Tough No.12 Resisting Temptation - Joseph

There won't be a school teacher amongst us or anybody under about 15 who won't be familiar with Joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the musical that launched Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. And to sum up the story so far and to sum up in very modern day parlance, Tim Rice wrote these words, Joseph was taken to Egypt in chains and sold. Where he was bought by a captain named Potiphar.

Potiphar had few cares, he was one of Egypt's millionaires having made a fortune buying shares in pyramids. Potiphar had made a huge pile, owned a large percentage of the Nile, meant that he could really live in style and he did. Joseph was an unimportant slave who found he liked his master, consequently worked much harder even with devotion.

Potiphar could see that Joseph was a cut above the average, made him leader of the household, maximum promotion. Let's see what the scripture says in Genesis 39. Now Joseph had been taken to Egypt.

Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.

Potiphar put him in charge of his household and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field, so he left in Joseph's care everything he had.

With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food that he ate. Now Joseph was well built and handsome and after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me, but he refused. With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house.

Everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you because you are his wife.

How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even to be with her. One day he went into the house to attend to his duties and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, come to bed with me, but he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants. Look, she said to them, this Hebrew has been brought to make sport of us. He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed.

When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story.

That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me, but as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. When his master heard the story of his wife told him saying, this is how your slave treated me, he burned with anger. Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined.

But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warder. So the warder put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison and he was made responsible for all that was done there.

The warder paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. May the Lord add his blessing and understanding to that reading. I stand to sing.

I want you to turn in the Word of God, not to the passage which was read, but rather to 1 Corinthians and chapter 9, or rather chapter 10. 1 Corinthians and chapter 10. One of the benefits of coming to our discipleship class, we teach one another scripture.

And each week our lesson is headed by one verse from the Old or the New Testament, and the challenge is that we learn it. So the next week you are somewhat ashamed if you can't say it and everyone else can. Now you're about the third or fourth lesson in the opening course when you come across the thirteenth verse of 1 Corinthians 10.

It's one of the big texts of scripture. If you've got the NIV, then I like to say it out boldly. If you've got the AV, then you can drop your voice a little, not because we've any objection to that translation, but it's just slightly different.

All right, on three. One, two, three. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.

And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Now, concluding our series that spans several Sundays now, in fact more than seven, it's gone on for quite a lengthy period on when the going gets tough. Tim and myself, helped by Muriel Foxon, have tried to deal with subjects on a Sunday night which cause Christian people, and perhaps those just on the edge of the Christian faith, a great deal of difficulty. One of the things we want to be known for, humbly, in the tab, is that we're a Bible-believing church, and we're prepared to look at difficult things from the pulpit, and think them through intelligently as a congregation by the grace of God.

And so we come to one of the most difficult topics. It's that of temptation. And anyone can leave at this point who's never been tempted, because if that's your situation, I haven't got anything to say that will help you.

Though I do predict if anyone leaves at this moment, you are living in a world of fantasy, because everyone, in some measure, is tempted. I'm approving of the honesty of an 18-year-old lad who, when he confessed the Lord Jesus our Saviour, said, I was saved six months ago, but nobody told my glands. Have a problem with your glands as far as your Christian life is concerned? I'm not just speaking this evening, however, about sexual temptation.

The reading from Joseph will serve as a back cloth, but I'm going to expound it, apart from occasionally dipping into it. And before I come to my subject matter, I want to read the 11th and 12th verses of 1 Corinthians 10, for reasons which will become apparent in a moment or two. So if you've got your Bible open, that's good.

Keep it there and listen. These things, the Apostle is referring to Old Testament Scripture, which he's been quoting before, these things happened to them as examples, and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the age has come. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall.

What the Apostle has in mind is that there are throughout the Bible, as I'll be telling you more clearly in a few moments time, examples of people who know what it is to quote the authorized version of the Bible, who come under divers temptations. Now the little boy in the Sunday school lesson is excused for saying that he believes temptation only occurs to those who swim underwater. But divers temptations refer to a variety of temptations, which hit the old lady at 80 and the young fellow at 18.

