Joseph Sermon 2 Genesis 39: 5-10
Imagine what Hollywood could do with the story of Joseph. A man of exceptional qualities... dreams from God...able to interpret the dreams of others...handsome...a victim of his brothers’ rage...able to rise from the depths of despair to power in a foreign land...forgiving of those who once had wronged him...the tearful reunion between a loving father and his long-lost son. Just the kind of man an audience could fall in love with is Joseph. But then there’s that one part in the story that doesn’t really fit with today’s Hollywood movie. He has the chance to have an affair with a prominent Egyptian woman and he turns her down! What an exception that would be in today’s movie world!
That’s because the life of Joseph is not a Hollywood movie plot, it’s the life of someone who became a chosen instrument of God. This was a man whom God would use to preserve his people, the people from whom the Messiah would come. God was with this man Joseph. He blessed him and gave him a God-fearing spirit. That’s why he was able to resist the temptation brought on by Potiphar’s wife, an exception in the movies perhaps, but the rule in God’s world.
Oh if we could all be more like Joseph! I’m not referring to his exceptional abilities or his good looks. I’m talking about how he resisted temptation. “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” he said. Where can we find that same kind of resistance, no matter what the temptation may be? Let’s answer that by rephrasing Joseph’s question as we consider:
“Temptation? How can I resist?”
1–The right way to ask that question
2–The right way to answer that question
I learned that famous question that Joseph uttered as he resisted Potiphar’s wife in catechism class, under the 6th Commandment, how about you? “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” It’s such a great testimony from a God-fearing man. It’s one of those questions where the answer is a given. Joseph knew the answer could only be something like this: “You can’t do this. You must not. You dare not. You love your God too much to do that. Your God has loved you and blessed you and is with you now to give you strength.”
Nevertheless it had to have been a very real temptation for Joseph, meaning, the opportunity to commit the sin with Potiphar’s wife was very real. He was in charge of nearly everything in that house because he had been on the good side of Potiphar for some time. Therefore he would be above suspicion. They were alone. He had been through a lot of heartache, was away from his family and homeland. This woman desired him greatly. How easily he could have said, “Go to bed with you? How can I resist?” (as if to say, why not?)
What a model Joseph became for all of us by the way he handled this temptation. “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” That was the voice of a believer listening to his conscience! That was the voice of a man who realized that this sin would first and foremost be a sin against his God, the God who had kept him safe and had prospered him besides. “Go to bed with you? How can I resist?”(as if to say, no way!)
Can we be like that? Yes, we can. Are we always like that? That might depend on what the temptation is and what our frame of mind is at the time. I wonder how often we deal with temptation the way we deal with dessert: “Another piece of chocolate cake? How can I resist? Another scoop of ice cream? Sure, why not?” While another piece of chocolate cake or another scoop of ice cream may not always be good for us in that it will add a pound or so to our body weight, we can usually have another one without doing too much harm. But giving in to the temptation to sin is always harmful. It might be harmful to our bodies; it is harmful to our souls.
That’s why we must ask the question before us today in the right way: “Temptation? How can I resist?” By asking the question the right way we will already have taken an important first step in resisting temptation. We’ll say “no” to it. We’ll get ready to fight it. That’s what Joseph did. He didn’t allow the thought of sinning to enter into his mind. He verbalized his conviction and the appropriate actions followed.
Joseph knew that the consequences of his actions would be great. You can tell by what he spoke. He knew that giving in to Potiphar’s wife would be a “wicked thing.” Thus he looked for ways to avoid the temptation. Our text says that he wouldn’t even go near Potiphar’s wife once he realized what she was after. As the chapter continues we see that Potiphar’s wife persisted in her temptation and became more aggressive, but Joseph continued to resist her, to the point where he ran from her as she grabbed his cloak. That would result in his ending up in prison. But that price he paid was worth the actions he took in resisting her temptation. God would even use his time in prison down the road to elevate Joseph to an even greater status in the kingdom of Egypt.
Do we realize what the consequences can be when we give in to temptation or when we go looking for it? Sometimes we sinful human beings are just like the wolf of the Arctic regions whom the local tribes used to catch without having to hunt them down at all. The tribes put some fresh meat on a sharp blade and let the wolf do the rest of the work. The wolf with its insatiable appetite not only would eat the meat off that blade but in the process would lick the blade clean, slicing its tongue in the process and thus begin to bleed. Then the wolf would either become so weak and vulnerable that the tribesman could just kill him or the wolf would die by bleeding to death. It got caught up in its own desire for more food to the point where it didn’t realize what it was doing to itself.
That’s how we can end up if we’re not careful, if we’re not watchful as our Savior said we should be. We can get so caught up in our own desires for what is pleasing to our flesh that we don’t even realize the harm we’re causing to ourselves or to others. That’s why God, in his love for us, has given us rules to follow about right and wrong. They are meant to keep us and others from harm. Joseph knew that and believed it. He knew that by giving in to Potiphar’s wife he’d be sinning against her, her husband, himself, and God. He refused to give in!
