Joseph in Potiphar's house

Genesis and chapter 39, please. Genesis chapter 39. You will of course notice that the intervening chapter, chapter 38, is a contrast with chapter 39.

Judah's immoral and intemperate behavior is going to be contrasted now with chapter 39 and Joseph. Joseph was brought down to Egypt and Potiphar, an officer pharaoh, captain of the guard in Egypt, brought him on the hand of the Ishmaelites, which had brought him down thither. The Lord was with Joseph.

He was a prosperous man and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. His master saw the Lord was with him and the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand and Joseph found grace in his sight and he served him. He made him overseer over his house and all that he had he put into his hand and it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house and over all that he had the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake.

And the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house and in the field. He left all that he had in Joseph's hands and he knew not what he had save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly person and well favored.

And it came to pass after these things. That his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph and she said, Lie with me. But he refused and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master wanteth not what is with me in the house and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand.

There is none greater in this house than I, neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee, because thou art his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And it came to pass as she spake to Joseph day by day that he hearken not unto her to lie by her or to be with her. And it came to pass about this time that Joseph went into the house to do his business and there was none of the men of the house there within.

And she caught him by his garment saying, Lie with me. He left his garment in her hand and fled and got him out. And it came to pass when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and was fled forth that she called unto the men of her house and spake unto them saying, See he hath brought in a Hebrew unto us to mock us.

And it came unto me to lie with me and I cried with a loud voice. And it came to pass when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, He left his garment with me and fled and got him out. And she laid up his garment by her until his lord came home.

And she spake unto him according to these words saying, The Hebrew servant which thou hast brought unto us came in unto me to mock me. And it came to pass as I lifted up my voice and cried that he left his garment with me and fled out. And it came to pass when the master heard the words of his wife which she spake unto him saying, After this matter did thy servant to me his wrath was kindled.

And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound and he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that were in the prison.

And whatsoever they did there he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand but the Lord was with him. And that which he did the Lord made it to prosper.

Now we trust God again will add his blessings to the reading of his word. The Christian and his employment, the Christian and enticement, the Christian and evildoers, and the Christian at his extremity. Four simple thoughts that we'll try to bring before you just in the few minutes we have relative to Joseph in Potiphar's house and his purity.

The Christian and his employment, the Christian and enticement, the Christian and evildoers, and the Christian at his extremity. I want you to think of the providence that guided Joseph here to this particular house. Now, Joseph had no control over his place of employment.

So you may say the analogy is very poor. But I just want to maybe peak your thinking as a young Christian that God is able in his sovereignty to guide you to where you work and he is able to use you where you are. So while on the one hand it's valuable to be exercised about where I should work, we know that God has ordained work, that God intends for men to work, he intends that through work we would learn many things and among those learning our own hearts, learning the hearts of others, learning as well and being prepared and trained for other spheres.

But God intends work as part of normal human life, human activity with many, many different values and many, many different reasons for it. But not just that God intends you to work and that God is able to guide you, but God is able to use you where you are as a testimony. It became evident to everyone, obvious to all that were viewing Joseph, that God was with him and that God was prospering him.

Now that doesn't mean that the business you're with, the place you work is going to become a Fortune 500 company, but there should be something about your work ethic, something about your character at work, your honesty, your dignity, that makes you stand out, makes you recognizable to the boss, not that you're playing favorites or you're trying to play up to the boss or impress him, but just that you're someone that can be relied upon on the job. So, first thing to ask, where you work and so on, is it evident that you are the kind of person with a character that can be depended upon? Not that you put in all the extra hours that they want you to put in and not that you are willing to work anytime, anywhere, but that such is your character, such is your work ethic, that you can be depended upon where you are. The prosperity that attended this man, as you read Genesis 39, in your mind it flies to Psalm 1. Blessed is the man that walketh not, and so on.

That was chapter 37, but now here he is seen that his leaf isn't withering and whatever he does is prospering. So, you have a man here marked by prosperity. The presence of God that was evident with him, even the ungodly heathen had to notice it.

