When clean living doesn't pay

Intro

If you type into Google, how to be succesful you will get millions of results. There are millions of people out there who claim to have figured it out. There’s Napoleon Hill ‘Think and grow rich’. There’s Jordan Peterson, ‘12 rules for life’. And there’s even this guy, ‘The art of the deal’.

But if you’re a Christian here this morning, you know you don’t have to bother with all that don’t you? You know the answer, how to be successful, happy, how to stay healthy and how to win at life? It’s easy - just follow God’s rules.

It’s in the bible, look I’ll show you:

Prov 4:18-19 - if you do the right thing, life will just get better and better. But if you do the wrong thing, you’ll feel like you’re stumbling.

Proverbs 4:18–19 (NRSV)

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,

which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;

they do not know what they stumble over.

Psalm 1:1 - if you do the right thing, you’ll be happy! How good is that?

Psalm 1:1 (NRSV)

Happy are those

who do not follow the advice of the wicked,

or take the path that sinners tread,

or sit in the seat of scoffers;

Proverbs 10:3-4 If you’re good, you won’t go hungry. Even better, diligence makes you rich. there you go, work hard, consistently, over time and you’ll become wealthy.

Proverbs 10:3–4 (NRSV)

The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry,

but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.

A slack hand causes poverty,

but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Psalm 37:4 - if you love God, he’ll give you what you want. Wow!

Psalm 37:4 (NRSV)

Take delight in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

This is God’s word. These are promises. And before you ask, no they’re not taken out of context, all of them are making universal wisdom claims.

Be good. Follow God’s rules for life, and you can’t go wrong.

Of course, we all know exceptions don’t we.

We all know people who have worked hard, only to have their work destroyed through no fault of their own. We all know people who are honest, decent people, the kind of people you’d love to have as your neighbour, who have just had such a rough trot.

I remember a few years ago watching a debate between Jordan Peterson, the author of 12 rules for life, and Slavoj Zizek. And Jordan Peterson was talking about how most people’s lives could be improved if they work harder, stoped being lazy, stopped ignoring the things they know they should be doing. And Zizek said, ‘would you say that to someone in North Korea?

Kim Jong Un sent me to a labour camp but I guess my real problem is that I need to clean my room.

Of course, I’m being a bit cheeky, and my list of prosperity verses is not the only thing the bible says about how to live well in this world.

But when we are hit hard with the sheer unfairness of life, when clean living fails to pay, it’s easy to ask, well why bother with integrity then? Why bother trying to live Jesus’ way?

Context

If you were here last week, we asked a related questioin - related, but not the same. We asked that question ‘why doesn’t God do something when people intend to harm us.’ And we saw part of the answer, people sometimes intend to harm us. Evil exists. Sometimes people do evil things. But God mysteriously, but deliberately and consistently takes the things people intend for our harm, and twists them into something for our good, for us, and through us, for many people.

That’s the big picture, something we hold onto when it feels like God is absent, like we are God forsaken and our enemies seem to run the show.

But there’s more to wring out of this crucial truth. If we’re to really grow up in our faith, if we’re to learn to see God at work in the real, messy, world we inhabit, the world where bad things happen to good people, then we need to pay attention to what happens in this chapter of Genesis.

And we need to pray, so please join me as I do that.

Pray

1. Clean living pays, most of the time

State

As a general principle clean living does pay. The bible says that for a reason. In general, working hard, doing the right thing, not breaking the law, being self-controlled - all of those these will help you avoid needless pain.

Show

And Joseph, for his part, here in Genesis 39, is not the spoiled brat we saw back in Gen 37. Driving around in his Ferrari, rubbing the fact that he was the favourite in his brother’s noses.

Not a wise way to live - doesn’t excuse what happened to him, but not wise.

Here, he’s 3 years older, and a different man. He’s competent, prospers in everything. So much so that Potiphar, puts him in charge of his whole estate.

He’s so confident in Joseph’s ability and integrity that Potiphar doesn’t ‘know anything except the bread that he was eating’.

In case you missed it, that’s a euphemism for the marital bed. Despite being a slave, Potiphar has made Joseph the master while the master is away. And Joseph is supposed to do everything for Potiphar except take on his role as husband.

Genesis 39:3–4 NRSV

His master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him; he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had.

But here’s where the complication comes.

Because this is exactly what Potiphar’s wife wants.

