Temptation, Suffering, and the Greater Will of God
Transcript
Good morning. Y'all, that was some worship. That was good. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Genesis 39 today.
We are in the Joseph narrative. We're in the back stretch, the home stretch of Genesis. And we are following the story of Joseph. We're going to be on page 19 in our Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. We want you to have a Bible that you can read at home, but it will be on page 19.
All right, so we've been in Joseph for the past couple of weeks. We started off the Joseph story, and we're introduced to Joseph. He's one of the 12 sons of Jacob. Joseph, he was the favorite. He was loved by his father so much so that he gets this technicolor, this rainbow coat that probably would have looked really tacky to us, but back in the ancient Near East, probably would have killed it. He gets this coat, kind of shows that he is the favorite, and then God starts giving him dreams.
And these dreams are prophetic, and he's explaining them to his brothers and his dad that these dreams are one day they're all going to bow down to him. And that doesn't go well for him. His brothers get jealous. They beat him up, throw him in a pit, plan to kill him, but his brother Judah steps in and says, no, let's sell him into slavery. We can make some money off this. So Joseph went away, and while he was away last week, we walked through Genesis 38, which is the story of Judah, that God, out of all the brothers, chooses the most broken one, the most messed up one, to bring about his line.
That's ultimately what we see, is that Jesus comes through the line of Judah, and now we're back to Joseph. And we're following Joseph down to rock bottom. His story builds you up, or breaks you down to build you up later. It's a classic rags to riches story. One of the earliest ones I remember, as far as rags to riches stories goes, was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I remember in middle school being assigned to read it, and I was like, man, that book is that thick.
So I did what every other kid did back in middle school. I went to Books A Million, and I got the Cliff Notes. And I read the Cliff Notes. And y'all, the Cliff Notes is a good story. Like, it's a really good story. It only needs to be that long.
But it's like a classic rags to riches. Pip is this little orphan, and he gets some good luck. He gets a benefactor. He rises through the ranks of English society. And he lives happily ever after. He gets the girl of his dreams.
We love stories like that. If you were like me, and you didn't like to read stories like that, but you'd like to watch all of the movie. I got to watch all of The Pursuit of Happiness. And that's another classic rags to riches story. It's a true story. Will Smith, he plays this guy that in the 80s lost everything.
Him and his son had to live homeless on the street as he was doing an internship at a brokerage. And it's like 90 minutes of Will Smith getting his teeth kicked in. And five minutes of he made it. Yay. And it just kind of breaks you down and builds you up. Joseph is a little bit better.
We get some more chapters with some more length of how he's going to rise. But today we're going to follow him to rock bottom. So we're in Genesis 39. And in this story today specifically, we're going to see that he undergoes sexual temptation. And I want to spend some time in this today because we're in an overly sexualized culture. And the Bible has some stuff to say about it.
So we're going to spend some time in that. When we take a step back from it, we're going to see that all the suffering, all the trials that Joseph is undergoing is part of a bigger plan that is in play. So let me pray. And then we will jump into the text. God, thank you so much that you've given us your word, that we get to open it every Sunday. Be exposed to the gospel.
Be exposed to you. God, I pray that you would speak to us in this story. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.
Verse 1. Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. So let me pause for a moment. I want to point out something the text clearly highlights. Joseph is about to, he's in suffering, he's about to suffer.
He is in a whole bunch of mess, and it makes it clear the Lord is with him. The Lord does not abandon his people, no matter the situation. So whatever mess that you may be in life, God is with us, for those of us who have trusted in Christ. He is with Joseph. Verse 3. It picks up.
His master saw that the Lord was with him, and the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him. And he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time that he had made him overseer in his house over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field. So he left all he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food that he ate.
All right, so Potiphar is the one that purchases him ultimately. Potiphar is an officer of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the king. He's the ruler of Egypt. And he's not just an officer. He's a captain of the guard.
So he is a high-ranking official in the Egyptian government. So we're already starting to see here that God has a plan for Joseph. He doesn't get sold to just anyone. He gets sold to this high-ranking official. And he starts to make Potiphar rich. And Potiphar realizes this.
He's like, your God is making us successful. And every bit of success that Joseph had rolls over into Potiphar. Potiphar becomes so successful that he hands over the keys to his business empire to Joseph. So that the only thing he has to worry about is his next meal. And y'all, that is crazy successful. Because you asked me, hey, man, how are things going?
