You will turn with me in the Word of God to Genesis chapter 39. I always, almost without exception, love preaching the Word to you. But I will tell you that as I've studied and explored Genesis 39, I have told my wife and my children, it's been a long time since I've been this excited about preaching. And that's saying something, because I'm usually excited about preaching. But I hope it will become evident why, because there's so much to refresh us here. Yes, there's sin in our text, we will see, when we talk about Potiphar's wife. But to look at Joseph and the grace of God so very evident in his life, The way he resists temptation, the way he proves himself to a man who wants to pursue holiness, is a refreshing thing to read about and to see God's presence all over this text. So I'm overjoyed and excited to preach to you this morning. You're in Genesis chapter 39. Let's read the entire chapter together. Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. And Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord had made all he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight, and served him. Then he made him overseer of his house, and all that he had he put under his authority. So it was from the time that he had made him overseer of his house and all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. And the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field. Thus he left all that he had in Joseph's hand, and he did not know what he had except for the bread which he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance, and it came to pass after these things that his master's wife cast longing eyes on Joseph, and she said, Lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand. There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her. But it happened about this time, when Joseph went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was inside. But she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me. But he left his garment in her hand and fled, and ran outside. And so it was, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and fled outside, that she called to the men of her house and spoke to them, saying, See, he has brought into us a Hebrew to mock us. He came into me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. And it happened, when he heard that I lifted my voice and cried out, that he left his garment with me and fled and went outside." So she kept his garment with her until his master came home. And she spoke to him with words like these, saying, The Hebrew servant whom you brought to us came to me to mock me. So it happened, as I lifted my voice and cried out, that he left his garment with me and fled outside. So it was, when his master heard the words which his wife spoke to him, saying, Your servant did to me after this manner, that his anger was aroused. And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and he gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever they did there, it was his doing. The keeper of the prison did not look into anything that was under Joseph's authority, because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper." Let's pray. Father, once again, we need the help of the Holy Spirit. It's not just me as I preach, it's your people as they listen. So Father, we need the man of God to preach the word of God and the power of God, and we can't do that apart from you. So Father, we pray for the outpouring of your spirit, that you would minister to our souls, Lord, where there needs to be conviction of sin, where we need to address sin in our lives, and to repent of it, and to do works befitting repentance. Lord, open our eyes to see it. where we need encouragement and comfort because we're downcast. Lord, would you give that? Lord, you know the needs of each person here in ways that I never could. So will you minister to each one from your holy word? And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. There's so much here that I'm going to dive right into the text, but I will say these two things at the very beginning by way of introduction, which I intend to plant in your minds like seeds, which I trust then that the scriptures themselves will water, and then we'll seek at the end to harvest the fruit that comes from it. Here's the seeds I want to put into your mind. The first one's this. You're not sufficient. You're not adequate. You say, for what? For anything. For everything. Thanks, Pastor. I came here to be encouraged. You've insulted us. No, I'm not trying to insult you. I'm telling you I'm in the same boat. In myself, I'm not sufficient to do anything that is of good or help to the advancement of God's kingdom. I am not adequate to be the child of God that God wants me to be. I'm not sufficient to be the husband Angela needs me to be. I'm certainly not adequate to be the father to my six children that they need me to be. And left to myself, I am absolutely insufficient whatsoever to be the shepherd of souls God has called me to be, or to feed you with His Word. Now granted, God's called me, given me those gifts, but here's the thing, I can plant and I can water, but I have no power to give the increase. apart from God Himself granting grace, apart from His equipping, I'm not sufficient for anything that's before me, and neither are you. But isn't that why Jesus said to us, Abide in Me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. For apart from Me you can do five hundred things, Is that what he said? Apart from me, you can do two things or one thing. No, apart from me, you can do nothing. You see, because the reality is when you begin to realize that you're not sufficient, That's not discouraging. I think it's the lesson God's been trying to teach me for the past couple of months in different ways. It's a reminder He's been giving me that I'm not sufficient for things, and that doesn't discourage me. As a matter of fact, it encourages me. Because when God reminds you of how insufficient you are, it puts you in a place of strength. Because then you have no other choice but to look heavenward, and fix your gaze upon Him, and cry out to Him and say, Lord, if you don't work, it's never going to happen. And that leads me to my second thing I want to set in your minds before we dive into this. You're not sufficient for the circumstances God brings into your life. Your shoulders aren't big enough to handle them apart from His grace. But here's the positive side of that. Wherever God's providence leads you, His grace will keep you. Wherever God's providence leads you, His grace will keep you. Paul was a man who came to a place where God gave him a messenger of Satan. He says, a thorn in the flesh, some sort of physical infirmity, some sort of physical handicap. He doesn't tell us what it is, but it was something that plagued him and bothered him, something that was a hindrance to him. And he cried out not once, not twice, but three times, God, would you please take this from me? Would you heal me? And you remember what God said to him? My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." In other words, Paul, it might be better for your body if I healed you, but it's better for your soul if I don't. But I'm going to give you something better, a far greater value than physical healing. I'm going to give you the grace sufficient to endure the trial. And Paul says, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. I boast now in my infirmities, I boast in my weaknesses because God has proven himself strong." Now what does this have to do with our text? I hope it's obvious. Joseph was put in circumstances that were some of the worst