His brothers, now again, underline this as a young believer, his brethren could take home away from him. His brothers could take liberty away from him. His brothers could take family away from him.

His brothers could not take the presence of God away from him. There is no power on earth, and I say this carefully, there is no power on earth, there is no circumstance that could ever come into your life that could take the presence and fellowship of God away from you. You are the only one that can hinder that fellowship.

Do you get that? It may seem like something you can say quickly, but could I just impress that on you? That there is nothing. No one. And let me just take extreme cases.

Maybe there's somebody here and you think you're being badgered by the oversight. They don't like you, they don't appreciate you, and you're not getting what you deserve, and you can list the complaints a mile long. Maybe there's someone here and your spouse is against you.

Maybe there's somebody here and business has been against you. Listen, there is no circumstance, no power, no person that can possibly remove the presence of God, if that's what you want. You can know God and have fellowship with God amidst every set of circumstances.

That's something which is under individual control in that sense. You know what I mean by individual? It's up to me. Do I want to enjoy God amidst any set of circumstances? That's what Joseph was doing here.

God was with him amidst these circumstances, and he was here seen, and it was evident that God was with him. There was the providence that guided him, there was the prosperity that attended him, the presence of God that was evident. Let me just talk about the preparation.

The preparation that was being undergone here for the future. God always prepares. What did God have in mind for Joseph as the ultimate of his life? God was going to bring him to administration over an entire country.

Where is he going to train for that? He's going to train by being administrator in Potiphar's house. He may have thought, these are wasted years. What in the world am I doing here? The dream I had in my father's house showed me as... over others and my brethren bowing down before me, what am I doing as an administrator in Potiphar's house in Egypt? God was training him.

So that your circumstances today that may seem so contrary, that may seem so out of what you view as the big picture of your life, they may well be God's training ground. God always trains. God always prepares.

Every trial, every difficulty in life is preparation for the next, which is preparation for the next. You may say, well, that's fine. Couldn't we just cut out the trials? That way I won't need any preparation for them.

Just forget the trials. Who needs to be prepared for the next one if there is no next one? But you see, it's just not trial. What we will find is that in every trial, Joseph learns God in a better way.

So it's just not that the trial is preparing me for the next trial. It's that the trial is going to reveal God to me here. And as I learn God in this trial, then I'm prepared for the next trial where I'm going to learn God in even a better way.

You remember, don't you, the instances of the disciples in a boat in the storms? Two times, right? Just come to me in your thinking to Mark's Gospel. Mark chapter 4, the Lord Jesus Christ says, Let us go to the other side. And they take him even as he is.

And he's in the hinder part of the ship, asleep. The storm arises. Master, save us.

We perish. He arises, rebukes the wind and the sea. There's a great calm.

And they get to the other side. Trial number one, the Lord in the boat, in the storm with the disciples. Come to chapter six.

Trial number two. The Lord's not in the boat. See, he was in the boat the first time.

The trial was, we'll call it easy, because he was right there. But he had taught them, my word says we're getting to the other side. He had said the same thing.

Depart to the other side in chapter six. But he's not with them. Same trial, but he's not there now.

So the trial's a little greater. But they had learned him in chapter four as the one that could command the waves and the sea. And now they're fearful of death again in chapter six.

Chapter four had prepared them for chapter six. And now the Lord comes walking on the water. So not only is he the one that can control the winds and the waves, but walking on the water.

I mean, even to this day, men use that as the ultimate of a symbol of deity. What a revelation to their souls in that trial. He was preparing them for it.

And so likewise here. And you can think of other things too, can't you? You can think of a David with a sling and a stone, felling the different animals, the bear and the lion. Why? Preparation for Goliath, which was preparation for greater trials.

And so every set of circumstances, it's not how can I get out of this? It's what can I get out of this? What can I get out of this? In this trial, what can I learn of God? How is God preparing me for the future? What is there of God being revealed to my soul that I can take into the next trial and learn God in an even greater way? And so here then is preparation for the future. You can go through the different stories of the word of God and you can multiply them. How God prepares for trials.

