Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Jeff:
Welcome back to another episode of The Bible Guys. I’m Jeff Forester, and I have the unparalleled Wesley Woods today as my guest co-host. Chris is out of town this week, and so the unparalleled Wesley Woods.

Wesley:
Yeah, it gets better every day.

Jeff:
Every day, every day. It gets better and better and better. So we’re really excited about having you this week. Yeah, it’s good to be here. We’re talking about mostly in this whole time, the life of Joseph. Yeah. So we’re going to be reading today in Genesis 39 and talking about Joseph and Potiphar’s house. Yeah. But first… We got a good one. Yeah. What was that?

Wesley:
I don’t have it in front of me. It’s a stump the pastor question. Oh, these are great. Lisa T. Lisa T. Hello, Lisa. So I’m going to read this for you. This is a tough one, Pastor Jeff. It says, what is the biblical stance on the existence of extraterrestrial life and how does it align with our understanding of God’s creation and plan for salvation? So Lisa just had a simple like question just to… The biblical stance on extraterrestrial life and then how does it relate to… How does it align with our understanding of God’s creation and plan for salvation? So she’s trying to link the two.

Jeff:
Well… We only have, what, 20 minutes here?

Wesley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff:
Man, that’s a tough one. So in my opinion, the Bible doesn’t have a stance on extraterrestrial life. There’s no statement about extraterrestrials. There are a couple of places in the Bible where people looking for something would say… For instance, we referenced, I think, was it in Genesis chapter 6 a couple weeks ago, where it talks about how the sons of God slept with women and then there were naphtalene on their land. Some people would say that sons of God means people from outer space or something. There’s just no evidence and it’s certainly not in the original language. The Hebrew doesn’t seem to reference that at all. So the Bible doesn’t really seem to reference aliens at all or extraterrestrial life. Now in the context she’s asking the question is really great because the Bible really is human-centric. It’s very much God’s desire for humans to be able to have a relationship with him, then how humans broke that relationship, and then the whole rest of the Bible is God solving this broken human relationship, ultimately culminating in the person of Jesus Christ paying the price for our sins and redeeming us. And then all of the elements with regard to judgment, with regard to the afterlife, are only referenced in the context of humans. So there’s a couple things. On earth, death came because of the humans. Romans chapter 5, wherefore is by one man sin unto the world and death came by sin. So death passed upon all men because all have sinned. That word all men is talking about mankind, humanity, right? And then there’s another verse that says wherefore it’s appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment. So it sure seems like there was no death in all of God’s creation until humans sinned. And then after that, now we all humans have one appointment, and then after that there’s the judgment. So God’s not referencing any other people groups. There isn’t any other reference of a salvation process for other extraterrestrial types, those kinds of things. So It seems to me that the Bible is very human-centric and exclusive of extraterrestrial life, but it just doesn’t reference it at all. Yeah. What’s your take on it?

Wesley:
So basically the same thing. So the Bible doesn’t, and I heard a preacher say this a long time ago, the Bible doesn’t explicitly talk about extraterrestrial life. And the preacher said, where the Bible stops, I stop. So that’s kind of how I look at it. Everyone can have an opinion on anything, but ultimately what does the Bible say is what it all comes down to. So if the Bible stops there, that’s where I stop.

Jeff:
I don’t feel the need for more. Now, I would say this. The obsession, the modern obsession with aliens, I think is going to be very useful in the end times. So I don’t think that it’s a sinful obsession, but I think it’s going to be very useful. You know, the Bible talks about how the last trumpet will sound and all the Christians, those that are dead in Christ, will rise first, and then those that remain will rise. So this rapture kind of a moment. And how would the governments of the world explain the disappearance of 2 billion people? yeah right uh the easiest way would be governments go oh it was the aliens yeah i’m not saying it was the aliens but it was the it was the aliens right and then uh at the very end as as the bible describes the battle of armageddon all the nations of the world come together to fight each other And then Jesus returns in the sky and they can visibly see him and his armies. And the armies of the world turn to fight Jesus. Who do they think they’re fighting? If they thought they were fighting their creator, they wouldn’t fight him. Right? And I think that there’s this convincing now, you know, seven years before, Hey, uh, 2 billion people disappeared because aliens alien person. And then now, Hey, look, there’s the aliens coming back. And that would be, I think maybe the, the, so it’ll be a useful tool for the antichrist perhaps in the end, not that it’s sinful to play around and watch an alien movie. Right. But it’ll be a useful tool at the end. Yeah. I’m glad you said that.

Wesley:
Cause I like alien versus predator. Yeah. All the cheesy ones, you know, the super cheesy, low budget. Well, thank you, Lisa T. That was a great question. We’re not afraid to dive into the difficult questions, so we appreciate that.

