Joseph succeeds, then imprisoned

Good morning. Before we begin our way into the passage here, just. First one, thanks to the Lord for all those who took part in the Christmas Eve service here this last Wednesday where we had a manger over here. And I tell you, what we saw was the kids and they were just beyond words wonderful. But also just all the other folks who participated in various ways. And frankly, if you were here, you participated. That was a really neat time. And we thank the Lord for that.

The other thing is just talk, since we're very close now, three and a half weeks from now, I'll be leaving with Bruce Beatty. Bruce is not here this morning. He's in Naples, Florida. But we'll be headed to Uganda. And it'll take us a couple days to get there and a couple days back. But here I am in the heart of East Africa. And so here's the schedule, leaving on the 21st of January. First landing at Entebbe, and yes, that's the place where there was the hijacking and the Israeli raid to free the people there. We'll be headed to the town of Mbale, okay? And from there to a nearby village called Shisenyo Village. That means mango, okay, in Lugandan.

And just to give you some idea, here Bruce is, and between him, or rather he's between two guys who are former Muslims, and the fellow Isa on his left there is one of those guys who became a believer because Bruce talked to him. Isa, by the way, is Arabic for Jesus. So he will be seeing Issa and talking to him some more. Hassan is finishing his electrical engineering program and then he hopes to become a pastor after that.

See some other indications of life there in the area of Mbale. I'll be spending a lot of time, probably most of my time, with Joseph Molaco. He is the part-time pastor, part-time farmer of Chisinau Village Bible Church. That's Mango Village Bible Church there.

And so I'll be spending a good time with him, either working with him individually or having him act as my translator. I'll have to say my Lugandan is a bit rusty. So anyway. He will be translating as I teach. So I'll be teaching just about all the time I'm not sleeping and eating. So, anyway, there's Joseph.

Next is a fellow we prayed for starting last month and the Lord answered prayer is Khalid Mwasa and his family. And so here's Khalid with the whole family in the Islamic garb because that's when the picture was taken. And he's now a believer as of this last June. He is some rough equivalent to a tribal chief and county sheriff in terms of his occupation and post there. So real interesting to have him with that influence. It'll be my first time there.

Bruce tells me when he walks into a room, it turns heads. Everybody's in a state of alarm. So it'll be interesting. If you'd like to pray, please do so. I will need lots of prayer. I'll be teaching hours and hours every day, either a group or a small group or larger group. And I'm not sure, they tend to kind of shoot from the hip over there, maybe even sort of a pastor's conference, but I'm not sure. So I don't know. Anyway, I have to be prepared to teach lots of different things. The other thing is they frequently, whereas here I'll teach for 35, 40 minutes, typical over there is to teach for two or three hours at a time.

Okay. Ah, okay. With that, we'll step into Joseph's reality vacation package, okay? To Egypt, as it is. Oh, what luxury. What privilege. Now, as we wrapped up Genesis chapter 37, which by now is a few weeks ago, we saw that Judah, the leader here, or the one who took the lead, had boldly taken the initiative to make sure that Joseph got handed off without his colorful coat to some traders who were going to sell him off to people down in Egypt. And by the way, the price that they paid for him, 20 shekels, was the going rate at that period of time. And fits right in. He was not paid for with any extraordinary amount. He was just a standard run-of-the-mill slave as he was being traded.

So here he is, first headed up to Dauphin to talk to his brothers and then rerouted by this sail down to Egypt where he would go to the house of Potiphar. So his starting point in this reality package, after being hauled behind a camel probably, is at the house of a man named Potiphar.

And this picture that you see here, the larger one, gives kind of a typical Egyptian court officer's villa. So a fairly nice arrangement, certainly for the time. And that would be typical. The picture that we have down the corner is Potiphar eating, and we'll see the application of that in a minute here. Potiphar is the captain of the bodyguard for Egypt's ruler, Pharaoh. Here is a picture of an Egyptian nobleman, Nebamun, and it shows a picture of him out bird and duck hunting, okay, behind the reeds and whatnot along the Nile. And underneath him there is his daughter and off to the side is his wife. So kind of an idea of that was a recreational activity. And so here's the daughter, here's the wife. So here he is going to have a cool time there. All right. Now, it goes like this.

