Genesis 39

¹ Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. ² The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. ³ His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. ⁴ So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. ⁵ From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. ⁶ So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. ⁷ And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” ⁸ But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. ⁹ He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” ¹⁰ And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. ¹¹ But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, ¹² she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. ¹³ And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, ¹⁴ she called to the men of her household and said to them, “See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. ¹⁵ And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house.”¹⁶ Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, ¹⁷ and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. ¹⁸ But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house.” ¹⁹ As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, “This is the way your servant treated me,” his anger was kindled. ²⁰ And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. ²¹ But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. ²² And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. ²³ The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.

For a good bit of my life I have heard people talk about Wendy Bagwell’s rattlesnake story. Sometimes it is attributed to Jerry Clower, but it appears to have been original to Wendy Bagwell. Bagwell talks about being invited to a little country church of about twenty-four people. He and his group were playing their guitars and singing and the little congregation had all gotten up on their feet and were shouting and dancing and singing. He said everybody was so excited that he and Geraldine did not notice what was happening behind them. He said that a couple of ladies went behind the band, behind the stage, and brought out five big rattlesnakes and started handling them. He said that he and Geraldine looked at each other and backed up while one of the ladies went nose to nose with one of the snakes. He said she brought the snake near him and he couldn’t back up far enough. She then threw the rattlesnake on the ground, took her shoes off, and put a bare foot on the head of one of the snakes.

In the midst of all of this, Bagwell says that Geraldine looked at him and said, “Wendy, what are we going to do?”

He responded, “Just relax. It’s going to be ok. Look around and see where the back door is.”

She said, “I already have. There ain’t one.”

To which Bagwell famously responded, “Reckon where do they want one?”

I have heard that story recounted most of my life. It is a product of older southern gospel humor and I have always found it charming. “Reckon where do they want one?” If there ain’t an exit, I’ll make an exit!

When you really need to leave a room—I mean when you absolutely must leave a room!—you will either find an exit or make one.

Genesis 39 is a story about a man who determined to find an exit or make one. In fact, so ready was Joseph to get out of the room with Potiphar’s wife that he ran out leaving his clothes behind. Why? Because there was something in that room more dangerous than a rattlesnake. Temptation was in that room and, with it, the death that sin brings.

I would like to talk about how to make or find an exit when temptation comes at you. There are few texts that give us clearer principles in this matter than Genesis 39.

Learn to see the presence and favor of God as more desirable than that by which you are tempted.

The first step toward making an exit from temptation is to value the presence and favor of God more than you value whatever it is that is tempting you. Joseph has been sold into slavery in Egypt. By the providence of God, he finds himself in charge of the household of a ruler named Potiphar. God’s hand was on Joseph and he found favor in Potiphar’s eyes. Unfortunately, he also found favor in the eyes of Potiphar’s wife. To put it mildly, Potiphar’s wife was after Joseph. Verses 7-9 present us with the great moment of crisis in the story.

⁷ And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” ⁸ But he refused and said to his master’s wife…

Well there it is. Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph. He rejects her advances. Notice his reasoning:

⁸ But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. ⁹ He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

That is the great question, is it not? “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” This question is linked to the previous blessings that God had bestowed upon Joseph in Egypt. God had not only preserved Joseph, He had prospered Joseph. God, in other words, had been faithful to Joseph. “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

To give in to temptation is to turn away from the source of all life and joy! It is to turn away from your Creator. It is to value that which is temporary more than that which is eternal and abiding. In Calvin Miller’s The Divine Symphony he defined lust like this:

Unbridled lust:

A cannibal committing suicide

By nibbling on himself.[1]

That is not a bad definition. To give in to lust is to nibble oneself to death by turning away from the God who gives us life and by turning to that which destroys us.

Joseph resisted temptation because he valued the favor and presence of God more than any absurd temptation. One of the interesting things about our chapter is that it includes an inclusio, a literary bookend technique whereby a section of scripture is bookended by very similar sections that define what is in between. So, for instance, consider the introduction to Genesis 39. Read it carefully and ask yourself what the theme is.

¹ Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. ² The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. ³ His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. ⁴ So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. ⁵ From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. ⁶ So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.

