Genesis 39:1-20 “Fatal Attraction”

Let us start with a quick review of the story of Joseph in this series since the start of the story was last week. Joseph was the youngest of twelve brothers, but by far his father’s favorite. His father Jacob presented to him a beautiful ornate robe to wear. His brothers were jealous of course. Then, Joseph is given two dreams by God that share the future day of when the brothers, indeed the whole family, will bow down to Joseph. The brothers are enraged and plan to kill Joseph. Instead, they throw him into a pit to die and rip his robe to shreds. Rather than killing their brother, the other brothers decide to sell Joseph into slavery to a band of Ishmaelites who end up taking him to Egypt.

We have a lot to unpack about this story: A band of “whose-a-malites” purchase Joseph from the pit. What exactly is an “Ishmaelite”? Remember when Sarah and Abraham were trying to have a baby with no luck, so Sarah gave her maidservant Hagar to Abraham and she conceived? The child of that union was Ishamel (Genesis 16:1-12). Later Sarah does give Abraham a child of her own, whose name is Isaac.This is in fact Joseph’s grandfather. However, the Ishmaelites fall out of the family tree of Israel.

Ishmaelites today would be the Muslim Arabs. The Islamic faith was not around in the time of the Story of Joseph–Christianity was not around either by the way. However, today Muslims claim this heritage as their own. That is why Islam is considered an Abrahamic Faith, though opposed in many ways to Judaism and Christianity. This ancient rift still plays out today in modern world politics–as we can see in the Middle East.

And, just as an aside, please note that the Palestinians of Gaza do not count themselves as Arabs, nor do the Arabs themselves see the Palestinians as one of their tribes. The Palestinians of Gaza first came to the shores of Egypt on ships from ancient Minoa, that is Crete. The Egyptians kicked them out of their land! Today some people suggest that we should just send all the Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan. Yet, they are not the same people at all. They are not Ishmaelites or an Arab tribe. In fact, they were subdued in the Islamic conquests.

The next thing I want to address in terms of ancient culture is this idea that you could sell another body into slavery. One could own another person outright. Today it is hard for us to fathom that for most of human history people were buying and selling other people. Of course in some parts of the world this still happens. As missionaries in Thailand we witnessed first hand that one could buy a child for a mere $20.

Back then, no difference existed between the idea of slavery and servanthood. I mention this because today we openly say that we “serve Jesus” as our Master. It could be translated as “we slave” for Jesus. We belong to Our Lord. In that same way, Joseph now literally belongs to an Egyptian named Potifar. Potifar is Joseph’s legal master in Egypt. It is Joseph’s livelihood to serve Potifar and only Potifar. This means that when Potifar’s wife summons Joseph, he must go. He has no choice in the matter.

In this situation, Joseph is actually in the wrong when he refuses to lie with Potifar’s wife. I know that is really hard for us to comprehend today. How can you be wrong for not committing adultery?! Adultery is also wrong. Let me just assure you of that. That is in the Ten Commandments and Jesus himself warns against it. So, Joseph is put into an impossible situation in our text for today. He cannot refuse anything Potifar’s wife asks, and he cannot commit adultery. She wants him to commit adultery.

I want to point out that when sin comes into our lives, it tends to come very much in this fashion: “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t!” Too often we are left to choose the lesser of two evils or get really creative with some third option. What do you do if your boss tells you to do something illegal at work? Do you risk losing your job?

In the case with Joseph, it is even worse because he does refuse to commit adultery but then is accused of rape by the person who tried to have him commit adultery. Potifar’s wife is content to destroy that which she cannot attain. She concocts a story after taking his loin cloth from him that he had come naked into her chamber. Well, everybody in the palace probably saw Joseph running naked out of the woman’s bedchamber! Case closed. The truth does not really matter at that point, does it?

Remember last week I mentioned the fact that in those days “You were what you wore”? Joseph’s ornate robe given to him by his father made him more important than the other brothers in the family. We have gone from Joseph’s ornate robe being torn to pieces at the time of his enslavement to his now fleeing completely naked from Potifar’s wife. That is how everybody is going to see him now. He is the naked slave. His fall from grace is complete as he is thrown into prison.

Nothing that Joseph has ever done should have led him to this downfall. In this is a truth of life, a biblical motif, that we see again and again. We do not sin ourselves, but sin finds us. We do nothing wrong, but then we hear from others that somehow we have transgressed.

One day as a young man in Germany I was sitting in a park outside of a movie theater waiting to meet friends to see a movie together. The Bavarian police came running up to me with their guns drawn. I had no idea what was going on. I do not believe that I had broken any law. There was no sign that I was trespassing or had stepped on the lawn when I should not have. I was actually sitting on a bench. I was not smoking. I was not assaulting anyone. They asked for my papers (in Germany one IS required to always be able to prove identity). I gave them all that they asked for. They said that they had to take my papers back to police headquarters to verify. They got back in their police cruiser and disappeared. Finally my friends showed up to see the movie, but I could not move from that bench because the police had taken my ID, and I wanted to get it back. I had to trust that they would return, hand me the ID, and hopefully not want to arrest me for something. I would not know what. Were they really going to arrest me for sitting on a park bench? They did eventually come back. I missed the movie, but life went on.

One time in Thailand, I was driving to a Christian school in Phitsanulok, visiting Mitchel Young if you recall his name from having been the pastor at Hanapepe UCC. Well, the electricity had failed in the city, so all of the street lights were out. I came to the first intersection, stopped, looked both ways, saw that it was safe to proceed, and made a turn. The next thing I knew, a motorcycle cop was pulling me over. He stated that I had broken the law because I made my turn without waiting for a green light to do so. I argued that of course the light was never going to turn green. That fact seemed of little importance to him. I suspected that he wanted a bribe; however, I did not feel like paying him off, so we got into a conversation. When he learned that i was a missionary going to the Christian school he changed his tune and offered to give me a police escort instead. In that way I came to visit Mitchell with a police escort that day. That made the police officer feel important and got me where I needed to go.

You can have the purest thoughts and intentions on the planet, but you will still need to deal with environmental evils and other people’s inclinations towards temptation. This is a truth of being a Christian. Jesus never really did anything that would warrant his going to the Cross. We all know that. It is an historical fact. Jesus never hurt anybody. All He ever did was just love on the people around him. He fed them. He healed them. He gave them hope of eternal hereafter.

I think about how today we have groups of masked men roaming the streets of America with weapons arresting people who have never really done anything wrong. They have never hurt anybody. We see videos of women and children being manhandled. We see videos of pastors and priests being sprayed with pepper spray–because they were heard speaking Spanish or have dark skin or wanted to offer Holy Communion to detainees. We all suffer because of other people’s sins. Ephesians 5:11-16: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the Light becomes visible.. . . Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

Yet, our text about Joseph goes on. We learn that even in prison God continues to bless Joseph's life. This is in verse 21 of Genesis 39, “The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.” Soon Joseph was running the prison for the jailer. No matter where life puts you, the Lord can still bless your life and use you. There really are no guarantees in this life except that the Lord wants to bless your life and see you prosper in faith no matter where you are.

As we continue with this story, we will see God use Joseph to His glory. Tune in next week for the theme of redemption that is coming!

Amen.