If you’ve got your Bible, turn to Genesis 42 in verse six. I want to speak tonight on the subject caught between two worlds. We’re going to look at God’s man in Egypt. We’re going to look at Joseph, A young Hebrew for, that’s how he’s described in chapter 41 and verse 12 by the butler who remembers his fault and he says to Pharaoh in chapter 41, verse 12, “Now, there was a young Hebrew man with us in the prison.” We’re going to marvel at the fact that this young Hebrew rises to governorship over the land of Egypt because that’s what we read about in Genesis 42 in verse six. Now, Joseph was governor over the land. The outsider was now an insider. We have God’s man in Egypt. We have a spiritual man in a secular world and he’s caught between these two worlds, but he survives and he thrives, and I think there are lessons for you and I to learn.
William Wilberforce was one of Britain’s greatest social reformers. You’ve probably watched the movie Amazing Grace and become familiar with his story. He was a member of the British Parliament for 45 years. He was considered one of the most influential figures as you know in the abolition movement, which brought slavery to an end across the British Empire. He became a committed Christian. He was converted to Christ just a few years after he became a member of Parliament and this ushered in a crisis in his own life. He wasn’t sure whether he should continue as a member of Parliament for a couple of reasons. Number one, the evangelicals of his day were despised and derided by society and he kind of concluded it was the end of his political career anyway, to become an evangelical Christian at that time was the death kneel in your social life, in your political life. And on the other side of the crisis was the thought among the evangelicals of his day that really the best position for a Christian was to disengage from the culture.
The stance that most Christians took was to separate from the structures of political power within society, and many had spoken into Wilberforce’s life and encouraging him to do that, and so he is kind of caught in this crisis. Should he leave the Parliament or should he stay? If he stayed, he’s probably lost to some stature and prominence among his peers given the fact he’s become a wide-eyed evangelical enthusiast because the Church of England was the reigning religion within that day and they kind of looked down their noses at these kind of free church people. And then why not give himself to the ministry? Surely he would be better giving up his secular job and perhaps entering into ministerial school and giving himself to Jesus Christ fully.
But his friend John Newton, the former slave trader himself, an evangelical minister within the Church of England, he urged him not to cut himself off from his present circles of influence and he urged him not to retire from public life. In fact, two years later, as Wilberforce did continue in public life and political life, Newton said this to him in a letter, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of his church and for the good of this nation.” And God indeed had done that and history gives testimony to that fact. But I think the dilemma that faced William Wilberforce is a dilemma that many Christians struggle with to this very day. The idea of combining our commitment to God and our dedication to Jesus Christ with our involvement in the structures and workings of this world. How do we strike the balance of Jesus Christ talks of in John chapter 1117 verse 11 in John chapter 17, verse 14 through 15, where Jesus talks about how a Christian is to be in the world but not off the world.
It seems to be a balancing act that the Lord Jesus prays for and points to. And the balancing act is that we as Christians are to participate in the world without ever becoming a part of the world. That’s the dilemma. It was a dilemma that was faced by the early Christians as they moved about the Roman Empire. It was a dilemma faced by Joseph way back in the Old Testament as he moved about amidst the society and it was something that troubled the heart and teased the mind of William Wilberforce. Well, I think Joseph helps us to work this out and think this through. We’re going to be a little bit more topical because this is more implicit in the text than explicitly explained, but we know that we have God’s man in Egypt. We know from chapter 45, we know from Psalm 107 or 105, and we know from Genesis 50 that God sent Joseph into Egypt.
He’s God’s man in Egypt, and this young Hebrew is now the governor of Egypt. The outsider is now the insider within the purposes and plans of God. And I want us to look at three headings, two quickly and one a little bit more in detail. We’re going to look at the spiritual man, Joseph. We’re going to look at the secular world, Egypt. And we’re going to see that this spiritual man survived and thrived in the secular world, that God had him there for purposes that would bring great glory to God. So let’s look at that outline. Let’s just establish again the spiritual man. We’ve kind of established that as we have gone along in our series, and Moses here in the Pentateuch continually cast Joseph as a spiritual young man. He marks Joseph’s life with the preeminence of God’s glory at the center of it and a life marked by a conscious sense of God’s presence.
