Hello everyone and thanks for listening today to Trinity Sermons.
Now here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share encouraging sermons rooted in
biblical truth that guide us in our faith journey as we seek to love Jesus, to live
like Jesus, and to lead other people to Jesus.
Now this is episode 3 of our sermon series that we are calling, Live in the Dream, about
Joseph and Genesis, and Rob Hirkmans will be preaching today about that time when Joseph
faces the temptation of Potiphar's wife.
Now before we begin, don't forget to follow our podcast to stay up to date on all of our
future sermons and episodes, and to learn more about who we are, feel free to check
us out on social media or visit our website at trinitiestreetsville.org.
God bless.
Good morning.
A reading from Genesis, chapter 39, beginning at the first verse.
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.
Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought
him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian
master.
When his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord gave him success in
everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.
Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything that
he owned.
In the time he put him in charge of his household and all that he owned, the Lord blessed the
household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the
field.
So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph's care.
With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
Now Joseph was a well-built and handsome man, and after a while his master's wife took notice
of Joseph and said, come to bed with me.
But he refused.
With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in
the house.
Everything he owns has been entrusted to my care.
No one is greater in this house than I am.
My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.
How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?
And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be
with her.
One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants
was inside.
She caught him by his cloak and said, come to bed with me.
But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she
called to her household servants, look, she said to them, this Hebrew has been brought
to us to make sport of us.
He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed.
When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.
She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home.
Then she told him this story, that Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport
of me.
But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.
When his master heard the story, his wife told him saying, this is how your slave treated
me.
He burned with anger.
Joseph's master took him and put him in prison.
The place where the king's prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him.
He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
This is the word of the Lord.
As Grace mentioned, this is just the second time we've had a service at 1115, at least
in a good number of years, so we're very glad that you've joined us this morning.
So the other day, my wife Sally and I, we were on our way to visit some friends.
And while we were on the way, you know how it goes, we got talking, I got a bit distracted.
And before you know it, I had taken an exit that I shouldn't have taken and we started
going in the wrong direction.
And it's a good thing we didn't go too far because we never would have reached our destination
if we hadn't turned around.
But I just, I got distracted.
Now many people, as they set out to pursue their dreams for their life, their vision
for their life, sometimes they too can get distracted.
They might start out with a very, very clear vision, right?
Some of you here today, you have a clear sense of where God is calling you and where you're
going.
Maybe if you're a student, you have some clear academic goals or if you're older, some career
goals or some vision for your family.
Even if you're retired, you will have plans for your retirement.
And so you've set out to achieve those goals and maybe you're making absolutely great progress
toward those.
But then sometimes you stop and you look and you say, oh no, I've kind of, I've gotten
lost.
I've gotten off track here.
I was headed from here to here, but now I'm over here.
And you might wonder how on earth did I get so distracted from my dream, from my goal?
I have to tell you, there are millions of things today that are there to distract us
from reaching our dreams and reaching our goals.
We live in a culture that is known as a culture of distraction.
And what they mean by that is our culture is full of everything from technology to media
to a 24 seven news cycle to the busyness of life.
There is always something distracting us.
There was always something trying to pull our focus and grab our attention.
And this is a problem because it is really hard to accomplish the big things in life
if we're constantly distracted by the little things that are going on all around us.
A distracted existence leads us to no goal.
That is a scary statement.
It's a scary thought that all the distractions in life could actually lead us away from God's
dream for our life.
Now there are a couple of big distractions that can come to us throughout our life from
time to time.
These are challenges.
There are choices we have to make.
And if we do not handle these changes and choices very carefully, they can totally derail
our life and they can totally take us off the path of our dreams.
Now we have been reading the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis.
Joseph had a dream that one day he was going to be a great ruler, a great leader.
But in today's story, Joseph will come face to face with two major distractions that he
must overcome if he's going to achieve that dream.
And we too must overcome these distractions at some point in our life.
I'm sure we all will face them at some point or another in the pursuit of our dreams.
And those two distractions are this.
They're the distraction of power and the distraction of pleasure.
The lure of power and the temptation of pleasure.
Now for Joseph, the lure of power was this.
Will he let his newfound popularity go to his head?
And for Joseph, the lure of pleasure was this.
Will he let this pretty lady take him to her bed?
So you've got on the one hand, you've got this thing over here which you could say he's
is Joseph going to end up on a power trip?
