Compromising Positions

Compromising Positions

Genesis 39:11-23

September 30, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not—and if you’re not, I want to know how you’ve escaped it—but the midterm elections are coming up in just a few weeks. I am constantly amazed, every time we have an election, that anyone still wants to run for office! There are a lot of reasons I have no desire to run for any sort of office, not the least of which is the way things from your past, things you maybe don’t even remember, are dug up and made public for everyone to see. When Barak Obama was running for office and the press began trying to hold him responsible for things his pastor had said many years before, I told my congregation at that time that none of them were allowed to run for office! I’ve re-read some of my old sermons, and some of them make me want to go apologize to the congregation that had to endure them! But seriously, in the politicized, divided world we live in, your past can very quickly come back to haunt you, even if the events of the past are things you no longer remember or you have repented of. It doesn’t matter. This past week, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh found himself face-to-face with his past, and it’s unclear how all that is going to play out in terms of his appointment to the Court, but whenever situations like that come up, I can’t help but think how different a person I was twenty or thirty years ago. I wouldn’t stand by some of the things I said or did when I was in high school, and I would hope I could be forgiven for some of them! But not in our world. In a world that is highly focused on litigation, there doesn’t even have to be any proof of the misdeed, just an accusation today.  And it’s that reality that places us right in the middle of the story of Joseph, the dreamer, when he found himself in the middle of an epic “he said, she said,” one he knew from the start wasn’t going to go well for him.

We’re in the midst of a sermon series focused on the life of Joseph, one of the most detailed and honestly beautiful stories in the Old Testament. His story takes up about a third of the book of Genesis; it’s the climax of the story in many ways. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at Joseph’s early life: how he was the favorite son of his father, how he made his brothers jealous enough to think about killing him, how they sold him into slavery in Egypt instead. He was then taken by a caravan of traders (distant relatives, actually) to Egypt, one of the world’s superpowers at the time, and he was sold to an important official in the Egyptian government. Potiphar was the captain of the guard, which in that time and culture meant he was the head of the bodyguard for Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt (cf. ZPEB, Vol. 6, pg. 823). He’s close to power, and would have been one of the most trusted people in Egypt. No one got that close to Pharaoh if they weren’t trusted! So Joseph is purchased and made to work as a household slave in the home of a very important Egyptian official. It’s still slavery, but as servitude goes, this isn’t as bad as we might imagine.

This part of the story reads pretty fast, and time is rather condensed in the narrative, but the best scholarship indicates Joseph was a slave in Potiphar’s household for somewhere around eleven years (cf. Elliott, Joseph, pg. 51). For eleven years, he worked in and around Potiphar’s other slaves, and near Potiphar’s wife. We don’t know exactly at what point she noticed this new slave, but you get the sense from the text that it was fairly soon after Potiphar brought his new purchase home. There aren’t a lot of people in the Bible that we get physical descriptions of. We simply don’t know what most of them looked like. King David and Jacob’s brother Esau are among the few who have physical characteristics described. Joseph is another. We’re told in the early part of this chapter that Joseph is “well-built and handsome” (37:6). Granted, that’s not much to go on, but he must have stood out among all the slaves because he attracts the attention of Potiphar’s wife. “After a while,” she invites him into her bed, but he refuses. He knows that to do so would have been a violation of the trust his master had placed in him as well as a sin against God (cf. 37:8-10). But Genesis says she kept asking, day after day after day. She was, it seems, relentless. For how long, we don’t know, but we do know that Joseph seems to have changed his routine so that, as much as possible, he wasn’t in the same place with her (cf. 37:10). And that brings us to the passage we read this morning.

“One day,” Genesis says. One day. It probably started out like any other day, and Joseph was probably expecting, as he has been for the last several years, that Mrs. Potiphar would make an attempt to get him to sleep with her. So he, once again, spends the day trying to avoid her, but then that moment comes. The moment when he realizes it’s just him and her in the room, maybe in the whole house. He has, by accident, ended up in a compromising position. And if he doesn’t realize it right away, he certainly does when she grabs him by his robe. This is, of course, the second time Joseph has been defined by his robe. The first was when his father gave him the “coat of many colors” or the “ornate robe.” He lost that one when his brothers sold him into slavery. Now, once again, his robe (this time, a slave’s robe) is his undoing (Walton, Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, pg. 71). She grabs it, holds onto it, and he runs away. He leaves his robe behind once again. Forgetting modesty, forgetting his place, he turns and runs away from his master’s wife to a safe place. Unfortunately, by leaving his robe behind this time, he has given Mrs. Potiphar the leverage—and the evidence—she wants and needs.