imaginable. He's been given a prophetic vision by God twice in dreams. You're going to be a great leader. And by the way, do you realize he ultimately would be, he wouldn't just be a great leader in Egypt. Egypt was the superpower of the day. His power, his authority was second only to that of Pharaoh's. That means Joseph became the second most powerful man in all the ancient world. That's how much power he would have. And that's what God was prophesying to him. But the very next thing he does is get him sold into slavery. where he has no status. He's at the lowest rung of all of the community in Egypt. The social status, there was none. And he had absolutely no rights, as we'll see. You notice he doesn't get a trial. He just gets thrown into prison because he's a slave. He doesn't have rights. He starts off as a slave. He winds up as a prisoner. A prisoner who's in a prison for doing the right thing. Falsely accused by a wicked, wicked woman. And was Joseph in himself sufficient for those circumstances? And if it was you and I, how many of us would come out of all that bitter and angry and frustrated? And yet, that's not how Joseph came out. Because at the lowest points of his life, four different times, as you hear it in our text, it says, and God was with him. And God was with him. And God was with him. And God was with him. That's the secret of how he was able to endure hard circumstances and come out not bitter, but better. And so with that in mind, I want to dive into our text, which I intend to preach to you under four basic headings. What do we see? But first of all, Joseph is first of all described as a spirit-filled slave. Secondly, he's described as a righteous man. Third, he's on the receiving end of a false accusation. And fourth, we see him as a spirit-filled prisoner. So he's a spirit-filled slave, a righteous man, a false accusation, and then we see a spirit-filled prisoner. First of all, a spirit-filled slave. That's verses 1 through the first half of verse 6. Verse 1 reminds us of the things that we were told at the end of chapter 37. Joseph's been taken down to Egypt by the Ishmaelites that his brothers had sold him to. He's sold to Potiphar, who is the captain of the guard, the officer of Pharaoh. Now that's like saying he's the head of the Secret Service. These are the people who surround Pharaoh to protect him. The Secret Service protects our president even to the expense of their own lives. So this is a very important man, a man who's entrusted with the protection of Pharaoh. And so he becomes a slave there. And what we begin to notice in verses 2-6 is a five-step escalation in Joseph's life with Potiphar that's going to be repeated verbatim at the end with the prison warden. So we see the same thing happening twice. They serve as bookends to the narrative. Let's consider them together. The first step, the first rung, if you will, the step is this, and the Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph. Do you realize that Genesis chapter 39 verse 2 is the first time in four chapters God's name has even been mentioned? You will not find it in the previous chapters. The last time God was mentioned by name was chapter 35, when God appeared to Jacob and spoke with him. But then we have chapter 36, which is all about the history of Esau's descendants, the Edomites, and God's name is never mentioned. The following chapter after that is about the cruelty of Joseph's brothers to him. Now, it's certainly true God gave the two prophetic dreams to Joseph, but even in that context, God's name is not specifically mentioned. And then we read of the cruelty of his brothers who were going to murder him and then sell him as a slave. And then we come to the chapter we dealt with last week. Yuck! Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar, and all the wickedness and the vileness of this man who hires a prostitute not knowing it's his daughter-in-law, gets his own daughter-in-law pregnant, and then wants to take his gentile, unconverted gentile buddy and cover up his sin. And through it all, God's name is not mentioned. Then suddenly you come to chapter 39, and you start reading, and God appeared, and God did this, and God said this, and God showed mercy, and God, and God, and God, and God. It's all over the place. It's like a glitter bomb has blown up. And suddenly, God is everywhere. Now, He was not absent in those other pages. His providence was working. We've seen that together. But it's so refreshing. You know, that's why I tell you I've been excited to preach Genesis 39 to you this morning, because it's like walking through a desert for six weeks. And there's not a spot of rain. And you're parched. And your skin is cracked. And everything's hot. And suddenly you emerge from that desert, and you hear the thundercloud. And then it's not just a few drops of rain, it's sheets of rain, a deluge. And you're covered in filth and grime and sweat, and whereas usually you would run and leave and get out of the rain, this time you just stand there and you just take it all in. And you just let it saturate you, and it washes all the grime and the filth away. You read about the presence of the Lord, and then you read about, here's Joseph, finally the man who responds the right way. A man who does the right thing and pursues holiness in the midst of great pressures. And it's refreshing. And your soul comes away going, oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you that you've refreshed our souls. And that's what I see in our text. Well, notice what happened. The Lord was with him. The Lord was with him when? Doesn't that strike you as a very strange time to say God was with Joseph? He's a slave. He doesn't have any rights. He's at the lowest rung of the social ladder imaginable. He's owned by somebody else. And this is the time the Spirit chooses to say, the Lord was with him. Well, isn't that the way things should be? Isn't that the way we should understand things in our own lives? If you're in Christ, has the Lord not promised you, I will never leave you, nor forsake you? It means on your best of days, the Lord is with you. And on your worst of days, the Lord is with you." And it's interesting, Joseph could have interpreted his slavery as a thing of saying, God has a controversy with me, it must be some sin in my life that's why he's done this. Well, actually, what's interesting is, so far as we know, he was the only Christian in all of Egypt. He is the only person in the entire land who is the object of God's favor and of grace. And yet, he's a slave. tells us that we shouldn't always interpret bad providences as God punishing us, or trying to hurt us in some way, or chasing us for some sin. Sometimes he does do that. But in this case, that's not what it was. Certainly it humbled the pride that Joseph had had, but nonetheless, this was God's plan. And it's in the midst of the hardship that the Lord is with him. Which leads us to the second rung. The second ascending rung is this, the Lord enabled Joseph's master to discern that God's presence was with his servant. Notice what it says, "...his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand." Verse 3. Think about who Potiphar was. He was a pagan. He was an idolater. The Egyptians had many gods, and yet he looked at Joseph, and what did he see? God's with him. