Genesis 39

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel. We do have extra copies if you would like one to follow along today in the passage as we read it. Raise your hand up real high and somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle, if anybody’s interested. The internet network on the screen up there along with the password.

I’m really excited to be studying Genesis 39. Occasionally, when you do what I do, occasionally, you come to a topic and you feel completely way out of your league—can’t talk about this kind of thing. Recently, this has happened to me a couple times, about a month or two ago when the Getty had their Sing! Conference downtown.  They asked me to do a seminar for the Sing! Conference and they gave me the title, “Hope for Weary Pastors.” Now, a lot of times I feel completely unqualified to talk about something, but in that case I felt like I was triple qualified. I’m a pastor. I’m weary. I need hope. So, what better thing could there be for me to talk about than something like that?

Today feels a little like that as well because our subject in chapter 39 of Genesis is something I’m really knowledgeable about (and you are too). It’s temptation. I won’t ask you to raise your hand if you’ve ever been tempted because you all have. I already know that. It would be sort of a fruitless endeavor and some of you would maybe try to duck that in some way, but everybody sitting around you would know. These are some questions that come up all the time:

• Is temptation a sin?
• Does everyone experience temptation at some point?
• How should we respond when we’re being tempted to do something that we know is wrong or perhaps tempted to not do something that in the moment is the right thing to do and yet we are tempted to not do it? What choices are available to us?

That’s the kind of stuff that we will mine from our chapter here in the Book of Genesis. The overall study has been called “In The Beginning,” and it does indeed take us back to the beginning, the Book of Genesis. That’s how it starts, “in the beginning.” And it helps us with some of those really big questions people have been asking. They’re timeless questions:

• Where’d everything come from?
• Why is this reality, the reality that exists rather than another one?
• What does it mean to be a human person?
• What has gone wrong with the world? We all know the world is broken. We all know sometimes it seems like it’s cycling out of control. What’s wrong with the world?
• How can the world be fixed? Is it possible for that to happen?

So, we come to a book like Genesis and we start to find answers. I love that we can also find an answer to this question, “What can we do about temptation?” We all experience it. Frederick Dale Bruner said,

“The typical temptation of the young is lust; of the middle-aged, ambition; of the elderly, bitterness. Actually, all three drives are similar and related: ambition is a refined lust, bitterness a disappointed one.”
Frederick Dale Bruner

Wow. Well, let’s see what the Bible has to say about temptation from Genesis 39. This is an amazing narrative. You remember, we’re studying along in this Book of Genesis. We’re starting to zero in on the life of Joseph, and the rest of the book—indeed, all the way out to chapter 50—will be focused on his life and God’s dealings with him in his life, and God’s preserving the line through which Messiah will come later.

Look with me, if you will, at the (probably) older teenager (Joseph), that’s my guess. He’s probably about eighteen or nineteen right at this time when we start chapter 39. As we studied in chapter 37, actually, he’s been kidnapped, beaten up by his brothers, and sold into slavery to some traders that were passing by. And he’s been taken down to Egypt where he is going to be put on the auction block and basically sold as a human slave.

“Joseph had been taken down to Egypt,” verse 1 says of chapter 39, “and Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the bodyguard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there.” And then you should underline this next phrase, verse 2: “and the Lord was with Joseph.” Why should you underline that? Because it’s going to show up four times in this chapter, and it’s a key ingredient to our topic, actually, that we’ll talk about throughout this chapter.

Verse 2 begins, even though he’s on the trading block, even though he just got bought as a slave by the captain of the guard, “the Lord was with him.” Now I don’t know about you, but when my circumstances are going south, when I’m bloody and bruised, by the way life is and the way it comes at me, when my hopes and my dreams are all shattered… He had dreams. He shared his dreams with his brothers, and it didn’t go well. But now his dreams seemed to be all shattered. Are your dreams shattered? Or do you feel like you were dealt a bad hand in some way? You should be able to relate to Joseph no matter what age you are, if you feel that way, because that’s where he’s at right now. And yet the Bible tells us the Lord is with him.

