Rip Currents
Life of Joseph • Sermon • Submitted
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Big Idea: Being faithful in exile is incredibly important. This is our story…we live in a land that is not our own and sometimes the ethics of that land will ask from us what we cannot in good conscience give it. Look at the options that Joseph had open to him: He could’ve given in and taken advantage of Potiphar’s good favor and slept with his wife…or…he could’ve told Potiphar about it and ruined his marriage…or…he could’ve set a trap for her…or… he could have stepped in and defended himself in hopes of turning it back on Potiphar’s wife. How to do the right thing when it is going to cost you greatly.
Big Question: Is God’s Kingdom your ultimate reality?
I have noticed that this is like therapy for me…do funny ocean phobia breakthrough bit...
Do Rip Current bit...
Can’t swim against and you can’t pick your feet up and go with … both will drown you
And so why do we talk about Rip currents?
Set up Babylon and then Egypt as the kingdom of this world.
If you are a follower of Jesus, Colossians chapter 1 tells us that we have been given citizenship in a new kingdom…God’s Kingdom. God’s Kingdom has a set of morals and ethics that are counter to the kingdom of man.
Explain the progression of Babylon as the kingdom of man and where man has defined his own set of morals and ethics. Maybe talk about the end of times. Talk about how Egypt is another name used for this kingdom.
Here is why I am particularly proud of my Rip current example: In the Bible, the kingdom of Babylon is directly associated with the sea. Revelation 13 and Revelation 18, and although it isn’t just found in those chapters, those two chapters really play on this sea imagery. The sea is seen as this place of chaos and death…the very thing that Babylon uses to gain, keep and assert its power. Meanwhile, the land is seen as God’s Kingdom where His citizens live. The land is seen as a place of beauty, tranquility, and order. That is why when John the Revelator opens up his description of the new creation he says this:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
It isn’t that there won’t be an ocean in the New Creation but that there won’t be any of the vestments of the old system where might makes right and the one with the ability to assert their power over others makes the rules. What makes the ocean so chaotic and so deadly is that it is composed of 7 billion people all choosing to define good and evil in a way that ultimately benefits them and their tribe.
Just imagine each of our sins like a big rock thrown into a glassy calm pond with ripples that greatly disturb the water. Now realize that we all do that several times a day multiplied by 7 billion people. It is the dozens of little choices that people make everyday that ultimately have only one aim: their flourishing and moving them farther up the ladder (be that the corporate ladder, the financial ladder, the social ladder, the ladder of pleasure, or the ladder of self-actualization and fulfillment). And people will lie, cheat, steal, and step on others in order to climb that ladder…when you look at the collective humanity doing that, the chaotic and turbulent sea becomes a really great metaphor for the kingdom of this world.
AND YET...
In this current age, if you are a follower of Jesus, you are pictured as strangers and aliens in a foreign land.
Going back to our Rip current example: We don’t yet fully live on the beach because God’s kingdom hasn’t come in it’s fullness yet. There is still very much a sea in this current age. But our feet (if we are followers of Jesus who have been transferred to a new kingdom) are supposed to remain grounded in God’s kingdom as we remain close to the shore.
Its like we are wading in waist deep water. Our feet are still grounded on the land but we have to live in this constant tension of the current of this world trying to pull us into deeper and deeper water.
We are going to look at several stories where we see characters in this place. Joseph, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed-Nego, Daniel, and even Esther. They all live in Babylon (and Egypt). Several of them take Babylonian names…Joseph will eventually take the name Zaphenath-Paneah (and Egyptian name), they learn the languages of Babylon, and participate in the culture of Babylon to an extent…they hold high ranking jobs in Babylon and Egypt…Esther is the queen of Babylon for goodness sakes…and catch this:
NONE OF THAT IS SEEN AS BEING UNFAITHFUL TO GOD!
And that is really good news because guess what?!? You live in Babylon. You work and raise your children and go to the grocery store and make friends and go to baseball games in Babylon.
And yet, there are these moments, just like in Joseph, and Daniel, and Esther, and Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed-Nego’s story where we are faced with these Rip Current moments where the culture, ethics, and morals of Babylon run counter to God’s kingdom and where it tries with all its might to drag you out to sea.
Maybe like we just heard in the story of Joseph, it is things that are not your fault and completely beyond your control. Maybe it is false accusations or persecution. I find those instances fairly rare, however.
A lot of the time, it is around the big cultural issues of our day:
Like political issues, things like abortion, sexual ethics, views on marriage and divorce, ideas about gender, or a thousand other enormous social issues of our day.