2. From dreamer to dreamboat

In verse 6, we’re told Joseph was great to look at. A better translation is maybe - Joseph was super hot, easy on the eyes, a real specimen!

Potiphar’s wife notices how beautiful Joseph is, how powerful and competent he is.

And in verse 7 she says two words: “bed me”.

Explain

Now this story is always told as a tale of temptation. A quick google - genesis 39 sermon - brings up tons of preachers telling you how to avoid temptation, how to be like Joseph and ‘just say no’, how to ‘run from adultery’ like Joseph.

All good advice, you should run from temptation - 1 Corinthians 10:13 says take the way out, 2 Timothy 2:22-24 - flee temptation, Proverbs 4:14-15 - don’t enter the path of the wicked.

All good, wise, godly advice. Removing yourself from temptation will make it less likely you cave in. As the old saying goes, you can’t stop the birds flying over your head, but you can stop then nesting in your hair.

But the trouble is, Genesis 39 isn’t about temptation.

I know that most of us, when we read it we imagine Joseph as this hot, buff, young guy working for an older married woman. And we imagine that Joseph is being tempted with the offer of an office fling. I suspect most of us, also imagine two middle class white people. And what all of the sermons I found want us to imagine is ‘how would I as a straight, red blooded male, cope if a woman was throwing herself at me’?

But we need to get that image out of our heads. Because this is not a story about an office fling. It’s a story about an office assault. It’s not a story about temptation, it’s a story about victimisation.

Slide: To Kill A Mockingbird

This is the image we ought to have because it’s far closer to what this story is actually showing us.

To kill a mockingbird is the story of how Tom Robinson, a young black man in Alabama, is fasely accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Even though Tom has a crack lawyer like Atticus Finch laying out the facts, showing how it was Mayella who propositioned Tom, and how he refused her, how he did nothing wrong, he ends up lynched by the mob of townspeople.

That is far closer to the story of Joseph. There are plenty of other examples of men sexually harassing women in the bible, but here, in Genesis 39, it’s the other way around.

We have a young enslaved man from a despised ethnic minority facing harassment and then false accusations from a rich, powerful ethnic majority woman. This story is not about how someone heroically resists the temptation to commit adultery.

Because there’s no evidence here that Joseph was tempted. The text doesn’t say that. What’s more, Joseph isn’t being offered free sex with no strings here. He’s being offered to sign his own death warrant. A Hebrew slave, sleeping with his Egyptian master’s wife would be suicidal.

Just in case you think I’m overplaying the race card, look at what she says in verse 17 ‘the Hebrew slave came in to insult me’. She may as well have said this ‘n----’

3. Love God, love your neighbour, still cop it.

State

This is a story about how you can love God, love your neighbour and still cop it.

Show

Look at verse 8

Genesis 39:8–9 NRSV

But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”

Potiphar’s wife says ‘bed me’ and Joseph says no for two reasons:

it’s not loving to my neighbour - Potiphar - it would be wicked against him, and it’s not loving to my God - it would be a sin.

It’s Jesus own summary of God’s law right here.

Joseph understands something profound about sin here. He sees no separation between a sin against his neighbour, and a sin against God. Because people are made in God’s image. To harm God’s image is to harm him.

God so profoundly and deeply loves everything and everyone he has made that he takes sin against other people personally. All human beings have infinite dignity because of this. Because no matter who you are, no matter what your race, no matter if you are a slave or a master, you are made in God’s image.

This is the foundation for our belief in human rights, by the way, never believe anyone who claims Human Rights were discovered by the 18th century enlightenment philosophers - it comes from the bible. The enlightenment philosophers just plagiarised it.

Joseph is determined to love God, and therefore love Potiphar.

That’s why he says no.

But it doesn’t stop the abuse.

V10 She hounds him day after day. Constantly harasses him.

The question to ask here is not, how did this young hunky red-blooded male resist her, but how did he not despair?

Sure at the end of his life Joseph could look back and say that although she intended it for evil, God intended good.

But in the middle of this trial, this suffering, we’re not sure if Joseph knows that.

He certainly doesn’t know how God is going to work things for his good.

All he can do is avoid her.

Teaching point

I need to pause here.

When someone is harassing you like this, you don’t need to just put up with it. Joseph didn’t have a lot of options - he was a slave. Thankfully, in Australia, this kind of behaviour is against the law. And you do not need to put up with it.

