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· 35 viewsBreakdown! The story of Joseph shows us what happens when the journey of faith seems to fall apart.
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This series started last week with a look at rerouting the journey of faith. We started with the parable of the Good Samaritan; but I noted there are plenty of examples in the Bible where someone finds their journey of faith with God suddenly shifted to an alternate route. Let’s keep going with this idea and look today at another example of someone whose faith in God took new directions.
Today I am going to skip around a little bit into the story of Joseph. I want us to highlight some features that run all the way through Genesis 39-40. We are not going to read all of those two chapters; I’ll skip around a bit and fill in the gaps so that we know and understand what is happening in these chapters. Here is the set up. Jacob has two wives, Leah and Rachael. Leah has six sons for Jacob before Rachael has any children at all, and then later Rachael gives birth to Joseph. As you may know, Joseph is then given some preferential treatment by his father Jacob. Joseph’s brothers are rather envious of him and carry out a plot to get rid of Joseph and convince their father Jacob that Joseph has been attacked and killed by a wild animal. What the brothers actually do is sell Joseph to a traveling band of merchants on their way to Egypt. So, Joseph is carried off to Egypt to be sold as property into slavery. That’s where we pick up the story beginning in Genesis 39.
1 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, 4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. 5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field.
I’m going to skip ahead into chapter 40. But let me fill in the gaps so you know what happens in the story. Potiphar has a wife who take a rather special liking to Joseph. Joseph wants nothing to do with any kind of romantic relationship with his master’s wife. In fact, he says,
9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”
Even here as a slave in Egypt, Joseph is compelled to act in a way that remains faithful to God. Surely God will honor Joseph’s faithfulness. I mean, if I were Joseph, I’d be expecting a grand rescue in which Joseph will be given freedom from his slavery.
But as the story goes, Potiphar’s wife becomes so enraged that she cannot get her way with Joseph that she makes up a story that she was attacked and assaulted by Joseph. Potiphar believes the lies of his wife. Joseph is taken and hauled off to prison. Not a turn I would expect in the story. Joseph does the right thing to remain faithful to God, and he gets falsely accused and tossed in a dungeon for it. This is now the second time Joseph’s life has experienced a sort of breakdown moment. First, he is sold off into slavery by his brothers back in Canaan; then he is locked up in an Egyptian prison for a crime he did not commit.
But the story keeps going. While in prison in Egypt, Joseph comes into contact with other prisoners. One of those prisoners is the person who serves as the cup bearer for Pharaoh. The cup bearer has a dream which he does not understand. Joseph interprets the cup bearer’s dream for him, a dream through which Joseph tells the cup bearer that he will be restored to his royal position in three days. Here is where I am going to pick up the story again toward the end of Genesis 40.
14 But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. 15 I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.”
21 He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand—22 but he impaled the chief baker, just as Joseph had said to them in his interpretation.
23 The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.
21 He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand—22 but he impaled the chief baker, just as Joseph had said to them in his interpretation.
23 The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.
1 When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile,
Joseph’s Adjustment of Faith
Joseph’s Adjustment of Faith
How’s that for adding another breakdown on top of all that has already happened. Joseph makes his wishes and desires pretty clear in these verses. He recognizes that his life has become one injustice after another, and he wants out. If we were to add up the timeline from when Joseph was sold off by his brothers to where I leave off reading here in the beginning of Genesis 41, it is eleven years. You and I have been living in a breakdown of a partially shut-down world for about six months because of coronavirus; Joseph lived quarantined as a slave and prisoner for eleven years. How is that for a breakdown?
Joseph remains faithful to God even when his life becomes a series of breakdowns
how does Joseph do this while isolated and alone in Egypt?