“He became,” and this is what this has translated into for him, “a successful man, he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. His master saw that,” this is the second time, “the Lord was with him.” That’s two of four times we’ll hear that phrase. “And how the Lord caused all that he (meaning Joseph) did to prosper in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight,” the sight of his master, Potiphar, “and became his personal servant. And he made him overseer of his house and all that he owned, he put in his charge.” This is amazing. He went from first to worst and was in the pit with his brothers. They threw him in the pit. Now he’s gone from ‘worst to first’ in the household. It’s back. It’s up, down like this, right? And he put him in charge of everything.

Verse 5, “it came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph. Thus, the Lord’s blessing was upon all that he owned in the house and in the field. Everything he owned in Joseph’s charge was put there and with him, there he did not concern himself with anything except the food which he ate. Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.”

I think that, right there, you want to insert ‘♫ dun, dun, dun, dun ♫’ because that’s where the trouble’s going to come from. That doesn’t mean if you’re handsome in form and appearance that you will have trouble. It just means you could have trouble; it’s possible for you to have trouble. And certainly in this particular case it leads to that, because “after these things (these events), his master’s wife (Potiphar’s wife) looked with desire at Joseph and she said, ‘Lie with me.’

Now that’s not her saying, “Let’s tell untruths together.” No, this means exactly what it sounds like. The movie would be PG, R-rated (I don’t know what the ratings are anymore). It’s been a long time since I’ve gone, but PG doesn’t stand for “Praise God.” I know that!  But she is after him aggressively. She doesn’t just want to cuddle. This isn’t just about, ‘I just need somebody to cuddle with right now. Could you hold me?’ It’s not that. No, it’s, “Lie with me.”

And how old is he? Eighteen, nineteen. Where is he? Far from family, friends, culture, far from his religion, his roots. Wow. ‘Time plus opportunity, plus lack of accountability.’ Wow. And she’s after him. He refused. Now when I read that I thought, “Oh come…” This is the part where I start… I’m just a guy, full-blooded… But he refused. If it was me, it would at least have said, “he struggled.” “He fell down.” “He (whatever).”

“But,” this is fascinating to me, “he refused” (from the get-go) and said to his master’s wife, ‘Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he’s put all that he owns in my charge. There’s no one greater in this house than I, and he is withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.’”

Which is interesting to me, he’s appealing to this Egyptian woman in a sort of common sense. ‘This should be common knowledge to you to understand this; he’s been so generous with me.’ Up to right now, anyway, there’s no appeal to religion, it’s just this sort of common understanding that even in Egypt he expected she would get, right? Then he does bring in his faith, which says to me, his faith remains intact and alive at whatever level it might be. He says to her, “How could I do this great evil and sin against God?”

Now you could underline against God if you want to in your Bible. By the way, all sins committed are sins against God. Most sins committed are also sins against a person, some people on a horizontal level, but all sins or sins against God. Why? Well, because we’re actually breaking God’s laws. We’re basically saying, “God, your will, your ways don’t matter. We think we know better.” And so, we head off in our own direction. Some people will say, “It’s disordered loves,” and that’s true. It is a disordered love; that ism we’re loving something more than God. But it’s also a dismissal of God; it’s also a disregard of God. And it’s actually an offense to God, and it separates us from God and we must never forget that. It’s very important that we are reminded of that over and over again.

“How could I do this great evil,” he says to her, “and sin against God?  It came about that as she spoke to Joseph day after day.” Oh, you mean it happened more than once, and you’re eighteen or nineteen, and your hormones are operating on 10, and you are a handsome young man and you are away from all sense of accountability. And day after day, relentlessly, aggressively, persistently, she wants him, but “he did not listen to her to lie beside her or be with her.”

“It happened one day (of those many days) that he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of household was there inside.” The narrator wants us to underline that and to feel that the house is empty except for her and Joseph. The two of them are alone. Now the level of unaccountability just went way up. There’s nobody even in the house. She knows it, may have even arranged it. ‘You guys take a break, take the afternoon off.’

