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"A Risky Life" Text Comment v. 1 This verse reconnects with the history of Joseph by recapitulating the information in 37:36. v. 2 The Lord was with Jacob… Just as he had been with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but Joseph did not receive a direct word from God that God would be with him, as the patriarchs had. "I will be with you…" But the narrator is telling us that God was with Joseph just as surely as he was with the patriarchs and that this accounts for what follows. Indeed, we’ll have the same statement at the end of the chapter once more, this time when Joseph had been thrown into prison! The narrator is telling us, the covenant community, that God is with us, both in thick and thin. v. 6 lit. "in Joseph’s hand" a stronger phrase than in v. 4. Now we learn that Potiphar had so much confidence in Joseph that he paid no attention to his own affairs. v.10 There was a prolonged period of temptation, which, of course, made Joseph’s resistance more difficult and more notable and laudable. v. 15 Fearing exposure or simply furious over his rejection she now fabricates a story that is a tissue of lies but calculated to elicit maximum sympathy for her and fury at Joseph. Note the little changes. The cloak was in her hand but she says that he left it beside her, as if he had taken it off himself preliminary to rape. v. 17 Again she puts it in a way calculated to get results. She stings her husband with the implication that he was partly to blame (the slave you brought us), and appeals to both class and racial prejudice (he is only a slave and a Hebrew one at that) and the sense of his assault against their household ("us"). v. 20 This has always struck careful readers as a surprisingly mild punishment for such an offense committed by a slave against a free woman. It would have been even more striking to an ANE reader. The assumption seems to be that Joseph’s protestations of innocence, which are not recorded here, were enough to raise suspicions in Potiphar’s mind that his wife might not be telling the truth. He knew Joseph and he knew his wife, after all. That would indicate that Joseph’s splendid faithfulness through this entire episode was not unrewarded even though he was thrown into prison. And the reader of Genesis knows, of course, that the prison was to be his path to the second highest office in the land! It is amazing how universal the biblical narrative is. We encounter in its narrative the situations of human life everywhere and at all times. It is because it is the story of human beings and human life and that life is, at bottom, everywhere the same and at every time the same. The story of the spurned woman who takes revenge on an upright male is one of these universal stories, a situation that recurs in every generation, in every society. Many wondered, for example, if something similar had happened to Justice Clarence Thomas, though perhaps we will never know the truth in that case. But Genesis is not at all concerned to suggest that men are more upright than women. After all, Judah was placed in the most unfavorable light in the previous chapter, while Tamar was presented as the heroine, the only one in any way faithful to the obligations of family and covenant. Genesis, like the entire Bible, no matter its doctrine of male headship and patriarchy, is splendidly evenhanded in presenting the failures and the virtues of each sex. But that is all backdrop only. What we have here is the account of a man, who is in covenant with God, enjoying God’s blessing, but falling into great peril, in this case, into the hands of a woman who is capable of doing him serious harm. God is with this man, but the divine presence does not shield him from this risk. God is with him, but that does not mean that Joseph will not have to exercise his will in a most heroic way. He will. What God’s presence means is that Joseph’s faithfulness will have its reward in due time. Indeed, what God’s presence seems to mean is that Joseph’s life is going to be a life of great blessing amidst trial and temptation. Or, to put it another way, that "God was with Joseph" tells us that things are settled and secure from the theological viewpoint, ultimately all is well and all is safely in God’s hands, but as we are looking at life, and as we must deal with our own lives from day to day, we face risk and danger and difficulty of every kind. The Bible paints the Christian life characteristically in these bold strokes and bright colors. But, you and I are beset by a tendency to make much less of our lives, to see them in much fainter strokes and paler colors. The Bible speaks of our lives as a warfare, but day after day we can live largely unconscious of being surrounded by adversaries, of being in the thick of combat, of living on a battlefield strewn with the carnage of this spiritual fight to the death. The Bible also speaks of our lives as a pilgrimage, but we can meander through the world day by day largely unconscious that we are going anywhere or that the journey on which we have embarked is beset with difficulties and dangers of every kind. It is one of our worst problems as Christians; a fundamental problem, by which I mean the cause of many other failures and weaknesses. We do not think our lives to be as large, as consequential, as so much the adventure and the perilous journey that the Bible is always telling us they are. And because we think of our lives as much smaller and so much more an ordinary thing than truly they are, we pass through days and weeks and years blissfully unaware, like deaf and blind men walking through a battlefield, of that which ought to be engaging us all the time – to fight on the Lord’s side in the battle for what is right and holy and good, to defend our souls and those of others from the assaults of sin, the world, and the devil, and to make haste to get ourselves and others safely across that no man’s land that separates us from the heavenly country. Now, I know that I am speaking, by and large, to a congregation of principled Christians. But, it is precisely because of my confidence in your desire to be what you ought to be for your Savior’s sake, that I challenge you to listen to this, from Alvin Plantinga’s excellent book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be (188) and see how much of yourself you find here.
