New Horizon 2025 Bible Reading Thursday 7 August 2025 Mr John Lennox - The test of witness, authority and power

 

NEW HORIZON 2025 BIBLE READING

THURSDAY 7 AUGUST 2025 MR JOHN LENNOX

 

THE TEST OF WITNESS, AUTHORITY AND POWER

 

Joseph is put under extreme sexual pressure. Notice where it happened – in his workplace. That is often where sexual temptation particularly for men happens. Where a young man perhaps comes into the office who is very beautiful and young and the CEO has a wife who is showing her age now and he ends up going off with the young woman and destroying the family and children out of utter selfishness simply out of his apparent need to satisfy himself sexually. In this current age we have seen a revolution in sexual dynamics so that sex is not simply something that is done, it forms people’s identities and there has been an extreme move to subjectivise people’s identity so it is what we feel and the normal norms completely disappear. This is a huge issue, but I want you to note that Joseph’s basic principle was that he wouldn’t sin against God and do this wicked thing. He still believed in objective norms of moral behaviour. That is the crucial thing and crucial lesson here. All sin is ultimately against God even though other people may be involved. She put the pressure on, Potiphar’s wife.

Chapter 39 verse 11 …

“But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, ¹² she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. ¹³ And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, ¹⁴ she called to the men of her household and said to them, “See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. ¹⁵ And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house.” ¹⁶ Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, ¹⁷ and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. ¹⁸ But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house.”

¹⁹ As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, “This is the way your servant treated me,” his anger was kindled. ²⁰ And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. ²¹ But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. ²² And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. ²³ The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge, because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.“

Joseph fled out of the situation and that’s the advice Paul gives to us in these kind of circumstances – “flee youthful desires.” There are some situations in life where the only way to deal with them is to get out. That has various ways of understanding – getting out may mean switching off a computer or not taking the next click which will lead you onto pornography. Most of us are only 2 clicks away from disaster, it is that close and it is all around us. The Lord encourages us not to take those steps and those clicks. He couldn’t switch her off but he could run. As he ran he left his garment. Once against we are faced with the question of garments and what they represent. They represented Joseph, he was a high official now even though a slave. His garment would have identified him immediately and so she and it’s interesting that she used the race card “This Hebrew slave.” She showed it to her husband when he came home. And one of the interesting things here is, normally the immediate punishment for adultery would have been death and execution. The very fact he didn’t do that is an indicator that he suspected that there might have been more to the story than his wife had told him. Joseph fled because he had a central focus outside of himself and outside of his world on God. The famous writer Nietzsche once said “Those who know why they live can endure almost any how. Those who know why they live can endure almost any how.” If you don’t know why you are living then under this kind of temptation you may wall fall to pieces. Why am I living? It was a big question for Joseph. His life had so many ups and downs already. His clothing is used to identify him. We have had this again and again in the story. Used as evidence because it was part of Joseph. It was used to construct a lie. It was used to construct fake news. And the tragedy of today is that our clothing or a picture of us and the tone fall of our voice are enough to created a deep fake image that can be used to represent us talking lies or saying anything that the manipulators want us to say. This is a primitive version of it. Using evidence it really was Joseph’s cloak. It identified him but then it was used to give fake evidence to the servants and to Potiphar as well. The situation is getting worse and worse and we need to understand what is happening with misrepresentation and faking of human personality. We have to face the fact that we have to recognise many of us fail where Joseph stood. David did too, he saw a beautiful woman and he fell for her. There is a lot we can learn from his story. David learned when he repented and admitted his sin that the Lord was prepared to forgive him. “Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven and whose iniquity is covered.” He had to learn another thing, that sin even if repented of and forgiven has consequences. Those consequences cannot be forgiven because they are in a different category. David had to live the rest of his wife, although forgiven with the consequences of that sin. We need to remember those 2 things. It is important to realise that there is forgiveness for sexual sin of this kind. Of course there are bound to be people struggling with these issues. The wonderful thing about the Christian gospel is a gospel of forgiveness. Christ died not just for my sins in the past but for all of my sins. Jesus Christ offers something that no one else offers me. He does not compete with any other religion. None of them offer me a forgiveness that I can know on this earth, a certainty of it because it does not depend on my works or efforts but what he did for me on the cross and his resurrection so that I can be certain that I will be with him one day in heaven. Wonderful news and anyone here can enter into it without further ado. There is a power to the message of the gospel and forgiveness. But all this lay in the future when we are thinking of the life of Joseph. The topic of forgiveness will feature greatly in what follows. Joseph ends up in the prison and what does he do? Does he moan? He continues to be a faithful servant. He was a slave to start with and rose to running Pharaoh’s entire estate, it must have been huge. Instead of complaining in the prison he sets to work to do what he can and in the end he becomes the end the prisoner who governs the prison from the inside. Translating this up to date would have been almost impossible to imagine. Joseph is running the place.