Jeff:
What a good one, yeah. You know, it was interesting. I just had the privilege of sitting down with our teenagers. I don’t know, we had maybe a hundred high schoolers.

Wesley:
That was just last week, I think. Yeah, last week.

Jeff:
It was just an open forum Q and A. So the high schoolers could ask any question and the same question came up. So it seems to be on the mind of a lot of people right now. I would say this is probably the 10th or 15th time I’ve been asked this question in the last year of Christians just asking, so where do aliens fit in? So, yeah. Great question. That’s great. It’s a fun one to talk about and think about. Now, on the other hand, do you think it’s mathematically impossible that there’s life out there?

Wesley:
Mathematically. So mathematically, so now when you move into mathematically, now you move into like Einstein and you go into probabilities. So according to probability, you would assume that it would be likely. Looking at it mathematically.

Jeff:
So it’s interesting for evolutionists, there is not enough molecules in the universe to have randomly created life. The probabilities of it. So I think it’s highly unlikely if you’re an evolutionist. But if you believe in creation and that God specially creates, then yeah, the universe is big enough I think for it. So it’s kind of a weird thing. Anyways, that’s a whole other conversation. I think we should do a whole show.

Wesley:
No, I’m joking.

Jeff:
Yeah. Okay. Well, hey, we’re going to continue on with Joseph. And there’s a pause in between the story of Joseph being sold into slavery and then now Joseph’s experience in Egypt. And during that time, Judah has an affair with one of his father’s wives or with his sister-in-law. Wasn’t it his sister-in-law? Yeah, something like that. And it was a pretty horrible story. But ultimately she winds up in the lineage of Jesus, the family tree of Jesus. So God redeems the story even though it was a terrible story.

Wesley:
Which is an awesome aspect when you think about it, the fact that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, all roads can lead back to Jesus. Yeah, which is awesome.

Jeff:
Now we have Joseph in Genesis chapter 39, and I’ll read just like 23 verses here. It says, When Joseph was taken to Egypt by the Ishmaelite traders, he was purchased by Potiphar, an Egyptian officer. Potiphar was captain of the guard for Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. The Lord was with Joseph, so he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master. Potiphar noticed this and realized that the Lord was with Joseph, giving him success in everything he did. This pleased Potiphar, so he soon made Joseph his personal attendant. He put him in charge of his entire household and everything he owned. From the day Joseph was put in charge of his master’s household and property, the Lord began to bless Potiphar’s household for Joseph’s sake. All his household affairs ran smoothly and his crops and livestock flourished. So Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. With Joseph there, he didn’t worry about a thing except what kind of food to eat. Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man, and Potiphar’s wife soon began to look at him lustfully. Come and sleep with me, she demanded. But Joseph refused. Look, he told her, my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He’s held nothing back from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God. She kept putting pressure on Joseph day after day, but he refused to sleep with her and he kept out of her way as much as possible. One day, however, no one else was around when he went in to do his work. She came and grabbed him by his cloak, demanding, come on, sleep with me. Joseph tore himself away, but left his cloak in her hand as he ran from the house. When she saw that she was holding his cloak and he had fled, she called out to her servants, and soon all the men came running. Look, she said, my husband has brought this Hebrew slave here to make fools of us. He came into my room to rape me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream, he ran outside and got away, but he left his cloak behind with me. She kept the cloak with her until her husband came home. Then she told him her story. That Hebrew slave you brought into our house tried to come in and fool around with me, she said. But when I screamed, he ran outside, leaving his cloak with me. Potiphar was furious when he heard his wife’s story about how Joseph had treated her. And so he took Joseph and threw him into the prison where the king’s prisoners were held. And there he remained. But the Lord was with Joseph in the prison and showed him his faithful love. And the Lord made Joseph a favorite with the prison warden. Before long, the warden put Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners and over everything that happened in the prison. The warden had no more worries because Joseph took care of everything. The Lord was with him and caused everything he did to succeed. Yeah.

Wesley:
Wow. It’s kind of like the major theme we see here is that the Lord was with Joseph. Like we see that over and over, like no matter where he was, that the Lord was with him. And it reminds me of that verse where the Bible says that he will never leave us or forsake us. You know, God was with him every step of the way and that we can take comfort in that, that no matter what we’re going through, it can be tough. Right. He went through some very difficult, tough situations, but God was with him in every single one of those instances. So that’s right. Yeah. It’s kind of like an overarching theme.