The social and economic pyramid is here's the pharaoh at the top. That's what you would expect, right? Pharaoh is considered a god. And then here was Potiphar, one of the government officials, kind of at the same level as the noblemen and the priests. And Joseph was here at the bottom of the pyramid, being sold as a common slave and servant. So, after arriving, I'm sure he got lots of exercise while he got there. That's his social status.

But it says there in verses 2 and 3 that the Lord was with Joseph. We're not left to guess, fortunately, what it means for the Lord to be with Joseph. It means that Joseph was successful in his management of everything that was placed under his charge. That's how the Lord was with him and that's how that was expressed in Joseph's case in particular here.

Even Potiphar saw that the Lord was causing everything to prosper. Oh, it's not so much that he recognized the Lord. He's saying, man, everything that I put into Joseph's charge. I mean, we would use terms like he's got the Midas touch, you know, he's got a green thumb, those kinds of things. That's the way things were with Joseph. Whatever he did, he did well. Things were phenomenal. He says, man, I'll put everything into this guy's hands. He turns it all into gold. It's all good.

And it turns out that the phrase, the Lord is with, holds a key in sight for us as well because we have passages right there in the New Testament. Here's 2nd Corinthians 13 11. Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. As you do these things, the Lord certainly will be with you because He indwells you, but also the Lord will be blessing those things in a similar way to the way the Lord blessed what Joseph was doing. We can count on the Lord's person and resources to be with us in the midst of these things. When we walk by faith, God will be with us.

Here's Philippians 4.9, a similar phrase comes up. The things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and as you do it, what? And the God of peace will be with you. All of his resources, all of who he is will be available to you. He will be your adequacy. in the midst of those things. So when we walk by faith, God is with us. Not just to sit there and fold his arms, but to be every resource we're ever going to need. Then in verses 4 through 6, it said he was over the house. Not hovering quite like that. And certainly not the house that was really disheveled and upside down. No. He was over this really nice nobleman's house.

Potiphar put him in that place. Certainly Potiphar, seeing that everything that Joseph touched just turned to gold, so to speak, put Joseph in charge of everything. He put him over everybody and everything and gave him full charge and full responsibility. He says, why not? I'd be foolish to do otherwise. Joseph became Potiphar's personal servant and was put in charge of the house and the field and all his assets. Yeah, everything. Just take care of it. Why not? I'd be crazy to do otherwise.

Joseph turns everything to gold. He has a green thumb in the widest sense. Everything grows and does well. All Potiphar paid attention to is putting his food in his mouth. He says, I love this. All I've got to do is this. He just sits there and eats and loves it. Joseph takes care of everything. Everything goes well. I don't have to worry about it. I just got to put my food in my mouth and chew. He doesn't deal with that.

Genesis 39 also introduced the phrase, over the house, part of the biblical teaching on stewardship. Stewardship means being entrusted with something, whatever it is. Not encrusted, entrusted. Get the difference. There is a supplement, two pages, two sides of one sheet of paper on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room. Feel free to take a copy of that if that's insightful or helpful to you or you're interested in that, and I'll let you pursue that further. So, Joseph was an honorable Hebrew hunk. That's what verse 6 tells us here.

Not quite like that. Anyway, more like that. Basically, he was a real good-looking guy. Not just a nice face, but I mean, everything about him. Woo! He looked good. So, here is Joseph. Pretty hard not to notice the guy. His brothers, sure, they removed his colorful coat, but all that did was expose the fact that this guy is an honorable Hebrew hunk. And by this time, he's grown a little bit. and matured a little bit. Matter of fact, it's pretty evident by this time that he's learned some lessons. Some of his cockiness and perhaps arrogance. After all, he was pretty bold to go around wearing this coat that would make your brothers hate you, right? That's pretty bold. Maybe naive even, okay? He learned differently as we'll see here.