How's real estate? How's the church? And I said, man, deals are going well. These sermons preach themselves. Let me tell you what I'm concerned about. Breakfast.
Duck donuts in the morning. Cafe strudel for brunch. I don't know. Like, real Mexico for lunch. I mean, Libby's. I mean, dinner.
I got options for days. And I don't really, I mean, if I start rolling into that, you'd be like, okay, this is weird. You must have some success. The only thing that you worry about is your next meal. And that's Potiphar. He is growing successful.
He's handed it all over to Joseph. Everything is going well until it's not. Verse 6. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, behold, because of me, my master has no concern about anything in the house.
And he has put everything he has in my charge. He is not greater in the house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her to lie beside her or to be with her. So Joseph, Joseph is starting to make lemonade out of this situation.
Things are starting to go well. And then his handsome form catches the eye of Potiphar's wife. And it's about to get messy. There's a couple layers to how messy the situation is. The first deals with sexual temptation. Potiphar's wife repeatedly solicits herself, repeatedly offers herself.
It is direct at the start. She says, lie with me. And we get messages like that all the time in our culture, that sexual temptation can be direct. That it shows up on the internet. You are only a click away from being solicited into sexual immorality, into a whole world of broken sinfulness and sexual temptation that leads to sexual sin. We're a click away.
And with smartphones, there are apps for days. There are like 8 billion dating apps that are designed to invite you into this casual hookup culture where sex has been so detached from the way that God created it that it was deeply spiritual, meant for a husband and a wife, for the procreation of children, for the enjoyment of one another and intimacy. It's been so detached from that that there's all kinds of tech companies that are trying to profit off of it. I mean, Facebook. Facebook used to be like, oh man, look at his family. Look at that guy I went to high school with.
What a beautiful family. Look at his kids. Man, it's great. So like old flings soliciting you, like sending messages in your inbox, porn bots reaching out to you. There's no safe space anywhere on the internet. And it's gotten so casual that it's not uncommon to hear stories, even in office environments where someone is just asking, soliciting themselves for casual sex.
It is direct. We see it all over our culture. Over and over again, we see direct messages. And when it's not direct, it's subtle. It's subtle temptation. That's what Joseph also got.
It says, and she spoke to Joseph day after day and he would not listen to her. To lie beside her or to be with her. So she makes the appeal, lie with me. And then she says, no, just lie beside me. Just come join the bed. Lie beside me.
It's subtle. It lures you in. It's just coffee. It's just lunch. It's just text messaging. It's just messaging back and forth.
Lie beside me. We will justify ourselves that it's just coffee, that it's just a drink, that it's just a meal. It's just messages. Yeah, there's some sexual jokes that got thrown in. It's not that big of a deal. It lures you in like a frog on a slow boil.
The old wives tale, for those of you that like cooking frogs, was that if you want to cook a frog, you don't just throw it in boiling water. That you put it in a normal pot of water and you slowly turn up the heat. And it won't do that. The frog will just stay in and it slowly turns up the heat until finally it doesn't realize that it's been boiled. And that is us. As coffee rolls over into someone's place, as lunch turns into more intimate meetings, as messages turn more intimate, it lures you in slowly.
Slowly, until you have slowly boiled over from sexual temptation into sexual sin. The reality is that no one is immune to it in this culture. It is all over the place. That's why we need to take the Proverbs seriously. The Proverbs has a lot to say on this. There's one passage I love in 721-22 that says, Whether direct or subtle, sexual temptation lures us into impurity, into sexual immorality, into adultery.
And what that can ultimately do is for those of us who say we love Jesus, it lures you down a road that you may never return from. And if you reject Jesus all together on that road, that ultimately leads you to death in hell. Like an ox to the slaughter. That is what Joseph was facing day in, day out. But that's not the only layer that makes this messy.
You see, the second layer that makes this worse is that Joseph is a slave. There is an imbalance. There is a power imbalance here. She is a free woman and she's not just any free woman. She's the free woman wife of a powerful official. And Joseph doesn't have certain rights.