The rest of the story is pure soap opera. It’s the classic story line of “making a good choice with bad consequences.” We know Joseph is innocent. We know he made the right choice. We know he didn’t sin, but no one else does. He said, she said. And she starts “saying” right away. First, she tells her story to the other servants: “Joseph tried to attack me, but I grabbed his robe and screamed for help and he ran away.” Then she tells the same story to her husband when he comes home: “Your slave, Joseph, tried to attack me, but I grabbed his robe and screamed for help and he ran away.” By the end of the day, she’s built her coalition. She’s got people on her side, and when her husband, Potiphar, hears the story, he is angry, but notice that the text does not tell us who Potiphar is angry with. We always assume he’s angry at Joseph, that he believes his wife’s story and that’s why he puts Joseph in prison. But there are indications in what happens here that Mr. Potiphar doesn’t believe Mrs. Potiphar. For one, the normal penalty for rape or attempted rape in that culture was much more severe. Execution was the normal penalty. A quick death for swift justice. No long, drawn-out trials or investigations. The master of the house would determine guilt or innocence quickly and carry out punishment. For adultery or attempted adultery, Egyptian laws prescribed being beaten a thousand times with a wooden rod—essentially the same thing as death. Few people survived the beating (Elliott 52). But neither of those punishments happens here.

Instead, Joseph is put in prison—but not just any prison. Did you catch that? He is put in the place “where the king’s prisoners were confined” (39:20). He’s not thrown in a hole; he’s given a place in what we might think of as a minimum-security facility. It’s the place where political prisoners are put, and he’s probably a lot more comfortable than a typical ancient jail. This also would put Joseph in contact with other political prisoners, including members of Pharaoh’s court (cf. Walton 71). We’ll see how that plays out in the next few weeks. But the point for now is this: Potiphar gives Joseph a far less severe punishment than the crime he was accused of called for, which leads me to believe that Potiphar didn’t exactly believe his wife. He knew he had to act, to save face, to protect the reputation of the Potiphar marriage, but he chose to also protect Joseph. And in all of this, the text wants us to notice, God is working to protect Joseph as well.

There are several things, I believe, Joseph’s story at this point has to say to us, living in the culture we do. The first thing is to watch out for the overriding power of instant gratification. We live, I often say, in a microwave culture. We want and expect everything now, right now, and not a moment later. I’ve been told we can describe our world this way: we want what we want when we want, and “when” is “right now.” We’ve come to believe that our needs, our wants, our desires are our right—we are entitled to whatever we want, no matter what. We’ve elevated instant gratification to a far higher value than long-term fulfillment and that shows up in all sorts of way in our lives. In Joseph’s story, the temptation before him is obvious. That same temptation is everywhere in our culture today, but it’s only one of many temptations that come up against us today. Richard Foster famously said many years ago that most of our sin is rooted in our desire for three things: money, sex and power. We want what we want when we want it, and we want it right now.

When we went to buy books for Rachel this fall for her classes at Indiana State, I started thinking about the last time I had to do that for myself. Twenty-five years ago, I was in seminary, and we would get the book list from the professor early and we would start shopping for the best price. Sometimes it was the seminary bookstore, but often we could find the same book cheaper at CBD—Christian Book Distributors. In those days, I would take the order form out of the catalog, hand write the order numbers and title on the order form, write a check and send it in, through the mail. Like a caveman. We would rejoice if we got the books back in 2-3 weeks. But, swept along by the currents of culture, I find myself today getting anxious and more than a bit frustrated if my Amazon package doesn’t arrive in the two-day window I expect because I’m a Prime customer. I’ll call and demand my package—as if the poor person on the other end of the phone line can do anything about it! My need for instant gratification has become a right in my mind. Now, that’s a minor example, to be sure, because Joseph put off the advances of Mrs. Potiphar, and denied his own instant gratification, for somewhere around eleven years! (And we complain if our fast food takes more than a minute to be delivered through the drive-through window!)

