Genuine Offense
Genesis 50:20
Message #3
We’re loosely following the book, “The Bait of Satan” by John Bevere and these are my thoughts on Chapter 3. As I’ve said, these messages build on one another, so I’d encourage you to watch, listen, read the first two messages (and I’d encourage you to read the book).
So, today we want to look at that “much less occurring than you think” genuine offense. Most of the people you have been offended by actually did not intend to hurt you, and may not even know they offended you.
However, there are times (less often than we think) when someone who has offended you is genuinely, intentionally trying to hurt you. When that happens, what do we do? How do we handle that? How do we respond to that? That is our focus, today.
We’re going to look at the Life of Joseph today, which (I think) is one of the most important series I’ve taught because we learned divine forgiveness through it. So, it goes really well with this series. You can get that series on the Word By Mail phone app.
Joseph spent the majority of his life being genuinely hurt by people that he loved and served. And his biggest life-changing hurt was at the hands of his own brothers, and I know Christians who would say the same thing, that their biggest life-changing offenses have been at the hands of their brothers and sisters in the church.
So, here is the big question for today: “Can God use the offense that someone intentionally caused me – for good?” Can we see ourselves saying to that person, “You intended to harm me – but God used it for good”?
The life of Joseph runs from Genesis Chapter 37 to Genesis Chapter 50, but I have to paraphrase and summarize for you. So, if you have your Bible (I hope you do), maybe you can just turn the pages with me and make marks (for later).
Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, and God changed Jacob’s name to Israel (after he wrestled with God and God broke him – literally – by breaking his hip), and Jacob’s twelve sons became the Twelve Tribes of Israel. And so, ten of Jacob’s sons, who would become the leaders of ten Tribes of Israel hated their brother Joseph – they hated him.
1). Because Joseph was his father’s favorite (Genesis 37:3)
And Dad had given him a Coat of Many Colors to prove Joseph was the “favorite.”
2). Because Joseph had two dreams about his brothers
Both of which had his brothers bowing down to Joseph (Genesis 37:5). But Joseph’s mistake was telling his brothers about the dreams, and so (in Genesis 37:8) they genuinely hated him with malice.
And then, the ten brothers were away tending the sheep, and Jacob sent his favorite son Joseph to check on them. (In Genesis 37:18) When the brothers saw Joseph coming, they made plans to kill him – literally. So, they threw him into a cistern to die and took his special “Son Coat” and put animal’s blood on it so their father would think a wild animal had killed Joseph. But, as Joseph was in the pit, a group of traders came by on their way to Egypt, and Judah (the patriarch of the Tribe of Judah) convinced his brothers to sell Joseph as a slave instead of killing him so they could make some money, and Joseph would still be “as good as dead” to them.
Because Joseph had unknowingly offended his brothers (with his dream) his brothers decided to kill him or at least make him “as good as dead” to them.
I have seen this happen in church and I have had this happen to me in church. And it certainly has been one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in my life, which is why I teach so much about it – which might be why God allowed me to go through it so that I would teach so much about it. I teach about church conflict, and forgiveness, and reconciliation, and offense all the time because of what it has done to me, and what my family has experienced by it. God has brought me through this so I can share with you and help you get through it or even prevent it from happening.
(What God brings you through is most often how he wants to use you. If you look at what fire you’ve been through you can usually get some idea of how God wants to use you because that fire of trial was preparation and refining.)
So, Joseph is sold as a slave, and when a person is sold as a slave, they completely lose their identity. No longer was Joseph the favorite son of a wealthy shepherd he was now a slave with zero rights. If he ever got married, his wife would be a slave and his children would be slaves. Joseph had just lost everything. (Seemingly forever.)
But if you know the story of Joseph, you might be saying, “Yeah, but it works out good in the end.” But Joseph didn’t know it was going to work out good in the end (just like we don’t know). All Joseph saw was hopelessness and darkness in his future.
Maybe like some of us feel when someone has genuinely offended us, we feel that hopelessness, darkness, and that cloud of depression.
