NEW HORIZON 2025
BIBLE READING 4 AUGUST 2025 - JOHN LENNOX
“A STRANGE NEW WORLD”
The Test of a Dysfunctional Family Life
When you think of the biblical world there’s a number of
people who found themselves moving from one world into a strange new world.
Perhaps the first one who’s famous is Abraham. And God spoke to him with the
words that are regarded by Hebrew scholars as some of the most important words
ever spoken to a human. In Hebrew it is “Lech lekha” get going. And God soke to
Abraham and told him to get going to a land that he would show him. They also
mean go into yourself, go for yourself. And that ambiguity shows us that God is
interested in a journey of many different kinds. We are all on a journey and we
are on a journey that it is geographical components of course. But we have
found that as a life goes on, we go more and more into ourselves and we learn
about ourselves especially if we are followers of the Lord Jesus. Abraham didn’t
know where he was going but we know he ended up in the land of Canaan. And as
you trace down his descendants you discover then the member of his family often
had to move to a strange new world. Joseph was taken by force and sold down to
Egypt which was an utterly strange world. New language, new customs, new culture
and he had to come to terms with it. Moses was born in a Hebrew family but
rapidly adopted into the Egyptian royal family and as an adult he then had to
reverse that and go from the cultured world of Egypt to stand with the Hebrews
and lead them out of Egypt into a strange new world. And Daniel was taken from
a tiny monotheistic culture in Israel and Judah and removed quite rapidly
several 100 miles to Babylon, a new language, a new culture, a new legal system
and he had to cope with that. All these people moved geographically in order to
enter a strange new world. Now during my lifetime and yours something very
different has happened. We have stayed in the same place and the culture has
changed around us so that we find ourselves in a new world without ever moving
from where we are living. And young people today have to got to cope with a
world that I had no concept until 20 or 30 years ago. All of us have to get
used to a strange new world. God is a God who speaks and is thrilling to be
involved in a week where we are listening to the word of God. I find that
absolutely thrilling when I pick up the bible and realise these are not just
any words. This is God’s word and it is God telling a story. Now that’s hugely
important. Many people today, in fact all of us I suspect are looking for a
story that we can fit in to, a big enough story to allow us to be fulfilled in
life, to allow us to develop and of course if we are Christians to allow us to
flourish as we follow the Lord Jesus. And so when God tells a story, its
different in a way from all other storytelling. And this story of Joseph is
powerful in many ways, and its proportions are very interesting. The story of
Joseph takes up roughly 30% of the book fo Genesis. The story of creation takes
up 2 chapters out of 50 or may be 3, much less. Now of course as a scientist I
wish it was the other way around. I would have liked a lot more chapters about
creation. But then I’m not God and God thinks that we need to know much more
about Joseph than we do about creation because Joseph in the story, a remarkable
story of how God dealt with a human being. Now Genesis not only tells us the
story, the rest of the bible gives us some indication what the story is about.
Sometimes scripture comments on itself and in the book of Psalms you read
something about what the story of Joseph is about. Psalm 105 is a historical
psalm, it relates part of the history of the people of God, Israel and this historical psalm I want to break into it at verse 12
“When they were few in number of little account and
sojourners in it. When they went from one nation to another from one kingdom to
another people. He suffered no man to do them wrong, yea, he reproved kings for
their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. When
he called for a famine upon the land; he brake the whole staff of bread. He
sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant. Whose feet
they hurt with fetters, he was laid in iron. Until the time that his word cam;
the word of the Lord tried him. The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of
the people and let him go free. He made him lord of his house and ruler of all
his substance. To bind his princes at his pleasure and teach his senators
wisdom. Israel also came into Egypt.”
