The Bible Recap Day 29

 The Bible Recap Day 29

Genesis 48-50

God Shot: Forgiveness

There are many different ways of defining forgiveness and what comes next but for the sake of brevity, for this recap, we will define forgiveness with this one requirement ““Like God, to forgive someone means to no longer hold sin against the person who has sinned against you.” Think of a bank loan and then one day the bank calls and says “ok, your debt has been cleared”. That is the way I see forgiveness. (Side note, it took me almost 30 minutes to write this paragraph because I started down a LONG research rabbit hole trying to define forgiveness, this could be an interesting study)

Over the last few days “forgiveness” has been put in front of me repeatedly. It has come in the forms of music, sermons, conversations, and now my Bible study itself. I would like to believe that I am a forgiving person. I once heard it said that “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die to die”.  And that is a great visual image for me. As I sit here and type I cannot think of anyone that I have not been willing to forgive, whether they have asked for it or not. But I can also say that as I sit here and think about it there are many people that I have forgiven that I do not trust and when I think about them my blood pressure rises. (This is why I went down the research rabbit hole, I don’t truly understand how that part of forgiveness is supposed to work.) I am not saying I am a saint or anything, but I don’t understand the unwillingness to forgive others. However, there is this one guy that I struggle to forgive all the time. Like, every day this idiot causes me problems. And that idiot is me.

So here is my God shot for the day Genesis 50:15-21

[15] When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” [16] So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: [17] ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. [18] His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” [19] But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? [20] As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. [21] So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

 When I read this today the thing that popped out to me was that these brothers were still afraid of Joseph because of what they had done to him. We have not been told whether or not he had acted poorly towards them or led them to believe that he was going to punish them when their dad died. But for some reason his brothers thought that he would. I am going to take a little license here, because we can’t know, but I am going to believe that Joseph had fully forgiven his brothers and had not lorded it over them in any way. So the unwillingness to forgive was not from Joseph but from themselves. They had allowed the fear of punishment to reside inside them rent free for years because they had been unwilling to accept the forgiveness of their brother. I loved his reply “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?”. Hey guys, I forgive you. We are good. God is so real and present and I can see his hand moving. Why are you still worrying about this?

The reason this stood out to me at first was because I could not understand why these brothers could not accept the forgiveness that Joseph was willing to give. Today, I was going to write about the freedom we get when we stop living in fear of what someone can do to us by not forgiving them. By letting them live rent free in our minds, ruining our days and for what? Because we won’t forgive them. That is just dumb to me. And as I was writing about my ability to forgive others God spoke to me and asked me why I was unwilling to forgive myself? Because he already has. 

Almost 27 years ago I made a mistake that was made public. I was a licensed minister and this mistake was in direct violation of one of the conditions of my licensure. I went before the deacons of that church to return my license and talk about reconciliation and  how I could prove my repentance enough to get my license back. There was this old grumpy deacon in the room. You know the kind, the one who sits on the front row, and stares at the preacher almost waiting for him to do something wrong. He was a nice person in his own way but he was not a very forgiving person. He tended to hold on to grudges and since my dad was the pastor of the church I was trying to appease him specifically because I did not want something I did to reflect poorly on my dad. Anyway, After I told the deacons what I had done and how I had gone about seeking forgiveness from God and others I handed that grumpy deacon my license (He was the chairman by the way). The license was still in the frame and he kept turning the frame around in his hands as he stared at a spot on the floor. Finally, he looked up with actual tears in his eyes, stood up, and walked across the room and handed the license back to me. He looked me dead in the eyes and told me “Mike, if you have asked God for forgiveness, and we believe what the Bible says, He has already forgiven you. If he has forgiven you then we have no right to withhold that forgiveness ourselves.”

That story came to mind as I was thinking about forgiveness. That grumpy old man really could be me. I tend to hold grudges against myself. Why can’t I forgive me if God already has... and sent his son to die to do it? That was my God shot. God was asking me today why I act like the brothers and won’t let go and forgive me.

-  The most influential person in your life is the one you refuse to forgive