No one was there. Potiphar’s probably away on some kind of state business. “She caught him by the garment, Joseph, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ And he left his garment in her hand and fled and went out,” literally stepped out of his garment. His coat. Was this his coat of many colors? I don’t know, but he stepped out of whatever it was. Was he willing to now, after that coat of many colors, that thing, that was his symbol of his being daddy’s favorite, was he willing to even let go of that, if that’s what it was, in this particular moment to avoid falling to the temptation that was all over him?

And she is aggressive again, “Lie with me. Lie with me.” And he runs outside. “When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside,” here she is snubbed and rejected yet again. How many days in a row? How long is she going to put up with that? She does have power. She is the wife of Potiphar, the master, right? And so when she saw all of that, “she called to the men of her household and said to them, ‘See, he (meaning Potiphar) has brought in a Hebrew to us to make sport of us. He came into me, to lie with me and I screamed. And it came about When he heard that I raised my voice and screamed, then he left his garment beside me and fled and went outside.’ So she left his garment beside her until his master came home” (Potiphar comes home).  Then she spoke to him with these words, “The Hebrew slave whom you brought to us came in to make sport of me. And it happened as I raised my voice and screamed that he left his garment beside me and fled outside.”

Now about this time in the story, you’re thinking literally anything could happen. Potiphar has the power to simply execute Joseph. He is the captain of the guard to Pharaoh. He’s literally the top secret service guy to the king, to the head dude in the land. And so what we’re told though is, “It came about that when his master heard the words of his wife, which he spoke to him saying, ‘This is what your slave did to me,’ that his anger burned.”  Okay, so he’s mad. “Joseph’s master took him though and put him into the jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined and he was there in the jail.” And then interestingly, for the third time, “The Lord was with Joseph, and extended kindness to him and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. And the chief jailer committed to Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in the jail, so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it.”

So, he is gone from being head of the household to head of the jail and that may have taken days, weeks, months. The narrator doesn’t think it’s important necessarily to tell us how long that took, but that it happened is important for us to know. So, he was responsible for all of it. And our last verse: “The chief jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph’s charge, because the Lord was with him (fourth time), and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper.”

Wow! All right, well, everywhere we go—whether it’s the pit, the palace, or the prison—it follows us, doesn’t it? Temptation—it’s there. If you’re in the pit and you’re Joseph, or if you’re here today and you’re in some kind of pit yourself, even if you’re in the palace, and things are going well for you… Joseph had things going really well for him, and now he’s back in the pit. It’s like up, down, up, down. The yo-yo thing.  Maybe you feel like that sometimes in your own life, that “When are we going to get a break?” “When are things going to level out?”  But temptation seems to follow us around every corner, every time we turn on the television, every time we turn on our computer, every time we step into our office, it seems to follow us everywhere we go.

Today, on the way in, I said to Kim, “How many times today do you figure we are tempted by something?” And we started with the hundreds, but then the more we talked about it and we don’t have much time to talk, because we live kind of close, but we were in the thousands by the time we got here.  How many times do you come to the intersection of some kind of temptation? Each and every one of us, every time you encounter another human being, every time you have an opportunity to purchase something, every time you have an opportunity to look at something online, there is that possibility that there could be lurking there some kind of temptation.

Is temptation itself a sin? How should we respond to it when we’re tempted? This is what I want to talk about.  But I want to start with a story I’ve told before, and I love it so much. I’ve got to tell about the parochial school and the students who all file in a lunchroom, and the nuns that put a dish full of apples with a sign that says, “Take only one apple. Remember God is watching.” And some clever little student had put another plate full of cookies down at the other end of the table, put a sign there, real cleverly, and said, “Take all the cookies you want. God is watching the apples.”  I love that. I think it’s a great story.

I mean we are always being watched by God. That’s true. He is everywhere, and never leaves us or forsakes us, and we do well to remember that. It’s both for our comfort and I think to inspire courage, to inspire faith and trust in him. And when we start to get to know this God of the Bible, the thing that we keep trying to drive home with everybody is that the one who knows you fully, the most fully, he knows you better than you know yourself and loves you fully, completely, unconditionally.