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the creation of mere men. He's a true and a living God, and he is with Joseph. He was able to see there was something extraordinary going on in Joseph's life, and he knew it wasn't just Joseph's a skilled guy. It was his God had poured out His grace upon him. He's given him unique gifts, and this is all the Lord's doing. The Holy Spirit tells us in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 7, that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. That is, gold has been put in clay pots. People don't usually put gold in clay pots. They usually put it in a safe or a vault, where it can be kept safe. But the point Paul's making is this. God has put His grace in us so that it may be obvious it's Him, and not us, that's done the work. They see the grace of God operating in our lives, and they give glory to the God who put that grace there. That leads us to the third thing. Joseph found favor in Potiphar's sight. This is going to happen again with a prison warden, though it doesn't say it explicitly here. If you look at verse 21, the scripture says, "...the Lord gave him favor in sight of the keeper of the prisoner." In other words, it was God himself who turned Potiphar's heart to be favorable towards Joseph. Which leads us to the fourth escalating rung. Potiphar promoted Joseph. He promoted him, Joseph. He gave him the second highest authority in his own household. Potiphar was able to delegate responsibilities to Joseph and know for certain they would be done. Not only would they be done, they would be done well. And they'd be done with diligence and they'd be done with integrity. He knew, I can trust him with my checkbook. And he's not going to skim anything off the top. As a matter of fact, he delegates all this to him and doesn't even check up on him anymore. He doesn't have to. All he knows is, well, this is what I own. This is the food I'm eating for supper tonight. Because he was able to trust this man to do these things because God had given him administrative skill. And the fifth rung in the letter is, God bless Potiphar for Joseph's sake. Notice what it says down in verse... Verse 5, "...so it was from the time that he had made him overseer of his house and all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. And the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field. Thus he left all that he had in Joseph's hand, and he did not know what he had except for the bread which he ate." You know, very often the world, even today, the lost world, citizens of this lost world are very often blessed with temporal blessings because God's people are near them. And very often they don't even know it. They're not even conscious of it. But to live in safety with your neighbor because your neighbor is a Christian and fears the Lord. To know that your wife and your children are safe in their presence and in their company because they fear the Lord. They're blessed in ways they're not even conscious of and very often are not even grateful for, and yet God himself is giving them temporal blessings because they're near to God's people. So this is what we're seeing as a spirit-filled slave. God was with Joseph in the strangest of times. In the weirdest of times, in the lowest of times, God was with him. And if you're in Christ, your worst of times, God is with you. What did David say? He said, Mercy and truth shall follow me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, and ahead of me is eternity, and where I'll be in heaven. But goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Which days? The best days and the worst days. How about the days when you sin or fall to some besetting sin? Are goodness and mercy with you on those days too? Well, the answer is yes, because why is one of those things mercy? Why do I need mercy? Because I'm a sinner. And mercy follows me even when I yield to besetting sin. Because I belong to Christ. And if you're in Christ, the same is true of you. So, first we've seen a spirit-filled slave. What we see next is a confirmation that Joseph was a righteous man. And this is verses 6 through 12. These verses are obviously meant to serve as a contrast to Judah's sexual infidelity that was detailed in the previous chapter. The end of verse 6 tells us that Joseph was a handsome young man. He had a good build. He had a handsome face. And unfortunately Potiphar's wife noticed it. She saw it. We know we're in trouble when we get to verse 7 and we read these words. She cast longing eyes on Joseph. Almost any time in Genesis have we not seen somebody lifts up their eyes, we're in trouble. Eve saw the fruit and she took it. The sons of God saw the sons of men and took them, as many wives as they wanted. Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the well-watered plain of Sodom and Gomorrah and pitched his tent there. Not once, but twice, Judah got in trouble. His eyes saw a Canaanite woman and he married her. Mary's a pagan. Then he sees a woman dressed like a harlot. and takes her. And so when this tells us that Potiphar's wife looks upon Joseph, it's not a good thing. She's beginning to lust after him and desire him in her heart. And notice verse 7. She's a brazen woman. She's unashamed. She doesn't blush to express to him what she wants. She comes to him and tells him with all candor, lie with me. You know, many times I've said from this pulpit, it's probably the most quoted thing I've ever said, is that men are scum. And I should explain that, especially for those of you who are new. What I mean by that is that since the fall, men, by their natures, apart from God's grace, are sexual predators. I don't mean that all men are rapists. That's not what I mean. What I mean is they're looking for a conquest. Look around at society. Is it not obvious that men are wanting one conquest after another, and they will tell you anything you want to hear to obtain their desire? And when God saves a man, He takes out his heart of stone, gives him a heart of flesh, and grants him grace to control himself. And to put to death those sinful desires, but I don't have to tell you men, you have to fight it because you feel that pull inside of you that you're constantly having to bring before the Lord and fight with. And the fact that we're surrounded by a world that's saturated with sexual perversion is something we are always having to fight everywhere we go because visually we're bombarded. on the television, in the magazine rack, in the grocery store, checking out, buying your bread. Everywhere you go, it's there. And so we have to constantly fight it. That's what I mean when I say men are scum because of the fall. But what I would also say to you ladies, you're not immune either. There's many a woman who's a snake in the grass, slithering about looking for somebody to sink her fangs into. And if you don't think so, think again. The same tendency you have to fight in your own heart. Why are women drawn to soap operas and to romance novels that are full of things about who had an affair with who and who cheated on whom? Why is it that women have to struggle in their hearts with a desire for men to notice them and have a rivalry with other women? if they think they're better looking or better dressed or whatever than others, or others receive their attention. All of us have to fight sin in us. It's not true for just one person, it's all of us. Well, here's a wicked woman. who completely is given over to her sin, her desires, and she makes no secret of the fact that she desires Joseph. But what I find remarkable is how steadfastly Joseph resisted her advances in verses 8 through 12. Let's look at it layer by layer. Look at verse 8, but he refused. Number one, he just resolved, I'm not going to do it. You know, it's not a sin for you and I to be tempted from without. The devil comes along and throws things in our thoughts, throws ideas before us, dangles the lure before us and carefully hides the barbed