(At the end of Chapter 37) Joseph was sold to Potiphar, the captain of the Pharaoh’s Palace Guard. And Joseph served in Potiphar’s house ten years, with only a slave-life to look forward to. But Joseph made the choice to serve well and to serve faithfully, and as time went on (in Genesis 39:6) Potiphar made Joseph head over his household servants.
And then, suddenly, in the very next verse (Genesis 39:7) it got worse (much worse). Potiphar’s wife decided she was going to seduce Joseph. She was relentless in her pursuit of Joseph, and Joseph was relentless in his refusal. But one day (in Genesis 39:12) she cornered him and Joseph offended her by refusing to lie with her. As he ran out (Genesis 39:14) she pulled his cloak off of him and screamed rape. Again, an unintentional offense by Joseph (who’s just trying to remain pure) and the person offended by Joseph is again determined to do harm and she succeeds.
So (Genesis 39:19) Joseph gets thrown into Pharaoh’s prison with no hope of ever getting out (because he was a slave) and he was given just enough bread and water to keep him alive – so he could continue to suffer.
And some of us have found ourselves suffering in a similar prison going over, and over, and over… and over again the genuine, very real offense, committed against us, which was purposeful and intentionally meant to harm us. And we’re just living in this torture of bitterness, and anger, and resentment, and maybe even revenge. And maybe we would blame Potiphar or Potiphar’s wife and we would certainly blame our brothers (if we were Joseph). They’re the ones who started all this pain.
And maybe we’d review in our minds – a thousand times – what we would do or what we would say if we ever got out of that prison. Maybe we would see ourselves confronting our offender and rehearse a thousand times each word we would say. And every time we did, our prison would get darker, and colder, and more and more confining until in the prison of our minds, we would be sitting in a dark corner of our cell, cut off from the world, able only to feel the pain of anger, and bitterness, and revenge.
And, maybe, we would begin to blame God. And maybe, over time, the anger, and bitterness that we feel toward the people who offended us would be turned toward God.
I’ve seen that exact thing happen far too often but that is not what Joseph chose to do. Please listen very carefully to me. Joseph had no external freedoms, but he still had the freedom to choose in his heart and in his mind, his internal response to what had happened to him. You have the freedom to choose how you’re going to respond to whatever your circumstances are that seem to be imprisoning you. God’s sovereignty is at work, but we still have to choose how to respond to it.
God’s sovereignty was at work, but Joseph still had to choose well. He couldn’t just curl up in the corner of his mind and torture himself with his anger and bitterness.
Joseph had to believe God and he had to look for where God might be working and join God there.
We also need to believe God and look for him working. In our culture, we have been duped into thinking God only does “good things” (and it’s true – James says “All good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow of turning”). Our circumstances (Paul says), sometimes they’re bad. But God is still in them. We need to see that God is still working in difficult circumstances.
And Joseph did see God working and he did quickly join God there. (In Genesis Chapter 40) Two of Pharaoh’s servants got thrown into this prison with Joseph. And (in Genesis 40:5) they both had dreams, and dreams were Joseph’s specialty. And so (Genesis 40:9) Joseph interpreted both of their dreams with exact accuracy. One would be restored to Pharaoh’s service, and the other would be killed. And Joseph made just one request to the one who was going to be restored. Just “Remember me” when Pharaoh restores you to service, which the servant did not!
Seriously God? I thought that was obviously you at work. You brought Pharaoh’s servant to me with a dream, and you gave me the exact interpretation and then you sent him back to the only one who could save me from this place (Pharaoh himself) but then you let him forget about me?
How easy it would’ve been for Joseph to believe at that point that God himself had forgotten about him as well. It could not have gotten any worse and Joseph could not have gotten any lower in life.
And Joseph, again, had to choose to trust God in spite of every single circumstance OR to go back into the dark corner of his mind and continue the self-torture of anger and bitterness.
