New Horizon 2025 Bible Reading Wednesday 6 August 2025 with John Lennox - The Test of Injustice and Endurance

 

NEW HORIZON 2025 BIBLE READING WITH JOHN LENNOX

WEDNESDAY 6 AUGUST 2025

The Test of Injustice and Endurance

Genesis 39 verse 1

“Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. ² The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. ³ His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. ⁴ So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. ⁵ From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. ⁶ So he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate.”

He was a bit like a Frenchman.  It’s interesting these innocent little touches that are marks of authenticity in terms of the integrity of the original documents.  Jacob has lost Joseph. He has essentially lost Judah. And we saw yesterday how Judah’s line nearly petered out. And now we return to Joseph and he’s arrived in Egypt. And presumably he was simply put on show in the marketplace, the slave market place. And Potiphar, who’s a very high official, probably something like the head of Pharaoh’s secret police bought him. And the first thing that is said about him there is that the Lord was with Joseph and he became a successful man. Now don’t forget, we’re describing a slave who’s been bought, has been demeaned to be a commodity and yet the Lord was with him. And we are to read this tory through that lens that the Lord was with him. You know, if there’s any epithet that I would like to have my life, any part of it, it the observation the Lord was with him. And it’s immensely encouraging because we tend to think of success as being a hugely enjoyable thing. And yet here is a slave in a foreign country having to learn a foreign language and to submit to the authority of his boss. And yet the description of his life is that the Lord was with him. We should never forget that the Lord can be with us in the apparent downs of life as well as the ups of life. And looking at this through the lens of the end of the story, we realise this is the Lord being with Joseph in his training to perform a role unique in history under the providence of God. It is easy to think, isn’t it, on times when we feel weak and alone and perhaps not terribly successful that the Lord has left us. But when the Lord Jesus left the earth, he says, “lo I am with you even unto the end of the age.” And what you and I have to learn is to understand how it is the Lord can be with us even in our deepest trials. And Joseph was going through a rough time, not in spite of the Lord being with him but because the Lord was with him and was preparing him for a role that of course at that time he could never have understood. What we have in Joseph is a man who’s prepared to reject, as we shall see in a while, some of the most powerful of human feelings because he had subordinated them to the authority and will of God. Now the next thing which is even more astonishing, is that his master saw that the Lord was with him. Now many of us in this audience will be responsible to earthly bosses. Do they see that the Lord is with us? Now how could this pagan Egyptian see and understand that the Lord was with Joseph? I presume he talked to Joseph and Joseph had told him his story. We do not read any details of this, but I think we can assume them from what we are told here. And you know that idea of seeing that the Lord was with him is an idea that’s picked up in the New Testament. “All men will know that you are my disciples because you love one another.” Jesus said. And in the way their attitude, they took knowledge of those disciples later that they’d been with Jesus. They saw. And we should strive in our lives not only to have a personal sense that the Lord is with us but to live in such a way that people can see that the Lord is with us. Let’s be practical about this. Suppose I went to your superior in business factory, university, farm, workplace and I said “tell me about so and so.” Would you say that there’s something special about them? In fact, let me be direct. Would you say that the Lord was with them? And would you know what that meant? I wonder how all of us would fare? It’s wonderful when people notice that there is something different. Many, many years ago I met a doctor in another country and he had given his life to Christian work. He was from a Jewish background, a very wealthy background and he was building a very promising medical career. And on the medical team, there was a nurse who was always cheerful whatever the pressure, never lost her temper or swore, not matter how aggressive he was and how demanding. She was utterly different from all the other medical staff, and it intrigued him. He couldn’t let it go. He kept seeing that there was something about this nurse. And one day when they were left in the operating on their own, he blurted out “what is so different about you?” She answered in one word – “Jesus”. That wormed into his mind and his heart and in a rainstorm he covered his head with a coat so that he wouldn’t be recognised. His family was very well known and he sneaked into a bible bookshop and bought a bible to find out who this Jesus was. That had made such a difference in the life of this nurse and he became a believer through reading it. And a very touch time followed for him when his family rejected him and essentially threw him out. Nevertheless and it is a long story, I’d love to tell it, but he devoted his life to bringing medical care, the Christian message to people far away from his home. The nurse was like Joseph, there was something about her. And I would pray that one of the results of a conference like this is there’s going to be something about you that speaks to people, that draws them, that they want to know. You know, the apostle Peter challenges all Christians not to be preachers, but to be witnesses. “Always be ready to give a defence to those that ask you a reason for the hope that is within you.” Have you ever noticed that the asking comes from someone else? It’s not you giving a