Voice of the Nazarene 2-16-25

Voice of the Nazarene 2-9-25

Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week, venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene.

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:18

Let me talk to you just for a few minutes about something called forgiveness, and go with me into the 45th chapter of Genesis. I would assume that you know the story of Joseph out of the Old Testament. He was his father's favorite son. Jacob was not a great dad. He had 12 sons, and he showed favoritism. Not a good thing for a dad to do, but he picked Joseph out of all the lineup, and he had made for him a coat of many colors. Not only was it bad because none of the other boys got a coat, but Joseph put it on and begin to strut around in his coat. And to make matters even worse, he had a gift to prophetic dreams. And in his dream, he saw his brothers bowing down before him, and he was stupid enough to tell them, not smart, and they became so jealous. They were so consumed with jealousy, they wanted to kill him. And when the opportunity came, they yanked his coat off and tore it, put him in a pit trying to decide what to do with him. Knew they had to silence his voice dipped that coat in some animal blood, and fabricated a story to their father that an animal had killed him. Of course, the old man mourned and said, an animal is devoured my son and I will go to the grave mourning, but some Ishmaelites, who were slave traders, were traveling through the country and and to get rid of the kid rather than just kill him. One of the brothers said, let's sell him. They sold him for the price of a slave, the same price that Jesus was sold for. Out of the Old Testament, there's not one character that his life so aligns to Christ than Joseph. And then the story, you know, the the brothers breathe a sigh of relief, and they're saying, we got away with it. But the Bible says, Be sure your sins will find you out there in Numbers 32:23. Years later, the children of Israel needed food. Famine had come in the land, and the old man, Jacob had said to his boys, they have food down in Egypt, we have lost everything. The animals are dead. The trees have died. Wells are empty, and you need to go down to Egypt. He gave them some money and a wagon, and they head down to Egypt because of the famine, and they meet with the Prime Minister. They had no idea what had ever happened to their baby brother they'd sold into slavery. And when they meet with him, he has now learned the culture, and he can now speak Egyptian, and he's wearing the garb of an Egyptian. 22 years have passed, they didn't recognize him, but he recognized them. He knew it was his brothers, and he knows that his dreams have finally come true, that they've been fulfilled, and the thought that his dreams have come true, that one day he would look at his jealous brothers and say, got you. But this was a new Joseph. This is a changed Joseph. This is a broken Joseph. He'd not only been sold, but as the years passed, he'd been lied on. He'd been thrust away in prison. Promises made to him had been broken, and so he's changed. The pride is gone, and the haughtiness and the arrogance is gone. And he stands broken before them. And instead of getting even, he begins to sob, and he begins to cry. And I want to pick up the reading. It's Genesis, 45 verse one. Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all his brothers that stood by him. And he cried calls every man to go out from me, and there stood no man with him. While Joseph made himself known unto his brothers, he wept aloud and the Egyptians of the house Pharaoh heard about it. Joseph said unto his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed and horrified in his presence. And Joseph said unto his brothers, come close to me. And his brothers came near, and he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land, and yet there are five years in which there shall neither be earring or harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant on Earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all of his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. The message I'd like to share with you today has been born out of my past, from some of the darkest hours and days and months of my life, things that happened, that were unjust, unfair, they were wrong, and I fought not to become bitter. And I wondered, how could this be happening? How can I walk out of one great field of labor and run into a wall? And I saw a friend, and I had opened up to him, was sharing with him, and he put up his hands, and he stopped me, and he said, don't go any further with the story. You've got to totally forgive them. And until you totally forgive them, you're going to be in chains. If you release them, you will be released. And then I remembered some things that I hadn't told him yet. I said, there's some things I forgot to tell you. He said, Ray, the wounds of a friend, but thank God for a friend, Ray, you've got to totally forgive them. And until you totally forgive them, you're going to be in chains. You've gotta release them in order to be released. And I can tell you, across the years, every so often, some of that would rush in kind of like a storm and all over again. You have to say, God, that's not the attitude I want to have. Don't let me get bitter, but help me again to remind myself I forgave. And God, I want you to know they're forgiven. One of the hardest things that I've ever done in all of my life. Maybe that's one of the hardest things that you've ever done. And I said, I can't. And he said, you can, and you must. Total forgiveness means setting your enemy free. Well, that's not natural, is it? There's something within the human heart