This is so picturesque of what we discovered a couple of years ago that was at the heart of the Me Too movement. That a couple of years ago, our nation's eyes were open to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories that came out that showed the brokenness of this world and how it has been for thousands of years. That there are those in power and authority who objectify, who harass, who assault. And some of you have seen this and some of you have been through this. And I am sorry. I'm sorry that we live in a broken world where this is the reality.
I'm sorry for some of you that we're not able to escape this. But we're stuck in this. Let me say very clearly. God is judge. And that one day Jesus will sit on the throne. And every single wrong will be answered for.
You can take that to the bank. The Bible gives us the picture that Jesus is a judge who will judge all of these wrongs. But the Bible also gives us people that we can empathize with. Joseph being one of them. Joseph knows what it's like every day to go to work thinking, I'd just like to do my job and being harassed over and over and over again. Wondering if you say the wrong thing, what is that going to do to your standing?
Wondering who you can talk to. Wondering if anyone is going to believe you. Feeling powerless. Let me also say clearly, if that is you, if you are currently in that situation, we want you to come and talk to us as pastors. Because you do not need to be in that. We want to be able to help you out of that situation.
This is the situation of many. This is the situation of Joseph. So how does he respond to the sexual temptation? How does he respond to this abuse of power? He responds by declaring truth. He has three points of truth.
He says that this would be an abuse of trust with Potiphar. He says he has put everything in my charge. He's like, I'm not going to abuse the trust that I have. He's given me everything. I'm not going there. Then he says, you are his wife.
He makes the point, this would be an offense against Potiphar. I'm not going to sin against him. And then he makes a third point. He says, how am I going to sin against God? He says, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? He ultimately sees what is true about the Bible, that all sins ultimately and primarily are a sin against God, and he's not going to do it.
He responds with truth. He speaks truth into the situation. And I want to expand this category for us. I actually want to take a moment to step away from the story and as a pastor talk to you guys because every season I see different people in our church that are wrestling with this, that are fighting sexual temptation. So I want to expand Joseph's categories that he gives of truth, and I want to give five ways that we can battle sexual temptation, that it might not roll over into sexual sin.
And the first one being, cultivate a deep love for Jesus. Cultivate a deep love for Jesus. If we are so in love with God, if we are worshiping Him, if we are delighting in Him and enjoying Him, if we are doing that well, seeking Him in worship, in word, in prayer, if we're doing that, when sexual temptation comes, we'll see it for what it is, that it's gross, that it leads to death, that it does not satisfy. That's why we say over and over again in our church that we believe that Jesus is better than everything else is because we want to believe that, even in the midst of temptation, that we might see that He is better.
That is your primary way. If you're enjoying God, you can absolutely take sexual temptation and push it to the side. But there are going to be seasons where we are not doing that well. Let me give you a second way to fight this. The second way is to memorize and quote Scripture. Memorize and quote Scripture.
Psalm 119.11 says, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. That's the hope, that we might know God's word, that we might hide it deeply in our hearts, that we might be able to use it to combat sexual sin in all temptation. That's what Jesus does when He's being tempted in the wilderness by Satan. He quotes the Old Testament, fires back, uses the Bible as a weapon. That's what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 6 when he says, put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. He gets to the sword of the Spirit, which is imagery for God's word.
That you might use it as a weapon, that you might use it as a weapon to defend yourself against evil. Store up the word in your heart. Have some fighter verses memorized that you might be able to repeat them in a moment's notice. Third, pray for an escape. Pray for an escape. 1 Corinthians 10.13 says, No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.
God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. That's been taken out of context. And people will say, God doesn't give you any more than you can handle. Sometimes He does. So that's not what the passage is getting at.
What He's saying is, is that when you are being tempted, if you pray, God will give an escape. That needs to be our heart. That we would pray, as Jesus prays, lead me not into temptation. That we might not engage in sin. That we might find an escape. 4.
Invite church family in. Invite church family in. We are not meant to walk in this alone. The reality is, is in an over-sexualized culture, where all of us have faced this, and all of us have fallen in some form or fashion. You are not alone. If you have stuff hidden, the Bible calls you to bring it to the light.
As 1 John 1, 5-10 teaches, that we might walk in the light together. That brings true fellowship with the body, and also helps expose light to darkness. There are times, there are seasons in my life, where I'm asking the people in my life, whether it's Chet in the office, or the guys in my group, hey, this is what's going on. Can you pray about this? Can you also ask me about this in three weeks? We are not meant to walk in this alone.
