Fear not: For am I in the Place of God?

In the eyes of many scholars and ministers, when going over Jacob's family album and the deliverance God brought through Joseph, forgiveness is the big theme. Joseph is honored for his great forgiveness.  I think forgiveness is a little easier than people think.  It relies on God. For me the Joseph record is the story of God's great love and provision.

The true exercise and action of man is trusting and believing God. Genesis is filled with records of people that sojourned through the wilderness of life, physically, mentally and spiritually, to ultimately find the wellspring of grace that was really right there all the time. Jacob's sons were no exceptions.

Genesis 50:14-21
And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father. And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.  And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. 

And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye 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 therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

After all the ways God showed His love during hardship and famine, despite the poor relationships, envy, strife, evil intentions, immorality and lack of trust; Joseph's brothers still in the end thought they were in big trouble and fearful of what would happen to them. Have you ever thought this way? Joseph reminded them how God meant all of it for their good. God is what resided and kept Joseph's heart. God was available to them too.

It is interesting listening to ourselves when we talk about God.  We may talk in chapters, verses, formulas and quotations, pontifications and special language. We talk fast, slow, loudly, quietly, intensely or cautiously about God. If we listen to ourselves long enough the 'trust factor' starts to become visible. It shows in the above conversation in Genesis 50. The 'trust factor' is not that we've proved every jot and tittle of the Bible. It is about our relationship with God. Bottom line is just what Jesus Christ told us in the gospels:

Matthew 22:35-41 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Joseph the Prototype of the One To Come

A significant portion of Genesis is devoted to the life of Joseph. It the story of family, government, investment and prosperity in a down economy, relationships, discretion and everything else that life presents today. It is no wonder that God lays out in the very first book a great example of life at its fullest. The greatest lesson of all is Joseph's life with God. He is in a sense a prototype of Jesus Christ.  We can learn much from studying the lives of the men and women that God highlights in the Bible. They show us each individually pieces of what the ultimate life of Christ embodied.

Joseph's life was by no means easy, but it was full of success. Most everyone knows the story of how his brothers threw him in a pit and he was captured and taken  to Egypt and ended up at the right hand of Pharoah to handle all his business (prototype alert - who is at the right hand of God?).  Pharoah was not a right-winged Israelite, but he could recognize that the spirit of God worked in Joseph when Joseph's brother did not. Imagine that!

Genesis 41:38 And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?

Joseph was good at what he did and the whole country of Egypt thrived even when the the world was in famine. Joseph respected and listened to God.  It was more than just obedience, it was love,  respect and thankfulness for all God can do. I imagine Joseph had great human qualities but it was God that was the wind in his sails. He was human just like us. He experienced hurt and injustice throughout his life. In forgiving his brothers, he listened to God so as to bring about change, restoration and help for them.

Forgiveness can be slow. It can take time, not because God is dragging His feet, but because the humans involved may be slow in believing. God can work at lightening fast speed if we let Him. Joseph wanted his family restored immediately but it became a developing story because of human lack of understanding and receptivity. So he trusted God to help him with the timing. God will do that for us too when we rely on his wisdom and grace. Sometimes God has to teach us to move on in some cases for our own well-being. Regardless, God has our best interests at heart.

Egypt got the benefits of God because Joseph obeyed God. Pharoah listened to Joseph. He realized it so much so that he acted on what he recognized and respected Joseph and the God that he represented. God desires the best for everyone including Pharoah and the Egyptians. Today everyone can have the spirit of God residing in his own heart because of what God provided through Jesus Christ.  That is amazing! We are coated with amazing technicolor spiritually as we move through life and its ups and downs. As we respect God and as we recognize the work of His son, Jesus Christ, we realize the spiritual side of life down to the smallest details through the three 'R's' of the divine life: recognizing, realizing and respecting. 

Context and Forgiveness

Forgiveness and forgiving seem a popular topic among preachers today. Everybody is an expert, since relationships among people are constantly being challenged. Humans are vulnerable to error, no one disagrees with that, but our sympathy for our natural man natures has boundaries in God’s Word.