The glory of God was preeminent in Joseph’s life and the grace of God was present in Joseph’s life. We marked on a number of occasions how the text tells us that God was with Joseph and whatever he did, God made to prosper. Here was a life evidently marked by the benediction of God. We noted that when he comes out of prison that he immediately centers his thoughts and turns Pharaoh’s focus towards God when he’s about to interpret the dreams. He reminds Pharaoh in chapter 41 in verse 15 and 16, it is not in me and we marvel at the fact he actually emerges out of 13 years of slavery and solitude with a God focus. He’s not bitter, he’s not distracted, he’s not put off his game. He’s still following God. He’s still testifying to God’s glory and exhibiting God’s grace in his life.
Here’s a life that shines in the darkness. Here’s a life that wins over hatred. Here’s a life that defeats temptation. Here’s a life that perseveres in the face of all odds. Here’s a life that wins the eye of the world. We have read it a few times. We’ll read it a few more times. Chapter 41, verse 38, and Pharaoh said to his servants, can we find such a one as this a man in whom the spirit of God is? There was something delectable and detectable about Joseph’s faith commitment. The Egyptians saw in him what they couldn’t find in themselves. God’s glory was preeminent. God’s grace was present. Stuart Briscoe says in his commentary in Genesis, Joseph was undoubtedly gifted and highly intelligent, but it was his spiritual capacities which were of paramount importance at this moment. And Pharaoh and his court could not help but recognize it.
In fact, we noted in an earlier study that this young man whose life is marked by such spiritual depth, spiritual devotion and spiritual determination has led a number of commentators to see parallels to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see the spiritual man? Many commentators argue that Abraham is a type of God. The father who offered up his only begotten son. Isaac typified the passive obedience of Jesus Christ in yielding to the will of the Father. And Joseph exemplifies the life and ministry of Christ at many points. Franz De Leach, one of the great Old Testament commentators, and David has his commentary, said, and so do I. Every pastor worth his salt has Franz De Leach on his shelf and he says this, “If you look at the history of Joseph, quote, you find the type of the pathway to Christ. From lowliness to exaltation, from slavery, to liberty, from suffering to glory.”
Enough said because we have established this as we’ve gone along, we have marveled, marveled at the lack of bitterness in Joseph’s life. We have marveled that he hasn’t been put off his game. We find him at every turn of the corner, committed to God’s law, passionate about God’s glory. Distinct in his faith amidst a foreign culture. We’ve marveled at this young man’s commitment to God. You see the spiritual man? He’s not a compromised follower or devotee of Jehovah. His is a life with the benediction of God upon it. In Proverbs 16, verse seven, we read that when a man’s ways, please Lord, even his enemies will be at peace with him, haven’t we marveled high Potiphar took to Joseph, haven’t we marveled at high? The jailer took to Joseph, haven’t we marveled at high? Pharaoh took to Joseph. When a man’s ways pleased the Lord, even his enemies are at peace with him. Joseph’s a spiritual man, no doubt about it.
God’s glory, preeminent. God’s grace, present. In fact, going back to William Wilberforce, if you have or ever do, visit Westminster Abbey, that beautiful imposing building in London, one of the ancient cathedrals of England where you’ll find statues and memorials to such luminaries as William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth and kings and queens. You’ll find their tribute to William Wilberforce and you’ll find these words on his memory and monument. He added the abiding eloquence of a Christian life.
To the average Englishman, William Wilberforce is remembered as a social reformer. He has fixed his place in the social history of the United Kingdom, but that man who influenced and impacted the secular world was above all a spiritual man in the secular world, just like Joseph. That’s the spiritual man. What about the secular world? What was Egypt like? The text isn’t explicit about it, but there’s some implicit implicit thoughts and certainly our study of history reminds us that Egypt as a land was primarily a land of small villages inhabited by peasants. You’ll find that Joseph goes throughout the land of Egypt and he sets certain stations up for the gathering of the grain.