Next year we’ll be working our way through Jesus teaching on the sermon on the mount. One of his most famous sayings was about turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile. When someone is sinning against us, as Joseph was sinned against, we may think, well I have to just buckle up don’t I? At the risk of spoiling the whole sermon series, no - you do not need to accept harassment. That’s not what Jesus is saying there.

And if someone is harassing you, go to the police. I’ve had to do this.

But if you’re not feeling like you can go to the police, in our bathrooms and on the noticeboard I’ve put the numbers of a bunch of different people you can call. I’ve done that because we want to be a church where what happened to Joseph, can’t happen.

But life is messy. People get jealous, lust and power make people do terrible things.

Explain

And sadly for Joseph, in verses 11-12 she corners him when he is just trying to do his job. Grabs him and again says ‘bed me’. But he leaves his cloak and runs outside.

Oh boy. This looks bad. Really bad.

Despite how loyal, effective, honest, and hardworking, and godly Joseph has been for Potiphar, despite the fact that Potiphar himself has acknowledged that God was with Joseph and causing his whole house to propser - Potiphar accepts his wife’s tall tale.

There’s no investigation. No trial. No chance for Joseph to defend himself.

Of course, finding out that your wife was lying and trying to seduce your slave would be too embarassing and humiliating. Better not to know.

Joseph ends up in prison, seemingly abandoned by God again.

Apply

Wisdom says, there is a general principle that clean living pays but the world is messy. People get jealous of success, lust - i.e. unchecked sexual desire combined with power leads people to do horrible, abusive things. From Harvey Weinstein on down, we’ve seen that with #MeToo. But let’s not forget #ChurchToo.

We can be doing all the right things and still find ourselves struggling, under attack, in the firing line.

In fact, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12

2 Timothy 3:12 NRSV

Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

But that is no reason to give up on our integrity. It is no reason to give up our trust in God. It’s no reason to think that God has abandoned us.

Because God didn’t leave Joseph in verse 6. He wasn’t finished with him. And he isn’t finished with you or me.

If you are copping it for something you didn’t do, if you are trying to live a godly life and you are being persecuted, or harassed, or lied about, then keep reading. Understand that we’re still in the middle of the story. There’s more to come.

But God didn’t leave Joseph

Transition

4. God never left

State

Even as the trajectory of Joseph’s life is going down, God is lifting him up.

Did you notice? Verse 1 tells us, Joseph went down to Egypt. Right before that he was put down in a pit. Now, at the end of chapter 39 he’s down in prison. The verdict the world has given him, the judgment the world made - his brothers, the slave traders, Potiphar is that Joseph needs to be taken down.

But as all this is happening, God has something else to say.

Show

Look at what we see in verse 21.

Genesis 39:21 (NRSV)

But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love;

Again, verse 23, the Lord was with him whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.

Conclusion

You might be thinking, sure it’s great for Joseph, he ends up PM. He’s also part of God’s special chosen family, he’s a VIP I’m just an ordinary person. I don’t look spectacular. I don’t get put in charge of things.

How is this good news for me?

As always, in the Old Testament, the answer is to see this story fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus is the greater Joseph.

Jesus’s power, his integrity, his abilities, gets him attention. Remember what people said about him, when they saw the miracles. He does everything well. At one point, the crowd tries to make him king by force.

Jesus is an impressive, attractive person because of his godliness, his love and wisdom.

But it’s that same godly life of love and integrity that people get jealous - homicidally jealous.

At the very same time as he life seems to be on the up, he is moving down into facing lies against him, false accusation, wrongful conviction - judgement, execution.

And yet, as Philippians 2 says, God took his shame and traded it for honour. Took the mocking used against him and turned it into victory. Took the name that people spat on, and made it the name above every name.

Jesus’ resurrection is God’s yes to the world’s no.

And one day, he will say the same of us. Jesus’ offer to us, if we are willing to trust him, is that one day we will hear God shout his judgement so loud that all of the other judgements will be silenced. One day God will overturn all of those human judgements, the judgements of jealous and lust-fueled slave owners like Potiphar’s wife, the judgements of corrupt bosses like Potiphar himself, the judgements of gossiping neighbours, the judgements of the mob on twitter - all of those judgements will be drowned out by God’s final judgement: I am with you!

Well done, good and faithful servant.