And maybe you think you know how to navigate those rip currents safely…and perhaps you do, but most often, I find it is the small personal rip currents that are most effective at dragging us out to sea:
It is the small moral lines we are willing to cross to get ahead. It is the ethical grey areas we are willing to exploit to allow our business or finances to succeed. It’s the white lie we are willing to tell. It’s the little injustices we are willing to overlook to not rock the boat or be seen as too liberal or conservative. It is the sins of a friend or boss we will not bring into the light for fear of losing the friendship or other repercussions. It’s the broken and sinful thing we will do as long as we think it can be done in secret because that thing ultimately leads to my pleasure, satisfaction, success, or fulfillment.
I’ll give you an example of something that always bothered me in the military. My yearly performance report. You work all year, you volunteer, and go to school and at the end of the year, you have to capture all of your accomplishments on a two page document and that document is a huge determining factor for whether you will advance to the next rank and pay grade or whether you will stay stuck for another year. And what happens is you will write it fairly honestly…at least some times… but then it goes to your boss and then their boss for corrections and to dress it up to make it sound better. And what happens by the time you get it back is it has been so malformed to “sound better” that it isn’t really even a true reflection of who you are and what you’ve done. But this system of half-truth is such the cultural norm that if you were actually dead honest about your performance report, you would never advance in rank. But let’s say you win the award package or get promoted based off of what amounts to a list of half-truths and outright lies…how do you feel about that?
The reality is that we are all faced with these little rip currents every single day that give us the opportunity to identify with the Kingdom of God or succeed in the system of Babylon and Egypt. And what you know, if you have been following Jesus for a little while is that those two things are not one in the same…that often, to follow Jesus and his kingdom ethics and values means serious repercussions in the system of this world.
And so the question becomes:
Which kingdom reality are you truly committed to?
We can know the answer to this question by how we answer this question:
How do we handle moments of compromise where we must choose between living as a faithful citizen of God’s kingdom and the allure of success, pleasure, and fulfillment if we will give ourselves over to the kingdom of this world?
This is the rip current moment. These moments where we are presented the opportunity to compromise our faithfulness to God and his kingdom or remain faithful to God’s kingdom ethics and value in spite of the cultural current around you.
And just like real rip currents, I find that followers of Jesus will often choose one of two bad responses. And so today, I want o look at Joseph’s story in light of these two what if scenarios? What if Joseph had chosen either one of the bad responses that we often choose when faced with these rip current moments and what do we learn by that?
The first bad decision that many people make is to simply kick up their feet and go with the current.
It’s sort of the ‘when in Rome’ mentality. This is the world we live in. Sexual ethics have changed. We have become supposedly smarter over time and our cultures views on all of these moral and ethical issues have changed. We have the option to either buy that lie and change with it or we look at the repercussions of going against the current and what we stand to loose by kicking against the current and go with the flow. Or sometimes we value what we stand to gain by just going with the cultural current around us and decide its just easier to go with the flow. Whether that’s with the big issues of our culture or the small personal Rip currents doesn’t matter. People get washed out to sea all the time and wind up walking away from God and away from their faith as they are drowned in the sea of cultural relativity and pursuit of personal interest.
What would Joseph’s story look like if he had chosen this option and what can we learn from that? And so I have added some italicized words to show how the story might be a little different:
It came about after these events that his master’s wife looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, “Lie with me.”
But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge.
“There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?”
As she spoke to Joseph day after day, though,he broke down and gave in in a moment of weakness. Genesis 39:10
Now it happened one day that he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the household was there inside.
She caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me!” And he slept with Potiphar’s wife keeping it a secret for many years. Genesis 39:12
And Joseph’s story essentially stops right there. Now that isn’t what actually happens though right...GO BACK AND BRIEFLY TELL THE REAL STORY.
But let’s just play out the what if for a second.
Maybe he keeps it a secret for a long time and never gets caught and lives out his days in Potiphar’s house. More likely Potiphar catches the two of them and kills Joseph. But perhaps he goes lenient on Joseph and still ends up throwing him in prison. Either way, Joseph likely misses the encounter with the Pharoah and a disastrous famine wipes him and the entire family of Abraham off the map.
Now, that is obviously speculation, but let me tell you an effect of that ‘what if’ scenario that is not speculation at all.
Was it difficult for Joseph to do the right thing when there were several witnesses to his actions and when it was incredibly costly?
Absolutely!!!
Was there ever a moment in Joseph’s story where he could have chosen to do the wrong thing and not only would it have not been costly but he would have actually been justified in the eyes of his witnesses?
Tell the story of forgiving his brothers and keeping them safe in Egypt.
