Bible was shared for me and the way that I was
used to come to the land of God I come, I come.
just as I am, don't trust a God with many a call, flicked many a dirt
because that poem is right, we'll leave all that of God I come, I come.
just as I am with the one thing but the Bible was shared for me and the way that I was
used to come to the land of God I come.