It was a prosperous country due to its system of irrigation and its natural resource in the Nile River, which supplied both crops and cattle certainly during the seven years of plenty. But amidst the small villages, the rose, these large cities, the city of On, we know it as Hierapolis where Ra the sun God was honored and there was Memphis devoted to Apis, the sacred bull. And so you had these burgeoning cities, although generally people populated the small villages. It was a land shackled by religious superstition. Research tells us there was 2000 gods and godesses to be numbered in Egypt. Pharaoh himself was God.
Special emphasis was put on the afterlife where the God Osiris would judge your deeds and apportion your rewards. Egypt was a land devoted as much to death as it was to life. We know about the famous pyramids and although most people lived in mud brick houses, there were these important and imposing structures made of stone that survived to this day, some of the stones and some of the pyramids just individually weigh 15 tons. What an engineering feat. I haven’t been there. My daughter Angela has and she says it’s mind-boggling just to stand at the bottom of one of these pyramids. The government was a large bureaucracy. The Egyptian priests and wise man studied the heavens, give themselves to astrology. They had developed a solar year calendar of 365 days and a quarter of a day. They were well known for their medicines. They had refined the art of embalming.
They had the equivalent of a mechanized army with their chariots. We read on Saturday with their men’s breakfast that when the Egyptians chased the Israelites to the Red Sea, they did it with 600 chariots. You say, pastor, “Why do you tell us all of this?” I just want you to realize that Joseph didn’t come to par in some pokey wee time, but he was part of a very sophisticated society and a very pagan society. So get that into your head. This spiritual man is residing and presiding in a very secular world. Secular. It’s the buzzword for today, isn’t it? Our culture is becoming more secular. How are we going to engage it? How are we going to survive and thrive in a culture that apart from a move of the Holy Spirit and revival and widespread reformation is likely to tumble into greater paganism and secularism and godlessness. And we as a spiritual people in the midst of a secular world, what are we to do? We’ll get to that in a minute, but we have established the spiritual man and we have established the secular world. Egypt’s religion was polytheistic. They were marked by pluralism.
We’ve already noted that Pharaoh himself was a God. We read about the magicians, don’t we? In chapter 41 in verse eight. They’re less scratching their heads, but Egypt was marked by magicians and astrology and paganism and new ageism before there was new ageism, its ethics where it was relativistic, anything went. You’ve got Potiphar’s wife hitting on Joseph, don’t you think of getting this young man lie with me. Come on, let’s have some casual sex at no cost, with no consequences. Got this kind of situational ethics. If it feels good, it’s got to be good. Do you see Egypt? Religiously polytheistic, ethically relativistic and in lifestyle? Materialistic. Matter was everything. You say, where do you get that? Well, I get that from Hebrews chapter 11, verse 23 where we read that for Moses to follow God’s will, what did he have to do? He had to give up the treasures of Egypt. This was an affluent advancing culture. Sophisticated, superstitious.
That’s the world in which Joseph inhabited and he had to inhabit it as a secular man. Now I’m going to get to the secular, the spiritual man in the secular world. But before I do that, let’s just remind ourselves again that when we talk about the world, we’ve got to establish a biblical understanding of that term or that thought. How does the New Testament use the word world or it’s the Greek word cosmos. Well, I think the New Testament uses that word in two ways and in one way, you and I are to engage the world and then in another way, you and I are to be separate from the world. When we speak of the world, we can sometimes speak of just the planet earth, not which God has made that which you and I temporarily dwell in. We can also extend that thought to the idea of the world of nature that God has given us to enjoy.
There is food to eat, there is water to drink, there are mountains to climb, there are oceans to seal, there are sunsets to see and all of that is fine and all of that is good and all of that is a gift from God. We’re not to detach ourselves from the physical world. The Christian life is not to be lived as some kind of dreamy idea of another world which kind of leaves you kind of half floating between that one and this one. Never fully engaged that with your feet on the ground. No, you and I are to embrace life, physical life, material life on planet earth in this world of time and space. The Bible uses the word world to speak of the people of this world, the people that God loves in Jesus Christ and give his son for them. That’s what we might call the sphere of the world and we’re certainly not to detach ourselves from that. You and I are to be legitimately engaged in that world. We’re to be concerned about its government, it’s education. We’re to be concerned about its public health. We’re to be concerned about our neighbors.