There you see the story of Joseph is set into a much bigger
story that starts at creation, that starts in a world that was beautiful, that
was ordered, where everyone had enough food to eat and Genesis ends in a world
that is broken, where there’s a famine, where many people did have enough food
to eat. And the story of Joseph is how God dealt with that. And the strange thing
that hits us right at the beginning is that God was behind the famine. Why
would God be behind the famine? And that raises a huge question of life. Some of
us have enjoyed relatively calm periods of life. Others have gone through
severe trials and when we hear that God might be behind that side of life, it
leads us to ask great questions. The story of Joseph will at least in part
address some of those questions. It is the story that is deservedly famous. It
is enthralled many children. Many children do not hear the bible stories
because their parents don’t read them to them. But Joseph has inspired great literature,
great art, great music. It’s one of those stories that goes on and on giving in
terms of its meaning and content. But I want to focus on those words just read.
“The word of the Lord tested him.” Now God created the universe, how? He spoke
and it was done. God made human beings as moral beings. How? His word defined
morality. In the day you eat of that tree you shall die. So creation is formed
by God’s word. The definition of morality and ethics is formed by God’s word
and it relates to God and what God says. And God keeps speaking. He is the God
who speaks. What we read about Joseph and what we are to understand as a lens
through which to look at his life is that the word of the Lord tested him. As a
Christian believer I must expect the genuineness of my response to the word of
the Lord Jesus to be tested. Most of us know what that means in our own lives.
We are going to look at what it meant in the life of Joseph because there will
be many points at which that will touch on our own experience. And there is a number
of tests and as we go through these 5 sessions I want first to look at the test
of dysfunctional family life.
Jacob, Joseph’s father had a very complicated arrangement in
terms of his wives and children. It was the recipe for a psychological
nightmare.
There is the test of morality – Joseph now a prisoner in Potiphar’s
house and tempted by his wife. The test of morality.
Then coupled with that there is the test of injustice and
endurance. He suffered not only the rejection of his brothers but in prison he
suffered false witness and he was tested to the extreme in those situations.
Then there was the test of witness when he got the
opportunity to witness to the most powerful man in the then known world, the
emperor of Egypt. He was ready and knew exactly what to say to turn the world
upside down and save it from famine. Therefore that meant he was now tested
with his use of power and authority.
That is a very different test from the test of suffering, how do you handle
power when you get it?
There is finally the test of forgiveness and reconciliation.
How Joseph used his power as lord of Egypt to bring his brothers to honesty, to
repentance, to forgiveness and reconciliation. I often call that part of the
story an anatomy of forgiveness because it is one of the most brilliant
expositions of what forgiveness really means and how it is related to
repentance. In that story we have 2 major phases, first of all the testing of
Joseph in terms of his training and character, building him up over a long
period of time to be a man who was capable of using power not only to run Egypt
and save it economically but also to bring his brothers to repentance and bring
the family back together. So there was a painful period of training and then
the skilful use of great power. Joseph had his glory days but not before he
suffered. In that way we see a pattern. In order to handle power and know what
it is for and use it properly people have to have suffered. Dostoevsky once said
“I cannot conceive of a great person who has not suffered.”
The very first attack on God is the serpent enemy who said
to the enemies “has God really said” and that is going to be the biggest attack
that will come on your faith in Christ. “Has God really said?” Has he got it
wrong in your case at least? And that is where the most battles will be because
the enemy will do anything to unsettle our confidence in what God has said and
make us wobble from it and try to knock us down. The word of God is the only
offensive weapon we have been given according to Paul. It is the sword of the Spirit.