He could have easily chosen to exact vengeance and killed his brothers. We get one part of the story where we see just how easily it was to throw his brothers into prison. Their lives were in Joseph’s hands and he could have easily justified killing them with basically zero consequences. I mean he was good. His family was there in Egypt. He had a sweet gig, a big palace and children of his own.
And yet we see this moment where Joseph is being tried by fire to produce the type of character necessary to make a real choice of consequence later in life…one that would greatly effect God’s redemptive plan for all mankind.
Let’s consider what James chapter one says for just a second:
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Ya’ll listen to me… God was working through the rip current to produce a strength of character in Joseph that would go on to have enormous effects on the whole world.
Through Joseph’s story we see what is truly valuable in God’s kingdom:
Strong character forged in the fires of trial and adversity.
What we choose to do in those moments of compromise shape us for the better or for the worse. Our sin is like a big rock being thrown into a glassy calm pond…it’s ripple effects go far beyond what we can even imagine and the damage is untold. I’ve already said that that is the reason the Babylon is likened to the chaotic and destructive sea.
BUT!!!! When we choose not to just put our feet up and go with the flow, our character, that eternal part of ourselves that will go on forever is shaped and molded into something that God values greatly in his kingdom. God isn’t asleep at the wheel and he isn’t unaware of the consequences it may cost us…trust me we will talk about that in a minute. But it does mean that we don’t have the option of sitting idly by in the face of compromise…the stakes are too high.
That means there is no lie white enough to tell. That means that even if you are never caught of found out, that it is your eternally valuable character that is being shaped by the choices you make. That means that even though the cost might be high to bring the sin of a friend or boss into the light or step in in the face of injustice…we cannot kick our feet up and go with the flow.
Alright, if the first bad choice people make is to kick their feet up and go with the culture around them, then:
The second bad decision many people make when caught in the rip current is to try and swim against the current.
I watch as followers of Jesus decide to rail against the system and wage war against Babylon. ‘We need to stand up and fight for ______________’ is something often heard from people who want to wage war against Babylon. This is the equivalent of trying to swim against the current. Ya’ll…look right at me… BABYLON WILL CRUSH YOU!!!
Like just as an example...what if Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed-Nego would have used their proximity to Nebuchadnezzar to assassinate him?
The answer is…we would never get to see these words from Nebuchadnezzar:
Nebuchadnezzar responded and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God.
“Therefore I make a decree that any people, nation or tongue that speaks anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap, inasmuch as there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.”
Or these words:
“It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has done for me.
“How great are His signs And how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom And His dominion is from generation to generation.
What if Queen Esther would’ve taken racial justice for the Jews in her own hands and poisoned Haman (the guy plotting the genocide). Like instead of hosting the feast where Haman would literally make his own gallows and tie his own noose, what if she took matters into her own hands and poisoned him?
It is likely that Esther would’ve been killed as a traitor to the throne and the Jewish genocide would’ve proceeded with mass casualties.
Or…going back to our man Joseph…what would’ve happened if he would’ve told Potiphar about his wife’s actions or set up a trap for her to be found out…well…we are right back where we were with the previous what if…he probably would’ve missed the opportunity to save his family and continue God’s redemptive story.
I’ll give you a New Testament example from a question I often get. Why didn’t Paul or the other New Testament writers rail against slavery and just outright call it by the evil that it was? He wasn’t for slavery, but why wasn’t Paul clearer about how God feels about slavery?
The short answer to that question is that while Rome was fairly tolerant to new and emerging religions…they were not tolerant at all of anything that smelled like a slave revolt in the making. That would’ve turned every resource at their disposal against Paul and the Christian movement if they thought one of the aims of the movement was to free slaves. Paul actually does something way more effective and subversive though as he realigns the relationship between slaves and masters…he makes them equals with the same master who holds them both accountable. He nullifies the hierarchy that allowed slavery to exist in a sort of long game that would have effects in the social structure that went way beyond slavery and touched workers, women’s rights, the status of women, children, widows, and orphans, the rich and the poor and so much more. Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament figures were incredibly subversive to the system of Babylon but its how they along with Joseph and all the other characters we looked at went about it that is important.
Listen to me, we are in a war against Babylon but check out what Paul says about that war in Ephesians 6:12:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Look at me really closely here…we are at war…but not with people. Not with politicians, or bills and legislature, not with your boss, or that person who has done you wrong, not with those who hold different sexual ethics or views of marriage or gender, or those advocating for abortion or trying to take prayer out of schools or those pushing a hyper liberal or regressive conservative agenda. YOU ARE NOT AT WAR WITH ANY OF THOSE THINGS!!!