Invite church family in. Fifth, fear God. Fear of God is important in battling sexual temptation. Now that is not popular in our culture. It is not popular to uphold the fear of God, to uphold the wrath of God, but it is vital in your fight against sexual temptation. That's what Joseph ultimately does.
He says, I'm not going to sin against God. That's what Jesus teaches in Matthew 5, when he's teaching specifically on this. He says, If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, throw it away from you, for it's better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, then your whole body be thrown into hell. And the reason why that's important is because in seasons where you're not cultivating a deep love for Jesus, when you're not remembering his word to use it, when you're not praying well, when you're not inviting people in, you know what will help? Fear of God. Because flames are hot.
It is deeply helpful for me in those seasons to remember that eternal flames are hot, and I don't want any part of that. I want Jesus. So we are called to use fear of God as a means to battle this. And then Joseph gives us a bonus one in how he responds. Verse 11. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment saying, Lie with me.
But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. So Joseph's working, gets in a situation where he is alone. It says she caught him by his garment. That isn't just, oh, she grabbed his garment. The idea in the Hebrew is that she grabbed and seized his garment, and she pulled him in and said, Lie with me. Now there's no amount of declaring truth in this moment.
It's going to help. She's got him by his outer garments. They would have had outer robes with a sash, and then there have been inner garments that have been more like long underwear, like a long gown. She has his outer garments in hand. And he does one of the more biblical responses to sexual temptation. He books it.
He flees. He runs from the situation, so much so that she's got his garment. He like wiggles his way out, just has the inner garment on, and books it, and leaves with his garment left in her hand. That's what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 6, 18, when he says, Flee sexual immorality. When everything else fails, when all defenses have been exhausted, run. That's the biblical picture.
Run. If you are single, if you are not in a covenant marriage, and you are dating someone, and you put yourself in a compromising situation, run. If you're on the couch, if you're in the car, get out. Flee. That's the command. Run from sexual temptation.
When the culture is wooing you, and saying, Explore your sexuality. Explore sexual freedom. I want to plead with you. There are millions of people who have gone down that road, and have never come back. Run. Flee.
When your phone is tempting, and you are scrolling, drop it. Run. Flee. Whatever situation you are in, or you are feeling this, the last line of defense is to run. Get out. Flee.
We have got to start taking sexual temptation, and sexual sin seriously, because it will kill us. I have a son who's two. We do fires in the backyard. We have this fire pit, and my daughter, she knows when the fire is going, and she's kind of a timid person in general. She stays far enough back, but my son is like a bug, led to a bug zapper. I mean, he just, he sees the flames, and it's not like he just runs into it.
He just slowly, you know, gets closer and closer, and I've got to pull him out. I've got to yell at him, because he doesn't realize, that if he gets close enough, it will mar him. It will kill him. And that is the same with us. If we are not careful, we will get lured in, and we will not survive. And we need to treat it with the seriousness that the Bible treats it, and respond like Joseph.
Joseph responds righteously, but as we're going to see next, his righteous response leads to more suffering. Verse 13. And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and had fled out of the house, she called to the men of her household, and said, see, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice, and as soon as he heard that, I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me, and fled, and got out of the house. Now she has made up a rape allegation.
And what's worse is, is she's got evidence. This false allegation, she's got his garment. And this is a big deal. It's a big deal, period. It's a big deal for him, because Joseph is a slave. He does not have certain rights.
She is a free woman, and she's accusing him. And in his culture, he can be put to death for this. And she adds to it. It wasn't just the attempted rape. It was, he's making a mockery of our family, and a shame on our culture. That's a big deal.
And there's a little bit of a racist tinge there. This Hebrew, who is going to make a mockery of us. All of the goodwill that Joseph has stored up is about to be exhausted as soon as Potiphar gets home. Verse 16. Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home.
And she told him the same story, saying, The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house. As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, This is the way your servant treated me. His anger was kindled. And Joseph's master took him and put him into prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in prison.
So Potiphar hears this, and justifiably, he gets angry. But he doesn't kill him. He throws him into the king's prison. And I want us to imagine how Joseph would have felt. I mean, he was sold into slavery by his brothers. He worked his tail off for years to work his way up in this household, only to do the right thing and end up suffering regardless.