How God uses circumstances to prepare for future usefulness. And so administering in Potiphar's house was with a view to administering eventually over the kingdom. So God was preparing him.

God using your circumstances today to prepare you. But one more thing about a Christian and his employment. Maybe more practical.

Not just was there the presence of God that was known and the providence that guided him and the prosperity that attended him and the preparation that was being undergone. There were problems that he encountered where he worked. There were problems.

In the workplace, he was going to face a greater temptation than he faced in his father's house. Now let me just speak. I hope not too bluntly.

But let me just speak candidly for a moment. There are tremendous temptations in the workplace. It is becoming more so by the way women dress.

And by the standards of society. And by the behavior that society thinks is perfectly normal. There was a day when my generation, when we were growing up, that for a woman to make the first move towards a man was viewed as being totally, totally out of character.

That you would write that woman off as being, you know, just written off. Today that's accepted. It's the norm.

Nothing wrong with it. Plus their dress. Now it goes both ways.

There are great temptations for our sisters in the workplace also. There are Christian girls of sterling character. That unsaved men would give their right arm to be able to have as wives.

And they are passed over, ignored. All that is in the sovereignty of God. We're not judging that.

But their state is single. They have chosen that in faithfulness to the Lord and in obedience to the Word of God. And yet they are invited, propositioned, dated, or asked for dates and so on in the workplace.

It is a place of tremendous potential danger. Needs to be great care. Joseph was shielded from that in his father's home, but wasn't shielded from it in the workplace.

We can shield our children for so long. They are going to face temptation in the workplace. Temptation in school.

Temptation at university. Temptation elsewhere. What preserved Joseph we'll look at in a few moments.

But just to mention the tremendous potential of danger in the workplace. You may think I'm exaggerating. I work in an office with about 35 other people.

Most of them females. Only a few of us are males. There is a great danger.

And it takes great discernment and care and the fear of God. So I don't want to belabor that. I'm just going to leave it and hopefully just make you aware of it.

If nothing else, older believers who don't go to the workplace. You pray for younger believers that do. You pray for them.

They face temptations that you and I have no idea about. And standards of morality that you and I never had to face and never had to battle. So acceptable in the average to the mind, not just of the immoral, but to the average North American.

That to be chased becomes almost suspicious that there is something wrong with you. So please pray for younger believers that face those trials every day. But let me come then to what really I have touched on already.

Is the Christian and enticement. The call of the temptress. If there is nothing in your Bible that should make you so conscious of the shrewdness, of the skill, of the evilness of Satan as looking at this story in Genesis 39, this would suffice.

I want you to look at the full scope of this trial for just a moment. There are at least six different things that make this trial almost overwhelming. First of all, I want you to think when it happens.

Joseph is a teenager. That's when it's happening. In those years when acceptance and ego is so vulnerable.

As a teenager, he's being subjected to a tremendous temptation. But think of what is being suggested. I don't mean just the physical act.

I don't want to play psychology here, but I think you can't help but see this. Joseph has been rejected. Been rejected by his brothers.

Now he's being accepted by a woman. I mean, can you think of anything more sinister of Satan? He has just felt the sting. The tremendous sting of personal rejection.

We don't want you. And along comes a beautiful young woman who says, I want you. Listen, there's a tremendous danger.

Tremendous point of danger that some young Christians have fallen into. Where they have dated, gone with another Christian with the right intention, prayerfully. And something happens and the relationship is sundered.

And on the rebound, they gravitate to someone who is totally out of the mind of God for them. Unsaved maybe, maybe outside the assembly, maybe even someone in the assembly but just not fitted. The pain of rejection is tremendous.

That's where Joseph was in chapter 39, being rejected. So it's just not the idea of temptation, but it's the particular temptation. After feeling rejection, now he's being welcomed.

So it's when as a teenager. It's what? It's how often? Day by day by day. It wasn't just a momentary passing thing.