You are at war with Babylon and Babylon is only Babylon because it is filled with people committed to her through choosing to define good and evil in a way that best benefits them. At its root, Babylon is Babylon because of sin and we are at war with sin.
Look at this! Paul’s words about the type of war we wage comes right before a list of armor and weapons that we fight this war with and none of them are weapons you would find on a traditional battlefield.
The idea is that if we use the same weapons and tactics that the world uses, we are no different than the world.
No, we fight the battle against Babylon…no…against sin with truth, righteousness, the Gospel of Peace, faith, salvation, prayer, and God’s Word.
Check this out…most of those are defensive mechanisms that keep us from being sucked out to sea and yet if you’ve ever read the Armor of God passage, you know that there is only one offensive mechanism that is at our disposal…God’s Word.
God’s Word isn’t a weapon that we wield by beating people over the head with a list of moral imperatives. God’s Word is a unified story that leads to Jesus as the hope of the world and the conqueror of sin (Babylon).
I told you last week when we began this series that we were going to be looking at the story behind the story. If that previous statement is true: “That the entire Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus and his defeat of Babylon” then we should see Joseph’s actions as a foreshadowing of Jesus’. And we do…let’s check that out as we close things up.
Matthew chapter four is the story of Jesus’ own testing. Just as Joseph was tested alone and cut off from everyone in the wilderness of his story…so was Jesus. Just as Joseph could’ve shortcut God’s plan for his life and for the redemption of many people and taken hold of success, satisfaction, and pleasure by sleeping with Potiphar’s wife, Jesus was faced with the same choice to compromise and short cut God’s plan of redemption by bowing the knee to Satan.
Here is how that story ends:
Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory;
and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’ ”
Satan was offering a compromise disguised as a shortcut for the very thing that Jesus came for. Jesus came to reclaim all of the kingdoms of the world back to himself because they are currently under the control of Babylon with Satan as its leader. The problem, however, is that unlike Joseph’s story which only meant imprisonment, the cost to Jesus was going to be the most gruesome death ever imagined by mankind…death on a cross. Satan was offering the kingdoms of the world to Jesus without him having to go to the cross. Listen ya’ll that would’ve been tempting.
We see the same temptation crop up again later in Jesus’ life but only this time it is even more sinister.
Jesus just has this mountaintop experience with his closest disciples where he asks them who they believe that he is and they rightly answer that he is the messiah the son of the living God. And then this happens immediately after:
From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.
Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.”
But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
This is the same exact temptation that Satan offered Jesus in the wilderness! Peter essentially had only two options to offer Jesus and we have already talked about why they are the wrong options.
Peter had in mind that Jesus would institute his kingdom in some way that didn’t end in his dying…and yet that was God’s plan all along. That would have been the equivalent of Jesus kicking his feet up and going with the flow.
Peter had in mind that Jesus would lead a messianic military movement to overthrow Rome in an act of war…this wasn’t God’s plan either.
And Jesus immediately recognizes the voice of Satan in that rip current and rebukes him.
Instead, Jesus chooses option three and swims sideways out of the current…here is what Jesus says about his fight against the current:
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
Jesus came to deal with the real problem. Our sin. Jesus came to fight the battle against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. And Jesus did this by rejecting the temptation in the wilderness that every single one of us has fallen victim to. Every single person in this world has fallen prey to the rip current as we have chosen to define good and evil for ourselves. And so Jesus as the greater Joseph comes to live the life that none of us could live. Jesus comes to reject not just the calls of Potiphar’s wife but of every single sin ever committed. And then like Joseph, Jesus takes the undeserved punishment that would lead to our salvation.
It is as you place your faith in Jesus, in his life lived on your behalf and his punishment taken on your behalf that He pulls you out of the rip current and places your feet back on the sands of His kingdom. And if you have chosen to follow Jesus, you know that you are still subject to the same temptations and rip currents that you were before you chose to follow him. You know that you are still wading in the waters of this sort of already but not yet kingdom of God. Your feet are firmly planted on the sand but you are still subject to the rip currents of Babylon every single day.
If you are going to successfully navigate the rip currents however, it will only be as you go back to the Gospel that saved you and cry out once again for the power of Jesus to do something for you that you can’t do for yourself. It is truth, righteousness, the Gospel of Peace, faith, salvation, and prayer that keeps you from kicking up your feet and going with the current. And the hope of Jesus given to us through God’s Word is the weapon that allows us to fight the current the right way that actually leads to real change and revolution in the world around us.
Will you pray with me.