Did you see that? Genesis 39 begins with a strong statement of God’s favor upon and presence with Joseph in Egypt. Then you have the temptation/flight middle section. Now read the concluding section. Joseph’s situation has changed. He is now in prison. But notice how similar this sounds.

²⁰ And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. ²¹ But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. ²² And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. ²³ The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.

See? Inclusio. The chapter begins with strong statements about God’s provision, God’s presence, and God’s hand of blessing in the life of Joseph. And what stands between those two? Simple: obedience. Joseph resists Potiphar’s wife. If, in an inclusio, the bookends define the middle, what are we to conclude? We are to conclude that obedience opens the door for the continued blessing, presence, and provision of God in the life of His children. It means that when we desire God more than we desire that which we are tempted to, our relationship with God remains intact.

Think of it: had the middle of the chapter gone differently—had Joseph given in to Potiphar’s wife—the end of the chapter would not have formed an inclusio. It would rather have constituted a declension, a decline into judgment. But when, like Joseph, we value God more than anything and everything else, we remain in the place of blessing and provision, that is, in the center of God’s will and plan for our lives.

One of the things I think a great deal about is how, growing up, I never, to my knowledge, heard a sermon about the beauty of God. I do not think I ever heard beauty used as an attribute of God at all. And I certainly never heard anything about divine beauty in relationship to obedience. I consistently heard, “Do not sin or God will be angry at you.” I do not recall ever hearing, “Do not sin because your sin is inevitably ugly and small when compared to the beauty and glory of God.”

I do not say this to apologize for or dismiss divine wrath. Divine wrath is as biblical a quality of God as divine love and mercy. I simply say this: if our children get out of church and all they know is God’s wrath as a motivation to do good and never God’s beauty and glory as that which is incomparably greater than our sin, then they will develop a profoundly stunted vision of God.

Joseph clearly had a high view of God, a view that made the thought of sinning against Him detestable. He desired God more than anything else.!

Practice unrelenting persistence in unwavering resistance.

Another component in this model of resisting sin is the need for unrelenting persistence. Notice how Potiphar’s wife kept after Joseph:

¹⁰ And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.

“Day after day.” She kept after him. She sought to wear him down.

You can never rest. The devil is unrelenting. He will not stop on this side of Heaven except for those wonderful respites that God in His mercy grants us.

A couple of years ago a group of us from Central Baptist Church went on a mission trip to Mozambique. Near the end of our time we had a couple of free days so we took a van down into South Africa and went on a safari in Kruger Park. It was truly amazing! We were trying to spot the five apex predators. We found four of them. We did not get to see hyenas.

In the midst of our safari on one of the days we came up upon a group of cars that had stopped. That is how you know that something is either in the road or just off it. Everybody stops to watch. We stopped only to see a pack of mangy looking little dogs in the road. I asked the driver what they were and he said they were wild dogs.

I was frankly unimpressed. Compared to lions and hippos, what was the big deal. But then the driver told me that those little dogs were the most dangerous things in the whole park. I laughed at the thought of it. He assured me he was telling the truth. I asked how that could be. They did not look that dangerous. He told me that they were dangerous because of their ability to persist. He said that those dogs would start hunting, say, a gazelle. The gazelle could run faster than them but the gazelle could not run longer than them. He said those wild dogs would form a parameter and just follow the gazelle. They can go all day. They never stop. Eventually, at some point, the gazelle has to stop and rest. And that is when the wild dogs would attack. Their jaws, he said, were deceptively powerful.

As he talked, I became convinced. There is something terrifying about that: a predator who will not stop pursuing.  This is what the devil is like. “Day after day.” There are no time-outs in life. We must ever be on our guards!

Mark Galli, in his book Francis of Assisi and His World, wrote of St. Francis’ battles with lust:

And if temptation struck him, Francis immediately plunged himself into a ditch filled with ice water, remaining in it until “every seduction of the flesh went away”.[2]

We might say this is the first cold shower mentioned in Christian history! Francis was willing to do whatever he needed to do to get away from temptation. But what strikes me most about Galli’s little statement is this: “remaining in it until ‘every seduction of the flesh went away.’” He never let down his guard. He remained as long as he needed to ward off temptation!