That brings us to the central issue in Joseph’s story: the moral choices we make. It’s not a secret that many of the choices the world around us makes are contrary to what the Bible teaches. If we ever did, we certainly no longer live in a world where the Biblical worldview is one most people understand or follow. Joseph, though starting out as an arrogant teenager, at least had picked up somewhere along the way this teaching about a God who had created him, who loved him, and who wanted the very best for him. The problem we often have when it comes to talking about moral choices and a Biblical worldview is this idea that God is out to spoil our fun. One of the roommates I had in college certainly believed that. He and I had a lot of conflicts over choices that freshman year, and he seemed to enjoy making fun of the way I was trying to live. One afternoon, I’ll never forget, I came back to our room to find his attitude, in the form of lyrics from Billy Joel, posted where I could see them:

They say there's a heaven for those who will wait

Some say it's better but I say it ain't

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints

The sinners are much more fun

That was about three-quarters through the year; the last few months were a bit tense between the two of us. (God had the last laugh, though, because several years later, God got ahold of that young man and he’s now a strong believer.) God is not interested in killing our fun, but God created life and knows best how it can be lived to its fullest. Remember what Jesus said? “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). God wants the very best for us.

So Joseph lives in a world that has no use for his God. For Mrs. Potiphar, the choices she is making are separated from her religious belief. For Joseph, the choice he is being asked to make directly involves God. Joseph recognizes that, if he were to give in to her advances, if he were to sleep with her, it would not just be an offense against Potiphar. More importantly, it would be an offense against God. When we realize that, when we understand that our bad choices, our sin, is “primarily against God, all our rationalizations for sin fall short. Circumstances change, but God does not. That means that there is little that is relative or conditional about sin. Sin is usually pretty clear-cut” (Elliott 51).

Centuries later, King David will discover the same thing. In that famous story in 2 Samuel 11, David makes a mistake that, in some ways, comes to define the rest of his life. He sleeps with another man’s wife, then has that man killed and take her to be his own wife. There’s a lot in that story, but where his story parallels Joseph’s is what happens when he is basically called out. David prays, a famous prayer we have preserved as Psalm 51, and in that prayer, he says this to God: “Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge” (Psalm 51:4). The choices we make, the sins we engage in, are not just about us. They break our relationship with God, our creator, and so first and foremost, both Joseph and David testify, our sinful choices are offenses toward God.

It’s easy to think, especially in the world we live in today, that this is just about human sexuality and the choices we make around those big issues. As I mentioned at the beginning, we’re living in a world where a lot of prominent people are finding bad choices they made once upon a time continuing to follow them—politicians and preachers, stars and ordinary people alike. But moral choices are really much larger than just sex. Our choices about money: how we spend it and what it comes to mean to us. What does the way we order our finances say about our relationship with God? Do we order our financial life so that God is given the “first fruits” of our labor, as the Bible instructs us to do? Or do we give God whatever we happen to have left over after all of our other needs/wants/desires are met? Our choices about power. Are we willing to do “whatever it takes” to be in charge? Do we forget that the model of Jesus was to kneel down and wash the feet of those who followed him? Jesus said unpopular things like, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35). And, “Whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4). And, “Many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30). 

That also plays into the choices we make about how we treat others. As we follow a savior and a Biblical ethic which tells us to “do to others what you would have them do to you” (cf. Matthew 7:12), the way we treat others becomes a moral choice. We are, Paul says, Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), so people understand the way we treat them as the way Jesus would. That’s what an ambassador does; they do not act in their own power or authority, but in the stead of the one they represent. So, for instance, how do you treat the person who waits on you in the restaurant? A few years ago, one server set off a whole social movement by posting a receipt she received back at Applebee’s, on which a pastor had written these words: “I gave God 10%; why should you get 18.” Personally, I think that pastor needed to examine his whole attitude toward giving, but that’s another sermon. Needless to say, that post spawned a lot of similar stories and it wasn’t long before Sundays gained a reputation as being the worst time for servers to work because Christians leaving church tip poorly. Recent data suggests, however, that Sunday brunch and lunch are some of the best times for tips (http://bit.ly/2O68y9L). But treating others as Jesus would is about more than tipping. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Our District Superintendent is great about asking the server if there is anything they need prayer for; I want to be better at doing things like that. And it’s not just servers. How do you treat the person ahead of you in line, the person who works on your car, delivers your mail, the medical professional who cares for you—I could go on and on. We encounter so many people each and every day that we probably don’t even think about. How do we treat them? Do we make good choices and see them as human beings rather than just as someone who is there for our convenience? Mrs. Potiphar did not see Joseph as a human being; she saw him as a tool for her own needs. But each person is created in the image of God; we must treat them as such. That, too, is a moral choice.