hook so we can't see it. The world places stumbling blocks before you and me all the time. It's not a sin for those temptations to come our way. It's a sin on their part, not a sin on our part. What our task is, is how we respond to those temptations. What do we do in the hour of temptation? How do we handle it? Luther said, he says, I cannot keep the birds from flying around my head, but I can keep them from building a nest in my hair. And it's very, very true. What do we do in that moment? Here is Joseph, first of all, resolving, I refuse, I will not do this. I will not do this. And then he goes on to tell her, basically this, my master trusts me. He has put everything into my hand. I have the run of this house. I can do whatever I want to do, and He trusts me to be a man of integrity. He lets me in this house because He trusts me with His wife. He trusts me that I'm not going to try to seduce you. He trusts me that I'm not going to make you be unfaithful to Him. This integrity was proven, wasn't it? Here is an instance where it's shown that Potiphar's trust in him was not misplaced. Do you know what a one-woman man is? It's described for us in 1 Timothy 3, Titus chapter 1. Elders are supposed to be one-woman men. Deacons are supposed to be one-woman men. What's a one-woman man? A one-woman man is someone who, by God's grace, treats older women as mothers and younger women as sisters with all purity. The congregation can trust that they're not after your wives and your daughters, that their virtue is safe in the presence of the leadership of the church. But do you know something? It's not just elders and deacons who are supposed to be one-woman men, it's every Christian man is supposed to be a one-woman man. Is that true of you? Is a woman's virtue safe in your company? Is her reputation carefully guarded? Are you a man who's faithful? A man who knows, this man is not going to flirt with me. He belongs to another woman. Belongs to his wife. And he's going to be faithful to her. And I can trust him. And the reality is, it's not just Christian men, it's all men that are supposed to be like this, because this is God's moral law. His moral law is that we should all be faithful, all be guarding the virtue of others around us. Does that describe you? Does that describe you? Well, the third thing. Joseph gives Potiphar's wife a backhanded rebuke. You're his wife. He's reminding her, you have obligations because you're bound to Him by a covenant, the covenant of marriage. You belong to Potiphar, and he belongs to you. You do not belong to me, and I don't belong to you. I belong to the woman that God's going to give me someday. That's who I belong to. But I'm your slave, I belong to you in that way, but I don't belong to you as your lover. He's saying, you need to be faithful to your husband. Well, then at the end of verse 9, it's the thing I find most remarkable in everything that he says. Because think about it. Humanly speaking, Joseph could have gotten away with this. I mean, he was the head of the home. He could have worked it out to where the servants were outside the home at certain times so he could be alone with Potiphar's wife. She had a vested interest in not letting Potiphar know what was going on. He could have gotten away with it, humanly speaking, but notice what he says. He says, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against whom? And sin against God. Do you realize what he's doing here? He's implicitly saying, my God is omniscient and He's omnipresent. His eyes are in every place keeping watch over the evil and the good, and I fear Him. And I may get away with sinning against men, but I cannot get away with a sin in the sight of God." This is great wickedness. Notice he calls sin, sin. It's great wickedness on your part. It would be great wickedness on my part if I yielded. It's sin. Sometimes it's helpful in the fight just to call sin what it is. It's sin. And he says, this is great wickedness. This is sin against God. And there's a point I want to drive home to you. A very important point. I used to be under a pastor who was fond of saying this phrase. It was a very helpful phrase, although a very convicting one. Whoever you are, what you are in secret is what you really are. What you are in secret is what you really are. And I think for all of us that's convicting in some way, shape, or form. But let me put it to you this way, over the years I've prayed this, I need to pray it more than I do, but I've prayed this many times to the Lord. I said, Father, I want to have a good reputation for holiness and loving you in our community. That's a biblical prayer, because a good name is to be desired above great riches, and the scriptures tell us that a servant of the Lord must have a good reputation among those who are without. I don't want to do anything that dishonors you before the public. And Father, as a shepherd of people, of souls, I want to have a good reputation within the church before the saints. And certainly, I want to model the gospel, the power of the gospel, for my wife and my children in the home. But do you realize I can even deceive them? My prayer is, Father, Make me holy inside, where nobody but You can see. Take the words of my mouth, the meditations of my heart, the attitudes of my heart, the thoughts I choose to entertain, the motives that govern me. Father, would You sanctify them so that I truly desire Your glory alone and the fame of Your name to be spread abroad and not my own? Would you forgive me, Lord, for so often thinking the world revolves around me because it doesn't? But Lord, make me holy in the innermost part where only You can see." Joseph was a man who could have gotten away with secret sin if he had wanted to, but he knew his God and said, no, I want to be holy when no one else sees. I want to be faithful even when there's the opportunity for my flesh. In verse 10, it's obvious that Potiphar's wife will not accept no for an answer. Because this didn't just happen one time. It's one thing to resist a temptation once. But this was a daily thing. Over and over again, she pleaded and wanted him to do this. But look at verse 10, how he resists. So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her. To lie with her, and I love this next phrase, or to be with her. This woman's poison, and I'm not going to imbibe any of it. Now, he couldn't completely avoid her presence. There's no way he could. Because this was his master's house and he had responsibilities in that house. It's not like us who could say, if I'm in a bad work situation, I'll just go get a new job and get out of this bad situation. Slaves don't get to choose new masters. So he has to be around her to some degree, but he limited it to the degree he could. and said, I will not do this. I'm going to avoid her as much as I possibly can and not be anywhere around her. Paul says we're not to make any provision for the flesh. It's not exactly what we find Joseph doing. I'm not going to give any opportunity for this. Proverbs chapter 4, verses 14 to 15, Solomon says, Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it. and pass on. And again, I'm struck by the contrast with Judah. All Judah had to do was see Tamar dressed up like a whore one time. And she knew that's all it would take for him to fall. And yet here's Joseph being subjected for day in and day out, week after week, with this woman's temptations, and he steadfastly resists it. What a contrast between the two men. And yet it's God's grace that is enabling Joseph to do this. Well, despite all the measures that Joseph had taken, and the fact that he had made it abundantly clear to her, I'm