allow HIM to forgive…

joseph’s brothers were still living with guilt twenty years later.  they go down to egypt and they’re going to buy some grain and guess who the brothers meet up with?  joseph.  he might have a veil on or some of the officials then might be behind a partition, they wouldn’t get close to people.  i don’t know exactly why but they could hear each other but not see each other real closely.  he might have been high up, away from them.  they talk and communicate but they don’t know who joseph is.  but joseph knows who they are.  he recognizes them.

they come in and say, “we need some food.”  joseph devises a little test.  he says, “i’ll give you some food but if you want some food i’ve got to see that younger brother.”  they begin to struggle with that. 

genesis 42.20-21 (niv), “you’ve got to bring your youngest brother to me so that your words may be verified and that you may not die.”  and this they proceeded to do.  “surely we are being punished because of our brother.”

benjamin?  no, joseph!

“we saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life but we wouldn’t listen.  that’s why this distress has come upon us.” 

twenty, at least, years later they remembered vividly how he pleaded for his life.  and every bad thing that happened in their life they’d think, “GOD’s punishing us.” 

any of you ever felt like that?  then get it settled!  don’t live with your solution, live with GOD’s solution.  live with HIS forgiveness.  learn to forgive and allow HIM to forgive.  you don’t have to feel like every time something bad happens that it’s punishment for what i did wrong.  that’s a family living with their solution. 

joseph has this test.  then he sends them away.  verse 25, joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain and put each man’s silver that they brought to buy the grain within the sack.  after this was done they loaded the grain on their donkeys and they left.  they stopped and they looked in their sack and the silver was there.  their hearts sank and they turned to each other trembling “what is this that GOD has done to us?” 

that’s guilt twenty years later, unresolved guilt! 

if you’re feeling that way every time something goes bad, get HIS forgiveness.  you don’t have to feel that, “GOD’s punishing us or what is this that GOD has done to us?”

just a thought from the front porch…