Just a flirtation for a moment and minds began. Day by day by day. Faced with that temptation.

More than that, more than that, think of Joseph as a young teenager. Think of him feeling the rejection of his own family. Think of him now exposed to the appeal and the acceptance by another.

Think of the flattery to his ego of someone in her stature appealing to him. Think of it occurring day by day. Think of it occurring.

And the likely possibility is no one in his family would have ever known. Know what I mean? No one would have ever known. No elders getting up in the meeting reading 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and saying now Joseph has been guilty.

No discipline meeting. No embarrassment. No shame.

Absolutely distant from every eye that he would care about knowing. So let me just put it in everyday language today. If you could sin willfully and no one ever knew it, would it matter? Would it matter? It did to Joseph.

God forbid. How can I do this great evil and sin against the Lord? No, I would have seen it. Absolutely distant from home.

You know the ads, don't you? You've heard them on the radio, you've seen them on billboards. Las Vegas. What happens here stays here.

They are actually promoting the idea that you can go to Las Vegas, sin as openly and as willfully as you want to, commit any act you wish to commit, and it just stays here. Go back home and it's all forgotten. What's done here stays here.

That's the philosophy of our world. It wasn't Joseph's philosophy. I don't know if we appreciate how shrewdly, how skillfully Satan tempts.

I know Satan is not mentioned here. You may say you're reading more into it. Maybe that's so.

Let me just bring you to an obvious example, though, if I can. You recall when Satan confronted the Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness? Command that these stones become bread. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Okay. Cast yourself down from this pinnacle, for it's written, he will give his angels charge over thee. What's happening there? I want you to notice what Satan does.

Satan attacks at what is a perceived weakness. He's hungry. There's bread.

Or rather, there are stones. You can make bread. I'm going to attack him at a perceived weakness.

Okay. The Lord Jesus quotes the word of God. Now notice what Satan does next.

I couldn't get him at his weakness. Let me get him at his strength. You're going to quote the word of God? Here's what the word of God says.

Notice how skillfully he does it? He goes for a perceived weakness, and then he goes for a perceived strength. Both the Lord Jesus was able to deal with. But Satan will attack you at your weakness.

But he will also attack you at what you would think, if you were making an inventory, is your strongest virtue. Now you may say, well, do Christians really think they have strong points? Well, most Christians would acknowledge there are areas in which they feel weak. Areas in which they feel vulnerable.

That if that occurred, I don't know if I could handle it. If that came into my life, I'm not sure I could handle that temptation. And so wisely, we stay as far from it as we can.

We just avoid it. And so by inference, there are areas that we don't feel quite as weak. And maybe sometimes even we feel, you know, that's really not a problem for me.

I can see other Christians have that problem, but that's not a problem for me. Satan can attack at both weak points and strong points. Now I don't need to tell you, do I? I don't need to start bringing before you illustrations from the Word of God of men who fell not at their weak points, men who fell at their strong points.

Abraham, the man of faith, lapse of faith. Moses, the meekest man on all the earth, lapse in meekness. David, a man of untold courage and fortitude, fell there too.

Men tempted and falling not just at weak points, but at their strong points. And so here, we see the call of the temptress and how skillfully and how carefully the whole thing is orchestrated to seek to bring this young man down. How do you handle enticement? How do you handle temptation? Now I'm not just speaking about moral temptation.

Unfortunately, when we speak about lust, the only thing we think about is the moral end. But really, the Word of God speaks of lust in many ways. Lust for power, lust for position, lust for place, lust for possessions.

Lust takes many forms. And what tempts you may not tempt me, and what tempts me may not tempt you. How do we handle temptation? How do we handle enticement? Number one is, like Joseph, avoid it.

You notice what it says concerning Joseph that he... I'm just not putting my finger on it just at this moment. He avoided being there. I just can't put my finger on it at this moment in time.

He avoided it as much as possible. Avoid, avoid temptation. You remember, don't you, a man named Samson.