But he was a very good looking masculine specimen, no question about it. Even without his colorful coat, matter of fact, maybe even more so without it. But his good looks here aren't likely just a matter of genetics and exercise. Getting good exercise, working hard in Pharaoh's house and yard. But his good looks are about to become a problem as the account unfolds here. And we'll soon see what that means. Potiphar's wife took notice. Ooh, here is one Hebrew hunk.

She saw that he was very physically attractive, but her own flaws here were the real cause of her passionate and persistent appeal to Joseph that he be intimate with her. She was not subtle. She was passionate. She was open. This wasn't hinting. She was aggressive. Her appeal to Joseph wasn't subtle or restrained. She just demanded, openly demanded physical intimacy with Joseph.

What you see here is a picture of Leslie Ann Warren as she was in the movie called Joseph. I think it was around 1995. What's rather ironic is Potiphar's wife is played by Leslie Ann Warren and Ben Kingsley played Potiphar. Both Egyptian, right? They're both Jewish. Now, the fellow who played Joseph, however, was an Australian-born Italian, so I'll call that ironic.

But nonetheless, that's how it worked out, and they seem to have played the part fairly well. The world will make its appeal to us as well, and sometimes boldly and sometimes with subtlety. But the world will indeed make its appeal to us And you can count on it. It will even sometimes do with an authoritative demand. Look at Joseph's response carefully to this authoritative demand by Potiphar's wife.

But he refused and said to his master's wife, Behold with me here my master does not concern himself with anything in the house other than eating, but he has put all that he owns in my charge, even his assets. Asset management. There is no one greater in his house than I and he has withheld nothing from me.

So, his first point, I've been entrusted with everything, almost, except for what he's withheld, her. The next part, and you, because you are his wife, by the way, you're married to this guy, Because you're his wife, you're married to the man who entrusted everything to me. I've told you about the entrusting. Now you're married to this guy, and by the way, you're his wife. That's for you, not me.

He's trying to point her in the right direction. How then can I do this great evil and sin against God? Finally, so the biggest question is, how will this impact my fellowship with God? That's the bottom line question for this guy. He goes over the details about how he's a steward. I manage everything here in the household. All he has to worry about is eating. And you're his wife. But in the end, the bottom line here is, how is this going to impact my relationship with God, my fellowship with Him? How will that be impacted? That's the bottom line. That's the ending and final point, isn't it? Now, I think about this.

Joseph could have had some really juicy excuses. I came from a dysfunctional family. It was horrible. How would you like to have four mothers? It was terrible. Dad never did anything. The mothers did everything. If we did something wrong, Dad never said anything, even if it was awful. I was hated and betrayed by my brothers. They hated me. They took my coat off and threw me down a hole in the soul. I don't know why I all of a sudden turned Southern. I was sold into slavery and abuse, right? I've been abused. That excuses everything, right? I've been abused. Dragged behind a camel. My brothers Reuben and Judah were immoral. I've seen them do it. Dad never said anything. It was terrible what they did. So I'm just like them. It's a family tradition. I'm a young man with raging hormones. Woo! Okay? Have you seen her? Wow. I got to blow off some steam. Okay? Oh, and she sits there in primps all the time and makes sure that I see her doing it. Woo, it's hard to keep my eyes closed. Okay?

And after all, my family would never know. I'm here far, far away on this reality vacation. They'd never know. Here I am in this villa in Egypt. My father doesn't even know I'm here, likely. And my brother's off watching the sheep. Maybe the sheep are watching them. But nobody will ever know. It's far, far away and long ago. Besides that, the Egyptian culture here, lots of immorality. Everybody's doing it. I mean, I've got to be normal. You know what that means. Right?