The Christian is not to have a Gnostic view of life which carries the idea that the spiritual is best of material is no good. In fact, it’s evil. I don’t get that sense from the New Testament, do you? In fact, the New Testament is written and it tells us how to order our marriages and our homes. It tells us to pray for those in authority. Paul in fact uses his political rights as a Roman citizen in Acts 16 to protect himself. That’s not beneath him as a spiritual man and an apostle of Jesus Christ. We read about Theophilus in Luke’s Gospel and the place of authority he seemed to hold within the Roman political structure.
In fact, we read that our Lord Jesus Christ seemed to be very clued into life at ground level in the trenches. He seemed to know about the everyday struggles to make ends meet. He talked about the widow’s two mites, didn’t he? Talked about the disaster of a lost coin and Luke 15, he talked about clothes that need to be patched, talked about how you could get two sparrows for the price of one. He understood. The women liked to get a bargain even back then. The Lord Jesus seems to even very clued in and very natural in his expression of the world in which he lived and others lived. We’re told to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and you and I certainly should engage that world without embarrassment.
But there’s another use of the word world in the Bible and that is the spirit of those who live within the sphere and sadly that spirit is often independent of God’s spirit. Bible tells us about the fact in James four, verse four that this world is at enmity with God. That’s a different use, isn’t it, of the word world? And we’re told to keep our distance from that world. That’s the world that undercuts the spiritual and over prices, the material, where time supersedes eternity, where man is the center of all things, not God. We’re told in Romans chapter 12 verses one through two, not to be conformed to that world, not to allow that the godlessness, the arrogance, the independence, the idolatry that marks that world, that society, that kind of behavior. You and I are not to be impressed by it or be pressed into its mold. In fact we’re told that’s the world we belong to before we got saved. According to Ephesians two, verses one through two. That’s the course of the world that we used to be part of, but now we belong to another world within this world and while we are to engage the world in the general sense of making ends meet and living our lives, there are all around us beliefs and behaviors that you and I must detach ourselves from, keep our distance about. And that’s certainly what marked the early Christians.
They were in the world but they weren’t of it. They didn’t follow the world and dress them modestly. They didn’t take the fruit of the vine and abuse it to the point of drunkenness. They didn’t seek material gain at the expense of eternal significance. And we could go on talking about that. No, they were people of the way. They lived a certain way amidst the course of this world. In fact, early Christians lived so differently that the neighboring Jews and Greeks called them the third race. They seemed like aliens and strangers, they did things differently. You and I are to bear that in mind. There is a world we are to attach ourselves to and there is a world we’re to detach ourselves from. We’re in it and we’ve got to raise our families in it. We can enjoy the food in it, we can enjoy the sights in it.
We can enjoy the blessings that are part of it in God’s common grace. But it is a cursed planet. It is a planet in rebellion to Jesus Christ. It is a planet that lies in the lap of the wicked one. And sin has infiltrated the world’s political structures, the world’s entertainment systems, the world’s idea of what’s good, to such an extent as the prophet Isaiah says, “They call good bad and call bad good.: It’s a messed up world, a topsy-turvy world, morally and philosophically. And the Christian’s got to keep his head straight and realize, okay, I’m here but my affections are somewhere else.
And his book The Cultural Shift, Al Mohler talks about Aristotle and how Aristotle described our challenges. The problem of a fish in water, knowing nothing but life in the water. The fish never even realizes it’s wet. This describes the situation, says Mohler of many Christians in America, they do not even know that they are wet. And his point there is somebody, if we’re not careful, we can become so adjusted to that which is around us. We don’t realize how worldly we have become or how worldly we are becoming. Instead of being spiritual men and women in the secular world, we are increasingly becoming secular people in a godless society.
No, the Christian must be like the fish who lives in the salty sea, but who does not taste salty. Isn’t it amazing when you sit down on a nice piece of snapper or salmon or whatever it is or halibut, that fish which is swam its whole life in briny salty water doesn’t taste like salt. You and I need to be like that. We need to live our whole lives here. We’re in the world but the world’s not in us. Which brings us to this idea. What about the spiritual man in the secular world? What about the spiritual man in the secular world? Well, there are a number of responses that I think across the years Christians have exhibited and Christians have expressed.