I’m going to borrow from my friend Sam Aubrey. Unconditional affirmation and unconditional love are not the same thing. To demand the former is to deny the latter. Okay? You’ve got to affirm everything that I want to do, that demand precludes the unconditional love of God, because why? Because we want stuff that isn’t good for us, sometimes. We want stuff that actually is an offense to God sometimes.  And you can see in this chapter, while he resisted and he fled and it was to his good and to God’s glory, we read the Bible and it’s filled with pages of people who didn’t resist, couldn’t resist, didn’t have the strength and fortitude, and hallelujah even to Peter who denied Christ three times, there is an answer to the question of what do we do when we’ve failed, we dropped out in some way?

I have just three points today, so let’s get right to them. If we were to ask the question and answer it, what can we do about temptation?

I think the first thing is to understand the universality of it. We’re all marked men and women. The different sources of temptation are not as overt as a Mrs. Potiphar in your life. Maybe none of us have had that same kind of experience. Certainly, we’ve been tempted by the same kinds of things, most all of us, but the different sources can be aggressive. They can also be kind of passive sources of temptation.

The Bible teaches that the sources from which temptation flows are the world, the flesh, and the devil—that there are at least those three things. The first (the world) is our external context. The second (the flesh) is our internal context—that part of me that was born into original sin, which I think is the most provable doctrine of the Christian faith. Because I can see it in the mirror, I can see it in the chapel, you can see it in the chapel. Original sin, it’s the most provable doctrine of the Christian faith. Every single one of us is a sinner and given time and opportunity and unaccountability, so many of us have fallen so many times.

Sometimes our temptations are aggressive, sometimes more passive, sometimes obvious, other times it kind of sneaks up on us. Usually, it is very persistent, especially when we’ve said no once, it’s harder to say no the next time. Then it becomes a little bit progressively harder each time, because we start to form what C.S. Lewis called “a callous over our conscience,” because we keep saying “Yes” to that which we should say “No” to. Or we keep saying “No” to that which we should say “Yes” to. And in either case we’re saying “No” to conscience, and to the voice of the Holy Spirit as he speaks to us in our conscience.

It’s progressive, I would say. Sometimes it’s strategic, as in the devil. And if you don’t believe in a devil, he’s got you right where he wants you. The Bible is filled with conversation about the devil. Nobody talked more about the devil than Jesus himself. And if you think by the devil I mean a guy in skintight red tights with a pointed tail and a pitchfork and all that sort of thing, that’s exactly what he wants you to think of him. The devil would like for all of us to think of him as a caricature, as opposed to a strategic enemy of our soul that would love to derail our faith, distract us in some way, and who does so, either himself or with some of his minions, very strategically.

Just how many of you have ever driven through Green Hills and thought to yourself, ‘Why was that billboard there at just that moment in my life, when I was thinking this and there was that billboard?’ And you thought to yourself, ‘That seems a little too strategic.’ Or, ‘Why did that idiot cut me off in traffic when I was just ready to blow up on the phone at somebody, and it triggered me and I did blow up on that… Why was that strategic move there just then?’

Does that happen to you? Temptation often leads to rationalization. Which can then entice us to capitulation. So it is progressive. Joseph at eighteen, man, this is just a complete setup, a recipe for a disaster for him. But the story here I think is a hopeful one. It says, ‘I can live in the pit, the palace, or the prison and God could still be with me. And God could actually still be blessing me or you.’

I love the way Brian Hedges says it in his book, Watchfulness, which is little known but a really great book if you’re interested in a short read.

“You are absolutely helpless. The enemy will attack. Temptation will come. But left to yourself, you’re like a tumbleweed in a tornado,” (that’s a great image, isn’t it?) “a handkerchief in a hurricane. The lion will roar, the viper will strike, the flaming arrows of temptation will fly, you will fall, apart from grace. That is why you need God. Beware of self-confidence.”
Brian G. Hedges, Watchfulness

I think that’s so true. The universality of temptation. You are tempted whether or not you know it. The devil, if he’s doing it strategically, would prefer you not to know it. He would prefer to be able to go stealth in your life. How many of you’ve read Screwtape Letters? Raise your hand. If you haven’t read Screwtape Letters, go home today, pick it up. 31 short little letters by C.S. Lewis. He puts himself in the role of an elder demon instructing a younger demon in how to tempt the patient, which really is all of us, and how to bring temptation into the life of the patient. It’s just a fascinating read.