He had plenty of good excuses. Let's look at how Joseph responded here. Joseph thought about it. He didn't just respond with what his feelings were telling him. We live in a culture that tells us to hardwire, talking engineering speak here, to hardwire our feelings to the steering wheel. Okay? That's what our culture tells us to do. If you're feeling that way, of course that's what you do. That's what the culture says.

But what he did, he said, wait a minute, what's the truth here? What's the reality? I may have raging hormones, but what's the truth? He thought about it. See, in our culture, men are taught to think with their zippers. That's how our culture teaches, increasingly. If you doubt me, just turn on, well, never mind. I won't call what kind of tube it is.

Anyway, Joseph went directly to the truth. That's part two. He went directly to the truth. He talked about the most important relationships and commitments he had. He says, I've been entrusted. And he went into detail about that. He said, you are my master's wife.

And third, this will badly impact my fellowship and relationship with the Lord. That's the truth. He laid out the truth in front of her. Not that she was terribly interested in truth. Joseph went to the matters with which he'd been entrusted. He laid those out very clearly. The bottom line though was how will this impact my fellowship and relationship with the Lord.

Now some folks have speculated I think it needs to stay there as to why would Potiphar's wife be making such an urgent appeal to Joseph aside from the fact that he's a Hebrew hunk. Some have speculated that perhaps Potiphar was a eunuch and having a wife was just sort of a figurehead and that he really showed no interest in her. I suppose that's possible, but it's speculation. Some have pointed to the fact that in the Hebrew as well as the Egyptian culture, there was a lot of pressure on the woman to have children. And perhaps Potiphar had not been able to produce children, so she's saying, hey, here's this guy.

This guy is certainly a strong and virile young man. I'll appeal to him, and then I can have children. Perhaps that's the reason. But as we go through this, she was certainly persistent. Verse 10 tells us that Potiphar's wife didn't just make an appeal once and then walk away. The impression we get very clearly in verse 10 is this. She was persistent in her appeal with him, in her blatant appeal to Joseph, to be intimate with her. Verse 10 also goes on to summarize with us the faithful response of Joseph to the persistent demands and appeals from Potiphar's wife. What did he do? He didn't listen to her. Got that? He didn't listen to her. Consider Joseph's faithful response here. There's something else. The negative response is he didn't listen to her.

The positive response is he went around doing the things that he needed to do. After all, that's what he started off explaining to Potiphar's wife, right? Most of his explanation is filled up with the details of, these are the positive things that I've got to do. I can't have time for this diversion that you're demanding from me because I have these positive things to do. There was this whole villa that he had responsibility for. That was the positive direction. and also certainly his relationship and fellowship with the Lord. That was the positive direction he was looking to.

Here in Romans 6, notice in this passage there are statements in Romans 6 that we can look at, and they're underlined here and in blue, that are positive appeals out of that passage. Even so, positively, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but specifically here, alive to God in Christ Jesus. There is the positive statement there. And it goes on, even at the end of that passage, you are not under the law, the negative statement, but under grace, the positive statement. Further on in Romans 13 and 14, let us behave properly as in the day, the positive statement, Not in, and then he goes and details that, but in verse 14, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and what's the negative?

Make no provision. Don't listen to it. Okay? Just like Joseph did with Potiphar's wife. The best thing to do with the sin nature? You just don't mess with it. Okay? Deal with it the way God intends. Don't sit there and wrestle with it. The Lord goes into elaborate detail in Romans 7 and in fine detail in Galatians 5.17 to tell us, you cannot will not to do something. That's not our place. The best thing, come to a place of pay it no mind. Put your focus upon the Lord.

So, she was persistent and he was faithful until one day. Here's the one day in verse 10. It gives the impression Potiphar's wife was demanding and Joseph was faithfully ignoring her pleas and those continued for some time. We aren't told exactly how long it went on, but that pattern of her demanding and him refusing and not listening continued.

