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.

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?  

A Strange New World - The Test of Moral Temptation - New Horizon 5 August 2025

 

NEW HORIZON 2025

BIBLE READING 5 AUGUST 2025 - JOHN LENNOX

“A STRANGE NEW WORLD”

The Test of Moral Temptation

Genesis 37 verses 1 to 11

“These are the generations of Jacob” – with these words we come to the last section in the book.

This is an account of the development and growth of hatred within a family, hatred that in the end that led to the brothers getting rid of Joseph. He was 17 and it is interesting that the Hebrew scholars point out “he was pastoring his flock with his brothers” is ambiguous. It can also mean he was “pastoring his brothers with the flock” In other words he was looking after them in some sense given that responsibility by Jacob. We saw how Israel that is Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons and made him this robe that distinguished him and they were constantly reminded by it of his superiority in his father’s eyes. And we find that not only did the father give him this coat but Joseph brought a bad report to his father about his brothers. Now here again is a topic of great deal of controversy. Was Joseph a tell tale, a snitch? That is the view particularly of some Jewish scholars. The curious things about that is that there is no other indicator in the entire story that Joseph had that kind of sneaky character functioning as a spy to bring a bad report to his father. Now, the interesting thing about this is, of course, Joseph was not sinless. He was not like the Lord Jesus and we must not presume that he was neither must we presume that he was necessarily a sneaky spy snitching on his brothers. “He brought a bad report” How do we understand that? What was the result of his giving this report – hatred. That brings us to a topic scripture does deal with – tale telling. I am sure we are familiar with that. From childhood it is very tempting for a favourite child to tell tales to enhance his position in the family pecking order.  Telling tales is a problem at every level of communal life, in families, in organisations, businesses, churches and the bible has a great deal to say about it.

Proverbs 11 verse 13 “A talebearer revealeth secrets; but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.”

Leviticus 19 verse 16 “You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbour. I am the Lord your God.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

“Love your neighbour as your yourself” comes in the context of tale telling. Tale telling and gossiping have virtually unlimited capacity to destroy relationships and families and churches and organisation of any kind. Tale bearing is framed in the context of loving your neighbour as yourself. What is tale bearing? We constantly talk about other people. How accurate is our portrayal of other people in what we say. Paul warns us we will be judged as we judge others “with what measure ou measure, it shall be measured unto you.” A challenging statement. If you think of all my conversations and all the statements I have made about other people in the past week have they accurate, 100%, 80% or maybe over 50% or less. All those judgments I have made, critical judgments maybe of other people reveal what principles I use for making those judgment. Here is the challenging thing – there is a day coming when God is going to use my measuring  principles on myself. Suppose God were to step in right now and evaluate my life and analyse it on the basis of the principles I have used to evaluate other people in the past week, month or year where would I stand? It is a powerful corrective. Gossip, tale telling destroys relationships. There are many younger people who long for an older person that they can confide in who will not tell it. It is a serious flaw. It only takes a word or even silence or even a negation – you know the kind of thing where someone says ‘I’m not saying anything’. That is a damning a comment as giving detail. We desperately need it within our churches to be known as people of integrity who can keep a confidence particularly of young people who are afraid to talk to us because they are afraid we are going to snitch. So the challenge of us is absolutely is absolutely straight. The word of a tale bearer are wounds and they go down into the innermost part of the belly. It says they are gut wrenching, hurtful and difficult to repair. Here is something else that is a consideration. Remember when our disciples said to our Lord he should go up to the feast at Jerusalem and he said your time is always ready but my time isn’t yet because I testify of the world that its deeds are evil. Is that tale bearing? No. The challenge of the gospel is painful in part because it exposes the evil in our heart, it is to bring us to repentance because he loves us and he must do it. Remember the woman at the well how he did it with her. Talking to her very gently but very pointedly to bring up to the surface the truth of the fact that she had a series of serial marriages and hadn’t even bothered to get married on the last account. So the message we have to bring isn’t tale bearing but its stating a fact about human nature that we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That is a real problem when we are witnessing to people because we realise that part of our message is to bring out into the light of the day the fact that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So the Lord said ‘my time is not ready’. He had to choose it very carefully because part of his message had to do with what lies in the heart of human beings. The Lord pointed out that we have to deal with other people at this level but he was very clear in saying that before we point it out, the fault in someone else, we should take out the beam in our own eye and then we will see clearly to see the moat that is in someone elses eye. That is a powerful image. It is a beam versus a tiny speck of wood in the eye. We have to be so careful when doing counselling work. When we see something wrong with someone else we have to check ourselves in case there is a massive beam in our own eye that we can’t even see because it is so large. There are checks and balances in all of this. Of course the opposite of tale bearing is flattery. Here again Christians have problems. There is a danger among certain groups of people that they go so far in avoiding flattery that they have never learned to praise, never learnt to say thank you to people for their service done for the Lord. If you read Paul’s letters you will find he is constantly mentioning people by name. So they are there for the last 2000 years so that everyone can read how grateful he is for certain people for what they do. When was the last time that you said to a warm directed thank you to someone for what they have done. It is an oil that enables the Christian church to function much better. Avoiding flattery that will not get you anywhere but knowing how to praise and be genuinely grateful so that it encourages people in their ministry to the Lord. So first of all, Jacob gave his son this cloak and treated him as a superior child.