Jeff:
It’s my favorite part about the life of Joseph is that God was with him, God was with him, God was with him. So just to put this in perspective, this is about 1900 years before Christ. Just for people thinking, here we are, we’re 2000 years after Christ. This is almost the same amount of time before Christ that this is happening. And Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world at this point. So Potiphar being the head of the guard of Pharaoh was one of the most powerful people. Pharaoh being the king of Egypt, the emperor, whatever, the ruler. And they viewed the pharaohs as gods. So for Potiphar to be the protector of the gods, big deal. So here’s a guy that’s pretty wealthy. very substantial. He has farms and wealth and all these things, and the Bible says Joseph is sold into slavery to Potiphar. I think it’s interesting how the Bible talks about slavery often in the context of people buying people. Sometimes there’s good owners and bad owners, but the reality is, here’s Joseph as property of another human. And the Bible says the Lord was with Joseph. And those feel like almost contradictory ideas, don’t they? Yeah.

Wesley:
Yeah, but God was with them no matter what. And I just think that’s awesome when we think about it and even apply it to our own personal lives. Maybe there’s someone listening right now going through a really tough situation and they are wondering, is God still with me? Did God leave me? You know, I’ve been praying about this thing for a month and it doesn’t appear like anything has happened yet. Rest assured God is still with you. Now. Here’s the catch to that though. God doesn’t always answer our prayers The way that we ask for them. Yeah, so I can remember just as a young kid I prayed about certain things and God answered the prayer but not in the form and fashion that I thought he was gonna answer my kind of like I shared this before with how I prayed to God that I wanted to go into ministry full-time. At the time, I was working at another job and doing ministry like part-time. And now that I think back on it, it’s kind of like God was saying, are you sure you want this? Yeah, God, I want to go into ministry full-time. So the first thing that happened, the company that I work for downsized and my position was eliminated. I didn’t ask for it like this.

Jeff:
A lot of times our prayers really are prescriptions for God. It’s like we’re writing out here, this is what I need you to do for me. That’s a great way. As opposed to saying, God, whatever you want to do.

Wesley:
Which is the more scary aspect to us, even though he knows all, but we still, it seems scary to us.

Jeff:
So, you know, when I read this, humanity hasn’t changed much. This is 2,000 years almost before Christ.

Wesley:
We’re dealing with the same stuff.

Jeff:
Here we are 2,000 years after Christ. Injustices still exist, right? The Bible’s not endorsing the slavery here. It’s just acknowledging this is the condition of humanity and that, you know, Egypt was a pretty wicked nation and that’s what they did. But God was with Joseph, even in the bad conditions, even in the bad circumstances. And I think sometimes we are tempted, when something doesn’t turn out the way that we want it to, to play the victim. To say, well, I could be a great person, except this happened. I could have been a man of character, I could have been successful, I could have done a thing, but these circumstances happened, or these people held me back, or this thing happened in my life. But the thing was this, Joseph wasn’t leaning into what he felt like was fair for him. Joseph just did the best he could where he was. And the Bible said the Lord was with him over and over. You’re gonna see this as a theme. So we read it two times in this one chapter, but this is a theme of Joseph’s life, that the Lord was with him. And so he just worked hard. He was faithful for Potiphar. And, you know, sometimes the best answer in a bad situation is to be the very best you can be, and other people are going to see it, and you make a good thing out of a bad thing. One of the worst bosses I ever had I mean, I found myself sometimes just waking up in the morning depressed that I woke up and had to go to work today, you know what I mean? Horrible. But I decided, you know, I’m going to work really hard. I’m going to try to, and you know, The more I worked hard, the more reward I got, the better opportunities I had. And I began to create a little bit of peace for myself in the midst of this horrible storm that I hated, because I was overachieving. I was going beyond. I think that’s what you’re seeing with Joseph, is Joseph comes in as just a lowly slave, and he could have been blaming his circumstances, but instead he went, hey, I’m gonna do the best I can with where I’m at.

Wesley:
God blessed him. And I think there’s a point with that in verse two, the Lord was with Joseph. So he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master. Sometimes in life, you have to do what you don’t necessarily want to do for a season to get to the destination. And I think about that in my own personal life, how one of the first jobs I had was working at A&W. And one of the challenges of A&W, well, but here’s the challenge with A&W, they’re very different from like Burger King and McDonald’s. At Burger King and McDonald’s, you can make like five Big Macs and leave them on the shelf. At A&W, at least when I worked there, everything was made fresh to order. Oh, that’s good. So there was no like, I couldn’t make 10, I can’t remember what their hamburgers were called, make 10 of them and just put them on a shelf. They didn’t have a warming shelf. You literally made it and gave it to the customer. So that made it a very challenging during busy times because everything is literally being made to order. And I remember working there thinking, I don’t really want to do this. I mean, I’m getting burned by grease. One time, the huge grease traps on the side of the stove, I spilt grease over myself and the entire kitchen once. Oh no. And it took us like two, three hours to get that grease up. It was a… Disaster, but I was willing to do that because my goal was to get a car. Yeah, so I was willing to endure this horrible Working situation with people that were crazy and not and maybe you’re listening you work with a few crazy people. Let’s be honest We’ve got to tell the truth You’re going through this, this, all this stuff. But I knew this was only temporary. This wasn’t my permanent assignment. And this was going to get me to the next level. So that’s kind of how I look at it with Joseph. He endured and he did well in his job. He endured it. in this short-term season so he could get to another place.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. So he, so he did what he didn’t want to do so that he could do what he wanted to do. Right. Eventually get there. It’s same thing. Dave Ramsey talks about that with finances. Yeah. Right. Sometimes you have to decide to live like nobody else is willing to live so that later on you can live like nobody else can live. Yeah. Right. So with regard to saving and not going into debt and all those kinds of things. So I’ve heard sports players talk about that.