They may be different in degree, but they're the same in principle. And my verse that we're going to be opening up this evening, speaks very clearly about when the going gets tough in the area of temptation. So here's a heading to start with, there'll be three.

Temptation is predictable. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. Now there's an amazing Scripture in Hebrews chapter 4, which speaks of our Lord Jesus, and this is what it says in the 15th verse.

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin. No one is exempt from temptation. Have you got that clear in your mind? There is no exception at all.

So if you feel tempted this evening, well in one sense you're in good company, because we have this as a common denominator. And astonishingly, Jesus was tempted. Now what's your difficulty? Isolated in your mind, I'm asking you to speak it out to me.

Have you got it? Now relate it to this little phrase. In all points, Jesus was tempted like us. So whatever that temptation is, if Scripture is accurate, and my prayer that preceded this address showed my own belief that Scripture is inerrant, whatever that is, Jesus too was taken into that realm of temptation.

Temptation is not sin. Jesus was tempted because He is important. Tempted by the devil who would try to sell Him because of who He is.

You're tempted because you're human, and there's a possibility that you might fall as the devil comes and tries to set his snare in your pathway. We are all tempted at any time, in any place, and with the greatest ferocity. Temptation is predictable at any time.

Now isn't it extraordinary? I can be working at my desk, maybe you could be doing some shopping, or some very innocent pursuit you're engaged in, and suddenly the most awful thought comes into your mind. You ever ask yourself why? I have an interest since doing my so-called academic studies in education, the whole area of psychology. And one of the things that I never found an answer to, though I read many of the psychologists, was this.

Why does the random thought that's completely unconnected to what you're engaged in at that time, why does it suddenly pop into your mind? I can't find an answer for that. Apart from the perspective that the Bible gives in terms of describing life, when it talks of evil forces and influences, there is that which drops into my mind. I'm not responsible for it, and basically after the event I don't feel guilty.

But my problem is it does occur. Temptation can come at any time. It can stalk you in the pulpit.

It can take you to the very throne room as you're engaged in prayer. Here is our Lord Jesus, and at the beginning of his ministry we discover that he's tempted, at any time, in any place. He's there in the temple.

What's the temple described as? His father's house. And what thought comes into his mind when he's in the pinnacle, on the pinnacle of one of the temples, in the temple and he's on one of the pinnacles, what thought comes into his mind? Throw yourself down. Be a superstar.

Wouldn't you think for Jesus, the Son of God, in the Father's house, he would be away from any possibility of temptation whatsoever. But no, temptation hits at any time, in any place, and what's more, with the greatest of ferocities. No temptation has seized you.

Did you hear the intonation in my voice? I didn't say it to be dramatic, but to bring out the powerful verb that is there in the original language that justifies the translator in using such a descriptive term to find the English equivalent. Says the Apostle Peter, the devil is as a roaring lion, seeking who he might devour. We are not unaware of his devices.

The idea is of cunning, of traps being set. Temptation can seize you at any time, in any place, with the greatest ferocity. Don't you think that Joseph was the most incredible fellow of whom you read in the Old Testament.

I mean, here he is, no more than a teenager, finding himself in the land of Egypt. He's away from Jacob. His mother has died years back.

There's no synagogue. They didn't even have synagogues then, to be accurate. There's no remnant at all of the sort of life that he's been used to, to remind him of the things that father used to say in terms of how to live.

He's there in Egypt with the equivalent of the pawn, the permissiveness, the possibility of doing a prodigal. But Joseph is no Old Testament counterpart to the New Testament prodigal. The latter lived in the far country as though dad was dead.

But Joseph in the far country will live as though he can still hear the voice of his father, and as though he's still under the surveillance of Almighty God at any time, Joseph, in any place, with the greatest of ferocities. And the rest you know. I've no need to dig into the story in any of its detail.