not going to yield to your desires and your suggestions, she's intent on achieving what she wants. And so we read that there comes a day when he has to go inside the house, doubtless a spacious mansion, goes into the house to do his normal work, And none of the male servants were inside the house. Doubtless, that was her arrangement. She made sure that this situation was set up. You know, it strikes me. Isn't it sad how slothful we can be in pursuing holiness and how diligent we can be in pursuing sin? She takes the time to make arrangements so that she can catch her victim. She's completely blind to holiness, but was diligent to pursue her sin. And she comes to him, and she grabs a hold of him with a death grip, and grabs a hold of his cloak, and pulls him towards herself, and he's going to force her to be with him. And I find it remarkable. She says, lie with me for the umpteenth time. Joseph doesn't argue with her. He doesn't rationalize with her. He says, you want my cloak? Leave it. He leaves his cloak, runs as fast as his two legs can catch him with her behind him and the outdoors ahead of him. I think he set new speed records that day. I think he would have made Jesse Owens proud. Because he's booking it. I'm not going to argue. I'm going to run as fast as I can go to get away from this wicked woman and from this temptation and from this sin. Surely Paul had Joseph in view when he said, flee from youthful lusts. Because that is literally what Joseph did. He ran away. Again, I ask you, what about you? What about you? Men, we are surrounded by temptations. Not necessarily temptations to commit fornication or adultery, though those are present too, but the pornography that's around us. The stuff that you can access on your internet. I'm a lover of books. You know that, right? I love books. The problem is when you go into bookstores, in every genre, in every section of the bookstore, there's pornography either in print or in pictures or whatever else. And so we have to be very careful. One of the things that I have friends that I text on my days off when I get to go into Barnes & Noble. It's been months because of the pandemic since I've been able to go into Barnes & Noble. But I text them and say, brothers, I'm going into a bookstore on my day off. I will text you when I come back out to tell you how I did with what I set before my eyes. And I've gotten so used to it, I just say, guys, I'm going to a bookstore on my day off. You know the drill. And just having that helps me go in with my eyes very fixed and very focused as to what I'm going to pick up and what I'm going to look before my eyes, and then to come outside and be able just to type one word, victory, and send it to the men. I thank God for these men who lovingly hold me accountable. Do you have trouble on the internet? Get Covenant Eyes on your internet and put it on all your devices and enlist accountability partners for yourself who will hold your feet to the fire. You know that for years, for 17 years, as a pastor, I have pursued accountability. I refuse to be without it. There are men who are pastors who I get their counsel before we make any major decisions in this church, but I get to meet with my dear brother, Pastor Kurt Smith, and we ask each other the hard questions. Brother, are you staying in the Word each and every day? Not just so you can prepare sermons, but for your own soul. How's your prayer life going? Are you being faithful and diligent to pray each and every day? How's your relationship with your wife? How's your relationship with your children? Do you have their hearts? Are you giving them enough time? And then they ask those hard questions. What are you setting before your eyes? How's your thought life? And what's your relationship with women who are not your wife? Are you being discreet? And by God's grace, we've always been able to answer that question and say, nothing to report. But we're going to keep on asking that question of one another. When we ask each other, are you being faithful to be a worker who's earning your keep? In other words, are you being diligent to labor in the calling which God has put upon you? Brothers, it is so important for me And for my safety, it's so important for your safety. You ladies know, you send me a text or an email, I'm going to immediately say, make sure you copy my wife or your husband or both on those texts or emails because even over the internet, even over social media, I refuse to whisper in your ear. There's an intimacy I'm not going to have with you that I have with my wife. Whatever it takes, what did Jesus say? Pluck out your eye. Cut off your hand. Whatever it takes for you to be holy, do it. This is what Joseph did. I've got to run. I don't care if I look stupid. I'm going to run. Because I want to be God's man and I want to do what God has called me to do. Put the temptation behind you. Put God in front of you. And put your accountability partners in front of you. And run. Run to it. We need this, brethren. And let me tell you this about this sin. Don't think, well, I don't need that because I can trust my own heart. Don't you dare trust your own heart. The Proverbs say, he who trusts his own heart is a fool. You know, a man is trustworthy who doesn't trust his own heart. You can trust a man who doesn't trust his own heart. Because he gets what's going on. So I encourage you, Joseph was a spirit-filled man. He was a righteous man. Look at how he responded to temptation. Go and do likewise. This is put here for our instruction. So what have we seen? We've seen a spirit-filled slave. We've seen a righteous man. The third thing we see is a false accusation. This is verses 13-20. Potiphar's wife is a proof of the maxim, Hell hath no fury as much as a woman scorned. She is embarrassed She is angered that Joseph has refused her advances, and now she's going to punish him. And she has his cloak in her hand, and this is going to be her damning piece of evidence. She's going to come up with a story and use this piece of evidence, as it were, and give her own little wicked spin upon it. And notice what she does first. First of all, she enlists the help of the male servants who had previously been outside. But doubtless, some of them have been seeing Joseph running like a madman from the house and wondering, what in the world is that all about? And so notice what she does. First of all, she insults her husband, by the way. Did you notice this? Verse 13, so it was when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and fled outside that she called to the men of her house, she calls them back inside and speaks to them and says, See, he has brought into us a Hebrew. That Potiphar, that husband of mine, he's such a dumb bunny. Look at what he did. He could have been a lot more discerning in the way that he chose the slave that he would buy. He brought in this Hebrew, and notice what it says, to mock us. Not to mock me. To mock us. Why would she say that? Men being what men are. What happens when someone else is promoted and you're not? You envy them. You're jealous of them. Doubtless that's what was going on here. Joseph has been given authority over him and they don't like it. Think about hundreds of years later when King Nebuchadnezzar advanced Daniel. He put him over all of his servants, and what did the other servants want to do? They wanted to find a way to discredit Daniel, because they envied his position, and his reputation being slandered would advance their cause. And so she's playing upon their ego. Look at how he's ridiculed us. So they're prone to believe what she's about to say to them, because anything that discredits