It’s Time To Get Up Part 3- We're All Going To Face Them
Genesis 39:1-12 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 7-12-2020
We all have two traveling companions that journey with us throughout our lifetimes. Every now and then one or both of them will leave, but we are bound to run into each of them again, never knowing exactly when they might show up or how long they will stay with us .
When one of them leave us, we think its gone forever, but when one of them comes back, we think they will be with us forever. Neither of our beliefs is actually true. We may even pray to God, “Lord keep both of them out of my life for good.” But its not going to happen. God has a purpose for both of them. Who are they, keep listening to find out.
We are in part 3 of our series, It’s Time To Get Up. We are journeying in the life of Joseph. A young man who had special privileges in his Father’s home. He was hated and betrayed by his brothers. He was sold as a slave in Egypt.
We learned last time that after a period of about 11 years, Joseph rose to a place of prominence in Potiphar’s house. Potiphar saw that God’s favor was on Joseph, and he trusted Joseph with everything he had in his home putting him in charge of everything including the family business.
In our last message, I pointed out that some things come into our lives through no fault of our own. They just happen, and we find ourselves caught up in something that we never intended to be caught up in. Have you ever just been minding your own business and found yourself caught up in a situation?
This same thing was happening with Joseph among some of the women in the city Joseph was working. Joseph’s problem was that he was in his upper twenties, and he was handsome. Joseph had no control over his age or that he grew into a handsome young man. He did not know the women were having secret talks behind his back. Who was going to get to this young man first? He obviously was quite a prize?
We like to think of ourselves as a society of being progressive in our views and liberated in our beliefs especially when it comes to sex. We think we created affairs and one night stands and these things would be helpful to our self esteem. We even think sexual harassment on the job started in the 20th century. We don’t believe it when the bible tells us, there is nothing new under the sun, what is today has already been in the past.
If we are thinking we are progressing toward something, when it comes to sex, what is it that we are progressing towards? What do we hope the end is going to look like. What is the cost of sexual freedom with no restraints, no boundaries, and everyone free to choose what their behavior will be?
Why on earth would God ever come up with the idea that sex should me between a man and a woman who are married to each other when there are so many other possibilities?
Joseph is a slave working for his master, Potiphar. Joseph has his bosses’ complete trust and confidence. The first traveler I mentioned that is with us throughout life even though it comes and leaves on its own is Temptation.
Temptation is something that all of us has to deal with regardless of our age, our status, our position, our world view and whether we are a believer or not. It happens, when what we want is something we cannot or should not have.
One thing about it, we think that if we give in to it, we are going to feel better about it ,and we are going to be rewarded with something.
Temptation does not deliver what we hope, and costs more than what we planned to pay. It’s something we can’t just go back and undo, because it always has a spiritual or emotional cost that we can’t just get back. A trust is broken, a commitment is violated, or a person is hurt.
Potiphar’s wife has temptation come alongside of her and points out to her, just how good looking Joseph is. After all she is his boss, and even more than that she’s his owner. She should be able to have whatever she wants from him.
Temptation allows us to build up a fantasy world that has no basis in reality. The first mistake we make is that we think we can control all the circumstances that will flow after giving in to it. We simply see everything going in our direction as planned.
When it comes to sexual temptation, we usually dehumanize the person. The person is not someone’s son or daughter, someone’s mother or father, someone who wants to obey God, someone who has a plan and a goal for how they want their lives to go.
We see the other person almost as a thing, someone who is there to please my desire, and we convince ourselves they are as eager for this to happen as we are. Even if the other person agrees to give in to our sexual advances, we don’t know what their motives are for doing so. I do know this, we give them a power over our future that they did not have before the temptation became a reality sin.
We see in this passage that men and women have the same problems when it comes to sexual temptation. Both can seek to take advantage of the other based on the positions they hold. Potiphar’s wife is sure that any slave would be delighted and honored to have sex with her. She is practically a celebrity. She could make your life enjoyable or miserable as a slave. She thinks in her head, that Joseph is going to quietly and joyfully follow her to her sexual fantasy.
She goes to Joseph and says “Come to bed with be.” She is basically giving him an order as a master does with a slave. She is not in the least bit concerned with what this might do to Joseph’s future. She certainly was not going to leave her husband to marry a slave.
She really didn’t care if this could cost Joseph the best job he ever had in his life. She didn’t even care about the future consequences of what this could mean for her own marriage. She knew she could keep her secret hidden. She could find a spot and a story to go with it that was foolproof.
Temptation will always make us think we are smarter than we really are. Temptation will try to convince us that God does not see what we are doing. It tells us forget that bible verse that says, “the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the good and the evil.”
What should Joseph do with this beautiful, powerful woman who is standing before him telling him to follow her to a secret place to have sex with her? Was this another blessing from God? No it was not.