Chapter 40

Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord the king of Egypt. ² And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, ³ and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. ⁴ The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody.

⁵ And one night they both dreamed—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison—each his own dream, and each dream with its own interpretation. ⁶ When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. ⁷ So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” 

Joseph was not bound up with his own feelings of irritation, of desires for revenge, not wound up in a high emotional tension thinking of how he could get his own back. He noticed these men were sad. It is so easy for us to become the centre of our own life, and we don’t notice when people around us are exhibiting signs of being sad. We get upset over the most trivial things. Can we observe and think of folks around us today that might be looking sad? By asking them he was inviting them to reveal the source of their sadness. Joseph had a wonderful pastoral heart. He had every reason to be shut up in himself and silent and not interested in anyone else because everything that happened to him was unjust, unfair, unreasonable, untrue and yet he noticed these men. And they told them they had dreamed. He said, well why don’t you tell me these dreams. It becomes fascinating – they felt there was some meaning in their dreams. Joseph’s reply “do not interpretations belong to God.” What did they make of that? Please tell them to me. They each told their dream. Joseph interpreted them immediately. He told the cupbearer would be reinstated in 3 days and the baker would be executed in 3 days. One was good news and the other bad news. He was faithful to the interpretation of both. Joseph had had dreams. Would you not have thought that when these men said we’ve had dreams he would have said forget it? Dreams, nonsense, I had dreams when I was a teenager they came to nothing, forget your dreams. He still believed his own dreams. They hadn’t been fulfilled his own dreams. But he still on to the fact that those words of God by dreams years ago, of the imagery he couldn’t understand. He still believed in them and could tell these men that their dreams were worth interpreting. So, he interpreted them. Very gently he said that when the cupbearer got his job back,

“Only remember me, when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. ¹⁵ For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit.”

Please remember me when you get out. And he got out and there’s a delightful little thing here that in the imagery of the dream he was squeezing grapes into Pharaoh’s cup. Why was he doing that? These ancient emperors tend to drink too much alcohol and one of the jobs of the chief cupbearer was to dilute it with fresh grape juice without being noticed in the hope of retaining of his alcoholic rages. Another mark of authenticity in the text because that is what exactly happened in the ancient world. So, Joseph is of course is still in the prison and the chief cupbearer goes back to his job. The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him Can you imagine the day after Joseph interpreted the cupbearer’s dream and he had gone back to his job. Joseph is sitting in the prison wondering when the knock will come on the door. It didn’t come that day or the next or the next week but after 2 years of waiting that Pharaoh’s birthday occurred and he had a dream. It was then the cupbearer remembered what had happened in the prison. Would I have held out or would I have been screaming “how long Lord do I have to wait, how long do I have to put up with this, is there no justice and fairness in the world? I have stood for truth, for morality and this is what has happened. I have seen a glimmer of a door opening and it has been shut in my face and I am still in this prison.” He had held on but then Pharaoh dreams and the chief cupbearer gets very embarrassed and he has to go and remind Pharaoh of his sins. Not easy to do because he might have put him in prison again. He felt he had to do that and he goes and he tells Pharaoh about Joseph in the prison. He tells him the detail and Pharaoh’s dream is explained in the detail of chapter 41 verse 9

^“Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “I remember my offenses today. ¹⁰ When Pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, ¹¹ we dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own interpretation. ¹² A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream. ¹³ And as he interpreted to us, so it came about. I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.”

Pharaoh believed him and he sent and called Joseph and they quickly brought him out of the pit. When he had shaved himself and changed his clothes. Why did he shave himself? At that period in the Egyptian dynasties leaders didn’t shave. They were clean shaven. Most of the pictures we see the leaders had beards but this time they didn’t. Joseph is making himself ready to meet the emperor of the world, the then known world of Egypt. He changed his clothes and came in before Pharoah.