Joseph is something that advances their own careers. This is what he did. He came into me to mock me, to lie down with me. He came to rape me. And he started even taking his garments off, and that's why I have his garment in my hand. But I screamed. And he ran. Did you see him running like a madman? It's because he was caught in his crime. She puts her own little spin on the things they had seen so that later, when Potiphar comes, we saw him running after she scraped. But what happens next? Potiphar comes home from work. And again, she says the same thing. Verse 16, she kept his garment with her until his master came home. I find that interesting. Maybe Joseph's going to come back in another way in the house and get his garment back. Well, she's clinging to that thing because she doesn't want to lose it. This is my proof. This is my evidence. And so he comes back in from work. And so she tells him the same story, but notice verse 17. The Hebrew servant whom you brought to us came in to me to mock me. The blame's yours. It's not that I'm a faithless whore. You're just not very discerning when it comes to the slave-buying department. You're not a wise husband. You know, women are exploited sexually in our culture, men are exploited mentally. And that's what's going on here. You're just not the smartest guy. And I hear echoes of Eden. It's the woman you gave me, Lord. We blame someone else. It's your fault, Potiphar, that this man was brought into our house. And it tells him the same story. He cried out. He came to violate me. I cried out. He ran. Here's his clothes. And of course, that arouses his anger. He could go to the servants and say, Did you see this? Oh, we saw him running. and it corroborates the story. And you see what happens. It gets mad, as any husband would be, and throws him into prison. There's no record that he was put on trial because he's a slave. He doesn't have rights. He didn't get the right to a fair trial. And he puts him in prison. And it's not just any prison. It's the prison where the men were held who were the special objects of Pharaoh's wrath. the King's Prison. Something we need to understand about prison in those days. Prison then wasn't like prisons now. In the United States, the prisoner has more rights than the victim. As a matter of fact, in downtown Atlanta every year there are people who commit petty crimes when the onset of winter is coming on. You know why? Because they have free room and board for three months. They have three square meals a day, and they've got television, and they've got camaraderie with guys that are just like them. And so they'll commit petty crimes knowing that they won't stay there forever. And by springtime, they'll be out again. They don't have to work, they don't have to do anything, they have free room and board at our taxpayer's expense. There are people who literally do this. Well, that was not how prisons were in those days. As a matter of fact, did you notice the front of your bulletin? From Psalm 105, it tells us they put his feet in fetters and they hurt him with chains. That's describing Joseph. It's talking about Joseph when the Holy Spirit tells us those things. This was not the place that you wanted to be. But there's something else we should note here. Rape and adultery in those days in the ancient world was a capital crime. Why did Joseph not get put to death for what he supposedly had done? There's two answers to that. Number one, God himself was protecting him. But number two, it may tell us something about Potiphar. That there was a question of doubt in the back of his mind about his wife and her credibility. You know, a woman like this is not going to be a woman who just has an area of sin, besetting sin, in terms of her fidelity. It's going to show up in her integrity. The sin is going to show itself in other places. Typically, when people have this kind of sin to hide, they have other sins going on that are the presenting sins in its place. There's reason to question her credibility, and it seems that that's why Joseph was not condemned to death, but he is put in prison. Well, we've seen a spirit-filled slave, a righteous man, a false accusation. But what is Joseph now? In verses 21 to 23, he's a spirit-filled prisoner. Don't you love how verse 21 begins? Isn't it amazing? Once again, he's gone from bad to worse. He was a slave, that was bad enough. Now he's falsely accused of being a rapist and an adulterer, and now he has a prison record. You ever think about that? Our hero, Joseph, has a prison record. And yet, it's in the midst of that prison, where he's suffering horrible things, God was with him. He did not forsake him. He was still the object of God's favor, even though his outward circumstances were not good. And look at something we see here. We're just going to touch on it briefly. The same five ascending steps that God gave him with Potiphar, he now has with a prison warden. First of all, the Lord was with Joseph. Second, the Lord enabled the prison warden to discern God's grace upon Joseph. He recognized God was with him. Third, the Lord gave favor to Joseph in the eyes of the warden. Fourth, the warden placed all the other prisoners under Joseph's authority. I delegate responsibility to him. He does it. He does it well. I don't even have to look into it. Just the same way as it was with Potiphar. And then fifth, the Lord blessed the warden for blessing Joseph. What had God said to Joseph's great-grandfather? Those who bless you, I will bless. Those who curse you, I will curse. There are men who bless his descendants, and they're blessed as a result. And that's the fifth thing, that the Lord blessed the warden for blessing Joseph by prospering everything that Joseph did. I want you to notice verse 21 and 23, which is all about his prison sentence. And notice that the bookends are, the Lord was with him. Verse 21, the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy. Verse 23, because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made it prosper. There's three applications I want to make, and I trust that you have seen that there are more applications we've already been making. I won't come back and safely useful us, because I've already told you that. But there's three applications I want us to see. The first is this. The first to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him." I trust you know that that's a direct quote from the Scriptures. It's actually Proverbs 18, verse 17. I figure that quoting the Scripture directly makes the best applications, because you can't argue with them, right? But here's the thing. Over the years, recent years, I've come to see that so many American Christians apparently don't know that that verse is in the Bible. Or at least they willfully act like it's not there. Because the first person to make an accusation, they automatically believe it. And I've seen this time and time and time again. Could you imagine what would happen If Potiphar's wife and Joseph lived today in our 21st century context, here in the year 2020, I'm going to tell you what would happen. When Potiphar's wife had the cloak and Joseph had run, she would immediately go to Twitter and she would post, hashtag me too. And then the social media world would go into a frenzy. And people would be tearing Joseph's reputation apart. Do you hear what he did? Man of God, ha! And Christians would like it, and post it, and spread it, and add their two cents' worth. The bloggers would go crazy, writing hundreds and hundreds of pages of vitriol about the wicked, vile man who did X, Y, and Z. Pastors would have people coming to them in their churches saying, we