He did not ask for this temptation to come his way, but he was prepared mentally for its arrival. He was prepared in the same way as Jesus was prepared when the devil arrived with his temptations. He remembered the principles established in the word of God and used them as his defense.
Joseph reminded Potiphar’s wife of who he was. I have been entrusted with a charge by my master and he has put his complete trust and confidence in me. I will not betray that trust. I’m not here for you to use and move on with your life.
All Satan wanted from Jesus was for him to bow down and worship him just once, and he would give Jesus all the kingdoms of this world without having to go through the whole rejection thing along with the pain of the crucifixion. Just do it one time. One time may not seem like much. After all, surely you can be forgiven.
You know if you see God as a stern God upstairs keeping score, you don’t see how your sin makes that big a of a difference to him. I’ll ask for forgiveness later and even things out. If you see God as a loving Father who wants the best for your life, your understand how your sin hurts him and betrays his love for you.
Joseph reminds Potiphar’s of who she is. You are my master’s wife. He has respected you enough to not offer you to me. What you are asking me to do is a betrayal of your marriage. Joseph knew there was no kind of future for him if he got tangled up in a three way affair.
Everything he had worked for, could be gone in an instant. Joseph knew there were cameras throughout the house. Those cameras then were called servants. Somebody besides them, and God would know what had happened. They wouldn’t know which servant told another servant what.
Joseph reminds her that his goal in life is to obey God. Without God, he would never have gotten to the place he was in. He knew God’s view on having an affair or a one night stand, so he called it a wicked thing and a sin against God. Joseph believed God’s word was not old fashioned and out of date.
Jesus comes along a few thousand years later and says the same thing about adultery and sexual immorality. He reaffirms the Old Testament position that sex is to be between a husband and wife, but goes even further to talk about sexual unfaithfulness to God happening within our minds and thoughts. Jesus includes our sexual fantasies or lust as being as sinful as the acts themselves.
I guess Potiphar’s wife read far too much in what Joseph didn’t say. He didn’t say she wasn’t beautiful. He didn’t say the idea had never crossed his mind. He didn’t say he didn’t want anything more to do with her. So she persisted in this behavior of winking at him, touching him, and talking to him. She felt that she just had to have him at least one time. Temptation was walking with her so strongly there was nothing she could do about it.
It is a lie to believe the more you resist temptation, the stronger it will get. What feeds temptation is the constant thinking about it and reliving again and again the joys its going to bring into your life. If you choose to think more on the things of God, the power of the temptation is going to subside.
The Holy Spirit will get you to the point in which you will ask, why was that such a big temptation to me in the first place. Once you get some time distance between you and the temptation, you will really question why it had such a strong pull and you will value having said no even stronger.
The problem comes in that we don’t want to change our thought patterns or our behavior. Philippians 4:8 (NIV2011) 8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Sometimes we are conquered by temptation because we want to be conquered by it. We think we can use it to get what we want.
Potiphar’s wife went after Joseph day after day with her sexual advances. She was really harassing him on the job and there was no Human Resources department for him to go to ask for help. Joseph knew that the best thing he could do was to stay away from her as much as possible. The Scriptures says, “ he refused to even be with her.”
Why do we hang around some of our temptations? When Satan offered Jesus glory and fame with no suffering, Jesus does not say, “hang around a little longer” or”check back with me in a couple of weeks.” he says “Get away from me Satan.”
Joseph’s desires were only natural. God created him with those desires. Surely he had a right to satisfy them. Joseph knew he had to take some steps to distance himself not only from Potiphar’s wife, but from the feelings inside of himself. Temptation was telling him let’s make a deal, if you just give in once, it will be over with and I promise you I will leave the both of you alone.
In reality the opposite is true. Once you give in to temptation, it is much harder to say No the next time it comes around. Whatever the temptation was, it has a hook inside of us and has a stronger advantage point from which to pull us down. What we thought was going to be a one and done turns into negative spiritual force that keeps pulling us back to the same situation again and again.
We begin to make the same poor choices over and over and wonder we we just can’t walk away. I can tell you now, it is going to take the power of the Holy Spirit to break the chains and allow you to be set free. That’s just one of the benefits of coming to know Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Potiphar’s wife was determined that she was going to break Joseph.. She thought the only reason Joseph kept saying no was he was afraid he was going to get caught. She arranged for it so there was not a servant in the house. Now they could do it, without any consequences of getting caught.
Joseph came to work on an ordinary day, to carry out his responsibilities as he had always done. The only thing different that he noticed was that there was no sound of anybody talking or laughing or nothing. He may thought, that sure is strange. I haven’t run into a single other servant.
Out of nowhere he feels this pull on his cloak. Potiphar’s wife is again saying “come to bed with me.” He immediately puts two and two together. He knows this is not the time to try and reason with her, so he runs out of the house but she wouldn’t let go of his cloak. What she thought were sincere romantic feelings of love toward Joseph show themselves for what they really were. Those feelings turn into hatred and she is determined to destroy Joseph.