And over here is Joseph going to let his morals slip?
Both of these are major, major distractions that would keep you or me or Joseph from getting
where God wants us to go.
Flaunting around with power or fooling around with temptation and pleasure have derailed
so many dreams.
They have disgraced so many leaders and they've destroyed so many organizations that I don't
even need to tell you.
But the good news is Joseph shows us that we can face these distractions, we can overcome
these distractions and we can stay true to the dream that God has given us.
Let's start with the distraction of power.
Here is a saying that goes, the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Now maybe you've seen this, maybe you've experienced this, the abuse of power.
Maybe it's in your workplace.
Somebody got a promotion and they turned into a real jerk and they became really obnoxious
after that promotion.
We see it in politics sometimes.
The politician will make all sorts of promises in order to get elected, but once they're
elected they'll do whatever suits them.
Unfortunately we see it in the church as well.
You will see a church leader that grows in influence and is allowed to do whatever they
want and it has horrible and disastrous consequences.
You may even see it in yourself as well.
You get just a little taste of power, a little bit of power and pretty soon it goes to your
head and your friends are saying, hey man, you've changed.
You're not the same person anymore.
They did a little study back in 2012 where this researcher had two people play a game
of Monopoly and what he did is he totally gave one player like twice the amount of money
and two dice to roll and he gave the other less powerful player half the money and one
dice and then of course he let them go and play.
Well it didn't take long before the player with more money and more dice started acting
really obnoxious.
They were totally power tripping.
They started talking louder.
They started avoiding eye contact with their opponent.
They started hogging more of the table.
They even started reaching across and moving their opponents game pieces and when they
moved their own game pieces they were often very loud and obnoxious about it like boom,
boom, boom, I pass go, give me two hundred, you know, deal with it, right?
And everyone knew it was a game and it was rigged and yet they still acted like they
had real power.
The conclusion was that even a little bit of power can corrupt ordinary people even
when it's a game.
Now Joseph though, Joseph didn't have a little bit of power.
He had a lot of power and it wasn't a game, it was real power and this is how we know.
Let's take a look.
First of all, we know Joseph had power because of the people that he was around.
First of all, you have to understand Joseph was bought as a slave by this fellow named
Potiphar.
Potiphar was the captain of the guard.
Put another way, Potiphar would have been the commander in chief of the Egyptian armed
forces.
That made Potiphar one of the most powerful people in one of the most powerful countries
on the face of the earth in those days.
So right away Joseph is surrounded by some pretty big power players, okay?
It's the people he's surrounded with.
But secondly, it's the place he finds himself.
We are told that Joseph actually lived in the house of Potiphar, right?
Joseph, in other words, was living in the White House.
He was living in the center of power and all those visiting heads of state and all those
dignitaries and all the who's who of Egypt would have surely brushed shoulders and come
across Joseph as they came in and out of that place.
He had a group of people, he had a place, but he also had a position that gave him power.
Joseph found favor in Potiphar's eyes and became his attendant.
Now you may say, retentant, that doesn't sound like a great position.
But you gotta understand, that is the same word the Bible uses to describe Joshua's relationship
to Moses.
So in other words, Joseph became the COO of all the affairs and all the estate of Potiphar.
He had incredible responsibility and he had incredible authority.
This was a high position with high control and high power.
Not only that, but Joseph enjoyed prosperity.
Seven times in the passage that we just read, we come across words like prosperity and success
and favor.
I don't think there's anywhere else in all the Bible where you will find the story of
someone who ascends through the ranks, who ascends from slave to ruler as fast as Joseph
did.
Normally when young people are given that much power that quickly leads to disaster,
but Joseph prospered in that role.
Also we have to consider his popularity.
The text makes it clear that when Joseph came on the scene, things started changing.
People started noticing that he has the touch, he's got the gift, this guy's special, there's
something about him.
Before Joseph got here it was all meh and now look at the place.
Joseph's our man, he's our guy.
Joseph.
So his popularity is going up too.
And finally I want to mention this and you can put as much weight on it as you want,
but the scriptures are clear to tell us that Joseph was a good looking fellow as well.
He was handsome in form and appearance and some people have tried to establish is there
a connection between the power people have and their appearance?
Is there a connection between our looks and our power?
Well Joseph had both.
He had good looks and he had power.