need to sever our ties with Joseph. Have you heard about what he's done? That's exactly what will be happening today. Now, please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. False converts do fall into scandalous sin, and sadly, true converts sometimes fall into scandalous sin. How many thousands of pastors throughout the last several thousand years, do you think, have succumbed to sexual temptation, have betrayed their trust, have fallen from the ministry, fallen from the faith in times, sometimes lost their families? There are people who abuse, take advantage of children and women, Abuse them sexually and physically, and you know we have a zero-tolerance policy for anything like that here. You understand that. If we find out that a man, a member of our church, is verbally abusing his wife, you know we're going to show up at his door in love and say, brother, stop it yesterday. repent and deal with your sin. This is not okay. It's not acceptable. And if we find out that someone's involved in some sexual misconduct, as far as with a child, particularly with a minor, we're going to go straight to the authorities, as the law requires us to do, and tell them of the criminal activity going on. We want people to be safe in our church. I'm not justifying anyone who commits those kind of crimes. But the point I want to drive home to you is this. When you hear an accusation brought against somebody, you should not believe it just because somebody said it. And you certainly shouldn't believe it just because you read it on the internet. I have dear brothers and friends who are in the ministry presently who have had their names tarred and feathered and drugged through the mud in social media. And there are members of sister churches that will come to their pastors and say, we need to disconnect from so-and-so because they did X, Y, and Z. And they'll say, well, how do you know? Have you ever met Pastor so-and-so? No. Have you ever spoken to him? No. Have you ever interacted with him by email? No. So you don't know him. You don't know what kind of man he is. And the things you read on the internet, do you know the people writing the stuff? They're writing these things. Who holds them responsible? How do they have so much time to write so much stuff? Do they have a job? Do they live in their mom's basement? Do they take care of their family and provide for them? Because who has the time to do this kind of stuff? Why should they merit your trust? Because think about this. Here is Potiphar's wife. Was she a woman worthy of trust? Was she a credible source? Did anybody go to Joseph and say, what's your take on this? What is your side of the story? And to find out there's more to the story than you ever knew? And yet, brothers and sisters, I've seen laymen, and I've seen elders, and I've seen pastors, and even missionaries. Take as gospel the first accusation they heard. What I'm getting at is this. In the day in which we live, we are involved in social media cannibalism. And an accusation of wrongdoing is taken as proof. And someday it may be your head in the chopping block. I wonder how you want people to treat you. I wonder if you want them to give you the benefit of the doubt and to hear your side of the story. And yet, I see in the world we live in, that doesn't happen today. And that's sin. And that's wrong. Why do we take such delight in the downfall of people? Why do we participate in the carnage and sit there and rejoice? We don't go to the source. We don't go to the principles and the case. And if something's true and it needs to be dealt with, we deal with it. If there's sin to be addressed, if there's discipline that needs to be brought to bear, we need to bring it. But you do not hear or receive the accusation of every person who comes to you and tells you something about somebody. You love your brothers and sisters enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. And to find out from the principal sources, is this true or is it not? If only somebody had done that for Joseph. And yet they didn't. Yet here's a man. Look at it. Outwardly speaking, Joseph was guilty as charged. I mean, look at it. He had a prison record. She had the cloak in her hand. The men saw him running out. And they had her spin on why he was running out. But what did they see? They saw him running out. That's all they saw. Did they ask him, why did you run out? Then he could say, well, here's what was going on. You get my point, brothers and sisters. The first to plead his cause seems right. Potiphar's wife seemed right, but the Holy Spirit declares Joseph to have been innocent. Even so, we need to be very, very careful before we accept and listen to sinful gossip and slander about others. Here's the second thing. A godly work ethic is an important part of how you must show the world that you're a Christian. A solid work ethic. Paul tells us that whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men. What I find interesting about Joseph is this. Here was a man who had every right to throw a pity party. Because he was given a vision by God himself. You're going to be a great ruler, and the very next thing he finds himself, he's a slave. And he could have said, well, God's providence has made me a slave, but you know what? I ain't going to help these stinking Egyptians to prosper at all. And I'm going to move with a slothful hand. That's not what he does, is it? He puts his hand diligently to do whatever he does as a slave, and God blesses him in it. And then, when he's thrown into prison, he really could have thrown a pity party then. I've thrown a lot of pity parties in my day. You know what the problem with pity parties is? No matter how many people you invite, nobody ever shows up. Right? And you're having a party with one person, yourself. And weeping and bemoaning your station. But here is a man, it's like, this isn't what I signed up for, this isn't what God prophesied to me, and yet here I am, a falsely accused prisoner. But I have work to do. And I'm going to do that work as unto the Lord, because He sees me in secret. And because of it, God brought him to the attention of those who were over him. We don't take it seriously enough what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. He says, remain in whatever calling you were called in. Remain in that vocation. Don't strive to be somebody. Be faithful wherever God puts you. Whatever you have to do in front of you, do it with all your heart and with all your might. Do it with all your gusto. As God called you to be a homemaker, then study to be the best homemaker you can be. God call you to be a carpenter, or a businessman, or a businesswoman, or whatever it may be. Do it to the glory of God. Win it to His glory. I'll never forget, years ago, I was newly graduated from Bible college, had the vague sense that someday I would be in the ministry, but no clear sense of calling. And I was working as a carpenter to provide for my new family, my wife that I just married. And my boss would tell you that I was the hardest working of all his employees, and yet other people advanced in front of me. And I got frustrated with that, and I came to him and told him that one day. And he said to me, he gave me a rebuke, which I look back as one of the most important rebukes I've ever received in my life. He said, yes, you're my hardest worker. He goes, but Jerry, your mind's somewhere else. Your heart's not here. He goes, I don't know if you're going to leave me tomorrow and suddenly go into the ministry, because I don't know what you're planning to do. And I realized that for the good of my family, I needed to die to my sense