Once Joseph starts running out of the house, she screams. When the servants come running toward her in the house, someone may have seen Joseph running out the house. She makes up the lie that Joseph had tried to rape her. When she screamed, he ran out the house, but he forgot to take his cloak with him. This was the proof she needed to let her husband know what kind of a person, Joseph really was.
Wow this was pretty much an open and shut case. Somebody saw Joseph running. Several people heard the screaming. Nobody was there to refute her version of the story. The cloak was definitely Joseph’s and there it was in the bedroom.
If there had been the internet back then, there would have been clips of Joseph running, Mrs. Potipher crying, and Joseph’s cloak lying on the dresser beside the bed. Headlines, “Trusted Hebrew Slave” turns out to be a sexual predator. CNN would have a specail on other women coming forth to tell of assaults by slaves with too much authority.
When Potiphar comes home, his wife seeks to blame him for this humiliating and embarrassing experience in her life. She tells the story of the almost rape that her clever thinking had prevented. What was he going to do to preserve her honor and dignity?
He certainly was not going to ask Joseph for his version of what had happened humiliating her even further by not only calling her a liar, but being willing to take the word of a foreign slave over, that of his wife who was a noble Egyptian Woman and the mother of his kids.
The mere thought of challenging her word would have brought embarrassment to him. He was a member of Pharaoh’s Cabinet. Can you imagine the headline, “ Homeland Security’s Wife Prefers Her Slave In Bed Over Her Husband. The Scripture tells us that Potiphar’s wife had been after Joseph for quite a period of time. The Scriptures also tell us that when Potiphar found out about these things, he burned with anger.
I wonder what was he angry over the most. Angry possibly with his wife over the rumors she had her eyes on Joseph for quite some time, so her story just didn’t add up. Angry at Joseph. How could he have done this or been dumb enough to let him get himself in this situation?
Angry that he couldn’t publicly get at the truth. Angry that if he got rid of Joseph, all the good fortune that had come into his house would end. Angry that he felt his hands were tied.
Something tells me this is not how Potiphar’s wife thought all of this was going to end, when she made her first sexual advancement toward Joseph. This was not the fantasy she expected. She is convinced that she has crushed and destroyed Joseph once and for all.
She despised that he chose the righteousness of God over a sinful day of pleasure with her. She was determined to make him pay for not giving her what she wanted. When Joseph is led off to prison, she thinks its all over. Can you imagine her fear when Joseph comes to power over all of Egypt in 3 years?
Potipher is in a no win situation. Even if he didn’t believe his wife, he was not in a position to let Joseph walk away. If he did believe God’s favor was on Joseph’s life, what would God do if he had Joseph executed.
Joseph knows that he can’t call his master’s wife an out right liar. He had tried so hard to protect his master’s marriage by saying no to temptation and yes to God’s will. By being obedient to God looks like it is going to cost him everything, including his life.
It must have been pretty discouraging when he got the news he was headed for prison where the king’s prisoners were confined. His other companion that had journey with him was returning. He had said goodbye to temptation only to see that Suffering had showed up again.
Joseph may have been asking, God why can’t you see that I’ve been doing the right things. It’s been hard enough being sold as a slave. Now you’re sending me to prison. When is this all going to stop. I’m going from one bad situation to another. Why won’t you just send me back home.
You know we can look at Joseph and think, I wish I could have the ability to say no like he did. Instead I gave into temptation. My actions were more like Potipher’s wife than Joseph. What can God do with me now? I want you to know that you are not the first person to give into temptation and see your life in a mess because of it.
There was a man by the name of David who was described as a man after God’s own heart. He gave into the sin of adultery. Because he tried to hide it rather than confess it, that sin led to him giving in to murder. The consequences destroyed his family and led a nation into civil war.
But what made the difference for David was that he chose to admit to God that he had sinned, and couldn’t do anything to change it. So David prayed Psalm 51:10-12 (NIV2011)
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
David recognized that he could not change his heart, but God could. You remember earlier I told you that Jesus said to Satan to leave him. Jesus told him that because he knew that you were going to need forgiveness and that you were going to need another chance.
Jesus went to the cross and paid the price for our forgiveness from our guilt and our sin. None of us have to worry about whether or not God can still use us. God specializes in using people who have been broken by sin, but are now willing to invite him into their lives.
You and I have not seen the last of the temptations that we have been called to face. We always are going to have a choice to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us out of the situation or to stay there and try to fight the battle on our own.
God is faithful to never allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear without providing a way for us to escape. Let me ask you something, are you willing to pay the price to escape.
Always keep in mind, Jesus paid a far greater price, just to make the strength you need to escape available to you. Don’t think for a moment you can follow God without paying a price. Joseph is getting ready to pay another price as we shall see next week.