The second thing I think we learned here is the variety of responses. It at least made me think about that. And I’m going to throw those up on the screen for you. The variety of responses:

1. We can recognize it. (vs deny or ignore it)
2. We can remember (who we belong to)
3. We can resist (with the Word/in power of the Spirit)
4. We can run (as Joseph did)
5. We can fall (as have all but one)

We can recognize it or not. We might ignore temptation. We might deny it. Some of us might say, “Oh, that could never be me,” when we see somebody who’s tempted and falls. A lot of pastors think that, and then later on they become the one who falls, just like the other pastors that have fallen. But it’s not just pastors, it’s literally all of us, because we could all be tempted to deny or ignore temptation or deny that we are ever being tempted.

You can remember who we belong to, and I think that’s a really important one in terms of a response. You’re a child of the king of the universe who’s paid the price for all your sin. He has conquered death itself and promises to return one day and set all things right. How about that? That’s some good news. That helps. We still need some practical stuff, but, man, putting that into your head, into your mind and into your heart, holding fast to that is a really good thing.

You can resist with the Word and in the power of the Spirit. And we watch this, didn’t we? In Matthew 4, with Jesus, the temptation of Christ. He responds to the devil’s temptations with the Word of God. He, the living Word of God, responds with the written Word of God, and that’s how He responds to those temptations that are thrown to Him out there in the wilderness. That’s a great way to do it.

We can also run, that’s another option, as Joseph did. And I think sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is run away. And you may or may not think that makes any sense, but I really do think it does make sense. I think sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is run away. And it might mean you have to run away from some people, might mean you have to run away from some props. If it’s your computer that leads you there, or if it’s the mall that leads you there, or if it’s social media that leads you there, whatever it is, you might have to set those things aside. People, props, and places sometimes need to go if we’re going to be able to run away from this.

As you look at him, he’s essentially the naïve teenager who is quite bold about his multicolored robe. But here he’s grown up a little bit and we see it, and he’s willing to give up even that robe to get away from the temptation. That’s pretty interesting to me. The other option is you can fall, which I’m really glad Joseph, at least in this case, did not do. Adam and Eve did. Kane did. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, we’ve read all, and Joseph, even, I would say earlier on. He is one of the characters in the Old Testament that does come off looking pretty good.

But even with him, there’s this hint of his dreams. Whether they were from the Lord or not, I do not know, but his dreams could have been a bit of self-aggrandizement. And the fact that he shared them at least, “Hey, you guys are going to be bowing down to worship me,” makes one at least wonder if he might have thought twice about that. King David will fall. Wise King Solomon will fall. All of the prophets will fall. All of the disciples from Peter to Judas, as have the persons that are sitting next to you, and the pastor who is standing in front of you. That option has been taken up by all of us, at some point.

Jesus and the apostles speak to temptation and what we ought to do with it. First, the Apostle Paul,

“For the one who sows to his own flesh, will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
Galatians 6:8

So, if you want to reap corruption of your flesh, corruption of your soul, corruption of your spiritual life, sow to the flesh. What does that mean? It means flirt with disaster, flirt with temptation. For me, I mean a very thin sort of example that I’ve used before here is drive around Krispy Kreme waiting for the orange light to come on.  It’s like, “Lord, do you want me to have a donut? Lord, do you want me to… Lord, would you… Look hot donuts now?” And so, “Of course, it’s God’s will for me to have a donut right now!” And Joseph could’ve said, “Look, I can really help her. I can comfort her. Maybe God does… I’m all alone. I need some comfort too. And maybe this is all great.” And the rationalization leads to the capitulation sometimes. Thankfully, it did not in this case with Joseph.

The Apostle James writes,

“Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”
James 1:14-15

Okay, so if you happen to be one that’s shopping for death, this is where it all leads is the point. He’s trying to hold up the realities of the impact of sin for us, so that we can see, not only does it separate us from God, and not only does it separate us from others, but it even separates us from life itself. And when we fall to it, it leads us to a death.

