Presented to the Swift Current Corps, 07 August 2011
Presented to Alberni Valley Corps, 30 September 2018
Presented to Alberni Valley Corps, 30 September 2018
By Captain Michael Ramsay
The Alberni Version was entitled 'Oh Brother!'
The Alberni Version was entitled 'Oh Brother!'
I remember Grade 5. It was an interesting time in my life. My teacher actually taught my father Grade 5, a generation ago. I was predisposed to like him but it just didn’t work. I questioned him once about why my name was on the board for a detention before the class even began. When I questioned Mr Cavin on it he replied, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll deserve to be on the detention board soon.” Grade 5 was not my finest hour and I am sure I annoyed Mr. Cavin enough. On this day I didn’t disappoint him though in earning my spot in detention quickly – though I think he went a little over the top in giving me the detention. I really didn’t do anything wrong but I was part of a world record setting team, I’m sure, for the 4 quickest detentions in history. You see something had happened and this girl in my class, Crissy, was crying. Caveman saw her crying and gave her a detention. I was surprised and I thought this was the silliest thing in the world to get a detention for crying so, like any sympathetic 10 or 11 year-old boy, …I burst out laughing, earning myself a detention. Paul, who sat right behind me and was also a regular member of the detention club, thought that this was amusing that I had gotten a detention so early and so easily that he broke out laughing. Thus he also earned a detention. Christopher, another classmate of ours, was then so overcome by the humour involved in the whole situation that he laughed and was assured a seat in detention hall himself. Grade 5: our class motto could have been, ‘Where a detention is waiting for you before you ever get there.’ Sometimes there are challenges in life but Genesis 50:19 assures us “Do not be afraid.”
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“Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?” This is part of Joseph’s response to his brothers when they came to him seeking forgiveness. We remember the history between Joseph and his brothers, right? His brothers are pretty tough costumers. To recap, this was Joseph’s family life growing up: Joseph’s dad has children with a number of different women and Joseph’s oldest brother has an affair with the mother of a couple of his own half-brothers. Another brother of Joseph’s runs into the problem with a prostitution scandal that involves his daughter-in-law and two more of Joseph’s brothers trick and murder a whole community’s males before the rest of them carry off all of their possessions, their wives and their children. These were Joseph’s brothers (Genesis 34-38).[1] Now, there was also more than a little bit of sibling rivalry between Joseph and his brothers as their dad made no bones about the fact that Joseph – the second youngest- was his favourite son and we remember that Joseph didn’t necessarily hide this favouritism and that Joseph (even given their history) had been known to tattle on these brothers to dad (Genesis 37:2).
Now all this is bad enough but we remember the main thing that Joseph’s brothers did to him that would require forgiveness. Think of the worst prank that you have ever played on a younger sibling or the worst thing that an older brother has done to you and I imagine that this is probably worse. Genesis Chapter 37:12ff records how Joseph’s ten older brothers treat him. They grab their 17 year-old younger brother and throw him into an empty well and then they sit down to have lunch all the while, it seems, discussing whether or not they are going to kill him or what else they are going to do with him. (Imagine what it would be like in the well, hearing that conversation!) Providentially some slave traders come along; so instead of killing Joseph, his brothers decide to sell him into slavery. This is the last time they see Joseph for many, many years. Joseph then spends quite a few years as a slave before he is sent to prison for a crime he doesn’t commit. All of this directly follows his brothers’ actions of kidnapping, confining, and selling him into slavery. They have a few things for which they need forgiveness and they are scared of their brother, Joseph. And they are more than a little bit afraid because Joseph is now – in our story today – the second most powerful man in all of Egypt.
Joseph has already shown too that he is not necessarily above games and a measure of retribution. Remember when Joseph and his brothers met the first time after all these years: Joseph accuses them of being spies; he frames them for theft and then wrongfully imprisons Simeon, one of his brothers. Then, upon their next meeting much later, Joseph threatens to do the same thing to one of his other brothers. The brothers were afraid of Joseph and they are particularly afraid of Joseph right now because their dad has just died. Remember that Joseph was dad’s favourite so the brothers figure that maybe Joseph is just waiting until dad dies to finally really get back at them once and for all for the horrible things they did to him as a teenager. Dad, they figure, was their protection from their brother, preventing him from exacting his long overdue revenge on them and now dad is dead so they fear that it is payback time (cf. Genesis 27:41-45).[2]
Genesis 50:15 records that “When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did him.’” Have you ever done something wrong and just sat there worrying about the consequences? This is what it is like for the brothers. I can remember more of Grade 5 or even Grade 6. For whatever were my behavioural problems in elementary school I was pretty conscientious about wanting to get my work done on time. It was important to me. To this day, it is still very important to me but I can still remember Grade 5. There was this big library assignment that we were working on every week for a month or so. I was in bed one night drifting off into sleep when I shot up wide awake in horror, realizing that the assignment was due tomorrow AND I didn’t do it AND there was nothing I could do about it now because their was no internet in those days AND so I needed to work in the library AND our Librarian, Mr. Stubbs, was not a man anyone wanted to mess with. I remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach that accompanied the fact that I had done something wrong (neglected my homework) and there was nothing that I could do accept face the music. Have you ever had that feeling?