I wonder how it is that Joseph was able to reroute the direction of his faith in order to remain faithful to God during all that time. How did Joseph stay connected to the God of his upbringing back in Canaan? In the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the narrator pulls the story along by telling Joseph in prison that it’s going to be okay, that Joseph and these dreams are just ahead of his time. But of course, there is no narrator there in the actual story with Joseph. There is nothing at all giving Joseph any kind of assurance that things will turn around and everything is going to be okay. Joseph is all alone in this. He is cut off and isolated from anything which might help buoy his faith or provide some encouragement or point his direction. I cannot help but wonder, how does he do it? What keeps Joseph so firmly committed to the God of his fathers in this place where all the breakdowns of his life seem to be pulling him away and leaving him with no path at all to follow God as his fathers had done. There was no way in Egypt for Joseph to pick up the habits and rituals and expressions of religion which had been revealed to his ancestors and passed down. Joseph is in completely uncharted territory here in this Egyptian prison. How does he pull through all of this with the faith that he has?
the Bible does not tell us how Joseph adjusts his faith to keep up with the adjustments of his life
So there you have it. I set up the question. We’re looking at examples in which the life of faith has to reroute and find new expressions to fit a different time and a different set of circumstances and limitations. How does Joseph do this? Not to bring this message to a screaming halt, but I have to be honest here: I don’t know the answer to that question. I cannot say for absolute certain what it is that kept someone like Joseph faithfully connected to following God during those many years of one breakdown after another. And the reason I have to say that I do not know is simply because the story in Genesis does not tell us. The Bible does not clue us in to exactly what it was that rerouted Joseph’s faith to keep up with all those twists and turns he experiences in his life. We are not given that information. Even in the New Testament hall of fame in Hebrews 11 Joseph only gets a passing mention in just one verse.
22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
This is way at the end of Joseph’s life. There’s nothing about the way Joseph’s faith held him and sustained him in the middle of all these trials. I am asking the question here, but I am afraid the text of scripture does not plunk a neatly packaged answer right in front of us. We are going to have to do a little more work to get at the answer.
maybe the answer is left out so that we must consider for ourselves how to answer the question
Then again, maybe it is not a bad thing that the Bible does not give a play-by-play description of exactly how Joseph was able to keep the direction of his faith so focused through every rerouted turn he needed to take. Maybe it is better left just showing us the result; that Joseph remained faithful to God and connected to the faith he received as a child. Maybe the how-to doesn’t matter so much. Here’s why. We live in a completely different world than Joseph lived in. Maybe the how-to for Joseph’s faith to make the adjustments would not fit or work out at all like the how-to’s that our own faith adjustments may require. What worked for Joseph might not work for us because we are not him and he is not us. All we know is that whatever Joseph did, it worked for him. When Potiphar’s wife came to Joseph, he was able to respond with a focus of faith which directed him away from sinning against God. When his fellow prisoners were troubled by dreams which they could not understand, Joseph was able to respond that it is God who gives interpretation. We are not told how Joseph did this; we are just shown that he did it.
it is enough for us to see the necessity of adjusting faith to stay connected to God
But maybe it is enough for us today just to see the necessity of adjusting faith to stay connected to God as Joseph did. Even if we do not get a clear one-size-fits-all answer for how we adjust faith when life breaks down, it is enough to be reminded that we do—in fact—need to adjust faith when life breaks down. Let’s start there and consider, then, what kind of adjustments may be the most fitting and appropriate for the kind of breakdown we live through in our world today.
My Adjustment of Faith
My Adjustment of Faith
Last week Time magazine had a fascinating article about a study using a Cognitive Reflection Test that was conducted recently under the direction of Professor David Rand at MIT. He summarizes the findings of the research in a report published in the Journal of Psychological Science. I am being careful here to give exact references to where all this information comes from because one of the main points of the study was to show just how quickly people in our society share baseless misinformation full of inaccuracies and falsehoods.
Here’s how the study worked. In a selected group of over 850 people, everyone was shown 30 news headlines about COVID-19. 15 of the headlines made a completely false statement about COVID-19; and 15 headlines made statements that have been backed up by scientific findings and shown to be true. Half the group was given the instruction to select 15 of the 30 headlines to share on social media. What the researchers found was that the selection of headlines to share was pretty evenly split between headlines that contained true information and headlines that contained false information. When asked about the reasons why those particular headlines were chosen for sharing, the answer pointed to sharing headlines based upon a strong alignment with personal ideology. The other half of the research group was asked to look at all 30 headlines about COVID-19 and simply evaluate and discern if the information in the headline was true or false. In that group, after having to take the time to consider the accuracy of the information in the headline, the group chose factually true headlines over two-thirds of the time. This group was then asked to go back to the same 30 headlines and select half of them to share on social media. And this time, the group chose to share headlines that lined up with their previous exercise to first carefully sort out the truthful accuracy of the headline.