Joseph engaged the culture without becoming entangled in the affairs of this world, to borrow Paul’s words to Timothy. Joseph was in Egypt at least up until this point for 17 years, but Egypt was not in him. His ethics were different, his demeanor was different, his commitments was different, his world view was different, his behavior was different. He was in Egypt without Egypt seeping into him. And when you get to chapter 50, which we will in the new year, you’re going to find out that Joseph wants his bones to be carried to Canaan. He doesn’t want to be buried in. What does that tell you? For all the time his feet was in Egypt, his heart was in Canaan, which is a great analogy of where Paul will drive some of his thinking in his epistles when he writes to the churches that you’re in Christ, to the saints that are in Philippi, in Christ Jesus.
Their feet was in Philippi, but their heart was in heaven. Colossians tells us that. Set your affections on things above. While you live below, set your affections on things above. So while Joseph’s feet was in Egypt, his heart was in Canaan. He was a spiritual man the whole time he was in this secular world, he engaged it, he infiltrated it, he impacted it without compromise, without contamination, he remained unspotted from that society, which is James’s words to us, right? Pure religion is to what? Take care of the widow and the orphan and to remain unspotted from the world. In it, but not often. And here’s three responses. Two of them are bad and one of them is good. Here’s three responses when it comes to the spiritual man in the secular world. Number one is isolation. Don’t take to this path, but there are Christians who have taken to this path. They favor this approach to engaging the world, which is really detachment from the world. There is no engagement. In order to remain unspotted from the world, they avoid any kind of contact.
But you see, holiness is contact without contamination. Holiness is not utter separation, physical detachment, living apart from society in some kind of commune or in some kind of deranged or detached mindset. But that temptation to detach yourself physically and almost completely to limit your contact with the world in terms of even touch and taste has been taken to some extremes. Studying middle ages monasticism and you’ll meet some interesting characters like the medieval Saint Moran who spent 11 years in a hollowed out tree trunk for the glory of God. Macarius, the younger sat naked. Don’t know why he sat naked, but he sat naked in a swamp for six months until mosquitoes bit him to such an extent that he looked like a victim of leprosy.
And then there was the famous Simon Stylites, right? You’ve heard of him, spent listen 30 years on top of a 60 foot pole and for this achievement, he was sainted, I think by the medieval church. It was this idea that you know what to be holy was to separate yourself from the world and the holier were the less you touched it, the less you tasted it, the less you engaged it. And so what does the spiritual man do in the secular world? How does he remain unspotted? He withdraws. He can withdraw physically, which is the case with the monastics and he can withdraw mentally disengage, show no interest in the world around him. And that’s a temptation still to this day, many Christians today don’t know what’s happening in the world. They don’t care. They just survive and they do church work. They bond together like babes in the woods to protect themselves.
They have few unsaved friends and no very little legitimate social involvement, but that’s certainly not the pattern Jesus showed us, is it? In fact, Jesus rubbed shoulders with the world to such an extent that the religious snotty-nosed people of his day called him a glutton and a drunkard, not that he was either of those things, but he certainly associated himself with people who tended to push the limits. And you know what? You’re defined by the company you keep. And you know what? Jesus kept coming with people like that so we can conclude that he was a glutton and a drunkard. Lord Jesus Christ didn’t withdraw from society and he actually, he prayed that for his own disciples. This idea of isolation is not the pattern. Jesus said, “Father, I don’t pray that you’ll take them out of the world, but you’ll keep them from the evil that is in the world.”
They’re in it, but they’re not going to be off it. In fact, Paul has to explain himself in first Corinthians five, if I can find the verse, I think it’s verse nine, where he has addressed the issue of sin within the church and the need to separate from disobedient believers who are like leaven in a lump of dough. They’re spreading about influence and the church has to cut them out through discipline and purge themselves of the disobedient believers so that they may repent and the testimony of the church may be protected. But he says in verse nine of first Corinthians five, “I write to you in my epistle not to keep company with the sexually immoral person, yet I certainly did not mean the sexually immoral people of this world or with the covetous or the extortion or the idolater since then you would need to go out of the world.”