Probably the most often quoted verses of scripture on forgiveness lies in Matthew 18: 21-22:

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive (link) him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

I’m sure Peter thought he was being generous with seven times, but it really isn’t about the number of times one forgives, it is about the heart of forgiveness. It is about God's desire to help people. The heart of this is expressed a few verses earlier:

Matthew 18:11-14 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

In sharing God’s word it is easy to isolate scriptures and teach something that isn’t really the truth. Matthew 18 has beautiful context to draw from:

Matthew 18:15-17Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church (link): but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. (The church are those who love and are humble to God's Word. When something is not right, people who love God want His Word to thrive. There's a great example in chapters 37-50 in Genesis regarding Joseph)

It is very easy to gossip about someone rather than being upfront and loving, but God is after hearts and if we are in fellowship with him we know whether we’ve done enough. Forgiveness may or may not result in reconciliation.We keep trusting God on what to do and expect Him to help us forget and move on when we need to.


Ananias was forgiving when he listened to God and went and ministered to the murderer, Saul/Paul in Damascus. God said he was a chosen vessel to Him, so Ananias believed and obeyed. Paul believed Ananias. Paul eventually was given the responsibility by God to reveal the mystery!

Many of the prophets of old had to pull away at times from the situations they faced. Each one of us today in the grace administration period, can have the spirit of God to tell us what to do in any individual situation. It will always flow with the guidelines of the church epistles.


In Acts 20ff, Paul wanted to go to Jerusalem to help his countrymen. God didn’t want him to and for a very good reason. Things did not turn out well. God didn't punish him or thunder indignantly when Paul decided to go. God did the best to warn him. Paul eventually figured it out and got out of there for his spiritual, mental and physical health. He got backed into a corner and had to let it go. Letting go is forgiveness too. It might hurt a little, but maybe that's all that can be humanly done in a situation. Sometimes in life, we too must come to the realization that there is nothing else to be done, so it is best to move out of the situation and in moving on, we leave it all in the hands of God.

GOD IS REAL!

Just recently, I was reading a book by Jay Adams, From Forgiven To Forgiving.  It is a tremendous book and many of his points reminded me of the Joseph record in the Old Testament. Several years ago, I did a study on Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob. Many chapters in Genesis are devoted to the events in this man's life. His life was not easy but to his credit he is described as a man on whom the spirit of God resided. Perhaps because of this he had huge challenges, but through them all God guided and strengthened him as he handled them one by one. He is an amazing example of how forgiveness is brought about. He handled things God's way.  He had the humility to not try to outdo God and thus was able to be an instrument of true deliverance.


Forgiveness is a much written about subject. There is no question in my mind that the adversary wants to muddle and twist people's ideas in this particular area.

Ephesians 4:32 (King James Version)And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

'Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you'.  That sets the standard. Jesus Christ died for our sins once and for all.  This doesn't mean we have to be crucified to serve God but it does mean that we have answers to life's challenges and that we extend those answers to others. When we teach God's word to others and help them to apply God's word to every situation we are 'kind'.


Joseph's goal was restoration.  His brothers were pretty much a mess and had displayed very cruel behavior toward him in the past.  God worked in Joseph's heart to help facilitate the change that was necessary to cause them to see what changes they needed to make. God knew how to handle them and Joseph carried it out. God knew also that Judah would change and he showed Joseph how to bring that out. Several steps were needed. At one point Joseph spoke roughly to them and threw them in prison. It was there that they started to admit their lives had not been sterling and they repented of what they had done to their brother. It is a great record, one to be digested and re-digested.


God is real and he knows the best way to deal with life's issues. In the age that we live in of secular humanism, we need to take heed to a man like Joseph and how he did things. Our relationships with others should be based on truth, not feeling. Our goal is to help others come up and out of the quicksand of this world. It is  a world of competition, strife, ambition, greed and control. We can't just do that by patting someone on the head and saying nice things. We need to help people by giving them the words of God and telling them how Jesus Christ stood in the gap for us and that we have full access to the throne room of God. That is the promotion of true forgiveness!