To understand life we must understand Scripture because only there do we find the words of God. The advancement of terms like “mental health” and “chronic depression” are, in fact, evidence that we’re attempting to live in God’s world on our own terms. This is like bringing a basketball to the bowling alley. It’s categorical nonsense. Man simply cannot live by “bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4) – that is, via natural sources. We must live as we were made to be – as spiritual men and women in physical bodies. To know ourselves through the lens of a philosophy that believes we’re a cosmic accident is tragic foolishness. It is God who made us. And it is God who wrote us a book!
The reckless attempt (insistence) upon living a materialistic life is the root of so much despair. A “natural” pursuit of some vocation or hobby – an art, a craft, a love like hiking or photography or sports…all are blessed only insofar as we see them as gifts from God. It’s sheer madness, a drinking of poison to the soul, to see anything under the sun as an end unto itself. Only God can fulfill us for the simple reason that we were made by and for Him!
Thus, to that end we start a study of the life of Joseph. As with all things these days, the church has fallen prey to the humanism of the times and so watered down Joseph’s epic tale as to make it only and merely about forgiveness. If we dig deeper into Scripture, though, we find life. Indeed, we find truth. And that truth sets us free because in truth we see Him standing there who is Truth itself, the great and incomparable Savior and leader of our souls, Jesus Christ.
We’ll start this study by pulling back a bit. Again, to understand the life we live now we look to Genesis. The Bible just doesn’t tell us things that happened. That’s crazy, stupid talk, my friends. It tells us spiritual things through the things that happened with the intent that we come to know our sin and, therefore, the beautiful grace that’s there for us in Christ Jesus. The grandest pursuit of one’s life in Christ should be wisdom that comes only from Him, in the perfect pages of His book and applied prayerfully to the particulars of our individual lives.
We hear Jesus say that when He spoke in parables that some would be “unable to hear (Matthew 13:13; Mark 4:12).” But this wasn’t only about what Jesus said there…it pertains to all things He says (and He is the word of God, after all). To wit:
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40).”
You see, sin and worldliness keeps us from understanding the deep things of Scripture. This isn’t something mystical, incidentally. The spiritual man isn’t an irrational man. He’s the one who starts all his reasoning upon the Rock (Proverbs 1:7; 3:5-6; 14:12). In other words, the renewed mind (Romans 12:1-2) presupposes at the outset the clear and logical fact that Jesus Christ is Lord and that means exactly what it sounds like.
So, let us hear Him loud and clear, not with sin-stuffed ears that muffle and distort the truth about God.
First, we go back to the beginning. The lessons we learn from an examination of Genesis will set the proper foundation for our understanding of life’s categories. In short, it will produce in our minds the foundations for wisdom.
A fascinating thing to learn is that God has not established three co-equal authorities on earth of family, church and state. The state, as we understand it, is not, repeat not, a biblical category but an attempt by man to rule by himself.
The idea of the state is a concession of God’s, as with divorce, to the hardness of man’s heart (Matthew 19:8-9). Like with Israel demanding a king as the other – that is, pagan, nations had (1 Samuel 8), God’s original order for life was not thus. The primary institutions were and are family and church. The category of “vengeance” is one of justice and that was to be carried out by families. God is to rule over man and not other men! In rejecting God’s word and the life of faith we literally sell ourselves into diverse kinds of slavery.
We recall that God destroyed the earth through the flood because horrific violences had overtaken the land. Listen to what He told Noah:
“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Genesis 6:11-13 ESV
When the flood recedes, Noah and his family walked off into a fresh world. Let’s listen again as the Lord speaks. His words are recorded not because they make a cool story but so that we – His saints, His church – would have the critical wisdom to understand the times!
“And I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. If a wild animal kills a person, it must die. And anyone who murders a fellow human must die. If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image. Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth.” Then God told Noah and his sons, “I hereby confirm my covenant with you and your descendants, and with all the animals that were on the boat with you—the birds, the livestock, and all the wild animals—every living creature on earth. Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.” Then God said to Noah, “Yes, this rainbow is the sign of the covenant I am confirming with all the creatures on earth.”
Genesis 9:5-17 NLT
So, we see that the Lord judged a world full of violence and that violence grew out of faithlessness. Violence isn’t the result of social “pathologies” like poverty that require a statist remedy. It grows because men and women go their own way and refuse to obey the Lord in faith. Today we see sinful man’s great and dreadful hubris wherein those who would openly flaunt their defiance of the Lord’s command of sexuality using His war-bow, the rainbow, as their symbol. Talk about picking a fight that one can’t win!