Run.

There is a third component to our model. It is a simple but vitally important aspect: run! Watch what Joseph does:

¹¹ But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, ¹² she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. ¹³ And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, ¹⁴ she called to the men of her household and said to them, “See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. ¹⁵ And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house.”¹⁶ Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home, ¹⁷ and she told him the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. ¹⁸ But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house.” ¹⁹ As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, “This is the way your servant treated me,” his anger was kindled.

Joseph ran! He ran! Why? Because there was danger in that room! He was determined to find an exit or make an exit. Either way, he was out of there.

It is fascinating to see how often the New Testament speaks of running or fleeing away from sin. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul may have actually had our text in mind when he wrote:

¹⁷ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. ¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Flee! Flee sexual immorality! So too, in 1 Corinthians 10, we are told to flee idolatry.

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

That passage is important because it established a vital principle: there is always a way out! There is always an exit! God will show you a way. As a side note, my father made me memorize 1 Corinthians 10:13 when I was eleven or twelve years old because I kept getting into trouble! I remember it to this day. In 2 Timothy 2, we find the same idea of flight.

²² So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

That passage is likewise important because it introduces the idea that we not only flee from something, we flee to something, to Someone! We flee “youthful passions” and “pursue” instead “righteousness, faith, love, and peace” along with the rest of God’s people. Run toward the beautiful character of God and away from the ugliness of sin! We see a flight toward God also in 1 Timothy 6.

¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. ¹¹ But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

What do we run from in this passage? We run from “the love of money.” What do we run toward? We pursue “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”

The Christian life is one of running from something and running to Someone!

How do we do this? Jesus helps us. That is how. In Peter Mommsen’s biography of his Grandfather, Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold, he writes about his father’s efforts to counsel a young man struggling with lust. Listen to this:

Barry was sixteen. Puberty had left him confused, especially because he felt a strong tug of sexual attraction not only to girls (he knew that was normal) but even, to his horror, to women who were married. Embarrassed and afraid of telling anyone about his feelings, Barry turned in on himself. Finally, thinking that he would go crazy unless he got help, he visited Heiner’s study one afternoon and asked to talk. When they were alone, Barry poured out everything that troubled him. Heiner thanked Barry for his openness, and then told him how crucial it is for a young man to choose what attitude he takes to his drives. He also told him something his own father had told him at Barry’s age: “If you approach the sexual sphere with the utmost honesty and respect now, it will make self-discipline easier in later life. Listen to what your conscience tells you is right.” And then he added, “I will think of you.” But that wasn’t the end of the story. When Barry came home that evening, he found that Heiner had been there before him and dropped off a letter on his bed. “Dear Barry,” it began, “I am sorry I wasn’t more helpful to you this afternoon, when you opened your heart to me about the temptations that torment you. This is something where no man can help another find the way out, at least not alone. Jesus must enter into the picture. Jesus says, ‘If you want to follow me, deny yourself and take your cross upon yourself.’ If we are willing to do this, Jesus can come as a power to us and free us, which no other man can do. Your friend, Heiner.”[3]

I am struck by that powerful and beautiful little sentence: “Jesus must enter into the picture.” He then called Barry to the cross and to the power of Christ.

He was right to do so. Jesus truly must enter the picture! We cannot successfully resist temptation without Jesus! Jesus is a friend of sinners. Jesus is stronger than the devil that we are so easily tripped up by. Jesus is greater!

Yes, there are techniques and habits and behaviors we need to develop in our battle against sin. But ultimately we can never have reformation if we do not first have resurrection. And that is something only Jesus can do. Jesus makes us alive! Jesus raises us up and gives us a new heart! Jesus sets us free!

So, yes, value God more than you value anything else. Persist. Run! But run ever and always to the Lord Jesus. He alone can set us free! He alone can save us!

 

[1] Calvin Miller, The Divine Symphony ((Minneapolis, MN:  Bethany House Publishers, 2000)), p.122, 84

[2] Mark Galli, Francis of Assisi and His World. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.83.

[3] Mommsen, Peter (2015-04-30). Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community (pp. 330-331). Plough Publishing House. Kindle Edition.