Secondly, he told his father stories about what they were up to. Reading later it is clear they were up to no good very frequently.

Thirdly the most telling of all he had dreams of supremacy over his brothers and even over his parents which in that culture would have been a horrendous thing to suggest. Joseph was 17 and in a way artless, he had a dream and it was important and told it without realising what its content was. The first dream concerned grain and a grain harvest. These were cattle men, had nothing to do with grain harvest. The grain harvest was grain harvest in Egypt. Then the sun, moon and stars bow down. It was Jacob, his wife their mother and the stars all bowing down to him. It was clear that this made an impact on Jacob. God does sometimes communicate in dreams. He did then and he does now. I have met quite a number of people particularly from a Muslim heritage have come to faith in Christ because of a dream. I have no reason to question those dreams whose result is in a clear cut conversion and a life for Christ. We have to be careful with dreams because it is one thing when God sends a dream, it is an entirely different thing when we try to conjure up a dream in our own thinking. In scripture God speaking in dreams and visions is very rare. Most of you Christians are here because of a dream. God gave Paul a vision in a dream of a man in Europe, in Macedonia asking him to come and help and he came and as a result Christianity reached Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We must not despise dreams God sends. We notice that Paul was careful to check up on the evidence that lay behind the dream. Here were 2 dreams and it is clear they originated in God. They were God’s word to Joseph in a form that he did not immediately understand. He would only understand it much later when it was fulfilled. Paul warns in Colossians 2 verse 18 against people who he says are puffed in up in their own minds who have not held fast to the head. Something’s going on in their head but they haven’t held fast to the head who is Christ. They are really seeing things but they are seeing things out of reality and out of touch with God. It is one thing when God sends dreams but it is completely different when people imagine that every dream they have has got to have some kind of spiritual significance so that they become unbalanced and become more interested in their dreams than in scripture. That can lead to spiritual and moral shipwreck. When in university there was a man who decided God was directing him in dreams. He sold his bible to a fellow student saying he didn’t need it because God communicated with him in dreams and visions and told him what to do. Very sadly this included telling him to leave his wife and his life ended in their complete spiritual and moral disaster. So it is very important to keep balance here. Now another consideration which is a much deeper thing – dreams occur in the Joseph narrative but what is striking thing is God could have saved many actors in this story from a great deal of pain and distress by sending another dream. God could have sent a dream to Jacob to tell him his son was still alive when his brothers sold him. He never did. God could have sent a dream to Joseph when he was in prison to tell him his father was still alive but he never did. And that raises some very interesting questions about the delicacy God deals with people even in dreams. Here at the start God sends a dream to Joseph and he told it to his family. If he had kept it to himself it is clear he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. But probably through innocent young naivety, he simply told it because he would have known from the stories of his family, his father and his grandfather that dreams had played a role, particularly in his father’s life on his first night out from home. So we can think about these things and the one blindingly obvious thing is that the basic thrust of the 2 dreams was very clear. They were both about people bowing down to Joseph. They predicted Joseph’s eventual rule over his brothers, his father and mother. An outrageous idea in the Middle Eastern culture. You can imagine that when Jacob said what he said it wasn’t in the most even of tones “Shall I and your mother indeed bow down to you?” But the dreams gave no indication about how and when these would be fulfilled. But they did make Jacob deeply thoughtful. Perhaps it reminded him on his first night out from home he dreamed a dream of a ladder that reached from by his shoulder up to heaven. And God made a promise to him to go with him wherever he went. Perhaps it was the memory of that led to Jacob storing this up in his own mind. It made the brothers madder than ever. It fuelled the flame of their jealousy and their hatred and the irony and the whole story is that their hatred and what it led to eventually spelt their salvation from salvation. They would never understand it until they willingly did what they swore never to do and that was to bow to Joseph. You can’t help thinking when you think of that projection into the future and them all bowing to Joseph of a greater than Joseph. “And he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even to death on the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted him that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.” And because of that cross and the suffering of Jesus millions have bowed the knee. And out of those millions God has formed the Christian church. And many who comprise the church today first hated the fact that Jesus was special, that he made supernatural claims. In the end they claim to gladly bow because of who he is and what he has done. God spoke to Joseph in a unique way when he was young. We cannot necessarily expect that to happen to us. That is what happened to Joseph. But that does mean that God cannot speak to any of us. He has many ways to speak to us other than in dreams. He might well speak to you at this conference through his word and call you with unmistakable clarity.

