Five Things That Make Temptation More Difficult:
1. When you’re experiencing God’s favor.
- Genesis 39:4, 21.
- When God seems to be blessing everything you’re doing, it’s easy to start to presume on that. This is one reason why we often see pastors who are in the midst of a strong ministry get entangled in scandal. They don’t keep the proper safeguards in place because they presume they’re untouchable.
2. When you have power.
- Genesis 39:6-9.
- This is related somewhat to the first point in that in both cases someone is blinded to their vulnerability because they are riding high.
- It’s a common idea that someone gets power and then becomes drunk with that power and begins to make dumb choices.
3. When temptations are persistent.
- Genesis 39:10.
- We can push back a few times but sometimes we get worn down by the temptation that persists. Do we have the strength to continue to do what’s right even when evil keeps after us?
4. When you forget that sins are against God.
- Genesis 39:9.
- Most of us minimize sin by thinking of it as something like “I hurt myself by doing that” or maybe “I hurt her by doing that.” Far less often do we think of the fact that ultimately all sin is an offense against God.
- For the Christian, that raises the stakes. We are offending the One who died for us.
5. When you’re faithful and still suffer negative consequences.
- Genesis 39:11-20.
- We all prefer simple, neat, clean, black-and-white stories where you do something right and you get good consequences while those who do something bad get bad. Yet that’s not how the world works.
- Joseph here does what is right. As we’ve discussed through the previous four points, even in the midst of a situation with a lot of ways it could have gone wrong, Joseph does what is right. Yet the lies of Potiphar’s wife leave Joseph in prison.
- Now, there are two big points to make out of this:
a. First, going back to last week, the fact that something negative has happened doesn’t mean that God has abandoned Joseph.
- No, as we know, God is working even in the midst of these negative events to position Joseph in the right place.
- We discussed this at length last week so if you need more on that I’ll point you to last week’s sermon.
b. Second, there is the discouragement, pain, and frustration of having done right and still had negative consequences come into your life.
- Let’s just take a second to acknowledge how frustrating this is. Even if you hold onto the hope that God isn’t done yet, there are moments of frustration to get through.
- One small truth we can hold onto to help us get through is that this is something that we see in the Bible. We are not the first. Others have gone through similar struggles.
- Further, this means that God has not necessarily abandoned us in this moment. He is still attentive and working.
- You can also look back to v. 2 when Joseph was sent to Egypt.