Samson practiced brinkmanship. Got as close to things as he could. Got as near to what he wasn't supposed to do as he could.

And so God said, no wine, you are a Nazarite. Fine. So what is Samson doing in a vineyard? Brinkmanship.

And when he's there, you know what happens. He's constantly getting as close to things as he can. So what about it? What are you watching on your DVDs? What are you watching on your television? What are you reading? What novels are you reading? Get your thrills vicariously.

That fills your mind. If that's what you're feeding on, you're getting as close to it as you can without personally being involved. So number one, avoid it.

Number two? Number two is very simply, don't nurture it in your mind. You know what I mean. We are bombarded.

Bombarded. By images. By suggestions.

By billboards. By advertisements. By newspapers.

By magazines. I'm not suggesting we live as hermits. I'm not suggesting that we shut off ourselves from the information age.

But I mean, even turning on your computer and sending an email, you know what comes up. On the best of websites. Don't nurture it.

Don't think about it and allow it to begin to take root and begin to nurture it and wonder. You know? Don't nurture it. Thirdly, don't rationalize it.

You know what I mean by rationalize it? Let me give you a biblical example. The angel takes Lot and his wife by the hand to lead them out of Sodom. Escape to yonder mountain.

Stay not on the plain, lest thou be consumed. Look not behind thee. And so on.

And Lot says, look, rather than up there, how about just if we go to Zoar? It's only a little city. It's not much. It's not really that bad there.

Begin to rationalize it. Minimize it. Minimalization of the evil that was there.

Don't begin to rationalize it. Stay as far from it as you possibly can. And it's not just a matter of having a verse.

I mean, sometimes it is good to have a verse that you can keep in your mind. As Job would say, I made a covenant with mine eyes. And so on.

Those types of verses. But more than that, what did the Lord Jesus display in his temptation? He was committed to the Word of God. He was committed to the will of God.

He was committed to the work of God. And he was committed to the worship of God. And anything, anything which cut across that, anything which hindered the will of God, anything which hindered the work of God, anything which hindered the worship of God, he would not begin to brooch.

So with what you're looking at, can you get down at night and still worship God? With where you're going, with what you're doing, can you still get down and worship in light of that? So here then is the call of the temptress. The commitment. The commitment of Joseph is seen.

The word that is given here is that verse 8, he refused. The word really means to have a mind that is absolutely convinced. Literally it means a resolved mind.

Now what that means is he was resolved ahead of time. Resolved ahead of time. His convictions were made.

His convictions were set. Now I know that we sometimes get into situations where we don't know what to do. But I'm not speaking about those grey areas.

What I'm talking about here are areas that God has been absolutely clear about. Convictions set ahead of time. And maintained.

What about your convictions? Do you have them? Do you have convictions before God about your life? He refused. His mind was resolved. His convictions were settled.

They weren't to be bargained. They weren't negotiable. They didn't have a price tag on them.

He was a man marked by convictions. But what I want you to see especially amidst this enticement is this. The day that Joseph went into the house and the tempstress gave her appeal, I don't think that Joseph woke up that morning with a special message from heaven.

Joseph, today is the crisis of your life. Joseph, your whole future depends on what you do with this woman. Exaggeration? Had Joseph just gone along with the morals of society, we would not have Genesis 37 to Genesis 50.

Joseph would just have been another blip on the radar screen of the world's history and that would have been that. Joseph's whole future depended on what he did. Unseen by any other eye but God's.

Unknown to any other mind but God's. Joseph's entire future depended on a crisis that he hardly recognized was the crisis for his life. But let me just also encourage you with one other thing.

Joseph's future did not depend upon his gift. Joseph's future for God did not depend upon his gift. It depended upon his character.

His character. Your usefulness for God, your ultimate usefulness for God, is not as dependent upon what gift you think you have as it is upon your character for God. That is what is going to determine what you are for God for the rest of your life.

Gift is wonderful. Gift is very useful and is the ability that God has given you to serve Him. But what really is crucial is your character.