Sometimes suffering is so unfair. Sometimes you do the right thing and you still suffer. Sometimes we suffer because of our own mistakes. But there are situations when you respond the way you're supposed to and you still suffer the consequences. I love movies that do this. I love stories that bring out this feeling because there's a feeling in all of us when we see unjust suffering that just makes us mad, that makes us upset.
I love stories that do this. There are two movies that we watched all the time growing up, my stepdad and I. We watched them when they come on TNT. My mom would literally get out of the chair and leave because we watched them so many times she was tired of seeing them. We watched Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Two Stephen King novels made into awesome powerhouse movies.
Both capture the same thing. The Green Mile is about a man that, it's about prison guards that are on death row. They're supervising death row. There's a new prisoner that comes in. He's accused of killing two little girls in a pretty horrific manner. And he's big and he's scary at first, but the more they get to know him, they see that he's softer.
And then they start to see there's actually something miraculous about him, something angelic almost. He starts performing these miracles and they slowly begin to realize there's no way he committed these murders. And towards the end of the movie, you realize there's somebody else on death row that's actually guilty who did commit the murders. But there's no way to prove it and he still goes to the electric chair. And there's this scene when all the prison guards are in tears and they're angry and they're upset that he is going to be put to death. And what's great about stories like that is they bring you in to the same feeling that you're upset, that you are mad, that it's not right that he would suffer for something he did not do.
I love that because it brings out what's written into us as being made in the image of God. There's a part of us that hates to see unjust suffering. But God operates within that fallen story and he uses suffering for greater purposes, which is what is ultimately going to happen here with Joseph. Verse 21, But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge all of the prisoners who were in prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.
The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. So the chapter ends with a foretaste of where this story is going. But for now, we're at rock bottom in the prison. He is suffering. And as Americans, this is difficult for us.
We don't have a really strong theology of suffering. We don't grasp why God would use situations like this. But God makes it clear he is with him. This is not purpose. He is behind him. He shows him steadfast love.
But he does the same thing he did with Potiphar. God is with him. He blesses his work. He actually basically becomes a little bit of the sub kind of warden of the prison. That God is with him. He's not going to abandon him.
His suffering is aimed at a bigger purpose in this story. And we're going to walk through that in the coming weeks. But this is how our God works. God works within the broken story to bring about suffering for greater purposes. And suffering often is the way that God accomplishes his greater purposes. And God knows that that's not fair.
That is why he came. That is why Jesus came. That is why God took on flesh and entered the story himself. And when he took on flesh and he entered into our story he took on human suffering. He experienced suffering. He experienced temptation.
That's what Hebrews 4 is getting at when it says for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. We have a God who can sympathize. Who knows what Joseph went through. Who knows what we went through. Who subjected himself to temptation in the wilderness from the devil himself. This is what C.S.
Lewis has to say about this. He says we never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it. And Christ because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means. The only complete realist. You have moments in your walk where you are so tired of fighting sin and you are so weary. Jesus gets it.
He's the only complete realist and what he is getting at what C.S. Lewis is picturing for us is that he's the only one. All of us have fallen in temptation at some point. Jesus is the only one who's gone through the full extent of temptation and did not sin. He is the only complete realist. He knows what it's like to be Joseph day in, day out being tempted and he also knows what it's like to respond like Joseph to persevere in righteousness only to suffer in the end.
The greater purpose of Joseph leads to the greater purpose of Jesus and that was Christ going to the cross to suffer for all of us that have fallen. For all of us that did not respond like Joseph that have fallen to temptation. So that by faith in believing in his death and resurrection we might actually experience what it looks like to have the God the universe in us inside us the Holy Spirit helping us fight that we might not fall to temptation anymore. All of Joseph's story eventually leads to Christ on the cross for us. And that is good news for everyone in this room that did not run like Joseph.
For all of us that gave in to temptation for all of us that were swept up by lust. For all of us that have fallen and sometimes over and over and over again. For everyone in this room who has felt the crushing weight of shame and guilt the hope is that Jesus came that he might die for us that we might get his perfect standing and he might take our shame and our guilt that he might cover us those that have fallen. That is the hope of the gospel and the response for us is to run to Jesus to repent and run from sin and be made new. And we're going to celebrate as the band comes up.