Hey I just want to give you a little side note here.
This is in Genesis 39, but if you go back to Genesis 29 you will come across a description
of Joseph's mother whose name was Rachel.
And we're told quote that Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance, which answers the
age old question.
Yes, children get their good looks from their mothers.
So there you have it.
There you have it.
Joseph, a young man who has been given incredible power.
People he knows, the place he resides, the position he holds, the prosperity he achieves,
the popularity he enjoys and the appearance to boot.
So now the question is will this power go to his head?
Will he go on some kind of power trip that will distract him from his God given dream
like has happened to so many others before him and after him?
You see when you have power there's really just two ways you can go with it.
The first way is you can use your power to benefit yourself.
This is called the abuse of power.
The abuse of power.
When you use your power for personal gain to coerce or harm someone else in the process.
Of course this can take the form of physical abuse, financial abuse, psychological abuse,
even sexual abuse.
And I know that you have heard or maybe you've even experienced this kind of abuse of power
in your own life.
But hey, you don't even have to go that far to find an example of it.
Just look right here in the story and you will see someone who is abusing their power
for personal gain.
And that person is Potiphar's wife.
She's got power too, by the way.
She's got power, maybe more power than Joseph.
And man, oh man, is she trying to abuse that power.
She catches him, grabs him.
Is that physical abuse?
Come to bed with me.
Is that sexual abuse?
In Hebrew it's even more blunt.
There's only two words there and they're both in the imperative which basically means sex
now.
I want sex and I want it now.
But it's important to know this is not just about sex.
This is about power, right?
She's using power to get what she wants.
Now, the abuse of power isn't always so obvious as this.
In fact, I want to just take a side note here and say all of us who work or volunteer or
serve even here at Trinity, you have power.
You have some power.
Whether it's in men's ministry, women's ministry, prayer ministry, life group ministry, if you
are praying with someone in our part of our prayer ministry, you have a power relationship
over that person.
You may say, I don't have power over them.
We're just friends.
We're just talking.
We're just buddies.
We're church members.
No, no, when you're in that role, there is real and or perceived power in ministry.
And so we need to be extremely careful here at Trinity as we care for one another.
Churches get into a load of trouble in a whole bunch of hot water when we cross boundaries
and when we abuse power.
So let's make sure we're being careful with that.
We can't use power for our own benefit.
Is that what Joseph does?
Does he use his power to benefit himself?
And the answer is no, he does not.
He uses his power, in fact, to bless others.
And so must we read this.
From the time he put him in charge of his household, the Lord blessed the household
of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
So who benefits from Joseph's power?
The Egyptian.
Potiphar does.
In fact, all of Egypt ends up being the beneficiary of his power.
I just want to tell you this.
Joseph's great grandfather was a guy named Abraham.
And God told Abraham, he said, Abraham, one day through your descendants, all the nations
of the earth are going to be blessed.
And here we see Abram's great grandson, Joseph, and it's actually happening.
The nations of the earth are being blessed through him.
In fact, this is just the beginning.
Joseph is going to go on to launch a massive hunger relief program that is going to save
many nations and thousands and thousands of people.
So that is the way you use power, not to benefit yourself, but to bless others.
Now again, you might be saying, Rob, I don't have that kind of power.
But I would actually say all of us have some power in some of our relationships, in our
workplace, again, even here in the church.
Or one day you may be offered more power or you may be tempted with power.
What are you going to do when that day comes?
You're going to let that power go to your head.
You're going to use that power to benefit yourself or will you use that power for others
instead?
I hope so.
So Joseph didn't get distracted when it came to the distraction of power, but that's not
the only distraction he faced.
He also faces other really tough distractions, which we're going to call the distraction
of pleasure.
And here's what happened.
Here's what happened.
One of the greatest tests of our lives often comes during our high moments, our times of
great prosperity.
When things are going along great, that's often when the tests and the trials really
come.
And that's what happened for Joseph.
He was at the zenith of his career.
He was at the top of his game.
And that's when Potiphar's wife took notice of him and said, come to bed with me.
This is the distraction of pleasure, sexual pleasure.
It's an invitation to an extramarital affair.
And I know each and every one of us have seen how this kind of distraction can absolutely
destroy a person's life and throw all their dreams up into the air.
We live in a culture though that says, hey, if it feels good, just do it.
Just do it.
And Joseph lived in a culture that said the same thing.