message to them because you’ve decided to do it, it’s because you are so living and relating to them that they ask you not any old question, but a reason for the hope that is within you. That means that the way in which you have interacted with them shows them that you have real hope which is one of the key things in the current world meaning and hope. And so it’s so encouraging. We are encouraged strongly as part of what it means to be a Christian, to so relate to people that they will ask us about the hope that is within us. And I remember being bothered by that verse because I thought I was ready to give answers but nobody ever asked me. So I went to a much younger friend of mine in Cambridge. I was a student and I said, “I’m bothered about this.” “Oh he said, that’s no problem. Why don’t you ask them about the hope that is within them?” I said “they don’t have any hope.” He said “you try asking them.” And the next time I was on a train I saw the man beside me was reading a scientific journal. And it turned out he was a metallurgist. And he said what are you doing? You’re a student. I said “ye I am a mathematician.” And I took out my little Gideon New Testament and started reading it and made sure I held it so that he could see what I was doing. So after a while he said “excuse me. Is that a New Testament you are reading?” I said “yes”. And I kept on reading and didn’t say anymore. And I could see he was getting more and more agitated. And he said “I don’t really want to interrupt you, but I’m puzzled. You said you were a mathematician. Is that a New Testament you are reading.” And I said “yes it is”. And I went on reading. And in the end he said to me, “look forgive me for being bumped. Why are you reading it?” And I remembered what this student had said to me and I asked the question “have you any hope?” And he blurted out “I guess we’ll all just muddle through.” And then I said to him “I didn’t mean that and you know it. Have you any personal hope?” He said “none at all.” I said “that’s why I am reading the New Testament.” And he said “have you got hope?” And now I’ve been asked the question so I could do what Peter said. And I explained to him why I had hope. And I was glad I had my Gideon New Testament with me. And when we’d finished the conversation, we were coming into Paddington. I gave him the New Testament. By the way it seems to me that all of us here are convinced that scripture is the word of God. When was the last time you gave any of it away? That’s a challenge to think about. But anyway as he finished, there appeared a face, a woman with hair going all the way up like this. And she said “I’ve been listening and believed in Mother Earth.” She looked a bit like it too. She said “could I have one of those little books as well?” And I gave her one because Sally had given me two. And in that way you find by asking questions, my great intellectual hero Socrates, who constantly asked questions, you can get much deeper into a relationship and get to know people by asking them questions. And I’ve got a little test now. I’m Irish as you know and this is very difficult for me, but I still find it worth practising. And that is when I meet somebody new, keep asking them questions until they ask you one. It is a very interesting thing to try. Now if they never ask you one, they are probably utterly boring and you will get nowhere. But usually they do ask you a question. And I can imagine in this situation with Potiphar that he asked Joseph endless questions because he saw the quality of his character. And Potiphar had learnt a great deal from watching Joseph. And eventually he came to a decision and he appointed him to be in charge of his whole estate. Now this would have been a major undertaking. Potiphar would have lived in a palace, he would have had lands and estates all around because that was the usual currency in those days rather than money. And so this man is given a very high powered job even as a slave. We must not think of slavery always in terms of the awful kind of slavery that Wilberforce got abolished in the ancient world. Slaves could often get their freedom or they’d remain with their masters. They could own property, they could own land and so it was a very different situation. This man was granted a position of worth and dignity and huge responsibility. So in the end he as a steward was running Potiphar’s house. Now the New Testament uses the word steward frequently and the Greek term is economos from which we get economics.  The stewards in the ancient world were the people that ran the economics of whatever situation they were in and Joseph, as we are told, was put in charge of everything except Potiphar’s food because he was fussy about food, as many Egyptians were. Now we shouldn’t forget when we mention the word slave that there’s still many slaves in the world today and some of them are in the United Kingdom. There are people who have been trafficked illegally into the country and they are working in various stores and shops and garages and on farms, but they are held by slave masters. And all the money goes not to them to support their lives, but to the lives of the controllers. And this is a shocking scandal because it is very widespread. And you will know as well as I do that we’re constantly being told that Company X which is a brand name and they’ve traced back and discovered that these wonderful clothes are being made in some distant country by child slave labour. And we can do something about that of course, by choosing carefully or more carefully what we buy. So slavery is nothing new and it is very important when we come across it to do something about it. Joseph then was the manager, chief executive of a large corporation and the Lord blessed now what was going on. And Potiphar obviously benefited massively from the fact that he had Joseph at the head of his house Now that raises the question which I have had to wrestle with during my life, and it’s the question of the relationship between our faith in God and the work we do every day. Now I’d