In one sense it's unfortunate that these incidents in the Old Testament and the New Testament are perhaps more known to us than some of the sublime ethical teaching. That perhaps says a lot about us and what registers on our minds over against what doesn't register. But just in the extremes of brevity, we remember a woman comes to Joseph, not just once, but again, and again, and again, and offers herself to him when he's so young, and to respond to her advances in the privacy of the home would not only satisfy her, but might do him a lot of good, because she's the woman around the house with all the power.

Temptation at any time, in any place, with the greatest of ferocities. That's how it comes. Maybe the scenario is different from that of Joseph.

Maybe in any case that's not your weakness. But whatever the weakest link is in your personality, this is for sure, the devil is aware, and he'll exploit it if he possibly can. Temptation is not a sin, says Fred Wood.

It is a call to do battle. And this is what Joseph responded to in the early years of his life, when it would have been so easy for him to have complied with the requests of this evil woman. I sometimes wonder, to my shame, if the reason why I and some of us have not actually fallen into deep sin is simply because we lived amongst a pressure group that stopped it.

We lived within the company of Christian people. We never found ourselves alone in Egypt, alone with nobody looking over our shoulders, with a possibility of engaging and indulging in anything whatsoever. Sometimes I feel in the grace of God we have been unable to stand as we have, simply because we're afraid of what other people would say if they found out that we were engaged in that particular bout of sinfulness.

And this is where Joseph stands out so wonderfully. There was no peer group. There was no pressure.

Dad's away, and Mum is with the Lord. And the enticing temptation comes to him, not once but many times. That's what temptation's like.

It springs at any time, in any place, with the greatest of ferocities. Temptation is predictable. We have all been tempted.

Such is common to man. But moreover, I discover within my text as I unpackage it, temptation is endurable. Again, listen to the verse.

God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. Now, isn't my word, endurable, a reasonable summation of that sentence? He will not let you be tempted above what you can bear.

You might find that hard to believe, but that's what the Bible says, and it's rooted first of all in God's character, and then in your constitution. God is faithful. On that basis, we can say that temptation is endurable.

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. Two uses of the pronoun you. The argument is based on God's character and your constitution.

The character of God? Faithfulness. God can never renege on himself. It is impossible for God to lie.

It is impossible for God to deny himself, says the authorized version. Now, God in his faithfulness, God who will never let slip in the area of moving from truth into error, has said this, that no temptation will come your way that is so difficult that you could not withstand it if you really tried. Temptation is endurable, and Paul's argument is the character of God is brought into question if you say it's not.

So the man who says, I couldn't help it, or somehow something came across my path that I was completely and utterly unable to overcome, is questioning the character of God. God is faithful. If God wasn't faithful, then your argument would have credibility.

But if your argument's got credibility, then God has lost his. Temptation is endurable. It's argued on the character of God, and on the constitution of the men to whom this verse is addressed.

God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. He knows you.

He knows all about you. You know, I love the verse in the authorized version of the Bible which speaks of Jesus when first he met up with the chief of the fishermen, Cephas. Behold, you are Cephas, but you shall be Peter.

There is a distinction, you see, when Jesus first accosts you between what you are and what you can be. He can measure up your potential. If you're a brilliant interviewer, not an interviewee, the person who's being interviewed, but an interviewer, a sort of sophisticated version of Terry Wogan.

If you're good at your job, you measure potential. Will she be a stunning secretary, 500 words a minute? Well, she'd have to be pretty good at that rate, wouldn't she? Will he really be one of the brightest sparks in our office if we employ him? You've got to assess a person's potential, or try to if you're an interviewer. And God, he assesses your potential.

He knows the strengths that are there, dormant within you. And when temptation breaks upon your path, like the waves on Worthing Seashore beat on the shore, the reason is that God is endeavouring to create a situation or allow a situation to develop so that your potential can be realised. In that sense, temptation is a blessing.