If it feels good, just do it.
So what I'm trying to say is what Joseph was facing and the culture he lived in is not
all that different from ours.
And so we can learn from Joseph.
What can we learn from Joseph?
The first thing we can learn is what these distractions look like and how they operate.
And the first thing that this story teaches us is that these distractions and temptations
often come to us at unexpected times and in unexpected places.
I don't think Joseph saw this coming.
Joseph was a slave boy who had just been bought by a master and shoved in the house and put
to work for the princess of the house to take notice of him and to see him.
I bet he was like, what, me?
Are you talking to me, me, little old Joseph?
Meet Hebrew slave boy Joseph?
You think you want to go to bed with me?
I'm flattered.
I can't believe it.
Wow.
I just, I don't even know what to say.
I'm so surprised.
And temptation often catches us off guard.
We don't expect it.
We don't see it coming.
We're not ready for it.
It comes unexpected times from unexpected places.
But secondly, it wasn't just that this temptation was unexpected.
It was unrelenting.
She spoke to Joseph day after day.
It wasn't just that she propositioned him once and said, hey, go to bed with me.
And Joseph said, no, thanks.
And then she said, okay, I'll leave you alone.
No, it was day after day after day.
After day, hey, Joseph, the offer still stands.
Day after day, hey, Joseph, you know, anytime you want it, I'm over here.
Day after day.
Being tempted once is hard, but being tempted in an unrelenting day after day way is very
different.
So you may resist at first, but will you cave in over time?
It was an unrelenting temptation that he faced.
Thirdly, though, this was a largely unseen temptation.
Hey, Joseph, it'll be our little secret, right?
You know, it's just you and me in this great big house.
Nobody is really ever around here.
My husband's always out on business.
He doesn't really care.
And so, hey, why don't we just, you know, we can just do this on the sly.
Nobody will ever know.
So John Wooden, who's a basketball coach and a leadership guru, once said, the true test
of a person's character is what they do when no one is watching.
This temptation was completely under the radar.
It was unseen.
And fourthly, I think I want to say it was probably also an understandable temptation.
What I mean by that is often when we give in to temptation, it's because we've somehow
worked it out in our mind, we've reasoned it through, and we've come up with a reason
why we should succumb to that temptation, right?
Joseph might have thought, well, you know, I am a slave and she is my master.
I better do what she say.
Or he might have said, well, you know what, it may be to my advantage to sleep with her.
After all, be one more person in a position of power, one more friend in high places.
Or he may have said, you know what, I really should sleep with her because she could wreck
my career if I don't.
So yes, Joseph could have said all these things understandably.
He could have rationalized it and given in.
So I hope you see this was a heavy, heavy temptation for Joseph, right?
This was hard.
And please don't hold Joseph up as some saint like, oh, we could never be like Joseph.
Joseph was a flesh and blood human being just like you and just like me.
So there are some important lessons we can learn for better within reach for us as well.
We can stay true to the dream God has for our life in the same way that Joseph stayed
true in the face of this tempting pleasure.
Here's one thing that Joseph obviously did.
Joseph decided ahead of time how he's going to react in situations like this.
Did you notice how quickly Joseph refused her invitation?
Come to bed with me.
Boom.
But he refused.
Period.
He immediately said no.
The Bible doesn't tell us he thought about it for a while or he considered it for a week.
No, he immediately said no, which means that Joseph had already decided that his moral
foundation was going to come from God, that his view on sexuality and relationships, he
had already figured that out in his mind ahead of time before the temptation arose.
David Jeremiah says, the backseat of a steamed up car is not the place to formulate your
standards for dating.
And he's right.
Better have those things figured out before you get into that situation.
Sometimes we say, oh, heck, I'll just figure it out in the moment.
I'll muddle through.
No, no, no.
It's far better to decide ahead of time because moments like that, moments like that don't
make you who you are.
In those moments, it reveals who you are, reveals who you've already decided you're
going to be.
So he decided ahead of time.
But secondly, he considered others.
Many people today would say, oh, sex is just between two consenting adults.
It's nobody's business but their own.
But Joseph knew it's always somebody else's business.
There's always somebody involved.
There's always someone who can get hurt.
Joseph, he knew and he cared for Potiphar.
Potiphar had been so good to Joseph, given him so much opportunity, and Joseph knew that
to go and sleep with Potiphar's wife would be incredibly hurtful to Potiphar.