Every now and then I see an athletic team sport the slogan “Refuse to lose!” They use that slogan to express their resolve that they will try to win every game, as if losing is not an option.
But most teams do end up losing at least once in a while. I suppose when that happens then the slogan can still be used to express their winning attitude, which is part of success in itself. “Refuse to lose.” Think that can work with temptation? Whether it would or not, we can learn from Joseph that when it comes to temptation, it’s important to ask the right question the right way: “How can I resist?”
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Like teams that lose ball games, even though they don’t want to lose, we know that we will lose the battle against temptation at least once in a while. What’s more likely is that we will lose often, everyday, even if we tell ourselves “I refuse to lose.” Therefore, we have to learn how to answer the question, “How can I resist?” because we know just how weak we really are. Remember what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane to his disciples? “Watch and pray, that you don’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” It was right after he said this that our Savior, meanwhile, continued to struggle with his own agony in that garden, but always remaining obedient to his Father’s will.
Jesus went through what he did to take on the punishment we deserve. We cannot win the battles with temptation by ourselves. We certainly could not win the victory over sin by ourselves. Nor could Joseph win the battle that he won all by himself. Exceptional man though he was, he was a sinner, too. We hold Joseph up as a model for us, as a remarkable man whose life bore many similarities to the life of Christ, and yet Joseph was also a sinner. Some say he is one of the few people in the Bible about whom it is difficult to find faults. Here in this episode he spoke and acted well. But since he, too, was conceived and born to human father and mother, we know he sinned. Even if it came out only once in a while, he sinned. He therefore deserved the punishment that Jesus bore for him, too.
Jesus came to this earth, in part, to defeat the devil. That’s the same devil that won a huge battle in the Garden of Eden when he succeeded in getting Adam and Eve to fall to temptation and eat the forbidden fruit. Even the tactics the devil used back then were similar to the tactics he used on Jesus Himself when the devil tempted him in the wilderness. He tried to get Jesus to disregard his Father’s plan and take a shortcut. But already then Jesus showed that he would defeat the devil soundly, completely, to fulfill his Father’s plan. Jesus used the words of his Father to put the devil in his place. As a humble Son Jesus won not only the battle there in the wilderness, he also won the entire victory on the cross and sealed it by rising from the dead.
It is in the victory of our Savior where we find the real power and strength to overcome temptation. It’s our motivation for resisting, just as God’s love for Joseph was a big motivating factor for him. But it’s also the power to overcome. It has to be. If the power is not what God has done for us and will do for us then we know that the victory would be uncertain. We’re too weak to resist all the time. If I said to you today that whether we are saved or not depends on our performance in dealing with temptation, something like 90 percent or better, than who of us could rest assured that we will make it there? But the victory, the assurance of forgiveness and eternal life, that rests with God and what he has done by sending Jesus.
And so we fight the battles with victory already in hand. We still must fight the battles because he who has been defeated still tries to wrestle the victory away from us. But He who has won the victory has not left us to fight alone. He gives us weapons to use. He gives us the armor to put on and tells us to put it on. We heard about that in our epistle lesson for today. It would be worth our time to re-read that lesson again sometime today.
Just as Jesus used the sure word of God to show the devil that he was wrong and that God’s words are right, so also we have that tremendous, powerful word of God to use against Satan and all of his earthly forces today. Isn’t that one reason why we memorize important passages, like the one from our text today: “How then could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” We have the power of prayer that focuses our attention back on God and leads us to remember that he is on our side. We have that voice that tells us whether we are acting according to what we believe is right or wrong, the voice that moved Joseph to cry out as he did, “How could I?” We have the nourishment to build up our strength, the gospel in word and sacraments, the tools of the Holy Spirit. We have examples in Scripture, men like Joseph, Paul, John. We have the testimony of the martyrs, those who witnessed their faith in spite of persecution, many of whom died while witnessing. We have fellow Christians around us today to encourage us in the fight. We have brains to tell us when to run away, to use whatever tactics are necessary to resist, just as Joseph had the brains to run away from Potiphar’s wife. We have the promises of God: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you...God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will provide a way of escape.” We have confidence in Christ which allows us to say as Luther wrote, “One little word can fell him,” namely, the devil. Even a word like “no” may be all it takes to fell him.
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Have you ever tried to suppress a cough when you have a cold without the use of any medicine? Have you tried to just block it out of your mind or hold it in? That’s hard to do. Sooner or later the cough comes out, doesn’t it? You have to use some sort of cough medicine to control it. How about an itch that you got from a rash or poison ivy or something like it? You try to control the itch and can’t. You scratch the itch and then it just gets worse. You have to put ointment on it. Well, temptation can be like that. It keeps coming back. We can even make it worse.
Put some blood on it. That’s right, use blood as a salve for the itch of temptation. Use Jesus’ blood, and the temptation will go away. Use Jesus’ blood when you’ve made things worse by giving in to temptation. It’s the only cure. It’s a proven cure. It’s the salvation that Jesus has won. It cost him his life. It doesn’t cost us anything. How can we resist? Amen.