that wants to get even, that wants to retaliate, that wants to say, you hurt me and you owe me something better than this. And so when you totally forgive, it means you kiss goodbye vindication, vengeance to those that wanted to hurt you, maybe to destroy you, and then you're to pray for them the Bible says. Where in the world does the Bible come up with this stuff? Gotta bow your head and say, God, would you forgive them? You can kill him if you want to, but it goes opposite of what Jesus said. Pray for those who despitefully use you and bless them. You say, Well, Pastor, I can't do that. Well, I know it's against nature. The natural thing, you want your enemy punished, but Jesus said, bless them. And maybe, I don't know, maybe you were abused as a child. Maybe a spouse was unfaithful to you. Maybe you were abused by prejudice. It's kind of like James chapter five. Do you realize that 2,000 years ago, the issue was not blacks against whites, the issue was the rich against the poor? And the poor were saying, God, I'm not being treated right by those who are rich. But you know, God looked in and God knew, and the way forward is always to forgive. Now, if it can be proved that you've suffered worse than anybody else's ever suffered. I don't know if we can prove that, but if you have the angels have a word for you, and that word is congratulations, because you're promised a special blessing that the one sitting next to you may not have been promised because they have not suffered quite like you have. And instead of feeling sorry for yourself because of all that you've been through, it could be that you need to realize, and I promise you one day, you'll look back and say the best thing that ever happened to me was when I went through those difficult days, and that's what I've had to say. But it's only if you come to the place you forgive them totally and set them free. Now the question, how do you know if you've forgiven someone totally? Well, proof number one, you don't tell anybody what they did to you. You just tell God. There in Psalm 142 verse two, pour your complaint out unto the Lord. It's a lot easier to get on the phone, though, and spread it isn't and tell everybody else. Now, how do you know, preacher, that Joseph did that? Well, if you look at verse one, then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him and he cried, caused every man to go out from me, the servants, the aides, all those that are helpers. I want everybody else. I want their brothers. I want you to stay here. I want everybody else to go. And now behind closed doors, he speaks to them in Hebrew and says, I am Joseph, and they're speechless. And why did he make everybody else leave? Because he wanted to persuade them to go back to the land of Canaan, get all of his brothers and his father and bring them down to Egypt to live with him, and he would take care of them. And he knew that if they found out how his brothers had treated him, they would deal harshly with him, and he didn't want the Egyptians to know how his brothers had treated the now Prime Minister. He knew he was popular, he knew he was liked and he wanted to make sure that everybody would love his brothers instead of hate them, and so he never let his brothers or anybody else know he didn't tell behind closed doors, and the proof that you've totally forgiven is when you quit running around, telling everybody that you've been hurt. And that's how Joseph got to the place where he was spiritually. Now I don't know who I'm talking to. I know by live cast and telecast. I could be preaching to a future governor. I could be preaching to a future Billy Graham. But God will never be able to use any of us as long as we're angry and feel like we've got to prove ourselves and feel like we've got to vindicate ourselves, we've got to totally forgive. There's only two exceptions, if therapeutically, you need to talk to someone, find you a pastor, find a doctor, somebody that can keep a secret and unload to them. And secondly, if there's been a crime like a rape or a murder, crimes have to be punished according to the law. But the reason many of us get on the phone and we call around and we tell how somebody has hurt us is that we don't want them admired. We don't want them liked, and so we make sure everybody knows. But let me ask you this. How would you like it if God told everything that he knew about you, why don't you put it up on the screen? We got some screens in the back. I'm not sure we have enough screens in here to put everything that I've done or everything that some of you done, only a couple of you. But the good news is, he'll never tell it, because as far as the East is from the West, has our transgressions been removed from us? According to Psalm 103, verse 12, Jesus washes away our sin and nobody will ever know. And when you tell what somebody else has done, you violate a principle, and God doesn't like it. You don't tell everybody. And proof number two, you don't let them be afraid of you. Now these brothers are scared to death. I mean, they're frightened, they're speechless. They're standing before the Prime Minister. They suddenly know who he is, and they're found out. They're scared of death. And the funny thing is, this is the way that Joseph wanted them to feel, but he's a different Joseph now, he's changed. He's broken himself. He's a new man. And he hear what he said to them, come close to me, and he loved them, and they couldn't believe it. And when you totally forgive your enemy, you put them at ease. You know what we do in our marriages sometimes? We like to keep our spouses nervous. And you say, Well, I'll tell you, I'll never forget what you've done. And we don't couple days later we bring it back up again, but the Bible