Stuff like this is just never between two people, and you know that, right?
There's always children that are involved.
There's always a family that's involved.
There's always friends or a community that gets drawn up in this.
Everybody pays the penalty for these kind of decisions.
But Joseph considered others as he contemplated this.
Thirdly, he avoided the situation.
I love this line.
He says, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her, right?
Now, Potiphar's wife, she could have gone to plan B.
She could have said, okay, he has turned down my offer for sex, but Joseph, how about we
just get together for coffee?
Or Joseph, you know, it's kind of lonely around here.
Okay, forget what I said earlier.
Let's just hang out.
Maybe we could just go for a walk.
It's a big, empty, lonely house.
I just want someone to talk to and hang out with.
You know, years ago, I worked with a married couple.
The wife had had an affair with someone in her workplace, and as they were working on
rebuilding their marriage, they made a decision.
They said, in order to give our marriage a shot, she was going to have to quit her job.
They were set on this.
They determined that she could not go to work every day and be in that same setting as that
person who had tempted her and hurt her family so much.
It was a radical decision, and I think it was the right decision.
You can get another job, right?
But you can't get another life.
You can't get another marriage.
You can't get another family.
That's forever.
Now, some people might say too extreme, or they might say, man, Joseph's a coward.
You know, surely we can, we're strong people.
We can put up, we can hang out with someone.
I can have coffee with her and not be tempted by her.
But he ran, and he avoided her, and he knew that was the safest and wisest thing to do
in this situation.
I think he was right.
So the last thing I just want to say related to that is it's very apparent that Joseph
treated this whole thing very, very seriously.
How can I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?
Those are big words.
Those are serious words.
Nowadays, a lot of people would instead say, oh, come on.
How prudish, how old fashioned.
Don't you know people do stuff like this all the time?
Every book, every movie, every celebrity.
They're all having sex and doing this kind of thing.
My friends, my classmates, my coworker, they're all fooling around with each other.
It's all sex and affairs and cheating.
What, can't people fool around a bit?
Can't people mess around a little bit?
Oh.
But people don't take it seriously anymore like Joseph took it seriously.
Joseph said, I'm taking this seriously, and that is one of the reasons why he was able
to persevere through this temptation and ultimately fulfill the dream that God had in mind for
him.
He treated it seriously.
So I just want to say, if you've got a dream for your life, for your career, if you've
got a dream for your family, be careful when the distraction of temptation comes.
Decide ahead of time to follow God.
Think about others.
Avoid the risk and take it seriously.
Don't slough this stuff off.
It's serious.
So just in closing, just in closing.
Whether it is the lure of power or whether it is the longing for pleasure, both of these
are serious distractions that must be defeated in order for us to get where God wants us
to go.
Joseph's a good example for us to follow, but I would say there's an even better example
that we can look to, and that's Jesus himself.
Right?
Jesus, of course, knew all about the temptations of power and pleasure.
Picture Jesus hanging on the cross.
Surely Jesus had enough power that he could have taken himself down from that cross.
Could he not have used his power to escape?
Could he not have used his power to claim the throne as king and rule as he rightly
should?
Of course he could have, but he resisted that distraction, the distraction of power.
What about pleasure?
Surely Jesus could have lived a more pleasurable life than this.
He gave up the comforts of heaven.
Couldn't he have had some comforts on earth?
Couldn't he have avoided this suffering, avoided this pain, avoided all the suffering of the
cross?
And of course he could, but he resisted the temptation of pleasure as well.
You see, Jesus, like Joseph, sacrificed both power and pleasure.
He could have benefited himself, but instead he chose to benefit others, you and me included.
He could have saved himself, but instead he chose to save others, you and me included.
And that, ultimately, as we know, is how God's dream comes true.
That's how it came true in the life of Joseph.
That's how it comes true in the life of Jesus.
And that's how God's dream is going to come true in your life too.
So thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for listening today and it is our hope that you enjoyed this message
and are inspired by Rob's words and this relevant sermon.
And if you enjoyed the sermon, please take some time to rate and review our podcast so
that we can continue to share the good news with others.
And don't forget to come back next week where we'll be learning about the next stage of
Joseph's life as he continues to live out the dream that God had for him.
Today's sermon was taken from the November 12th, 2023 service at 11.15 a.m.