“And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” ¹⁶ Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”

All his life up to this point, all the depravation, suffering, all the misrepresentation, all the false accusation, all the life in prison, all of that is geared to these 10 seconds – will the Emperor listen. Now we begin to see how God is going to bring salvation through the Hebrews to the world. He is going to bring it through this young trained Hebrew who didn’t yet know what his own dreams meant. But he proved that he could interpret dreams and God would give the answer to some dreams. And so Joseph said that God would give a favourable answer. Pharaoh relates the dreams to Joseph. A double dream.

“Behold, in my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile. ¹⁸ Seven cows, plump and attractive, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. ¹⁹ Seven other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and thin, such as I had never seen in all the land of Egypt. ²⁰ And the thin, ugly cows ate up the first seven plump cows, ²¹ but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were still as ugly as at the beginning. Then I awoke. ²² I also saw in my dream seven ears growing on one stalk, full and good. ²³ Seven ears, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprouted after them, ²⁴ and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. And I told it to the magicians, but there was no one who could explain it to me.  Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do.”

 

Pharaoh must have been terrified because the Pharoah was supposed to be the one that governed the inundation of the Nile, which was vitally important for the economy of Egypt. All of its agriculture depended on the River Nile and its flooding at the right time of the year. And the Pharaohs feared for their lives in case the Nile inundation would not occur at the right time and the idea of something coming out of the Nile that was not working properly. These thing cows that ate up the luxuriantly well-fed cows and the ears of corn similarly indicated that something was going to go desperately wrong with the Nile harvest and he was in charge. He was supposed to represent the God Happy who was the god of the Nile. He must have been devastated and Joseph starts explaining what God is telling him. A young Hebrew. Pharaoh recognised that the young man in front of him had access to knowledge that Pharoah himself and all his magicians had no access to him. The same thing happened with Daniel in front of Nebuchadnezzar. You can sense it as you read through the detail that Pharaoh is coming to a dawning realisation that he is standing before something utterly unique in his own experience and he is standing in front of an authority he does not begin to possess even though he is the lord of Egypt. It is a devastating realisation for a man with a kind of power an ancient emperor had. Joseph interprets the dreams, in terms of verse 29 …

“There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, ³⁰ but after them there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will consume the land, ³¹ and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow, for it will be very severe. And the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about. “

He was asserting several things here to Pharaoh. There is a God that stands way above all the plethora of gods of the Egyptians, including the Nile itself and you, and he is going to bring it about. He is behind what’s going to happen. That raises all kinds of questions of course. We have to take those on board at some time or other. God behind history. And its spectacular when you think that God is moving in history and a whole land has got to be brought to its knees in order to bring 10 men to their knees. Those are God’s sense of proportion. We are not there yet. As Joseph starts to explain he goes on, he doesn’t stop.

Now therefore let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt.”

 

Now Joseph has taken over commanding the emperor, without pause or hesitation. He is now running the show.

 

“Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years.”

 

Now he is taking over the job of minister of finance, chancellor of exchequer and suggesting what level of taxes are to be imposed. Joseph has been a steward in all senses, a man who understands the laws of the house but he understood finance because he’s been responding for paying the slaves under his command when he was running Potiphar’s house and clearly he understood a great deal of how economics works. There have been masses of literature written about the tax proposals that are made here by Joseph. Some people think they are extremely unfair because as you read down it ended up with all the grain and all the property belonging to Pharoah and that is not a very system in economic history. But the first thing that Joseph suggested was you gather the food, you tax it so that you keep a proportion back, build store cities against the years of famine. There’s a young man standing in front of Pharaoh, the land is full of plenty at the moment and he is claiming there is going to be 7 years of harvest and there will be 7 years of famine but you are only going to build store cities if you believe what he says. You wouldn’t do it otherwise. Pharaoh is pretty subtle, no doubt he is standing in front of all his ministers and they are wondering what he is going to do now with all of this, what are we going to do with all this. Is he going to run a consultation with us? We will set up a few committees and we will have a commission and we will report next year as to what we are going to do. He’s shrewd and he cuts through any other ministerial suggestions. And he said “since God has shown you.” What did he mean by God? What did he understand? Well he certainly must have understood enough that this God was above all other gods and totally different.

“Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. ⁴⁰ You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command.”