He’s saying, “Look, I’m talking about believers. I’m talking about dealing with false professors or real Christians that need to be disciplined for God’s glory and for their good.” I’m not talking about you’re going to have to go to the office and sit beside the person that boasts of what they did at the weekend and certainly doesn’t blush about their exploits. You’re going to have to put up with that and your kid’s going to have to play with somebody in the street who uses bad language. If you’re going to not let your kid play with that kind of person, you’re not going to go to work with that kind of person. God may take you to this world because they’re everywhere. That’s the world you live in. It’s made up with this kind of people and you’re to be among them but not like them. You’re to be with them but not off them.
But we can tell from this, Paul’s reminding us that certainly physical separation, detaching yourself from any kind of social discourse or social interaction from your society is an impossibility and it’s certainly not the path for the Christian. I look back on my early days in Jesus Christ and I think I made some very major mistakes in that I quickly broke away from friendships that I had and there were some of those I needed to break from to retain my testimony and the glory of Jesus Christ. But at the same time, I burned so many bridges to the very people that as I sat at church on a Sunday morning, pastors tell me they’re the kind of people you got to touch for the glory of God. And it’s a balancing act and it’s not an easy one. And in fact, I would have to put this caveat that there is a time and a place to completely separate from the world physically. We saw it when Joseph left Potiphar’s wife. The situation was so threatening to his purity and his profession that the sins were so egregious and the attacks were so aggressive that there was a place for Joseph to separate himself from that situation. There are places and there are situations that a Christian cannot be part of. You and I need to use some discernment in that, but isolation as a pattern of life is not way to go.
There’s a second path. It’s not isolation, it’s insulation. These are sisters and brothers to an extent, and the difference is the one is physical and the other is emotional. There’s another approach where we’re okay, we don’t detach ourselves from the world. You’ll find us out among people. We don’t live a monastic life. We will be out among our neighborhood. But you know what? While we’re there physically, we’re pretty detached emotionally. We’re insulating ourselves. We don’t want to get caught up in people’s problems so we can insulate ourselves from their problems and their pains and that’s another approach and I’m not sure it’s any better. In fact, that might be the very path that we see in the story of the Good Samaritan. I don’t want to make more of it than needs to be made. But we read, don’t we have the Levite and the priest who when they see the man lying by the side of the road, what do we read about them? They passed on the other side.
They didn’t get involved. It may be speculation, but it’s worth the thought and we got to be careful with conjecture on the text. But Gary Inrig in his book on the parables suggests that certainly when it comes to the priest, if not even the Levite, that there may be some good reasons why they didn’t get involved. Maybe the priest thought, you know what looks like a dead person to me, it means somebody that’s really been knocked out unconscious, at least to the physical eye maybe looks as much dead as alive. And according to Leviticus chapter 21, verses one to four, if you touch a dead body, you’re contaminated and you got to go through a whole ceremonial rigmarole to get cleansed again. And it could be according to Inrig that the priests were on rotation. Many of them lived outside Jerusalem. And so the likelihood is this guy had gone, done his work was on his way home. If he touched the dead body, he got contaminated. He’d have to go back into Jerusalem, get all cleaned up to make the same journey home and his wife and his kids were waiting for him. Possible.
The other side is actually he could be going the other way maybe in the work and he really doesn’t have time to get involved. He’s got better things to do. He’s got to serve the Lord. The sacrifices have got to be prepared and the lamps have got to be lit and the high priest’s garments have got to be put out and me ready. There’s some possibility to that idea. And if there is, then it’s the fear of contamination and the fear of complication that him, he kind of insulates himself and he walks on the other side of the road and he insulates himself for good religious reasons, but that’s not how Jesus sees it, right? Jesus makes the hero of this story, the villain of Jewish society, the Samaritan who actually gets his hands dirty, bandages the guy up takes him down to the motel six offers to pay for a month’s stay and Jesus said, “That’s what you ought to do with your neighbor and don’t be hiding behind a cloak of religiosity and religious reasons as to why you don’t touch a bleeding broken world.”
