It’s Time To Get Up Part 5 —reconciliation

It’s Time To Get Up Part 5 —Reconciliation

Genesis 50:15-21 Ephesians 4:17-32

Have you ever had a bad falling out with someone? Something they did to you just seemed like too much to forgive. It happens with individuals. It happens with families. It happens with nations. It happens with ethnic groups. The desire to make them pay for what they did can go on for decades and even for centuries.

In one episode of the original Star Trek, there was an episode in which two aliens, one an officer of the law and the other an fugitive were trying to enlist the captain’s help. The officer had been chasing a fugitive across the galaxy for decades to bring him back to their home planet. The interesting thing was that both men were black on ½ of their bodies and white on the other ½ as if a line had been drawn down the middle of them from top to bottom.

The officer accused the fugitive of being a terrorist from a race of people who were violent, evil, and inferior intellectually. The fugitive accused the officer of being from a race of people that were oppressive, brutal, and murderers.

As they presented their sides of the story to Captain Kirk, he told them. “wait a minute, you are both from the same race of people. You are both black and white. How can you be both be claiming opposite things?”

The officer became very angry at the Captain and said, “Isn’t it obvious, he and his people are black on the left side and white on the right side. My people and I are white on the left side and black on the white side.”

The episode ends with both the fugitive and the officer making it back to their home planet only to discover a civil war between their peoples had annihilated everyone on the planet. Often times the result of an unwillingness to reconcile leads to an annihilation of a person or a group.

Jesus entered into the realm of humanity with two purposes in mind. The first was that we would be reconciled to God. He did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

The second was that we would be reconciled to each other. On the night in which he was betrayed Jesus prayed John 17:20-21 (NIV) 20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

It’s important to God that we learn how to love each other, far beyond the differences that we allow to separate us in groups and factions.

We have been looking at Joseph’s life. As you may recall, Joseph had been betrayed by his brothers who had hated him because he was favored by their father and he had dreams indicating he would rule over them. They sold him as a slave to a group of people going to Egypt to make sure those dreams would never become a reality.

They lied to their father about what happened to Joseph, and their father was sure that Joseph was dead having been torn apart by a wild animal. Their father mourned for a long time over his son. This was a dark family secret among the brothers.

Joseph is a slave in Egypt for 11 years and is then thrown into prison for over two years after being falsely accused of attempted rape. God is with Joseph throughout this ordeal. He keeps raising Joseph up to the top of his circumstances.

Pharaoh has a dream that no one can interpret it. Joseph interprets it and becomes ruler of all of Egypt. Egypt is the only place to get food thanks to the wisdom God gave to Joseph. Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to get food.

Joseph recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him. They all bow down before him just as Joseph had dreamed over 20 years ago. Joseph accuses them of being spies. He asks them about their father and his brother Benjamin.

They have no idea it’s Joseph who is asking these questions and why. He tells them, they can’t get any more food unless they bring Benjamin back with them. He keeps one of them in jail until Benjamin is brought back.

When Joseph’s brothers run out of food, their father Jacob does not want to let Benjamin go back with them. But when they refuse to go without Benjamin, he finally lets him go.

When they come back to Egypt, the second time, Joseph comes up with a plot in which he could keep his brother Benjamin with him, and let his brothers leave to be on their own. Benjamin was not a part of the group that sold Joseph into slavery and he and Joseph had the same mother.