Now the scripture goes on to tell that the brothers moved off pastoring their sheep to Shechem. And Jacob very foolishly sent him probably about 5 days walk. The impression is he went on his own and he was 17/18 at the time. A crazy thing to do because he was essentially an alien in the land and he sent him to see how the brothers were and bring back a report. He says so – verse 14. Joseph lands in Shechem and is wandering about, cannot find the brothers and a man he happens to meet tells them they have gone to Dothan – verses 17 to 27. What you are now beginning to see is the outcome of hatred and it is differentiated to a certain degree. The brothers begin to split off from one another in their attitude to Joseph. Reuben he wants to save the boy and he suggests putting him into a water cistern which was a deep hole in the ground that would contain a lot of water and would only have a relatively small entrance in the middle at the top so it would be impossible for anyone to crawl out of it in any way. And Reuben is interesting because he clearly didn’t keep watch and when he came back to the cistern, the text tells us that Joseph is gone. The brothers had already taken him out and sold him as a slave. Perhaps that is an indication of her character. He was labile, wasn’t consistent. Unfortunately he had a good idea, he wanted to bring Joseph back to his father but he missed it. He missed it by inconsistency. How much do we miss by being inconsistent particularly when other people rely on us to do a job and we don’t do it? So the brothers gang up on Joseph because of their hatred. It’s very curious to me and odd that Jacob who knew tht they hated Joseph would even send him there, would even risk it but he did and they in the end sold him and the cynical words of Judah – “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his brother. Come let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand be upon him for he is our brother, our own flesh.” They did the next best thing to killing him, they sold him as a slave. Judah is showing the bare remnants of humanity and he stopped short of fratricide when he sees a way of getting rid of his brother without actually killing him. So Joseph becomes a commodity, a slave, one more in the countless line of men women and children who have been demeaned by their fellow men and consigned to the humanity of slavery. It will take amazing grace to rescue Judah and his brothers just as it took amazing grace to rescue the slave trader John Newton in 1748. The man who wrote the much loved hymn to celebrate that grace and who profoundly influenced through his preaching and friendship that wonderful liberator of slaves William Wilberforce. There is an interesting historical detail here – the price paid for Joseph to the brothers fit exactly with what is known from archaeology as the price of a slave at that time. It reminds us of another man Judas which is a Hellenised version of the same name Juda – Judas who betrayed the Saviour of the world for 30 pieces of silver. A Saviour who is known as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. But that sale was to ensure a death not to preserve a death. There are so many hints and forewarnings of what would happen again. The text tells us they stripped him of his lovely robe and they dipped the robe in the blood of a goat. They sent the robe of many colours to their father and said “this we have found, please identify whether it is your son’s robe or not. And he identified it and said it is my son’s robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces. Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his sons for many days. All his sons and daughters rose up to comfort him. But he refused to be comforted and said No I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.” No there’s so many illusions in these few verses and we need to pick some of them up. This is the beginnings of years of deceit of the children binding themselves together to live by lies. Live Not by Lies is a work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1974 just before he was kicked out of Russia having been a dissident “Therein we find neglected by us the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation, a personal non participation in lies. Even if all is covered by lies, even if all I sunder