But listen, guys, through it all God was refining Joseph, and God was preparing Joseph, and God did have a plan for Joseph. And it was a plan that was a crucial part of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. What was happening in Joseph’s life was happening to facilitate the coming of the Messiah! That’s how big it is!
God was going to use Joseph to save the Twelve Tribes of Israel from starvation. And God was going to use Joseph to begin a four-hundred-year preparation for the Twelve Tribes of Israel to become the People of God. And Joseph is going to become second in command in Egypt giving him full right and full authority to kill his ten brothers for what they had done to him.
And if God had not refined him through these painful times, Joseph might have killed them all as soon as he could. And if he had killed them all, there would have been Two Tribes of Israel instead of Twelve, and one of those that would have died would’ve been the Tribe of Judah through which the Messiah Jesus would come – through which you and I have been saved for eternity.
So, let me ask you a question. Did God have a plan for Joseph’s life? And did God’s plan include a long season of painful refinement for Joseph? God’s plan included a long season of painful preparation for Joseph.
Please hear me right here, this may be the most important thing I say to you this morning. There is only one person who can derail God’s plan for your life. No man, no woman, no devil can (by themselves) take you out of God’s plan for your life. No circumstance or situation can take you out of God’s plan for your life. The only one who can derail God’s plan for your life – is YOU.
All through the Bible, you see God’s plan derailed for a person – God’s plan is not derailed, but for that person it is. I’ve experienced this in my life where I’ve come to grips with the fact that “Okay, God. I missed this. I messed up that. I made a bad choice here.” And listen, God’s plan for my life is to be standing here with you this morning. There’s no doubt about that. But the road I had to take to get here, God did not need all of that. I might have needed it, but God is just working with me.
And even then, in Proverbs 24 it says,
Proverbs 24:16 (NLT)
16 The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again . . .
And so, if you are saved, you really have to be committed to derailing God’s plan before you can accomplish it. No other person, no devil, no demon, no one can derail the plan that God has for your life – except you. I used to tell people all the time, the devil only wins if you quit. As long as you don’t quit, God will win.
Listen, God knows what he is doing. But you do not! You do not know all God has planned for you. And you do not know how God can bring good out of someone genuinely hurting you by an offense.
We must CHOOSE to TRUST God.
We must CHOOSE to STAY in the Refiner’s Fire
We must CHOOSE to STAY on the Potter’s Wheel
We must CHOOSE, by faith, to STAY right where God has put us UNTIL GOD is finished with whatever work he is doing there.
And that is exactly what happened to Joseph. Finally (in Genesis Chapter 40), two years later, the Pharaoh had two dreams. And (in Genesis 40:12) that “absent-minded servant” did remember Joseph. And Pharaoh did release Joseph from prison. And Pharaoh did make Joseph second in command over all of Egypt. And the famine did come. And the Twelve Tribes of Israel did run out of food. And then the brothers that planned to kill Joseph and then sold him as a slave came to Egypt to buy grain (Genesis Chapter 42).
Grain that Joseph has amassed for Pharaoh
Grain that Joseph was one hundred percent in charge of
Grain those brothers needed to stay alive
Would Joseph give it to them? (Would we have?) And what kind of attitude would Joseph have? (What kind of attitude would WE have?)
Joseph did mess with them – quite a bit – (Genesis Chapters 42-44). But Joseph also gave them all the grain they needed (no charge).
Turn with me to Genesis Chapter 45 in verse 4 where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, and when he does, we read in the second half of verse 4.
Genesis 45:4(b)-5 (NLT)
4 . . . “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt.
5 But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.
Then again, just two verses later.
Genesis 45:7 (NLT)
7 God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.
And then, in the very next verse.
Genesis 45:8 (NLT)
8 So it was God who sent me here, not you! . . .
And then, the grand finale, in our key verse today.
Genesis 50:20 (NLT)
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good . . .
Ultimately, THAT was Joseph’s PERSPECTIVE. If you can get this one verse (Genesis 50:20), really get it, then you will get the entire message, today.