Wesley:
I heard like Michael Jordan and other players talk about while everyone else went home, when everyone else went to the parties, they’re in the gym shooting free throws, they’re in the gym practicing jump shots. You got to be willing to do what other people aren’t willing to do.

Jeff:
Yeah, so the key here I think is, you know, the Lord was with Joseph so he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his master, Egyptian master. So it wasn’t that God was just with him and so he succeeded everything he did. It was as he was doing what he was supposed to be doing at the time. And God was like, hey, I’m gonna bless you there. So that’s a sermon, Jeff.

Wesley:
There’s a blessing in the doing.

Jeff:
Yeah, there is. Most of God’s blessings are if-then propositions. If you do this, then I’ll do this. And so he was faithful in the situation. But then you see this faithfulness goes beyond just being a hard worker to where Potiphar’s wife, it wasn’t uncommon in that culture for owners to sleep with their slaves. And so she’s coming on to Joseph and Joseph keeps resisting and resisting, resisting. The one mistake I think I see, other than him bragging to his brothers earlier about, hey, you’re going to serve me someday, that was a mistake. I think in immaturity. In this one, there was a mistake in that he allowed himself to be alone. He kept avoiding her. But then he’s alone with her and you know, hey, when people are coming on to you, you need to create buffer zones and you need to have, or when you’re tempted by a person, you know, you find somebody attractive, you need to make sure there’s always people around you. One of the things that we’ve set up at Heritage with our staff is we have one of our values is live wisely. And we’ll talk about it sometimes. The idea of live wisely is, hey, we don’t go in cars alone. We don’t go to coffee shops alone with somebody of the opposite sex. And it’s not that I think that you’re going to fall into sin, but the optics of it are such, or the opportunity to be such. And so we just say, hey, we’re going to build into our strategy. We’re going to build into the way that we live some buffer zones so that things like this couldn’t happen, so that nobody could ever accuse us. The reason why, because you’re going to find he goes to prison. Potiphar throws Joseph in prison, not because Joseph did something wrong, but because Joseph had no witnesses. Joseph’s life could have been ruined, and in some ways was ruined, because of an accusation that wasn’t true, but because he had nobody else to back him up, he couldn’t get out of it. And so sometimes the best wisdom is to anticipate a potential problem and then head it off before that problem ever happens. And so, hey, I’m always going to have more than one person around. Whenever I travel internationally, we always travel in groups. Hey, you went to Togo with me one time, right? And we travel in groups. We don’t travel alone. All those kinds of things. And there’s a reason for that. And it’s that On my worst day, I don’t want to be tempted. On my best day, I don’t want to be accused of something I didn’t do. And so having people that are together, I think that there’s something about that, that we need to be thinking about our reputations, not just what will happen, but what could happen and prevent that.

Wesley:
And don’t be lulled into sin. I think People have a misconception, I think, of the devil. I think they think the devil is like some huge creature or something that you saw in like a horror movie. He’s coming to get you with huge fangs. If you saw that creature coming towards you, you would run the other direction. The enemy doesn’t want you to run the other direction. So, he’s going to come like, I think the Bible refers to like an angel of light. He’s going to come in a form that’s very pleasing and appealing to you. So don’t get lulled into the situation, which the Bible doesn’t say, but it kind of seems like Joseph kind of got lulled into this. Well, I could still work around her. Well, I can still do that. No, stay far away.

Jeff:
Because it says he avoided her as much as possible. Yeah. earlier, and then now here he is going, oh well. Yeah, this is just how it is. It’s like, no, keep your guard up. But then he does do the right thing. He runs. That is the right thing. Man, when you find yourself in a bad situation, run. Run from it. As a matter of fact, don’t just run from a sinful thing here. Paul says in his writings, flee even the appearance. Yeah. of evil, right? Avoid every appearance of evil. He says, flee youthful lusts. And so that idea, that’s the right answer. When you find yourself in a tempting opportunity or tempting situation, run. Don’t get in that situation, but if you do, run. Run from it as fast as you can.

Wesley:
When temptation comes your way, run the other way.

Jeff:
Well, so he goes to prison, and then while he’s in prison, God’s with him there too. So we’re going to continue throughout the week with the story of Joseph, so we look forward to having you join us the next time.