That's clear. One day when nobody else was inside of the house. So here's the opportunity. It isn't a matter of her making some kind of quiet, secret, stage whisper appeal. Psst, Joseph, come here. Come on. Instead, this was everybody else is outside. Here is her chance. Here is her opportunity. So she grabbed his outer garment and made her demand for intimacy again. Openly. Okay?

At this, Joseph fled outside, leaving his garment in her hand. He loses another piece of clothing. Here's a comparison and a contrast out of these passages here. One of them was this. Here's Joseph's loss of his colorful coat just before being sold to the traders and the loss of his outer garment here to Potiphar's wife. It's an interesting observation.

Joseph seems to lose some clothing every time his life is about to change. I don't know what spiritual application he made for that, but I sure see it. But now Judah, Joseph's older brother, the one we just studied in chapter 38, fell for offer of illicit intimacy right away, paying the price. What do you want? Oh, I'll pay anything. Here, have a goat. Paying the price, no resistance apparent whatsoever. Joseph, however, ignored repeated demands for this illicit intimacy, unwilling to pay the price. I will not. I won't even listen to you.

Real interesting contrast there. Now, so Joseph is outside. Here's the villa and he's run outside now without his coat. The guys who are on the outside don't know what's taking place inside. And so now it's time for Potiphar's wife to tell the ones on the outside, all the workers who are outside, the story.

How did this come about? She does that, telling them that Joseph had made the advances toward her. And when she screamed, Joseph ran, leaving his garment with her. As far as they can tell, sounds like a good story. All right. Now, when her husband came home, she told him the same story. that she had told to the workers, at least very close. And so here's the account. Let's take a look at it in verses 13 through 18. And one of the things you'll notice in this account is look at what she says to the workers. He has brought in a Hebrew to us. Two things to notice. Who's the he? Potiphar. You know, this whole problem is Potiphar's fault. It's Potiphar's fault. Matter of fact, it sounds a lot like what Adam said in the garden, that woman that you gave me. So it's Potiphar's fault. And notice, she's a racist. It isn't the fact that he's just a slave. It's a Hebrew. That's the problem. He's Jewish. That's the problem. That's the source of the difficulty. She's anti-Semitic.

When the story turns around to her husband, it only changes slightly. Look at this one. Hebrew slave whom you brought to us, adds the word slave in there, still blames her husband. You're the one who brought this one in. She is consistent in blaming her husband, even to his face, which is real interesting. She claims in both cases that he is making sport Of us in the first report and of me in the next one. So, real interesting, a minor shift there. Nonetheless, she is consistent in these things.

Potiphar, you're to blame for bringing this Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew, anti-Semitic slave here among us and he's making sport of us and of me. So Potiphar's anger burned. We don't know why Potiphar's anger burned. Perhaps he thought, oh, this Joseph has violated my wife. I'd hate to say it, but maybe he knew that she wasn't trustworthy on that account. Could be. So that may have bothered him. It may also have made him very mad that now he's going to have to worry about something besides eating. And that may have gotten him pretty upset. But here's how the story turns out.

So what's Potiphar going to do? Joseph is now in the not-so-hokey-pokey. Okay? You got that? Oh, that's bad. Okay. He's in the king's prison. The king's prison. Oh, wow. Okay. Potiphar's answer to his wife's charges was to put Joseph in the royal prison.

It was the least severe of the options in front of him. He could have put him in a common prison, which would have been far more crowded and in pretty bad conditions, or even put him to death. Those were some other options that he could have chosen. I would suggest that it's possible that he chose this option because he wasn't quite so sure about what his wife was saying, and he may have been a bit irked to have her casting blame on him. Not just to her face, but in front of everybody else that worked for him. It's your fault, Potiphar. So nonetheless, he went light on his punishment for Joseph. So he put Joseph here in the royal prison. That's the next phase of Joseph's reality vacation. Would you like to sign up for that? He provided Joseph there, however, in that royal prison with two kinds of opportunities.