Joseph’s brothers purposefully, genuinely intended to harm Joseph with their offense. But, at the end of it all, Joseph says to his brothers,
Genesis 50:20 (NLT)
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good . . .
Listen to me, please. God is not responsible for every bad thing that happens to you. Please don’t misunderstand me. But God is at work for our good even in the midst of very difficult circumstances, including our genuine offenses.
So, ultimately (Genesis 45) because of Joseph, the Pharaoh invites Jacob and ALL his family to Egypt, and Joseph (and Pharaoh) gave these same brothers the best land in Egypt to settle in.
The best of all of Egypt was given by Joseph to these same brothers who had conspired to kill Joseph and whose life they had initially destroyed.
Now, think about Jesus’ words in Matthew 5.
Matthew 5:44–45 (NLT)
44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven . . .
Consider the Nation of Israel (four hundred years later) in the Wilderness. His plan was for them to enter the Promised Land. God brought them right up to the edge of the Promised Land. BUT, instead of trusting God, they blamed Moses AND God for the temporary circumstances they were in. And so, they sat down in the corner of the prison in their mind. And they blamed, and they complained and grew more and more bitter toward Moses and God. And so, God lovingly allowed them to die in the Wilderness they had created for themselves.
I’ve seen so many people who were following and serving God create a wilderness for themselves by taking up an offense from another person and then ultimately directing that bitterness AT GOD, and then dying spiritually because of it.
Please don’t do that. Don’t create a Wilderness of anger and bitterness for yourself. Resist the enemy’s Bait of Offense and you will AVOID his Trap of Offense. You don’t have to take the bait. God will provide a way out. You can leave it in the trap.
1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT)
13 The temptations in your life (to take the Bait of Offense) are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
As you are looking for a “way out” of the trap of offense, let me share two declarations adapted from the end of this Chapter in the Bait of Satan book.
I refuse to allow the unfair circumstances in my life to cause me to become BITTER and HOPELESS, leading me to somehow blame God.
Heavenly Father, YOU are in complete control of my life. Like Joseph, I will choose to learn obedience and be refined through ALL my trials.
So, today we want to look at that “much less occurring than you think” genuine offense. Most of the people you have been offended by actually did not intend to hurt you, and may not even know they offended you.
However, there are times (less often than we think) when someone who has offended you is genuinely, intentionally trying to hurt you. When that happens, what do we do? How do we handle that? How do we respond to that? That is our focus, today.
We’re going to look at the Life of Joseph today, which (I think) is one of the most important series I’ve taught because we learned divine forgiveness through it. So, it goes really well with this series. You can get that series on the Word By Mail phone app.
Joseph spent the majority of his life being genuinely hurt by people that he loved and served. And his biggest life-changing hurt was at the hands of his own brothers, and I know Christians who would say the same thing, that their biggest life-changing offenses have been at the hands of their brothers and sisters in the church.
So, here is the big question for today: “Can God use the offense that someone intentionally caused me – for good?” Can we see ourselves saying to that person, “You intended to harm me – but God used it for good”?
The life of Joseph runs from Genesis Chapter 37 to Genesis Chapter 50, but I have to paraphrase and summarize for you. So, if you have your Bible (I hope you do), maybe you can just turn the pages with me and make marks (for later).
Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, and God changed Jacob’s name to Israel (after he wrestled with God and God broke him – literally – by breaking his hip), and Jacob’s twelve sons became the Twelve Tribes of Israel. And so, ten of Jacob’s sons, who would become the leaders of ten Tribes of Israel hated their brother Joseph – they hated him.
1). Because Joseph was his father’s favorite (Genesis 37:3)
And Dad had given him a Coat of Many Colors to prove Joseph was the “favorite.”
2). Because Joseph had two dreams about his brothers
Both of which had his brothers bowing down to Joseph (Genesis 37:5). But Joseph’s mistake was telling his brothers about the dreams, and so (in Genesis 37:8) they genuinely hated him with malice.