But anyway, the command then – as it is now – is to “go and be fruitful.” Sinful man sees it as risk to live in and by faith. If that sin isn’t checked by grace, it grows into the intent to play God for oneself by organizing faithlessness into human institutions that “guarantee” safety and success. You hear the echoes of Babylon in every politician and academic that speaks of security outside of God!
His command was to go and live fruitful lives of faith, organized by family. The institutions of God are, therefore, the social liberty of faith and family. Man is not God and doesn’t have absolute or metaphysical freedom. We have derivative freedom to live in His will…which is to live in faith. Today, on this side of the cross, we fulfill His will by believing on Jesus, whom He sent, and living in the obedience of faith. All of our miseries and conflicts arise due to our refusal to be in covenant faithfulness to His simple command.
Again, we read:
“These are the clans that descended from Noah’s sons, arranged by nation according to their lines of descent. All the nations of the earth descended from these clans after the great flood.”
Genesis 10:32 NLT
But quickly these clans went their own way.
Jacob and his sons lived in the lands of these scattered and unfaithful men and women who sought to live on God’s earth as though they owned it. We too live in such a land.
In Genesis 10:8-12 we learn that Nimrod had risen to be the first king of Babylon and, for all intents and purposes, the ruler of the world. This is critical. Rather than faithfulness to God, which requires humility, patience, and steadfastness, sin rises up in our hearts and we seek to rule unilaterally rather than as God’s vice-regents. Nimrod was mighty, so he used that power for his own gain. Matthew Henry comments:
“He is here represented as a great man in his day: He began to be a mighty one in the earth, that is, whereas those that went before him were content to stand upon the same level with their neighbours, and though every man bore rule in his own house yet no man pretended any further, Nimrod’s aspiring mind could not rest here; he was resolved to tower above his neighbours, not only to be eminent among them, but to lord it over them… he gathered men under his command, in pursuit of another game he had to play, which was to make himself master of the country and to bring them into subjection. He was a mighty hunter, that is, he was a violent invader of his neighbours’ rights and properties, and a persecutor of innocent men, carrying all before him, and endeavouring to make all his own by force and violence.”
This we must know. All the mechanisms of life outside of faithfulness to Christ are anti-Christ and a continuation of war on God that entered the human play in the Garden of Eden. Rather than follow the all-powerful God in faith, sinners will follow the strongmen, the Nimrods of the world who offer them food and security. Outside of living in faith under God, in families, secular man rules other men by the threat of force. And when that threat is organized enough into what we call a state government, so that only the threat is enough, and the bloodshed is mainly implied so that the streets are clean of daily carnage, we call that civilization. To understand the times of Jacob and our own consider:
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.”
Genesis 11:1-5 ESV
In this we see the secular city of man. Rather than be “dispersed over the face of the whole earth,” they plot and work to “make a name for themselves.” God’s judgement of scrambling our languages was, in fact, a merciful thing in order to “disperse” the tyranny. Secular man rules via violence and threats of it through his laws. Godly men and women live in faith, working with their hands and minds to glorify God and to serve their families and neighbors. This is the true path. The righteous one. It’s the path of faith and family, not secular humanism.
What does all of this have to do with us today…with the mechanic, the accountant, the chef, the nurse, or the student? It shows that life’s complications flow from the poisoned well of humanism – the putrid philosophy that says a man can ascend into the heavens wherein it is Christ who came down for us. In Christ alone we receive right standing with God and the forgiveness we so desperately need through faith alone, so that we may have, at long last, peace of the soul. There is nothing for us “out there” in the world that’s perishing. All attempts to reform it through secular means, and our lives included, are but the work of the mortician on a corpse.
We live as sojourners and pilgrims. We glorify and enjoy Him who saves us and follow Him in faith, working with whatever skills He’s given so that we live out our salvation. We don’t disregard the “real world” but understand it at last. And we know that it’s family and church, in the obedience of faith (Matthew 28:18-20; Romans 1:5) that are the center of the universe, not the state, which is but a concession of God to facilitate order in this age of the gospel. To change the world, to turn it upside down, let’s know Christ through His word and live out our salvation. Together!
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