Here’s the bottom line: as ambassadors, whose standard, whose life are we representing? Are we so self-consumed that all people see is “me”? Or are we living out our calling as Christ’s ambassadors? Ever more, in a hurting and broken world, the world needs us to be people who live a life that is faithful to a Biblical worldview. Jesus once compared us to salt. He said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Matthew 5:13). Salt does a lot of things, of course. It preserves food, so some people see in Jesus’ statement an image of the church’s job to preserve a dying and decaying culture. Our presence and the work of the church is what keeps the world going. And there’s some truth to that. Salt also brings flavor. Years ago, I realized that the main reason I liked green beans was for the bacon and the salt that was put on them. When I had them without those flavorings, I didn’t like them as much. Now, though, I can’t have green beans and I shouldn’t have salt and bacon; I’ve tried all the different salt substitutes, and none of them are the same. Can I get an “amen,” fellow heart patients? Salt brings flavor, and so others see in Jesus’ statement an image of bringing flavor to the world, and there’s some truth to that. Imagine the world without the church’s contributions to music, to art, to health care and to reaching out to the marginalized. So there’s truth in that image as well. But lately, I’ve been captivated by another image that I had never thought of until recently. Salt also makes us thirsty. Eat a bag of potato chips and see how much you want some fresh, clear water. Do you remember when Jesus stood up and invited people to come to him to drink of the “Living Water” (cf. John 7:37-38)? We are the salt of the earth, and we should be living in such a way that we make the world “thirsty” for the living water, Jesus. Is your life lived in such a way that it makes others want to know Jesus, to drink from the living water, to follow him? Joseph’s life was lived in such a way that he pointed toward the God he barely knew, but the God he knew others needed. Our must be as well, especially today. Make others thirsty.

One more thing I want to emphasize from Joseph’s story, and it’s a theme Pastor Rick touched briefly on last week. It’s really a theme that goes all the way through Joseph’s story, and the way we’re saying it in this series is this: don’t put a period where God puts a comma. What seems like the end of the story—Joseph is in prison, another sort of pit, just like he was before he came to Egypt!—is not the end of the story. We might be tempted, were we Joseph in prison, to think all is lost, but God’s story is really just getting started. When you think the end has come, God still has plans for you! Even if there is failure or a perceived failure in your life, that doesn’t mean God is done. God can still use you, if you stay open to him. Even in prison, maybe especially in prison, Joseph stayed open to God’s possibilities. Genesis says “the Lord was with him” (39:21). And he was noticed by the warden and put in charge of many things. He became a sort of vice-warden in the political prison. Genesis says his success was due to one factor. Not his political skill. Not his organizational savvy. Not a course in management he took online. The sole reason for his success is this: “The Lord was with Joseph” (39:23). Joseph’s story is not over yet. Where we might put a period, God put a comma. And so there is much more to Joseph’s story because something is happening in him during this time in prison. God is with him; he is drawing closer to God. That’s not been said of him before, but in the next couple of weeks, we’re going to see what a drastic difference it will make in his life and in the lives of those around him.

Joseph’s story at this point should remind us that God is working, even when things seem to be at their worst. Our calling is three-fold. First, we seek to live with integrity, as people who resist compromising positions, people who seek to represent Jesus faithfully in everything we do. Second, when difficult and challenging times come, even when accusations come, we still live with integrity, staying faithful to what is right without compromise, in full faith that God is with us through it all. And third, even when it’s dark and when it’s difficult, know that God is not done with you yet. There is no place his grace cannot reach, there is no sin his love cannot forgive and there is no darkness his light cannot overcome. Trust in him and he will bring you through. Let’s pray.