the rule, let us resist in the smallest way. Let their Rule hold not through me.” Do we participate in lies? Some of us have lived with lies for a evry long time and they are still there troubling us beneath the surface. The story of Joseph would encourage us to bring them to the surface and repent of them. The deceit is perpetuated by false evidence. They bring the coat that is dipped in the blood of a goat. They had no DNA sampling in those days. They had no scientific ability to separate and distinguish between the blood of an animal and a human being. Jacob was deceived by the blood of a goat. Does that make you think of anything? Years before this man Jacob had dressed up as a goat to deceive his father who couldn’t see. God will make us face the deceptions that we have perpetrated even though it may take years. That’s a humbling thing. “with what measure you measure it will be measured unto you.” Here it is being measured unto Jacob. His mother had dressed him in the skin of a goat so that his father who couldn’t see went by the next highest sense touch and touched him and what he felt was a goat. He mistook the goatskin for the skin of his brother Esau and he was decieved. He thought he had got away with it. Years later he is facing a deception that involves not a goat’s skin but a goat’s blood. It is immensely powerful as an illustration of the way God works behind the scenes. We talk glibly about God’s sovereignty and human responsibility but the way they intermingle and work, this is an example of it and it is extremely complicated. Live not by lies. We have seen Jacob called 2 things – Jacob and Israel. Yakov, Jacob means deceiver. His name was Deceiver. He lived by deceit. So Jacob the deceiver finds himself at the other end of a deceit. And what we are now seeing as Jacob starts to mourn the death of Joseph, his family is beginning to fall apart. He has lost one son. The next chapter of Genesis many people think it is interposed. The story of Judah – verses 1 to 9  of chapter 38. You can sense the pathos in the first words – “Judah went down from his brothers.” Not just geographical, it was in every other sense. And he doesn’t’ care tuppence for the family line. This was the family God chose to bring the Saviour into the world. We know the Saviour comes from the line of Judah. Here is the line the first born son dead because of sin, second one dead directly killed by God and the third son left. And Tamar the wife now bereaved Judah promises her his third son when he is grown up but he didn’t do it. The line of Judah is about to peter out. That is the pathos of this story. The whole purpose of what I call the seed project. Abraham seed Isaac who seed Jacob and on down. This seed project which would bring the Messiah into the world is in danger of faltering because of human sin. Here is this woman Tamar and the third son should have been given to her but wasn’t. What does she do? She dresses up as a prostitute and deceives Judah to sleep with her. An extreme ploy. Judah asked what he should give her and she asks for her staff, various things that identified him. When she becomes pregnant it is told to Judah who suggests she should be brought up and be burnt. Tamar said “the father of my child is the owner of this ID.” He couldn’t do anything. Jacob has been deceived by clothing dipped in blood. Recognise who are this – exact same phrase here. Clothing again is used to deceive Judah and he has to recognise the idea belonged to him. There are repeated ideas going through. The main topic is deceit.

When the Lord Jesus talked about his coming he warned his disciples that the greatest problem they would have to face is deception. We now live in a world where the capacity to deceive is beyond anything that has existed before in history. The capacity ability through AI to construct deep fakes has a potential to deceive not millions but billions and it scares the leading head of our secret agents of the countries of the world. It is interesting Jesus warns of deception – “many will come in my name.” We need to know about these things. Live not by lies. We are in a world that is living increasingly by lies

A Strange New World - The Word of the Lord Tested Joseph

 

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 1^st 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.