There's a lovely verse, at least a lovely old-fashioned translation of a verse from the Psalms which I quoted in my series on Joseph some couple of years ago. The authorised version has got that Joseph was placed in irons, and an older version says iron entered into Joseph. I'm not up on Greek to say which has got the right nuance as far as the translation is concerned, but if there's a double blessing to be taken in a slightly different translation, then I'll plunder the double blessing.

Iron entered into Joseph. Here he is, you see, he's tempted. He's tempted in a nasty way, at any time, in any place, with the greatest of ferocities.

But why is he being so tempted? Because the devil has a field day in his life, or because in the overarching sovereignty of God, it is allowed for this scenario to develop so that Joseph will ultimately be in a place where tremendous privilege and responsibility can be showered upon him, and he'll have the mettle, he'll have the potential to be able to take up even more temptation and resist it. God tests His men and women, and in this sense you can look upon temptation as being, in a paradoxical sense, almost a blessing. All the sweat and the heat of the day, when those nightmarish situations come, and I know what I'm talking about, God does not make preachers immune from temptation.

One of the reasons why on the human level I would flee from any pulpit, God hear me, is because the more influence you exercise, the more difficult the battle, on the basis that if the devil zaps you, he might take others down as well. Pray for your preachers. Pray for your leaders, not because they're more important, but because the strategy of the devil is to go for leaders.

Look at the heartache in the United States of America in recent years when leaders have fallen. But Joseph is enabled by God's grace to resist this temptation, and the mettle in his character becomes stronger and stronger. And God knows your constitution.

And when temptation comes your way, God has promised on his oath, on his own character, because he is faithful that no temptation is directed towards you that is more sufficient, that is greater than you can withstand in his grace and with the empowering of his Spirit. Temptation is predictable. Temptation is endurable.

Now listen as I get to my final head in record time. Failure is salvageable. I used that word a few months ago in the tab in the evening, so I hardly need to redefine it, but I remind you that if something is salvageable it means it can be saved.

It can be brought back from misuse or abuse. Now my text doesn't actually say that, does it? That's why I took you to the context. Because in the context reference is made to the characters in the Old Testament.

And the reason why stories are written in the Old Testament. Why have we got the Old Testament? Why is it so frequently biographical and autobiographical? Well, these things happened as examples and were written down as warnings for us. Now they weren't all good examples, were they? Not in the Old Testament, nor in the New.

Two things. Many are in the club of failures. Secondly, from that club many successful people ultimately emerge.

Do you feel a failure this evening? Well, you've come to my society. I'm the President of the Royal Society of Failures. Voted because of my own achievements in that area.

I say that with tongue and cheek and degree, but there's an amount of seriousness there. You see these Old Testament records, they're records of people who blew it from time to time. Abraham, twice he passed his wife off as his sister so that his life might be spared.

Not exactly the most noble thing to do, was it? Moses, well on one occasion his wife calls him a bloody husband, in the literal sense, because of what he's done or failed to do. And David, well I've no need to take you on an excursion into his life. Again it's one of those seedy incidents that people tend to know about, more than they know about the theology that David discovered concerning the person of God.

Jonah, run away. Take it out of the will of God. Now all these men are in the Old Testament.

If I'd been writing the Old Testament I'd have taken out those bits. Because if I tell a story I want the to look a star. But when the Holy Spirit tells the story, He tells it honestly.

Why? Well you see, years later, centuries later, in the complexity of the twentieth century, we need help, don't we? Because we ourselves know what it is to fail. And if the Bible has removed all the warts and all the pimples, to quote Cromwell, from its characters, then we would think this book has got nothing to do with us. But it's got a lot to do with us.

It tells of people who failed in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. They didn't need to fail. Not a bit.

There was sufficient resources at their disposal by the grace of God. No more than you need to fail. But they did.

As you have. But failure is salvageable. And Abraham becomes a friend of God.

What an accolade. And David is described as the sweetest psalmist that Israel ever knew. And Jonah becomes a denial against knowing the Lord Jesus, becomes the leader of the apostolic college.