And then, the ten brothers were away tending the sheep, and Jacob sent his favorite son Joseph to check on them. (In Genesis 37:18) When the brothers saw Joseph coming, they made plans to kill him – literally. So, they threw him into a cistern to die and took his special “Son Coat” and put animal’s blood on it so their father would think a wild animal had killed Joseph. But, as Joseph was in the pit, a group of traders came by on their way to Egypt, and Judah (the patriarch of the Tribe of Judah) convinced his brothers to sell Joseph as a slave instead of killing him so they could make some money, and Joseph would still be “as good as dead” to them.
Because Joseph had unknowingly offended his brothers (with his dream) his brothers decided to kill him or at least make him “as good as dead” to them.
I have seen this happen in church and I have had this happen to me in church. And it certainly has been one of the hardest things I’ve dealt with in my life, which is why I teach so much about it – which might be why God allowed me to go through it so that I would teach so much about it. I teach about church conflict, and forgiveness, and reconciliation, and offense all the time because of what it has done to me, and what my family has experienced by it. God has brought me through this so I can share with you and help you get through it or even prevent it from happening.
(What God brings you through is most often how he wants to use you. If you look at what fire you’ve been through you can usually get some idea of how God wants to use you because that fire of trial was preparation and refining.)
So, Joseph is sold as a slave, and when a person is sold as a slave, they completely lose their identity. No longer was Joseph the favorite son of a wealthy shepherd he was now a slave with zero rights. If he ever got married, his wife would be a slave and his children would be slaves. Joseph had just lost everything. (Seemingly forever.)
But if you know the story of Joseph, you might be saying, “Yeah, but it works out good in the end.” But Joseph didn’t know it was going to work out good in the end (just like we don’t know). All Joseph saw was hopelessness and darkness in his future.
Maybe like some of us feel when someone has genuinely offended us, we feel that hopelessness, darkness, and that cloud of depression.
(At the end of Chapter 37) Joseph was sold to Potiphar, the captain of the Pharaoh’s Palace Guard. And Joseph served in Potiphar’s house ten years, with only a slave-life to look forward to. But Joseph made the choice to serve well and to serve faithfully, and as time went on (in Genesis 39:6) Potiphar made Joseph head over his household servants.
And then, suddenly, in the very next verse (Genesis 39:7) it got worse (much worse). Potiphar’s wife decided she was going to seduce Joseph. She was relentless in her pursuit of Joseph, and Joseph was relentless in his refusal. But one day (in Genesis 39:12) she cornered him and Joseph offended her by refusing to lie with her. As he ran out (Genesis 39:14) she pulled his cloak off of him and screamed rape. Again, an unintentional offense by Joseph (who’s just trying to remain pure) and the person offended by Joseph is again determined to do harm and she succeeds.
So (Genesis 39:19) Joseph gets thrown into Pharaoh’s prison with no hope of ever getting out (because he was a slave) and he was given just enough bread and water to keep him alive – so he could continue to suffer.
And some of us have found ourselves suffering in a similar prison going over, and over, and over… and over again the genuine, very real offense, committed against us, which was purposeful and intentionally meant to harm us. And we’re just living in this torture of bitterness, and anger, and resentment, and maybe even revenge. And maybe we would blame Potiphar or Potiphar’s wife and we would certainly blame our brothers (if we were Joseph). They’re the ones who started all this pain.
And maybe we’d review in our minds – a thousand times – what we would do or what we would say if we ever got out of that prison. Maybe we would see ourselves confronting our offender and rehearse a thousand times each word we would say. And every time we did, our prison would get darker, and colder, and more and more confining until in the prison of our minds, we would be sitting in a dark corner of our cell, cut off from the world, able only to feel the pain of anger, and bitterness, and revenge.
And, maybe, we would begin to blame God. And maybe, over time, the anger, and bitterness that we feel toward the people who offended us would be turned toward God.