There was a group of us (this goes back 20 years), pastor Matt and I were in a group. We used to go to Perkins Pancake House, anybody remember when that was in Hillsboro Village area? We used to go in there. I loved everything about that. But we had a men’s group that met in there on Tuesday mornings, like at 7:30am, when most musicians would never get up. But there were about 20 of us that used to meet in there.  And there was a guy in there that used to hang out with us once in a while. His name was Randall “Tex” Cobb, and you probably know him more from movies and stuff like that. He was in “Raising Arizona.” Anybody see “Raising Arizona”? He was the big bad guy in that. And he was in “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” or whatever it is. And he’s been in a bunch of movies with Leslie Nielsen and all that sort of thing over the years, and he was a professional boxer, also.  But he used to sit, separated from the group of us, he would sit down kind of toward the end there. And that was back in the day when you could smoke a cigarette inside a restaurant and stuff. And he’d be down there smoking his cigarette, eating his breakfast, but he’d be listening, and we could always tell, Tex was listening to what we were talking about. And somebody was talking about temptation and sin that day. I’ll never forget this. Somebody’s talking about temptation and sin, and we are all kind of wondering the impact of it in our lives and all that and talking about how negative it is and all that sort of thing, and it leads to death and it’s not enjoyable. And that triggered him. When somebody said, “It’s not enjoyable.” And he said, “Ah,” put down a cigarette like that, “Hey there, man, if you thinks sin isn’t enjoyable, you’re probably not doing it right.” Put out his cigarette and we all come and went, “All right, now, wait a minute, he’s a professional boxer. What are we going to do now?” But it’s true. Sin can be enjoyable for a season, but in the end, as James says, “It brings forth death,” and we do well, I think, to be aware of that.

Dallas Willard talked about how we manage all, as he said,

“Those who let God be God get off the conveyor belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzzsaw of sin. They don’t wait until it’s moving so fast they can’t get off of it. Their aim is not to avoid sin, but to avoid temptation—the inclination to sin.”
Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart

Okay, now are starting to get practical. What boundaries and borders do we need to put up to prevent ourselves from being vulnerable to the temptation—not just the sin—but, the temptation to sin itself?

I think Dallas is so right there. What can we do about temptation? Well, there we’ve got to recognize its universality. We’ve got to remember, there are a variety of responses, and they’re all on display in the Bible. We see them all over the place. The safety and power though of God’s presence is what this chapter reminds me of over and over and over again. The Lord was with Joseph, whether he was in the pit, the palace, or the prison.

And so, the answer isn’t just me looking to Jim, see? It’s not me just pulling myself up by bootstraps and being “Mr. Tough Guy Christian” and saying, “No,” trying to just get right back up in the grill of the devil and say, “Make my day,” or something. No. I mean we do have to say “No.” We have to resist. That’s true. But, man, it’s the secret of the Lord being with Joseph that mattered, no matter whether things were going well or not.

What temptation have you faced in times past? What are you facing right now? These are great questions for us to ask as we consider how we should respond to it. In preparing for the temptation that you will face in the future, I want you to know that the Lord is with you. If you belong to Him, the Lord is promised to never leave you or forsake you. We have a better bit of knowledge than Joseph did, because we’re looking through our New Testament back into the Old Testament. And we’re seeing in what we call chapter 39 that it’s really the Lord that was with him that gave him the strength and the courage to withstand temptation.

The apostle Paul would write about the tension of it all,

“No temptation is overtaken you, but such as his common to man; God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able, but with the temptation, will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”
1 Corinthians 10:13

So, you say, “Well, I’m being tempted. You don’t know what I’m being tempted with.” And the answer is, you’re right. I don’t, but God does. And if He’s allowed you to be tempted with this, guess what? He also intends to provide you with a way of escape. Now the question is, will you look to Him? Not will you look to yourself? Not will you look to me, but will you look to Him? He’s the one that’s promised to be with you. He’s the one that can be the answer you need in the pit, in the palace, or in the prison.