Not so Joseph, he knew that his life was a great matter, that great issues were being joined in his daily behavior. That in matters both small and great he had to do with Almighty God himself. And it was this fact, this theological knowledge that made Joseph the hero of a man he was in the face of this temptation from Potiphar’s wife. You may have thought of it yourself, as the chapter was being read, but Potiphar’s wife is precisely the picture of the adulterous woman painted by the father in conversation with his son in Proverbs 5, 6, and 7. Her lips dropped honey, her speech was smoother than oil. And Joseph practices in her case precisely the wisdom the father told his son he must do in such situations. And here is always the way for a Christian. There is a theological reality that motivates, that persuades, that inspires. And there is then biblical wisdom that forms a plan and wards off the temptation. But, without the former, without the theological conviction, the sense of one’s life as a life to be lived for God, the sense of pilgrimage and spiritual warfare, one never gets to the wisdom, the sensible plan by which to deal with the temptations of life. "God was with Joseph" and Joseph knew it. That was the theology. Inspired, strengthened, nerved by that, then he put the wisdom, the skill at living a holy life, into practice. You know, of course, that this is one of the great pictures of a man resisting temptation given to us in the Bible. Next to our Savior himself in the wilderness at the beginning of the ministry, this is the greatest of those pictures. We are also given instruction in the negative: men who fall prey to temptation, and we find those men invariably failing to do precisely what Joseph does so wisely here. And you must learn from him these pieces and parts of biblical wisdom, this strategy for resisting temptation. First, there is the clear and forceful presentation of argument. You must do this with others: whether Satan or other people. Many times you must do it as well with yourself. There are reasons not to sin, however beguiling sin may be. There are reasons so weighty that no Christian who looks seriously at them will sin in the face of them. We sin, precisely because we forget, or, sometimes, we refuse to remember what we know. Joseph made those arguments, so we read in vv. 8-9. The sin Potiphar’s wife was proposing would have been, he said, an outrage against his Master’s kindness to him and confidence in him. And, then, still much more, it would have been for that reason and many others, an offense against God himself. And you can think of countless other arguments: some of them specific to the certain sins you are tempted to commit, some sins are dangerous to you, or harmful to others, and so on. But many of them reasons not to commit any sin at any time in any way. The love of God, the cross of Christ, Gethsemane, the presence of the Holy Spirit and the danger of grieving Him, the damage to your own soul, the unworthiness of it all, the fruitfulness of your life, the tendency of sin to beget sinning, giving the Evil One – who hates you – a victory, the judgment day, what you will think in heaven, and on the arguments go. Joseph, animated by his theological conviction that his life was from God and through God and to God, that God was with him, made those arguments and kept making them through the long-drawn-out temptation. He did just what our Savior did in the wilderness, who used argument after argument with the Devil as well. There is no shortage of arguments, each of which is entirely adequate by itself, how much more all together. But there is a shortage of Christians making those arguments! Far too many of us, far too much of the time, take our cue not from Joseph, but from Oscar Wilde, who said, "The best way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it." Wilde knows better now. Second, there is the avoiding of occasions. You see that in this case in v. 10. Joseph not only refused Potiphar’s wife’s offer, he did all that he could to avoid her altogether. "Do not go near the door of her house," the Father admonishes his son. Because of the attraction of sin, the sensual pleasures that are anticipated, you will, even while you are telling yourself that you will not succumb, you will try to get as close to the temptation as possible without actually giving in. Such is our love of sin; such is the pain of separation from it, for sinners such as ourselves. "Satan often tempts me to go as near to temptations as possible without committing the sin. This is fearful – tempting God and grieving the Holy Ghost. It is a deep-laid plot of Satan." So wrote Robert