And I think that’s a challenge, isn’t it? To you and I. I like the story that Charles Schultz tells of Linus in a conversation with Charlie Brown and he asks Charlie what he’s going to be or Charlie asks him what he’s going to be when Linus grows up and he says a doctor. He said, “You can’t be a doctor because you don’t love humanity.” To which reply comes, “I do love humanity. It’s just people I can’t stand.” And in theory we do love people, but in practice we insulate ourselves from them as spiritual people in a secular world. In fact, understand me here, don’t misunderstand me. I think sometimes we look at people through a theological lens and then self-righteousness, we keep ourselves at a distance. Let me give you an example. What about an AIDS victim? How do you and I look at an AIDS victim? Well, there’s two ways to look at them.
You can look at them theologically and you and I would agree from Romans chapter one that he has indeed inherited the world wind, which is of his own making, and he burrs in his body the judgment of God for flagrantly disobeying the good law of God and we would be correct to conclude that. That is to understand his predicament correctly and theologically, but do we see him different when we stand beside his hospital bed and his life is ebbing away and you see the emptiness in his eyes and the fear in his heart about an unknown future and a life cut short. So easy sometimes to insulate ourselves for theological reasons and for good reasons. And we either detach ourselves from the world and insulate ourselves because we make ourselves busy in the Lord’s work or we simply look at society’s problems and we look at it simply in a detached theological manner and we are left feeling good about ourselves, but I’m not sure we’re left looking like the Lord Jesus and I’m not sure we’re engaging the world in a way that glorifies him.
A couple of years back, my dad told me a story that happened in the estate. I grew up in Rathcoole a few years ago, and you probably don’t understand the politics of it, but a number of Protestant terrorist groups get involved in a bit of a civil war and they started to take out some of their own commanders and there were a number of shootings that were gone on a regular basis and there was one particular guy that was shot dead by the name of John Gregg. We knew him as Grug. I remember him as a young boy. Everybody feared him. He went about our estate. He was an imposing man. He always went about with two German shepherds, what we called Alsatians. You didn’t want to mess with this guy. He was one of the ones that was shot. He was a leading Protestant terrorist and my dad learned that am amazingly, he had sent two of his kids to an evangelical church for Sunday school training and my dad had learned because my dad was involved in local politics in that estate that not one represented from that church visited that home or went to that funeral and I kind of was buckled.
Maybe nobody wanted to be associated with the home of one of the leading Protestant terrorists in Northern Ireland, but on the other hand, what an opportunity to get involved in a family. Maybe they didn’t want to be seen in the complications that came with perhaps being misunderstood, but that’s to miss an opportunity. You and I need to stop insulating ourselves and isolating ourselves from a culture that God wants us to impact. Which brings us to the last thought, infiltration. Infiltration. That’s the approach that Joseph exemplifies. Now, I know Joseph had no choice, but I’m not sure that robs the point of its power. Joseph got involved. Joseph engaged the culture he was in and we know that God’s hand of blessing was on him and God used him in a marvelous way and God intended to use him for God had sent him according to Genesis. 45 and he was in this society without being off it. And that seems to be what God wants from you and I.
He doesn’t want us to isolate ourselves physically. He doesn’t want us to insulate ourselves emotionally. He wants us to infiltrate the society and make a spiritual impact on the people that are part of a world that is in rebellion to God. God’s man was within God’s plan in godless Egypt. And it seems to me, if you take Jesus’ metaphor of the salt, we realize that is the path. That is the stance the Christian must take in terms of his engagement with the world. We are the light of the world and we are the salt of the earth and if you take that metaphor, you realize that salt doesn’t work unless it penetrates the substance on which it acts, and you and I are salt and we’ve got to rub ourselves into the wounds of this world.
Jesus sent his disciples out as sheep among wolves, not isolated from them, not insulated from them. This world is a dangerous place, but God has placed us here and Jesus has prayed that God the father wouldn’t take us out but keep us from the evil that is here so that we indeed might be lights amidst the perverse and wicked generation. We read about that, don’t we? In Philippians chapter two in verse 16, holding fast the word of life so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ. Where are they to hold that word of life fast? Verse 15, you are to become B, blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.
Look at those words. In the midst and among you get the same thought, don’t you in one Peter chapter two in verse 12, we can break in at verse 11. Behold, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may buy your works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. We are to engage those around us for the glory of God. We are to take the gospel to them in word and in deed, and they ought to observe us. They ought to hear us, they ought to watch us and see God and see grace.