love to stop and give you a lengthy lecture on it. I’m going to say one or 2 things but I’ve written a book about it and it’s called A Good Return, Biblical Principles of Work, Wealth and Wisdom. Now if we ask ourselves the question, why do we work? Well I suppose some of you might say, I’ve got a wife and children, I just have to work. The bible encourages us to work, to provide for ourselves and our family. “If any man will not work” wrote Paul “neither let him eat.” You notice he doesn’t say, as one famous Prime Minister and she shall be nameless said in this country “if any man does not work, it’s if any man will not work.” There are many young people, perhaps some of them here and they’d love to work but they can’t find a job. And I can remember when my son Jonathan came home in tears. Nobody wants me. It is a terrible thing not to be wanted or to find yourself made redundant in your 50’s. And many people experience that. Work is designed by God to be a significant part of our lives. Genesis teaches that work was instituted by God before sin entered into the world which is very important. So the biblical principle is the norm is to work with our own 2 hands or our mind or our fate or all that we can use, but that is to provide for those around us. But then the matter of what is the motivation for it? Often we think that the motivation for doing the work is the salary we get paid. Now I’m thinking of work which may be paid or may not be paid. The first work in the Garden of Eden was not paid. There’s no money around at those times, but what they were doing, as you can see by reading between the liens in the text, they were fulfilling what Paul says in Colossians 3 “whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.” You are serving the Lord Jesus Christ now. That is spectacularly encouraging. Whatever your work, however humble it is, however unseen and unrecognised it is, as a Christian you can do that work as if the Lord Christ asked you to do it. That’s a big deal because of the Lord appeared this morning and stood beside you and said to you, you know what I’d really love? I’d love a cup of tea. You’d be very quick to do it, wouldn’t you? And you talk forever afterwards. I made a cup of tea for Jesus my Lord. You can apply that to all of your work. That transforms work. You see, there’s a huge danger in our Christian society. It’s called the sacred secular divide, where people do their work, as “a means to pay expenses” and the real Christian work is attending church for an hour or two a week and possibly giving to a missionary offering. That is not a biblical view and it comes to its zenith when people talk about being in full time work. Have you ever heard that expression – Christians saying they are in full time work. All my life I have been encouraged to join every para church organisation that exists and quite a number that don’t exist anymore. And it’s usually said to be, you know, John, do you ever think of going into full time work? You know you should be in full time work, a person with your gifts and so on. And my usual answer was ‘you’re too late’. And they would say to me ‘but you know, you’re never too late to go into full time work.’ And I would say ‘you misunderstand me. I’ve been in full time Christian work almost since I was converted. And at the moment I’m in full time work as a Christian husband, as a Christian father, as a Christian grandfather, as a Christian academic, as a Christian bible teacher.” They reply “oh I didn’t mean …” And I said “oh yes you did.” This dichotomy is very dangerous because what it does, it creates 2 classes of Christians. There are those in full time work and then there are the second class people who pay for the first class people. By the way that is a very odd phenomenon. And what I would encourage you to do is get rid of this work envy. It is sad to my mind and I understand why it happens that pastors come along to a young woman and she says “I’m really thinking of going into medicine.” And the pastor says “well yes, that’s a wonderful thing to go into medicine but you’ve got such gifts. If you really want to serve the Lord you will go into coach the ministry.” And she’s lost to medicine. And I meet many young people like that, and they wake up later in life and realise that that advice was not biblical. What we are to do with our lives is to respond to Christ, not to what someone things we ought to do. It’s so wonderful that we can go directly to him and he will direct us into what to do. But let’s come back to this. What should the motivation be for our work, our everyday work? Well the Sermon on the Mount believe it or no talks about this in detail. “Do not worry” says Matthew 6. And this is Jesus himself talking, saying “what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? The pagans run after all of these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” In other words if you go out on the street and say to someone ‘why do you work?’ They’d say “I have a family to feed, a mortgage to pay and so on. It will all be in terms of material needs. Well says Christ, that is a pagan attitude. Well that shakes us up for a start, because if we are honest, that is the motivation of many of us. So what shall our attitude be? Jesus says that the Father knows we need these things, so are you saying we shouldn’t work for them? Doesn’t that negate what you have already said? That God has ordained that we normally work for the material things of life? And that is true. So here comes Jesus’ solution to the motivation problem. We sing about, but we rarely realise what the context is. And her it is you. That is, you’re not pagans, you are believers. You seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added on to you. So the motivation for daily work is seeking the kingdom that is the rule of God in our lives. We often sing Seek the kingdom of God and often we are thinking about going as a missionary or doing witnessing to our neighbours and so on. But this is talking about the motivation of going into the factory or the farm or as a teacher or as nurse. You are to seek the kingdom of God there. But what does that mean? Well Jesus explains it. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. Now this standard is very high. I often ask people, have Christians, have they ever heard a talk that lasts more than 5 minutes on the topic of work? And most of them say never. It has changed a bit in the last while and it’s a scandal because we spend a great deal of our lives, most of us engaged in the means of production, farming, teaching, all the rest of it. But what significance has it? Well, what the Lord says is we are to seek his kingdom, his rule in the work. That doesn’t mean that if you are a business executive, you have got to send the verse for the day on WhatsApp to every member of your staff every morning. No, it means seeking God’s rule in terms of your righteous character. And you all know that the matter of righteousness, of right and wrong is usually raised on day one of any job you do. It’s there that God wants to see reality, that we take it seriously, that we do the work for him so that if we’re a high-powered accountant, we’re not filtering money off into a Swiss bank account that the CEO doesn’t know about. We’re doing it faithfully and with integrity. And that’s where of course, often witness possibilities arise.  Many times I meet people who change job and I say what happened? And they said, well, it was a bit difficult. And I said, explain it to me. And very frequently it’s when an employee is asked by the employer to do something that they know to be wrong, to tell lies on account of the products of a company to say they’re better than they really are and so on. And they’ve the courage not to do it, and they’ve lost their job. And somebody else then gains the benefit of a person of real integrity. The goal of work, folks is very high. You don’t often learn about righteousness by sitting at home drinking coffee or going to meetings. Where you learn about it is in real, everyday life and this according to Christ is what he is most interested in. So if we are to sum this up briefly, the goal of work is seeking God’s righteousness. I often tell a little story about a man I met who was much younger than me many years ago. He was an electrician and his boss and this new job had sent him to wire new properties. And after 2 weeks, the boss called him in high fury. And he said “what on earth are you doing?” And he said he was surprised. He said “well I have been wiring houses like the other men.” The boss asked him “why are you so slow?” “Well” he said, “I’m not slow, it’s just that under the floorboard I find I need to take care of where the wiring runs to avoid the danger of a fire.” The boss said “who sees under the floorboards?” And this young man, aged 19 said, “my Lord does.” He was fired on the spot of course. And I remember listening to him, he’d find another job and saying to myself, have you got that far? That sense of seeking God’s righteousness in our daily work, it’s important isn’t it? And Peter had to learn it doing work at Christ’s direction. Do you remember when they went out fishing and he caught nothing, absolutely nothing? And the Lord said “let out your nets for a draught.” And Peter was a fisherman. The Lord was a carpenter. And Peter was wondering, well, what’s the point of this, we’ve toiled all night, we’ve caught nothing. “Nevertheless at your word I will let down the nets.” And Peter now goes to his daily job for the first time not to catch fish because he didn’t believe there were any there. He goes to work because Jesus commanded him to go to work. And the effect changed his life completely. That’s what the Lord is looking for. You know, it’s a very high standard, but it makes a huge different to your work if you can get up in the morning and say ‘Lord here’s a new day. I believe you have given me this job to do, whether it is in a shop, on a farm, teaching, nursing, whatever. I want to do it for you and I want to seek to learn whatever I can from your rule, your government in my life today.’ That puts work way up there instead of a way down there being despised by many other people who don’t understand these principles. And so here’s the challenge. When was the last time that I went to my work consciously sensing that Christ was sending me? That applies to the so-called Christian work as well. Preaching, teaching, it’s all the same. It’s all work of different kinds and it’s to be done by the Lord. A final point on that which might interest you. Going back to the Old Testament times, when the children of Israel eventually left Egypt, they were given a lot of back pay that was owed to them. They had been slaving for 400 years. And as the lovely phrase puts it “they spoiled the Egyptians and the Egyptians gave them gold and jewellery and all this kind of things.” And there were no banks in those days. So they melted down the gold and they made earrings out of it because they had observed that it’s quite difficult to steal earrings even if people are asleep. So here they went off and they got all their back pay in gold. And the interesting thing is that back pay was the fruit of their redemption. And now comes the massive mistake that Aaron made with the people when Moses disappeared up the mountain. They thought he was never going to return. The people demanded gods and Aaron said give me your earrings, give me all this gold. And he made a god out of the fruit of their redemption. He made it the goal of their redemption. Oh that so easily happens. If the rewards of working, salary, pay and so on are the fruit of redemption the moment they become the goal, the serious challenge is that we begin to seek the goal rather than the Lord, and we’d start to cut corners, moral corners. So all of this is a huge challenge. And so we are encouraged, all of us, to live in our workspace. Now for the last few minutes we are just going to move on to set the scene for what happens next. Potiphar’s wife was clearly in the house often when only she and Joseph were there alone.

“Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. ⁷ And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” ⁸ But he refused and said to his master's wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. ⁹ He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” ¹⁰ And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.”

Now this is a very important incident. You remember how sin first entered into the world. There was a beautiful garden. And Adam and Eve were by definition the most beautiful humans that ever existed and everything was open to them except one thing. That tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat of that, or you shall surely die. And Adam, the man was presented not simply with the fruit of that tree, but with the woman offering him the fruit of that tree. So to reject the fruit he had to reject her. And we know what happened, because it was to be desired to make one wise. And so on. He took it and the eyes of both of them were opened and sin and catastrophe entered into the world. So it was a beautiful garden, everything allowed except one thing prohibited. Now it’s a beautiful palace, everything permitted. Joseph was in charge of everything. And Potiphar has withheld one thing from Joseph, and that is his wife. It’s the exact rerun of the fall of humanity within the book of Genesis at the end now and we need to take it very seriously now. Sin in the sexual sphere us a very complicated thing in those days and for most centuries. Sex is something people do. Nowadays. We have to be aware that sex determines identity as who people are. But here the issue is adultery. It’s she belonged to Potiphar. She wasn’t free for Joseph to sleep with. Notice this, seeking the kingdom of God as we now close.

“Potiphar’s not greater in this house that I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

That’s the key to this. Joseph was no situational ethicist. He believed there was a morality that was objective, determined outside of him, determined by God. Because Genesis 3 tells us clearly that God has made us in his image as moral beings. He defines morality. And Joseph believed that. So here’s a young man that has the knowledge of good and evil but doesn’t’ give in to the evil but is utterly determined to follow the guidance and teaching of God and is not prepared to sin against God. That is a very powerful thing. He’d been for years on his own, lonely. He had normal desires and many contemporary advisers would have told him, go for it, Joseph do your own thing, if you feel like it. She feels like it and that’s the only thing that counts. Now that’s a huge issue today, which has been spread in reams throughout the internet and in the culture of internet pornography that’s destroying so many young people today. But let’s get the main lesson from this that what Joseph did when he was tempted like this, he ran. He got physically out of it and he suffered for that because she kept his cloak. And here we come again. The coat is used to deceive Potiphar into misinterpreting the story. So once again we have clothes used as false evidence.