King David knew a whole lot about this as he ran from cave to cave, trying to hide from Saul or the Philistines, one of the two. People nipping at his heels all the time.

“As for me, the nearness of God is my good.” (The nearness of God is my good.) “I’ve made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.”
Psalm 73:28

Where he even sees a missional purpose in all of it, even though he is having such a difficult time.

Jesus talked about it and he told us how to cry out to God. He said,

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.)”
Matthew 6:13

That means there is a reality to evil. I know the world out here doesn’t want you to think there is such a thing as evil, but that just means evil’s got them right where evil wants them, denying the reality of evil. And if there’s no such thing as evil, then why is anyone marching for justice? Why does anyone care about domestic abuse? Why does anyone care about human trafficking, if there’s no such thing as evil?

And how can we make a claim to care about those things and not believe that there’s a God to whom we will all answer one day for our responses to his leading in the world in which we live. We want to live in his power, for his glory forever and ever.

Jesus said to his disciples,

“Keep watching and praying that you not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Matthew 26:41

So, whenever you start to feel like you’re being tempted, where should you run to? You should run to your knees and lift up the empty hands of faith and your heart and just lay it all before them, including the honesty of, “I feel this way. I’m not being loved. I want love. I want this. Lord, here in all of my honesty, I pour myself out to you. Help me want what you want. Help me see what you see. Give me the very desires of my heart. Not what I want, but what you want me to want—the desires themselves.”

And Peter, of course, one of the closest of the disciples who knew what it was like to fall. He says,

“Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him (that means there’s going to be some) because he cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world (In other words, there are other Christians who are suffering the same way). After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will Himself (and I love this list) perfect, mature, confirm, and establish you.”

Yeah, you should have trusted him. That’s the right thing to do. It’s confirmed. You need look no further. He is the one. “Strengthen,” I need that over and over again. Why? Because just like Mrs. Potiphar, my temptations are persistent and aggressive, and then he will “establish you.” You’ll dig roots and bear fruit when you’re established in him.

All right, I’ll close, last quote is a pastor up in DC area (Garrett Kell) where I just was at. This guy’s really amazing to follow on Twitter.

“The longer you linger near temptation, the stronger it grows. The longer you give into sin, the easier it is to keep sinning. The longer you harbor unrepentant sin, the more calloused you become.” (Now he doesn’t leave us there. Watch this. It’s great.) “The longer you remain calloused, the further you drift from God. Flee temptation. The quicker you look to Jesus, the less appealing a temptation becomes. The closer you walk with Jesus, the sweeter his presence becomes. The deeper you hope in the return of Jesus, the more like Him you become. Let us not only flee from temptation, but in faith, let us flee to Jesus.”
Garrett Kell

Yeah. Listen, temptation to sin is a given. Falling to sin, it’s an option. Probably going to happen to you, probably going to happen to me again. But we do have other options, because Jesus was tempted in every category that you and I were tempted in. We know temptation itself is not a sin. It’s what we do with the temptation that begins to really matter.

What can we do about it? The most effective way you can say no to temptation is to say yes to the urging, the warning, and the comforting of the Holy Spirit. And to keep saying “yes, yes, yes” to Jesus over and over and over. He is your defender. We sang it earlier. He is your savior and your shelter. We sang that earlier. He is your refuge in the storm, your redeemer. He’s Lord of lords. He is. He is. He is. Let’s turn to him.

Lord God, thank you. You haven’t left us alone in this. We got somewhere to turn besides just trying to fight this out ourselves. We got somewhere to turn other than just sweeping stuff under the rug and having it haunt us for the rest of our lives. We have somewhere to turn when not only the hunger to cave to a temptation, but even the grace and mercy and forgiveness we need after we’ve fallen can be found. We have you to turn to. So, we cry out to you, Almighty God, Jesus, Lord and Savior, Holy Spirit, who indwells each and every one of us live large in us. Show us just how beautiful you are, and how you are really the answers to the deepest longings that we have in this life.  May we see Jesus in all of His beauty and all of His glory, and may the grace of God flow in and out of our hearts. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen, and amen.