He becomes the one who is in charge of the expansion of the church in Jerusalem and in Judea and throughout the whole of the diaspora where Jewish people are. Amazing, isn't it? That failure is salvageable. Not everyone is like Joseph.

I can't find hardly a trace of anything that he got wrong. But there are those who did get many things wrong in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament. But God didn't throw them away like a child chucks out a rattle that He doesn't want anymore from His pram.

God doesn't deal with us like that. And even though the truth of my text remains absolute, that temptation is predictable and that temptation is endurable, when nonetheless you don't move in in cooperation with the Lord in your life and when you blow it, God still has His eye upon you, still directed towards you, can still lift you out of the situation in which you have made such a wreck. Do you realize that? Says Michael Green, if it takes temptation and sin to show God in His true colors and Satan in his, something has been saved from the wreck.

A final word of application. What can you do? You who are in my society, the society of the failures, what can you do to help yourself? Well, having confessed what you have done that is wrong, then realize that God has forgiven you, okay? He's wiped the slate clean. That's marvelous.

You're forgiven. Then pray. Pray what? Matthew 6. Pray that you enter not into temptation, that God will keep you from any situation that you can't handle and when the situations come that you can handle, that you and God together will bring about success in your life.

Pray that you enter not into temptation. Secondly, read. Psalm 119 says, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his ways? By keeping heed thereto according to your word.

What you read will help govern how you behave. And then think. Think pure thoughts, says the apostle writing to the Philippians in the fourth chapter.

Marcus Aurelius, a man who was a Roman emperor and a philosopher said, A man's thoughts dye his soul. And someone has said, Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It's in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

How do you handle your leisure time? What are you reading? What are you seeing? You know one of the things that disturbs me most when I move around people's homes are the number of televisions in children's bedrooms and the lack of control on what I could see. There's a battle for the mind because it's in the mind where sin is conceived. What you think is so important, it makes you ultimately what you are.

Ah, but Mr. Preacher, you don't understand how difficult it is to control my mind. I do understand. I empathize with you.

But there are basic spiritual disciplines that will help in this whole area. That's why I was preaching, if you weren't in, get hold of the text, get hold of the tape. If you can't afford it, we'll even give it to you.

I mean that. Get hold of the tape on fasting and discover this, that sometimes when you go without food and you spend time before the Lord, not only does it clear your mind, your mental faculties, it gives you an ability to resist temptation in a way that you've never known before. One of the problems today is that we're so jolly self-indulgent as Christians that we reject these basic biblical disciplines and as a result, when the tempting situation comes, we've got little reserve.

So I conclude my address. Our subject matter has been of great importance. Temptation, it's predictable, it's predictable, it's endurable, and when you fail, you're still salvageable.

Because the greatest truth in the whole world is that this Lord Jesus, who was tempted in every way like you and me, retained His purity. And when they did Him to death on the cross, they killed a righteous man. No, they didn't.

He offered His righteous life as a saving sacrifice so that men and women could be salvaged from the wreck of failure. And it's Jesus Christ who speaks the word of forgiveness and encouragement and by His Spirit's stimulus to you and me so that we can go on from failure by His grace to success. Let's bow our heads in prayer.

And I want you to listen afresh to the first stanza and refrain which we heard sung so beautifully a little while ago. Yield not to temptation. Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin.

Each victory will help you, some others to win. Fight manfully onward, dark passions subdue. Look ever to Jesus, He'll carry you through.

Ask the Saviour to help you, comfort, strengthen and keep you. He is willing to aid you, He will carry you through. So we do that, Lord Jesus.

We ask you to help us, give us the disciplines we need, bring to the surface the potential that is ours in you, and help us to stand against the hurricane that often blows in, against those traps which would cause us to stumble, against those temptations that otherwise would seize us. Lord, give us your strength and your grace through the bequest of your Father of salvation through you and through your bequest of the Holy Spirit working in us. Amen.