I’ve seen that exact thing happen far too often but that is not what Joseph chose to do. Please listen very carefully to me. Joseph had no external freedoms, but he still had the freedom to choose in his heart and in his mind, his internal response to what had happened to him. You have the freedom to choose how you’re going to respond to whatever your circumstances are that seem to be imprisoning you. God’s sovereignty is at work, but we still have to choose how to respond to it.
God’s sovereignty was at work, but Joseph still had to choose well. He couldn’t just curl up in the corner of his mind and torture himself with his anger and bitterness.
Joseph had to believe God and he had to look for where God might be working and join God there.
We also need to believe God and look for him working. In our culture, we have been duped into thinking God only does “good things” (and it’s true – James says “All good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow of turning”). Our circumstances (Paul says), sometimes they’re bad. But God is still in them. We need to see that God is still working in difficult circumstances.
And Joseph did see God working and he did quickly join God there. (In Genesis Chapter 40) Two of Pharaoh’s servants got thrown into this prison with Joseph. And (in Genesis 40:5) they both had dreams, and dreams were Joseph’s specialty. And so (Genesis 40:9) Joseph interpreted both of their dreams with exact accuracy. One would be restored to Pharaoh’s service, and the other would be killed. And Joseph made just one request to the one who was going to be restored. Just “Remember me” when Pharaoh restores you to service, which the servant did not!
Seriously God? I thought that was obviously you at work. You brought Pharaoh’s servant to me with a dream, and you gave me the exact interpretation and then you sent him back to the only one who could save me from this place (Pharaoh himself) but then you let him forget about me?
How easy it would’ve been for Joseph to believe at that point that God himself had forgotten about him as well. It could not have gotten any worse and Joseph could not have gotten any lower in life.
And Joseph, again, had to choose to trust God in spite of every single circumstance OR to go back into the dark corner of his mind and continue the self-torture of anger and bitterness.
But listen, guys, through it all God was refining Joseph, and God was preparing Joseph, and God did have a plan for Joseph. And it was a plan that was a crucial part of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. What was happening in Joseph’s life was happening to facilitate the coming of the Messiah! That’s how big it is!
God was going to use Joseph to save the Twelve Tribes of Israel from starvation. And God was going to use Joseph to begin a four-hundred-year preparation for the Twelve Tribes of Israel to become the People of God. And Joseph is going to become second in command in Egypt giving him full right and full authority to kill his ten brothers for what they had done to him.
And if God had not refined him through these painful times, Joseph might have killed them all as soon as he could. And if he had killed them all, there would have been Two Tribes of Israel instead of Twelve, and one of those that would have died would’ve been the Tribe of Judah through which the Messiah Jesus would come – through which you and I have been saved for eternity.
So, let me ask you a question. Did God have a plan for Joseph’s life? And did God’s plan include a long season of painful refinement for Joseph? God’s plan included a long season of painful preparation for Joseph.
Please hear me right here, this may be the most important thing I say to you this morning. There is only one person who can derail God’s plan for your life. No man, no woman, no devil can (by themselves) take you out of God’s plan for your life. No circumstance or situation can take you out of God’s plan for your life. The only one who can derail God’s plan for your life – is YOU.
All through the Bible, you see God’s plan derailed for a person – God’s plan is not derailed, but for that person it is. I’ve experienced this in my life where I’ve come to grips with the fact that “Okay, God. I missed this. I messed up that. I made a bad choice here.” And listen, God’s plan for my life is to be standing here with you this morning. There’s no doubt about that. But the road I had to take to get here, God did not need all of that. I might have needed it, but God is just working with me.
And even then, in Proverbs 24 it says,
Proverbs 24:16 (NLT)
16 The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again . . .
And so, if you are saved, you really have to be committed to derailing God’s plan before you can accomplish it. No other person, no devil, no demon, no one can derail the plan that God has for your life – except you. I used to tell people all the time, the devil only wins if you quit. As long as you don’t quit, God will win.
Listen, God knows what he is doing. But you do not! You do not know all God has planned for you. And you do not know how God can bring good out of someone genuinely hurting you by an offense.