So that if we can be rattled and shaken by experiences in life to shift us away
from trust in the word of God then we will be ineffective and we will not be
able to follow the Great Commission of Christ to witness to the world. God
spoke in creation. He spoke to the first humans and he has been speaking in various
ways in the book of Genesis up to this point. To Adam Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. But what is very striking in the story of Joseph is that there seems
to be no record at all of God speaking to him in direct speech. In the 1st
chapter of Joseph’s story the word God does not appear. Yet God did speak to
him as is obvious from what happened subsequently in 2 prophetic dreams when he
was a teenager. No doubt he had heard many stories from his father Jacob and
his grandfather Isaac about the exploits of their family and their dealings
with God. Yet he himself appears to have lived a life trusting in God who was
largely silent. The words of Psalm 105 form a very telling comment on his quiet
yet deep rooted faith until what he had said came to pass. “The word of the
Lord tested him.” This is very encouraging because sometimes we meet believers
whose experience with God have been dramatic and apparently unmistakeable and
many of us when we hear these dramatic experiences we feel I’ve never
experienced anything like that myself so I must be inadequate. But we can get encouragement
from the story of Joseph because the fact that he was used by God to achieve so
much by God in later life may well be connected with his trust in God in the
absence of the dramatic. That is very important. Experience of God is not
necessarily dramatic or frequent. Joseph had these 2 dreams when he was a teenager
and he held onto them. They appeared to be dreams where his brother and father
and mother bowed down to him so that he had some kind of authority over them. He
had no idea what they meant but he held onto it. The little, very little that
he believed to have come from God he held onto it and we can do exactly the
same. 2 dreams that is all he had to keep him going for quite a number of years
of privation and difficulty. Testing is very important in the industrial world.
If you think of the space shuttle and think of the metals and materials that is
used in its building. Those are subjected to the most extreme testing so that
they will stand up when they come into the condition of outer space. And that’s
what happened to Joseph. He had a 13 year old ordeal of hatred, rejection,
slavery, false accusation and prison before he suddenly found himself in a
position where he could influence the entire world. Now what is very striking
to me about this and very humbling imagine Joseph in this learning period. He
used some of the stories no doubt that his father and grandfather taught him
but he didn’t have a bible like you have. He didn’t know a thousandth of what
we know about God and yet he held on. That is impressive to me. Do I hold on
with all the knowledge, all the biblical books I have got and commentaries? He
held on even though he had very little. And that lengthy time was a period of
waiting on God. That is one of the big topics of the bible – waiting on God. I
don’t like waiting. I remember when credit cards first appeared. There was one
called Access – the strapline was “Access takes the waiting out of wanting.” We
want but we won’t wait. God asks us to wait. If we have had to wait and are
waiting at the moment, perhaps frustrated by waiting, just remember that is one
of the great themes of the Psalms, that we should learn to wait on God and wait
his time. There are many stories in scripture where people did not wait and it
was a complete disaster and they missed out on what God had for them. Let’s now
look at the book of Genesis. It falls into 6 main sections and it’s divided up
in the manner of ancient literature by a repeated phrase – “these are the
generations of.” That expression occurs frequently, usually at the end of a section.
And without pausing to argue it these show us that there are 6 major parts in
the book. The first 3 each of them explicitly mentions the creation of human
beings as the pinnacle of God’s creation. The second half of the book has 3
major parts which can be very eaily summarised if we think of the statement “I
am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob.” The second half of the book, the
first part ends with the death of Abraham, the second part ends with the death
of Isaac, and the third and final part ends with both the death of Jacob and of
Joseph. So it is easy to summarise. That second part deals with not only these
people individually but with their families and their interactions with each
other. God promises to Abraham at the beginning of the second part of the
Genesis “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” But as you move through
the story you have him wandering around from place to place, still just a tiny
tribal group and no evidence whatsoever of how this small group could be a
blessing to the whole world. But Joseph gives the turning point where all that
changes. When Joseph steps in the court of Pharoah and takes over the
government of the then largest empire, we begin to see how Abraham’s family
will have a vast influence on the world. It is the first indication of the nations
of the world being blessed through Abraham. Joseph therefore becomes a Saviour