Murray McCheyne. And it is as true of all manner of other temptations as it is of sexual ones. We know we shouldn’t gossip, so we insinuate instead; we bring the conversation around to a person, a name, a subject; perhaps someone else will bring up the rumor, will make the unkind remark. We know we ought not to spend, but we find ourselves shopping anyway – only looking – we tell ourselves. Sharp-sighted Christians, honest with themselves, know how much time they spend approaching sins they tell themselves they will not commit. No wonder we fall so regularly! We are offering Satan our help. And, then, finally, there is the flight, the decisive act of the will, once and for all, and as soon as possible. In Joseph’s case, of course, the temptation gathered terrible strength from the fact that he could not entirely avoid it or put an end to it. He could not entirely avoid "the door of her house" as we are advised in Proverbs 5, because he lived and worked in her house. This is what makes Joseph such a perfect Christian man here and what made the Lord Jesus a still more marvelous man. They beat back temptations that could not be avoided and kept coming at them with terrible force. Anyone here who remembers what it is like to resist a strong, a powerful, a subtle temptation to the very end of that temptation, knows a little of what spiritual fortitude that requires; how much it takes out of a man or a woman’s heart: whether that temptation is lust, or envy, or greed, or drink, or temper, or laziness. But, still, we do see Joseph at the moment of absolute crisis doing what we are to do as soon as and whenever we can. "Flee youthful lusts" Paul wrote, and that is what Joseph did long before Paul. He ran out of that house leaving his cloak behind him. He fled. As Spurgeon put it, "The best answer to many temptations is a good pair of legs and the king’s highway." Joseph fled, without regard to any other consideration but holiness! Listen to this, from Martin Luther, in a letter to his organist friend Matthias Weller:
There is the wise man and the wise woman: always making arguments, keeping fresh in mind and heart the ugliness and evil of sin, the danger of it, the cost of committing it, the bitterness it engenders afterward; as well the obligation of a Christian to love and serve the Lord, to do his will, to keep his commandments, and to preserve himself or herself fit and holy for his or her Master’s sake; as well the blessing of obedience, the promise of reward, the fruitfulness of a consecrated Christian life and the satisfaction of doing God’s will. And, while making arguments, avoiding occasions. Taking steps, removing sources of temptation, staying away from tempting people and situations and stimuli, while the mind is clear and the heart convinced; taking steps before sin has set its hook and drawn away the mind. It is so much easier to beat a temptation beforehand than at the time! And, finally, while making arguments and avoiding occasions, rapping the temptation on the nose and heading off in the opposite direction at one’s first sight of the temptation, while one still has one’s wits about him. You remember Thomas a Kempis’ famous description of the successive steps of a successful temptation. There is first the bare thought of the sin. Then, after that, there is a picture of the sin formed and hung up on the secret screen of the imagination. A strange sweetness from that picture is then let down drop by drop into the heart; and then that secret sweetness soon secures the consent of the whole soul, and the thing is done. Well, best is to avoid the entrance of the thought in the first place by so avoiding those things that produce such thoughts as to make them come to us less and less frequently. Next best is to reduce the bare thought to rubble when it first enters the mind with the arguments of faith and the exercise of the will. After that, while the screen is being put up, turn out the lights in your soul by active argument and a turning away. Few temptations are resisted that get past that point. It is work, oh yes. It is the hardest work in the world, as anyone knows who has tried it and kept at it. It is the work of every minute of every hour of every day. But, tell me, you who have Christian blood in your veins: where would you rather be and what life would you rather have stretching before you: the life of Joseph with his torn conscience in the bed of Potiphar’s wife, or the life of Joseph with his clean conscience in that Egyptian prison? Remember too what Samuel Rutherford said: "A Christ bought with strokes is the sweetest of all Christs." |
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