We must CHOOSE to TRUST God.
We must CHOOSE to STAY in the Refiner’s Fire
We must CHOOSE to STAY on the Potter’s Wheel
We must CHOOSE, by faith, to STAY right where God has put us UNTIL GOD is finished with whatever work he is doing there.
And that is exactly what happened to Joseph. Finally (in Genesis Chapter 40), two years later, the Pharaoh had two dreams. And (in Genesis 40:12) that “absent-minded servant” did remember Joseph. And Pharaoh did release Joseph from prison. And Pharaoh did make Joseph second in command over all of Egypt. And the famine did come. And the Twelve Tribes of Israel did run out of food. And then the brothers that planned to kill Joseph and then sold him as a slave came to Egypt to buy grain (Genesis Chapter 42).
Grain that Joseph has amassed for Pharaoh
Grain that Joseph was one hundred percent in charge of
Grain those brothers needed to stay alive
Would Joseph give it to them? (Would we have?) And what kind of attitude would Joseph have? (What kind of attitude would WE have?)
Joseph did mess with them – quite a bit – (Genesis Chapters 42-44). But Joseph also gave them all the grain they needed (no charge).
Turn with me to Genesis Chapter 45 in verse 4 where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, and when he does, we read in the second half of verse 4.
Genesis 45:4(b)-5 (NLT)
4 . . . “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt.
5 But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.
Then again, just two verses later.
Genesis 45:7 (NLT)
7 God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.
And then, in the very next verse.
Genesis 45:8 (NLT)
8 So it was God who sent me here, not you! . . .
And then, the grand finale, in our key verse today.
Genesis 50:20 (NLT)
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good . . .
Ultimately, THAT was Joseph’s PERSPECTIVE. If you can get this one verse (Genesis 50:20), really get it, then you will get the entire message, today.
Joseph’s brothers purposefully, genuinely intended to harm Joseph with their offense. But, at the end of it all, Joseph says to his brothers,
Genesis 50:20 (NLT)
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good . . .
Listen to me, please. God is not responsible for every bad thing that happens to you. Please don’t misunderstand me. But God is at work for our good even in the midst of very difficult circumstances, including our genuine offenses.
So, ultimately (Genesis 45) because of Joseph, the Pharaoh invites Jacob and ALL his family to Egypt, and Joseph (and Pharaoh) gave these same brothers the best land in Egypt to settle in.
The best of all of Egypt was given by Joseph to these same brothers who had conspired to kill Joseph and whose life they had initially destroyed.
Now, think about Jesus’ words in Matthew 5.
Matthew 5:44–45 (NLT)
44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven . . .
Consider the Nation of Israel (four hundred years later) in the Wilderness. His plan was for them to enter the Promised Land. God brought them right up to the edge of the Promised Land. BUT, instead of trusting God, they blamed Moses AND God for the temporary circumstances they were in. And so, they sat down in the corner of the prison in their mind. And they blamed, and they complained and grew more and more bitter toward Moses and God. And so, God lovingly allowed them to die in the Wilderness they had created for themselves.
I’ve seen so many people who were following and serving God create a wilderness for themselves by taking up an offense from another person and then ultimately directing that bitterness AT GOD, and then dying spiritually because of it.
Please don’t do that. Don’t create a Wilderness of anger and bitterness for yourself. Resist the enemy’s Bait of Offense and you will AVOID his Trap of Offense. You don’t have to take the bait. God will provide a way out. You can leave it in the trap.
1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT)
13 The temptations in your life (to take the Bait of Offense) are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
As you are looking for a “way out” of the trap of offense, let me share two declarations adapted from the end of this Chapter in the Bait of Satan book.
I refuse to allow the unfair circumstances in my life to cause me to become BITTER and HOPELESS, leading me to somehow blame God.
Heavenly Father, YOU are in complete control of my life. Like Joseph, I will choose to learn obedience and be refined through ALL my trials.