That's what preserved Joseph in this trial was virtue and character. Not gift. Not even his intelligence.

Not even his administrative skills. But his character. What he was when no one else could see him.

That's what character is. Character is what I am when no one else but God's eye sees me. It's not what I am up here in front of you.

But it's what I am in the presence of God. That's my genuine character. That's what Joseph was.

His character preserved him. Not his cleverness. Not his arguing ability.

There was a time to argue but then there was a time to run. Joseph wisely knew the difference. There was a time to argue and to refuse but then there was a time he had to run and leave.

And so we see here the crisis of his life. And then of course we have you are all familiar with the choices that he made to lose his coach rather than his character and to suffer the consequences of her false accusation. But I want you to think of the consequences as well because the result is that Joseph is imprisoned.

When I read that I think what I often say in a different context and that is that life is not fair. Life is not fair. I think as parents that's one of the most important things to hammer home to our kids.

Life isn't fair. A lot of unfair things happen in life. A lot of bad people get ahead and a lot of good people get put down.

And so Joseph is imprisoned. He is put into the king's prison. And so we see Christians and evildoers.

I don't have time to develop this. Let me just mention one or two things and then I have to close. There hardly is any more hurtful thing than to be accused of the very thing you haven't done.

Sometimes you're misunderstood. Sometimes your actions are taken and exaggerated. Sometimes one side of what you've done has been brought out as an accusation.

But to be absolutely going in the opposite direction and to be accused. Do you remember when David fled from Absalom? That wicked man Shimei comes out and accuses David of shedding the blood of the house of Saul when that was the very thing David had avoided doing. And you recall how the rulers when they brought the Lord Jesus Christ to Pilate, we found this man perverting the people forbidding them to give tribute to Caesar saying he himself is Christ the King.

The exact opposite of what was true. So here with this wicked woman as she accuses Joseph, it's the exact opposite. He had refused and now she is saying he was the perpetrator and so on and so on.

To think that Joseph has to silently and submissively submit to all of that. To think that it says in our section that the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy. I would think that's anything but the mercy of God and yet here is God working at his purposes.

Here is God's hand over everything. A lot of unanswered questions. At least I have at the end of chapter 39.

Why didn't the man put Joseph to death for such an act? He could have done it easily. I wonder if he really suspected his wife after all. I wonder if he tempered his judgment with mercy and did not put Joseph to death because he suspected his wife really wasn't the virtuous woman she claimed to be.

But whatever the case, God in his sovereignty is moving and working here and we learn something about God being... The big word that people use, that preachers use is inscrutable. What that just means is you can't always understand how he works. You can't always understand why God does things the way he does.

But in case you don't know, God doesn't need your advice or mine. God is quite capable of handling things and of working at his purposes. God's ways are inscrutable.

Inscrutable. That means you may see the threads of your life and it may seem to you that life is unraveling. It may seem to you like life is going nowhere, that you don't understand what the Lord is doing in your life, either with your family, with your children, with your spouse, with your parents.

Things at work just don't seem to work together. God is inscrutable. He will allow a James to be beheaded and take a Peter out of prison miraculously.

He works in his own ways for his own purposes. And Joseph is down on a dungeon. Joseph, you have more lessons to learn.

You've learned administration now, Joseph, and I'm going to give you another course in the prison house. And you'll just have to be patient. And so Joseph is left in the prison house.

God's inscrutable ways. But thank God for one other thing. One other thing.

God's inseparable presence. The Lord was with him. So whether it's as an administrator over the house of Potiphar, whether it's in a lowly dungeon, circumstances do not negate the presence of God that Joseph enjoys.

That's open to you and to me. So may the Lord help us in our place of employment to be the Christians we ought to be. To be useful for God where we ought to be.

As we face temptation and enticement to recognize like Joseph, if no eye sees, if no ear hears of it, if it's never published abroad, there is one heart above all that I would long to please and hate to grieve. And that as I face life's many circumstances to recognize God absolutely in control and able to bring about His purposes.