There was no commission, there was no discussion, there was nothing. A direct command of the emperor takes a prisoner and puts him in charge of an entire nation immediately. Why did that happen? Because he believed God. God would use him to save a nation and his brothers. Behind this story there is a huge problem that has exercised people’s hearts and minds for centuries, it is the problem of unfairness, of good and evil. And although scripture does not go into at this point for a good reason precisely. The problem is this – God saved the Egyptians but he didn’t save everyone. When Jesus was on earth he healed many people, he cured many people but he didn’t cure everybody. And the same is true today. Some people pray and the Lord heals them, others pray and the Lord takes them to glory. It is a mixed bag and the thing that rises up in many human hearts is this. If there is a good God that is all powerful, surely he would solve the problems of the world and my problem in particular. Whatever worldview religion, philosophy we have it must take into account that what we see is a mixed picture. We see beauty and bombs in our world today and we have got to take account of that. No philosophy that doesn’t recognise that there is a mixed picture. And then we argue surely a God could should might and we never get anywhere. Have you ever a satisfactory answer to that question? The answer is no. When we try to solve a problem for several 100 years and fail we realise we are looking at the wrong problem. That is true here. There is another question we can ask. Its equally difficult, but gets us further. Granted that it is a mixed picture is there anywhere enough evidence that we can trust God with it? There is and it comes straight to the cross of Christ. Because if we ask about suffering and evil, the bible introduces us both in prophecy and living reality to a God who suffers. And if Jesus Christ is God we may ask a question – what is God doing on a cross? I remember standing in a synagogue in Budapest in 1943 there were a line of bullet holes at chest height around the backyard of the synagogue where the Nazi’s had murdered dozens of Jews. I had fallen into talking with a Jewish woman an architect from South America. I had been trying to translate the Yiddish which is kind of German into Spanish so she could understand the talk being given about the festivals about Jehovah. And that moved around the room I was adding a little bit to everything. We talked about the Passover, I talked about Israel being saved by the Passover. I added a little bit that Jesus turns out to be the Passover Lamb. In the middle there was a door and there was a photo montage in the door of the brutal experiments of Yosef Mengele in Auschwitz and the doorway was made to resemble the doorway of Auschwitz “Work will make you free.” I will never forget this young woman and she went stood in the doorway and raised her arms in the form of a cross. She stopped and she said “what does your religion make of this?” There was dead silence of course because she said it loudly. What would you have said? Many of her relatives had perished in the Holocaust and I course lifted my hear to heaven. I said I wouldn’t dream of insulting the memory of your loved ones and what I am going to say is going to be very difficult but you have asked me so try and come with me. You heard me say that Jesus was the Messiah. The hardest thing for you to even get your head around is his claim to be God incarnate. What is he doing on a cross and suffering? Surely this tells us if this is God, God has not remained indifferent to human suffering but has himself come part of it. There was dead silence and she began to weep and she said why has no one ever told me this about my Messiah before? It was very dramatic. You see at the cross love and mercy meet and we see a God who takes upon himself suffering. If he remained on the cross we would have never heard of him. But on the third day God raised him by his mighty power from the dead and that changes everything because it means that God has a solution, an ultimate solution to the problem of suffering and death. And it means that a good news can be preached that all those who face that it is in part their own sin that put Jesus on the cross, that he died there for them. That if they trust him they can receive in that instant a full and free pardon and be guaranteed that one day they too will be raised form the dead. It is the power of resurrection that shows us what the world to come is going to be like Our bodies decay and die. We might have to live with all sorts of disabilities but one day for the Christian they will be gone because Jesus will speak and give us all new bodies. There is no competition, no other religion offers anything like it. So its no offence if I receive from Christ that nobody else offers me. I have had that experience several times talking to Jewish people. There's something about lifting Christ up so that people can see him on the cross that begins to dissolve a lot of these deep problems that remain problems but the solution to them is not philosophical. But the real thing is not the philosophy of God but what God did in Jesus Christ on the cross. That is why I look at the story of Joseph. In one sense he prefigured some of this but not all of it because he is not Jesus and we need to come to that cross again because there we can find pardon, healing, restoration for the things that flood in our mind, the things we have done, the things we have never got sorted out but need to and repent to. It is the ultimate solution that God has done something that will eventually dissolve this universe and create another one. And I am going to be there thanks to the grace of God. Are you?