says in First Corinthians, 13: 15:21

5, love keeps no records of wrongs. And you know why we would keep a record of wrong because we want somebody to have to pay. We don't want them to get off so easy. We want them to feel as bad sometimes as we do. And do you know that most marriages could be healed by sundown before the day's over, if both parties would quit pointing fingers. So you don't tell what they did, and you don't make them afraid. And proof number three, you don't want them to feel guilty. Listen to this. He said, I'm your brother, whom you sold into Egypt do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because of what you did. Now, just imagine for a moment that you went to somebody and you say, well, I forgive you, and you better feel bad about it, and they don't. You still gotta forgive them. The toughest thing in the world is to forgive somebody that don't feel bad about what they did. The only thing worse is you go to somebody and you tell them, you forgive them, and they don't even know what you're talking about. And, they've run your whole life. They ruined your day, and they're almost innocent. I don't even know what you talking about. A little advice here, before I go any further, don't go across the auditorium this morning and say, I forgive you what you did or don't get on the phone if you're by live stream and say, I'm going to call you and I forgive you. And they're going to say, I don't know what you call me. Oh yes, you do. No, no, I don't you know you do. You get all riled up. Next thing you know, you gotta fight, and you got a good one on your hands. Now, Jesus on the cross is the great example. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do and the way to get major victory before God, that's the way you do it. They may not even know what they've done but God does. And may I just say, don't be surprised if it's a member of the church that hurts you, not this church, of course, I'm talking about the other one. Or if it's an important person, or if it's a godly person that's meaner than the devil. Not so godly, huh? All of us have been hurt along the trail, and I think back on some of those, my face gets red, and I'm not talking about anger, I mean with embarrassment. I remember back in Bible college days, and I was at a Christian high school. They also had the college, but I was in the high school department, and I lived on campus. I stayed in the dormitory, and I rode with somebody to a new church. I maybe had been there one Sunday before. I'm just a boy, I sat down on the end of a bench over here on one side, about third row back, and a great big guy comes in Sunday school had just let out. He walks up and said, that's my seat. I always sit there. Would you just mind moving someplace else? And you couldn't just walk out, plus I didn't have a ride back to the school. My face was so red, and you know, years passed, and I looked in a magazine and saw that he was the General Secretary of the denomination of the church. Sometimes big people can hurt you don't have a clue. It'd been nice if he just said, Would you mind just scooting over and just let me sit with you today? But he didn't. And you know what? You've got to let all this stuff go, or you're living just leafing back through the foul cabinets of the hurts of yesterday's. They have a little poem. You know, living with the saints above. Oh, that will be glory. Living with saints below. That's a different story. Well, you don't tell what they did. Number two, you don't let them be nervous around you. Number three, don't make them feel guilty. And proof number four, you let them save face. You don't rub their nose in something. Better still, give them a way out that's graceful. Joseph said you didn't do it God did. And I can imagine those brothers. Gad looked over at Asher, and he said, Did you hear what he said? He's not even blaming us. Look what we did to him. And he said, Hey, God allowed it, and you're forgiven. And 400 years before, God told Abraham, the day will come when I bring the children of Israel up out of Egypt. For that to happen, somebody had to go down there first. I've gotta send somebody down there. Hey, Joseph, why don't you go? And so Joseph was the first to go, and God did it to preserve lives. And these brothers couldn't believe their luck, the very man they were going to kill is used of God. Somebody said God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. Living in total forgiveness is the only way to live. But I'm not done. Here's a fifth proof. You protect them from their darkest secret. Now, what was these brothers darkest secret, what they had done behind their dad's back, the fabricated lie they told him, and what they had done to this boy