That’s what Jesus is driving at, isn’t he? In the passage we have already touched on in Matthew chapter five and verses 14 through 16, listen to these words again. You are the light of the world. A city that is sat on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket mean if God wants us in the world, he didn’t put us here to be a light with a basket on top, which can be four walls and a church roof or it can be a study group or it can be a homeschooling group, it can be a Christian school. It can be a whole lot of things that take into an extreme that has its place and has good ends. Taking an extreme leaves us like a light with a basket where we’re not out among, with the people we are actually to take the gospel to.
No, we’re to be like a light on a lamp. Stand our lights to shine before men that they may see, not hear of, not read about, but actually see. See your good works. How are they going to see your good works? If you isolate yourself from them? How are they going to see your good works and be impacted? If they detect right away from you, you have no interest in them. Now we’ve got to be among them. We’ve got to engage them. We’ve got to have a heart for them and they’ve got to see God at work through us. When people saw Joseph at work, they saw God in action. And when people see us at work, at work or wherever they find us or wherever we find them, they should see God in action. They should see conduct worthy of the gospel. They should see the values and ethics of God’s kingdom being fleshed out before their very eyes and it should be in their face and it should bring conviction. It should bring confrontation and then sometimes it’ll bring conflict.
The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and that’s where God wants us. Listen to these words by George Macleod. I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I’m recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves on a town’s garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse in soldiers gamble because that is where he died and that is what he died about. That is where the church may not to be and what church may not to be about. It’s a very challenging quote.
We’ve already established that we need to put certain limits and qualifications and boundaries to that. I’m not sure that that would call you and me to go into a strip club for Jesus’ sake or to sit in the company of people who are getting drunk and evil is being perpetrated. I don’t think we’re saying that, but we are saying where we can legitimately engage the culture, where we can meet people where they’re at. We’ve got to meet them on their terms. Paul says in one Corinthians nine, he became a slave to them. So often our idea of evangelism or our idea of reaching the world, we want to make them slaves to us. Paul actually says he became a slave to men, so he might win some. We’ve got to meet them where they’re at, confront them with the gospel, love them for Christ’s sake and impact the world that God has placed us in.
When Oliver Cromwell was persecuting his war, prosecuting his war would be the word, during the Civil War in England, he was running low on funds to finance the war effort, and as he talked to a number of his generals, they told him that all that was available to them were some of the silver crosses and some of the gold statues that they had taken from some of the high churches that they despised throughout England. And Cromwell said, “Well then take the saints and melt them down and put them into circulation.” I think that’s a word that God would have for us. God wants to melt us down. He wants us to become broken by what is breaking others. He wants to melt us down and he wants to put us into circulation.
We’re in this world until Jesus comes, and then we’ll be taken out of it. But until then, we’re to be in it without being off it. We’re to be spiritual people in a secular world, living lives that are driven by God’s word, guided by God’s spirit, and lived for God’s glory. Let’s pray and we’ll finish up tonight. Lord, we thank you for the strategic nature of a night like this. We’re actually at the mid-week point in the week. We can disengage from all the affairs everyday life. We’ve left our homes behind tonight, we’ve left our office desks behind. We’ve left our workstations behind, and tomorrow morning if Jesus tires, we’ll find ourselves in other people’s company. We won’t enjoy the rarefied era of a night like this where we sing to your glory and enjoy wholesome conversations and the blessing of Christian fellowship. All these things are to be treasured.
But tomorrow we’ll go into harsh environments. We’ll find ourselves in a world governed by different ethics. We’ll hear your name blasphemed. We’ll watch your law being trampled upon. We will encounter strongholds where man’s imagination and philosophy has thumbed itself in the face of God. But that’s where you want us. Help us to influence it, not be influenced by it. Help us to be a good witness tomorrow. Help us to stand for Jesus Christ tomorrow. Help us to pity those around us who are without God and without Christ, who are what we once were, lest we forget that. Lord, help us not to isolate or insulate. Help us to infiltrate, to be salt and light in the world. Shall we Ask and pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.