of calling to the ministry because I didn't have any clear call. What I did have in God's providence was He called me to be a carpenter. He called me to be a roofer. And I remember going home that night and calling my dad and just weeping, saying, Dad, you know, do I need to die to this sense of calling? He says, yes, son, you need to apply your heart. to what you're doing. And so I began to study. I began to study trade journals about roofing and carpentry. I began to acquire tools. I had long lists of tools I needed to acquire in order to be self-sufficient. And I said to God, God, if you never call me to be a pastor, if you never call me to be an elder, I will be the best carpenter in all of Cobb County, the best roofer in all of Cobb County, never achieve my goal. But that's what I'm going to strive for, for your glory. And if that's all I am to the day I die, that's fine. I had no idea at the time how important that was. To realize, God has put me here right now. And I need to put my whole heart into it. And when I went into the ministry, I just assumed that when I hung out a shingle and said, here's a Reformed Baptist church in northwest Atlanta, they'd come running. They never call, they never write. And I thought that within a year of starting our church in 2003, we would have 120 people here, and I'd be full-time in the ministry, and we'd be growing, and things would be great. And I found instead, for 14 years, I was bivocational, not knowing if I would receive a check each week or not. And I was able to fall back on those skills that I acquired years earlier to be able to provide for my family. As I used to say to people, I'm a full-time pastor, I just have to work on the side to pay the bills. But had God not taught me the lesson back then, I would not have been ready or equipped to do those things then. Put your hand to whatever God has put in your life and be the best to it, not for your glory, not for your self-promotion, but for His glory. So people look at you and say, look at his work ethic, he must be a Christian. It's God who's blessing the labors of his hands, and I see it. See, Joseph worked hard with his hands, and what did he do? He brought glory to God in the eyes of Potiphar. He brought glory to God in the eyes of the prison warden, and ultimately brought glory to God in front of the eyes of the greatest man, the most powerful man at the time, Pharaoh. God received glory through the work ethic of Joseph. Consider his example, and go and do likewise. Fourth and finally, as I said at the beginning, wherever God's providence leads you, God's grace will keep you. God showed up at the strangest times in Joseph's life, didn't he? You're in prison? God's there. You're a slave? God's there. The hardest times, the times when you're at your worst, He shows up. I'll never leave you, nor forsake you." In fact, it's interesting. Have you ever noticed when Stephen preached his whole sweeping survey of Old Testament history in Acts chapter 7, he mentions Joseph. And he says this, the patriarchs, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt. And then he says this, But God was with him. He gets the central point. Joseph wasn't sufficient. His shoulders weren't strong enough to bear up under the hardships he was enduring. But God was with him. God was with him. Brothers and sisters, wherever you are, some of you are going through hard things. I know you are. If you're not, you're about to. I hate to tell you. You're either coming out of a bad time, you're about to go into a bad time, or you're in a bad time right now. That's life in a fallen world, isn't it? But wherever God leads you in His providence, His grace will keep you. You don't have the grace sufficient today to meet tomorrow's trials, but when the trials show up tomorrow, God will give the grace necessary. He gives it to us as we go, so that we don't have to become embittered, but rather can humble ourselves under His Protestant Lord. Life has not turned out the way I thought it would! Has any of us been able to look and say, life turned out exactly the way we thought it would? None of us have. And yet God has been faithful to us. And He gives grace sufficient each and every day. And you know, if you're like me, when anything bad happens, you immediately kind of internalize it and say, I must be doing something really bad and God's punishing me for it. Anybody else in here like that? Nobody's raising their hand. I know good and well that you're there. And sometimes it is true, because God's a faithful Father, He does discipline us and He chastens us through heart providences to deal with sin, to help get our attention and wake us up. Even when He does, though, It's because He loves us, right? It's not because He hates you. Because He loves you. He delights in you. And He loves you enough not to let you continue in sin. But, just because you're going through hard times, does that necessarily mean God is chastening you? What was God chastening Joseph for when he resisted Potiphar's wife's advances? He was bearing fruit unto holiness, wasn't he? And yet, he gets falsely accused and put in prison. Well, where's God in all that? Well, He's right in the prison with him. Right? But what does Jesus say? He says, the branches that are in me that are bearing fruit, my Father, you ever heard it? Prunes. That it might bear more fruit. Sometimes the hardships in your life isn't God chasing you for sin, or Him showing His displeasure with you. It's Him pruning an already fruitful branch that you might bear even more fruit. Isn't that so in Joseph's life? He bore fruit and he was going to continue bearing fruit. By the way, notice he was acquiring skill sets necessary for what his future leadership was going to be. The humility would serve him well, but also he's being a faithful administrator of Potiphar's house. And then he's a faithful administrator of the prison. And then he gets to be a faithful administrator of all of Egypt. You might say he was faithful in a little, and God made him faithful in much. But God was with him. God was with him. God is with us in the circumstance so that we don't have to emerge bitter. Look back and realize, even when sinful men do sinful things to us, God has a purpose. What men mean for evil, God means for good. Romans 8.28 is still in our Bible that all things, the good things and the bad things, work together for the good of those who love Christ. And what is the good intended? Not necessarily that I'll be happy, not necessarily that we'll be more financially secure, but that we may be made more like Jesus. To be less conformed to the image of this world and more conformed to the image of Christ. And that's what God did in Joseph's life. When we look back with the benefit of 3,500 years of hindsight, and we admire him, well, isn't God put him here to remind us that if you're in Christ, God is with you, in the good times and in the bad, in every circumstance, to make him more like Christ. And so we can take hope in the darkest of days that God hasn't abandoned us, he's with us through it all, and will be with us till he comes home in glory. Well, that should fill us with hope and lots of optimism in the present age. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the example you set before us of Joseph. This text was not given to us so we could glorify Joseph, but so we could glorify Joseph's God. And we thank you, Lord, for showing us these things. Help us in our own lives, Father, to sanctify you in our hearts, Lord, to recognize that you're with us even when we don't feel like you're with us, through good and through the bad. And we pray this in Jesus' name.