It is the same feeling, when you are driving along, look in the rear-view mirror, see the red and blue flashing lights come on behind you; you look down at your speedometer; you pull over to the side of the road, roll down your window and wait for the inevitable, “Driver’s licence and registration please. Do you know how fast you were going?” It is that same feeling in the pit of your stomach. You are guilty and there is nothing you can do; you are entirely at the mercy of the nice man or the nice woman in blue. For Joseph’s brothers it may even have been more intensified than this too because with the protection of their father out of the way, they know that Joseph has the power of life and death over them. He can -with impunity- have them all killed, if he so desires.[3]
It is in this setting that they contact Joseph and say (and they might even be lying)[4] that, Verse 17, their dad said before he died that, “This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.”
The brothers are guilty. They know it. They approach their Joseph – who is in authority over them – in full fear and trembling.[5] It is with this same sense of deference and even trembling and we should approach God when seeking forgiveness (Psalm 2:1; Proverbs 1:7, 9:10; Ephesians 6:5; Philippians 2:2).[6] We have all committed crimes against God and sins against our neighbours (Romans 3:23, 5:12; Cf. Daniel 9:11).[7] And it is in light of this fact – pertaining specifically to worship - that Matthew 5:23-24 records, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” - if we want to be able to come before God we should make things right with our Christian brothers and sisters. Because we have all sinned we need to make things right with our brothers and sisters; we need to seek and to offer forgiveness and then appear before the Lord; when we do this it is exciting: we see such grace abound. This is what his brothers did. “But Joseph said to them, [Genesis 50:19-21] ‘don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me [ra`ah, literally "evil'],[8] but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.’
Scholar Derek Kinder tells us that each sentence of Joseph’s threefold reply is a pinnacle of Old Testament (and New Testament) faith. It serves,
1) To leave all the righting of one’s wrongs to God (Vs. 19; cf. Romans 12:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 4:19);
2) To see His providence in man’s malice (Vs. 20; cf. Genesis 45:5), and
3) To repay evil not only with forgiveness but also with practical affection (Vs. 21; cf. Luke 6:27ff.),
“These are attitudes which anticipate the adjective ‘Christian’ and even ‘Christlike’. Note that in verse 21 the I is emphatic: Joseph was promising something more personal [and practical] than philanthropy.”[9]
Now many of us have been hurt and that hurt to some of us may still sting just as much as that of Joseph’s being sold into slavery and being wrongfully convicted and of being betrayed by his own big brothers. But –even and especially in the midst of our pain and our sorrow - this is where we need to receive and offer forgiveness just like Joseph.
1) We need to refrain from seeking revenge or even justice for what has happened to us in the past as horrible as it might be;
2) We need to notice how God is working even in the midst of the evil done to us by our own friends and family;
3) And we must forgive our brothers and sisters for all that they have done to us; Joseph wept emotionally, and took care of them practically. He loved them and provided for them.
This is forgiveness and the Lord asks no less from us in our worship of Him. Luke 17:3,4 records that “…If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” Matthew 6:15 (cf. Matthew 18) states “But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
The Lord wants to forgive us and so the Lord wants us to forgive our brothers and sisters like Joseph forgave his brothers so that we can be in a right relationship with Him. He wants us to weep tears of forgiveness over our Christian brothers and sisters when they hurt us. The LORD wants us to notice how - even in the midst of the evil perpetrated against us and against God - He is working. And our Heavenly Father desires that indeed we will forgive and be reconciled with our siblings in the Lord so that nothing will interfere with our worship of and relationship with Him.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay 'Genesis 39:2a: The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.' Prepared for the Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, July 10, 2011. Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/07/genesis-392a-lord-was-with-joseph-and.html
[2] Cf. Genesis 27:41-45 for a similar story involving Joseph’s dad and his uncle
[3] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Interpretation 1: Louisville, Ken.: John Knox Press, 1982), 370-371. He contends that at first Joseph’s words could be interpreted as ambiguous at best, certainly not comforting.
[4] Cf. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (WBC 2: Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2000), 490. Quoting Sternberg (Poetics, 379), he refers to this as “a desperate fabrication”
[5] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, 'Proverbs 1:7, 9:10: Yir’ah, The Fear of the LORD.' Presented to the Nipawin Corps, 17 May 2009. Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/05/proverbs-17-910-yirah-fear-of-lord.html
[6] Cf. Gerhard Von Rad. Genesis. (Old Testament Library: Philadelphia: Westminister, 1961). I recommend this for further reading as almost every source I viewed pointed back to Von Rad at some point in the discussion.
[7] Cf. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (WBC 2: Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2000), 490 re. the use of the term ‘crimes’ against our neighbours.
[8] John H. Sailhamer, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Genesis/Exposition of Genesis/VII. The Final Joseph Narrative (50:15-26)/A. Joseph's Forgiveness (50:15-21), Book Version: 4.0.2
[9] Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 1), S. 235
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