called Joseph, 17 years of age, when they sold him into slavery. And all they had done. They put him in a pit. They tried to destroy him. They were so jealous, and they'd rather die than to tell their father. Joe said, You need to go tell Dad what you did to me. That isn't what he said. Now, I didn't read all of the account. I didn't read all the chapter due to time when you get home, I would urge you just to read down through it for clarification. Genesis, Chapter 45 it's not what Joseph did. He didn't allow him to do that. Verse nine, he said, haste you and go up to my father and say unto him, Thus saith my son, Joseph, God hath made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down unto me and tarry not. They didn't have to go back and fall on their knees and be embarrassed before their father. They didn't have to tell their dad all that, and that's the way God is. You know, most of us have some skeletons in our closet. Most of us have some things in our life that we're ashamed of. Nobody has to run the aisles here. Most of us have things that we have said that we wished had never come out of our lips. And God doesn't yank all the skeletons back out of the closet and try to embarrass us in front of everybody. He lets us save face. Fact of the matter, he remembers that we're but dust a gracious God, and Joseph would not let them tell it. And another proof that you're forgiven number six is that you pray for them. 17 years later, the old dad, Jacob, dies, and the brothers get together and said, Now what are we going to do? Now, is Joseph's chance to get even with us for what we've done. Dad's dead. Nobody can stop him. But it turns out Joseph felt the same way he had always felt, you're forgiven. Let me read it to you, verse 19, and Joseph said unto them, Fear not for Am I in the place of God, but as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now there fear you not I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them and spake kindly unto them. Let me just put it this way, total forgiveness is a life sentence. We're sentenced for life to always forgive, and you gotta keep doing it over and over and over. No wonder when Peter asked, how many times you think we gotta forgive? And Jesus said, 49 times whatever, it wound up somebody said about 490, I don't know. In other words, it meant just forgive and keep forgetting. And if it comes back up and the emotions try to return and the devil's trying to tip you to get back in that old attitude of unforgiveness, rebuke the enemy and say, That's not the way I feel. That's the way Devil you want me to feel. I've forgiven them, and I still do. Do you know what I did a number of years ago? And I do it every so often. I tell God, God, if somebody's hurt me, if somebody's angry and they're trying to destroy me, forgive them. If they never come to me, if they don't even say anything to you, if it's possible, I'm saying, God, forgive them. Don't put it on their account. And incidentally, God, be sure you don't have anything on my account either. Forgive me. You know God's not going to forgive us if we've got unforgiveness in our heart toward another, you've gotta forgive if you expect God to forgive you. So I close by saying this, be willing not to tell quit telling. You say, Well, it's too late I've already been, don't do it anymore. Quit bringing up the past and don't let them be afraid of you. Don't make them nervous when they're around you. Let them save face, protect them from their darkest secret, and pray for others and bless them. And that's the way I want us to close today, is to ask a blessing on those that have been enemies through the years, those that never let us get close, never really put their arm around us and pulled us into their little world. But instead of being bitter about it, forgive and we'll be better people for it, Father, we thank you today for your spirit, your presence, your love. We're glad for this story that's lodged back there in those dusty pages of a history book called Genesis, of a man that was willing to forgive, and the years had passed, the disappointments overlooked lied on in prison, and yet the Lord was with him, Over and over and over, and as time passed, he became a changed man, a new man, a broken man, who was willing to let the past go and let wrongs be forgotten and let people be forgiven, make us a little bit like Joseph, and help us to pray for others that they too can be released and they too can be forgiven. We pray it in the name of Jesus this morning, Amen. Me, this is what is that the way you feel this morning?

Unknown: 28:46

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor Ray LaSalle, for more information regarding BNC, visit Bucyrus nazarene.org.