The one opportunity was like what he had before, that is, in the same way that Joseph kind of rose to the top, because remember he was among all the slaves, just came in as a low-level slave, and then rose to the top being right under Potiphar in authority and command. That same opportunity shows up here in the prison, as we'll soon see, where he, in the prison, goes and manages everything, and the more responsibility they give him, the better things run. So that opportunity was now in front of him with the prison. But now here is, I think, one of the key reasons, and that is this new opportunity that put him in contact with, since it's the king's prison, those who are of the king's royal court. Those who are of the king's royal court. That puts him in Pharaoh's court, not just in Potiphar's house, but in contact with Pharaoh's court. It's the Lord's opportunity.

Here's the pattern here. It's kind of something we've highlighted before as a Hebrew poetry pattern where things are repeated with some kind of rhyming, not an exact repeating, but a rhyming of meaning. And one of the things that it does, the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him and gave him favor. Giving us not only emphasis by repetition, but further definition. What does it mean, the Lord was with Joseph?

It's a triple emphasis there. In verses 22 and 23 we see this, Joseph was a specially empowered faithful steward for whom God prepared the opportunities. Like with Joseph's stewardship of everything back in Potiphar's house, the chief jailer found that everything he placed under Joseph's charge went well. It was done well. It's possible that we could look at Joseph's imprisonment and say, oh man, what a bummer. You know, that's too bad. What a difficult bum rap. OK, bad deal.

But God provided the empowerment and the motivation and the wisdom and opportunity even preparing the way for him. You notice that none of this seems to be, even though it wouldn't have been Joseph's first choice, none of this seems to be an accident, does it? It's God's intent that you be a specially empowered, faithful steward for whom God has prepared the opportunities. Similar to Joseph, God intends and has provided for each believer here today to be a specially empowered, faithful steward for whom God has prepared the opportunities.

Isn't that amazing? Just like with Joseph, or very similar anyway. See, we have everything the Lord has provided for all of us. And by that I mean all of us. We all have the same position in Christ. Every believer here this morning is in Christ. Christ is in every believer here this morning. He has prepared the good works that we might walk in them. That you might recognize from Ephesians chapter 2. We'll get there in just a minute.

Now, we have motive, means, and opportunity, and that does not have to do with a detective case. As believers who are in Christ and in whom Christ dwells, each one of us as a believer has the motive of God's mercy and grace. Motivated by mercy and grace. There's your motive. Our means is the means of the multiple ministries of the Holy Spirit. We have motive and we've got means. as believers. Every believer here this morning. The next thing we have is opportunity.

By the motive and means which are provided totally by God, we have this amazing, God-given, grace-given opportunity to walk in the good works that He has graciously prepared beforehand. Just like the Lord did with Potiphar's house. Just like the Lord did in the king's prison. He's prepared it beforehand. Here is this opportunity in Ephesians 2, 8-10, for by grace you've been saved. And by the way, that's in what's called the perfect tense. What does that mean? It means it implies permanence. You've been saved permanently.

Through faith and that, that is the salvation, is not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. not as a result of our works, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we, that is, we who believed, we who are saints, are his workmanship. You see, it's not my works, it's his workmanship that matters here. Notice the distinction? Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Ephesians 4.1 and 17, Ephesians 5, 2, 8, and 15 follow with exhortations about our walk so that we would walk in the works that he's already prepared for us in advance. That's the opportunity. Motivated by grace. The means, we're in Christ. There's the opportunity. The works that he's prepared beforehand. He's done it. Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at this passage here and see Joseph, in one sense you could look at it and say, boy, what a bummer, being sold by your brothers, being falsely accused, and then having to pay prison time for something you didn't do. It looks like it's all headed downhill, and yet it's most certainly not. In fact, it is God's working out all the details, working all things ultimately for good. Now we just thank you that we can count upon you working all things for good and for you providing the motive and the means and the opportunity all by your doing and your workmanship. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.