and he in the bible is a thought model for the greatest Saviour of all, the
Lord Jesus Christ. The first Christian martyr Stephen made a speech about the
history of Israel with a specific slant. And the point he makes in Acts 7 again
and again that they were a nation that was always rejecting the Saviour that
God had raised up. And in Acts 7 verse 51 he brings his powerful message to a
climax. “You stiffnecked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you are just
like your Fathers. You always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet
your father’s did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the
coming of the righteous one. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You
who’ve received the law that was put in effect through angels and have not
obeyed it.” Stephen’s speech is a powerful lesson how time and again the
nations patriarchs resisted the very men that God was raising up to deliver
them. Stephen points out that God was with Joseph and yet he was rejected. God
was with Moses and yet he was rejected. And now, having learned nothing from
their history, Stephen’s audience showed the very same attitude by rejecting
the very greatest Saviour of all, Jesus the Messiah. It was a devastation indictment
and his message went home. And in a further rejection of that message that provide
his point he was stoned to death. That application of the life of Joseph leads
us to expect that in his life we are going to see certain patterns of behaviour
that recur at a higher level in the life of Jesus our Lord. Like Joseph he came
to his own and his own did not receive him. Like Joseph Jesus was rejected by
his own people and taken for dead when he was sold into Egypt. So Joseph’s life
is a foreshadowing of what would eventually happen, the Messiah who would
suffer and one day take over the government, not merely of Egypt but of the
entire world. And because of that the Jews noticed this and so some of them
came to believe in 2 Messiahs, one in the line of Joseph who would suffer and
one in the line of Judah who would eventually be king. Our Lord suffered before
reigning, so did Joseph. Before he could reign he was severely tested and when
he stood before Pharaoh his witness depended on 13 years of solid training.
When Peter addressed the persecuted church who was suffering a great deal he talked
about Christ and the sufferings he endured and the glory that followed them.
Then he said very gently “God’s grace will exalt you after you have suffered a
little while.” We are not promised anything different. After you have suffered a
little while God will exalt you. And so Joseph at this level becomes the thought model to help us understand our own experience. To everyone there belongs a
biography, there are reasons why we are who we are. And if the bible only told
us stories of people who came from wonderful backgrounds, where they had their
needs satisfied, well we would scarcely count it as credible. The bible talks
about life as it really is, messy, petty, full of strained relationships, even
murderous. And that was what life was like for Joseph. Growing up in a family where
Jacob had 2 wives, 2 further surrogate mothers so that in the family there was
one husband, 4 wives and 13 children distributed among them. They’re all the ingredients
for a psychological nightmare. In Joseph’s case in Genesis the story beings in
an interesting way. Genesis 37 we read “and these are the generations of Jacob,
Joseph being 17 years old.” Now you go on and on about Joseph but Jacob is
there in the background right to the end of the book. The book ends with 2
deaths – first the death of Jacob and then of Joseph. We are to realise it is
the story of Joseph but also of Jacob. It is the story of how the life of
Joseph brought massive lessons to his father who had made many of the same
mistakes as the brothers had made. The narrative concentrates on 3 issues that led to hatred in the family. So it is a
study of hatred. First of all Jacob openly treated Joseph as his favourite son.
Secondly Joseph brought a bad report about the sons of the 2 surrogate mothers.
Thirdly Joseph had dreams of supremacy over his brothers and parents and he
told them to his family. So the first topic is favouritism. Jacob loved Joseph
more than his brothers. Reason given: because
he was born to him in his old age. He was the son of his favourite wife with whom
he fell in love. He makes a colossal mistake by giving Joseph a magnificent multicoloured
robe that none of his brothers had. He singled him out and all the rest of them
I presume got cast offs. This brings us right down into contemporary families –
being fair to children. Is it easy? Some of them grow up to be like us. We find
it easy to love them. But others we discover not like us at all. We find it
difficult to cope with them. How can you be fair to your children and treat
them equally? Jacob didn’t walk the others down to the latest fashion emporium
nor give them all Nike shoes and so on. It was Joseph who got the lot. And
there he was walking with his brothers with this magnificent robe and it would
have been extremely expensive and the others with their cast offs. It was a
recipe for absolute disaster. It was worse because it wasn’t that Jacob
favouritised 7 or 8 of them, he only chose 1.
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