Stay with me, there’s a little more to this research study. Another group of over 850 people were selected. This time the entire group was given 30 headlines about various news items that were non-COVID related, non-politically partisan, and non-controversial. Again, 15 of the headlines were completely false, and 15 were based upon true and accurate reflection of facts. The group was simply asked to evaluate the accuracy of these 30 random headlines about various topics. The results were about the same. The group was able to identify truthfully accurate headlines two-thirds of the time.
Then, this same group immediately followed this exercise with another in which they were shown the exact same 30 COVID-19 headlines as the first study group had; 15 of the headlines being true, and 15 of them being false. The group was simply instructed to select 15 headlines from the 30 to share on social media, the exact same instruction given to the first study group in which they shared misinformation half of the time. But here is the difference. In this second study group, they only selected false and misleading headlines to share less than one-third of the time.
The results suggest this. That when a person takes some time to use their brain and critically evaluate the accuracy of information received, the effect carries forward even into times when the person is not asked critically evaluate information accuracy. Further analysis of those who tend to share false information half of the time has shown that the criteria used for sharing was not truthfulness or accuracy, but emotional reaction. Whatever headline pricked the deepest emotional response was often the first choice, completely regardless of accuracy or falsehood.
Alright. That was a long sidetrack. Let me bring it back together with the Joseph story and our need for an adjustment of faith. Here is what is true for us in the world we live in today. We are being bombarded by mountains of information every day. For some of us, it is a mountain of information every single hour of every day. We have cable TV networks, talk radio, websites, YouTube channels, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds. And here is what I know to be true because I see it all around us. We are being formed and shaped as people by the information we are choosing to take in. And we are navigating this superhighway of mass-information using little more than emotional gut reactions.
what is the lens I am using through which to see and perceive the events of our world?
I do not know what a person like Joseph did to adjust the focus of his faith to remain on God in the winding breakdowns of his life; I just know he did it because the evidence of how he lived showed it. But I do have some ideas about what we can do to adjust the focus of our faith in order to remain connected with God in the winding breakdowns of our world. And it has to do with making an intentional choice about conditioning our hearts to receive whatever comes at us in our world through the lens of scripture rather than a completely knee-jerk emotional response.
God has given us the gift of scripture to use as a lens for seeing the world around us
We read in Genesis 39 and 40 that the LORD was with Joseph and blessed joseph even though he was a slave and a prisoner in a land he did not choose. You and I who live today have received the blessing of God which comes to us through the truth of his Word revealed to us. We have the gift of God’s truth given to us in the Bible. Even if we find ourselves in moments in which the world looks like everything is broken, we still have that gift of scripture from God.
what adjustments do you have to make in order for that gift of God’s Word to guide the steps of your heart every day?
Now here’s the part where an application comes in. What adjustments do you have to make in order for that gift of God’s Word to guide the steps of your heart every day? Before that onslaught of misinformation comes funneling down through our televisions and radios and computers and phone screens, is there an adjustment you can make so that the truth of God’s Word becomes the lens we use to see the world rather than a knee-jerk reaction of heated emotions? What might that look like for you?
There is a resource that Pastor Barb and I have highlighted before that we each use as part of our daily devotions. It is the book called Seeking God’s Face by Philip Reinders. It is one example of a resource that is out there which will help you start every day by placing your heart for a few moments into the Word of God. And we do this before picking up any newspaper headlines, before scrolling any newsfeeds, before opening any emails, before returning any voicemails. Because if the truth of God’s Word is the first thing to begin the day, then it also sets the tone for how everything else is seen and experienced that day. God’s Word becomes the equalizer by which we evaluate the truth of what we encounter day-by-day in our world. By the way, we have a term for that; it is called a world and life view. And it is the lens of scripture which adjusts the focus of our faith so that we can see the world as God wants us to see it.
What does that adjustment look like for you? In these days when there is still so very much about our world that is in breakdown mode, how can you adjust the course of faith so that God’s faithfulness remains central to who you are and how you live? May we, then, be people who demonstrate an example for our world to see that the church of Jesus can rise above bitter division. May we accept the gift of God’s Word in ways that adjust the direction of our faith towards grace and hope.