“So Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. With Joseph there, he didn’t worry about a thing—except what kind of food to eat! Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man, and Potiphar’s wife soon began to look at him lustfully. “Come and sleep with me,” she demanded. But Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. No one here has more authority than I do. He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God.””
Genesis 39:6-9 NLT
In our anti-conceptual day it’s understandable that we struggle with the faith. To live in faith requires a life of the mind…a mind not conformed to the world’s principles of autonomy and philosophical neutrality. All of us operate according to a set of core principles. The only question is whether we’re “epistemically self-aware” (as Bahnsen called it) of them or not. And whether they are true.
The damage done to us by years of secular schools, which have trained us to think in bits and pieces rather than systematically, and, most glaringly, upon the premise of humanistic autonomy, is readily evident. To that end, we often speak of morality as we should ethics, and ethics as we should biblical principles. Properly understood, morality is a definition of what a given culture thinks is acceptable while ethics are normative. In other words, morality is descriptive and ethics are prescriptive.
The word moral is from the Latin “mos” or “moris” and it captures the essence of the custom of the time. Ethics is from “ethos” and is, rather, what many of us use the word morality to mean. This is important for the Christian to understand because we’re commanded to not be conformed to this world – that is, its moral ideas but to be transformed by God’s ethos. Here is a sterling example of that. It might be said that no one in all of history has ever had a better reason (worldly reason, that is) to conform to the world’s “mores” than Joseph. But, as we see, he declined his owner’s wife’s sexual advances despite his bitter life circumstances. All Scripture is God-breathed and contains His sweet truths for our lives. Indeed. But some passages smack us upside the head with great power so as to knock the worldliness right out of us. This is one of them.
First, we note that despite his slavery, Joseph has been delivered by the hand of God into a pretty cool gig. Of course, he’s still in slavery but Potiphar trusts him so much because he refuses to indulge in self-pity. Instead, regardless of the enslavement and all the personal betrayal he’s experienced, despite the emotional devastation he must feel, Joseph does a great job!
The first lesson is that God expects us to do our work well no matter where we find it, who we do it for, or how we believe we’re being compensated.
Our current morals is that of the Marxist whiner. Everyone complains. Everyone has convinced themselves that they deserve this and that.
Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t.
The thing is, if the modern Democrat party stopped whining about life they’d have nothing at all to say. Marxist-Leninist principles of economics dominate the education and media landscapes, so the Christian should be wary as those principles are built upon the foundation of covetousness. The reaction to this, though, isn’t some kind of full-throated materialism, incidentally. That’s simply a sinful overreaction to a sinful idea. No. We must be wise and build our lives upon the rock of Christ and His wisdom. The real answer is biblical economics and Joseph shows the heart-way in which this is achieved. (Political conservatism is far more biblical than woke leftism, sure. But still, it is Christ and His principles from Scripture that are the standards of truth, not any other thing. A more biblical form of idolatry is still idolatry).
We should all check our hearts to see if we spend time harboring bitterness over our circumstances. Be sober minded. No one should think more highly of himself than he ought to think (Romans 12:3) but do their job with faithfulness and gratitude. Should we avail ourselves of opportunities for advancement if they result from our hard work? Of course. But if our attitude and conversation is pockmarked with envy and complaining, we aren’t being faithful and must repent. If there’s anything for which we say, unless I have (or achieve) this I won’t be happy, let us turn back to Him for He alone sits upon that throne in life! All else is deception. If we try and make God-things out of good things we will fall. A great lie of our time is trying to achieve things for ourselves because that isolates us and the thing from God and others. Such is hyper-individualism and the morality of the time. A good indicator of this spiritual sickness creeping within us is our tongue. Is our conversation full of praise or complaint?
Would we fit in better with the Israelites in the wilderness, griping about the leadership, or alongside Joseph working faithfully despite his slavery? Scripture gives no man the right to whine.
Second, beware of outward gifts!
We’re told that Joseph is handsome.
Again, beware of outward gifts!
We’d all like to be successful, talented, handsome/beautiful and all that, but those are very often doorways through which Satan can draw us away from the Lord. If we boast, we should boast only in the Lord and not in gifts we were given by Him (Jeremiah 9:24)! The Bible tells us that anyone who trusts in their flesh, the strength or talents of it, will have their heart turned away from Him. Thus, they are cursed (Jeremiah 17:5).
Devotion to the Lord in faith will very often require that we exercise great patience in humbling circumstances. The world’s moral code is ease and vanity; it’s pride and guarantees. These temptations are ever worse if, in fact, we’ve been gifted by good looks, athletic or academic talents, or some circumstances. But who has a gift not given from above (John 3:27).
Those God will use must be emptied of pride and self-reliance. Easy success often deludes us into thinking we are the author of it.
Third, and here’s a bomb, Potiphar’s wife sets her lustful sights upon the young and handsome Joseph. Perhaps Joseph would have been better off if he had been a tad bit ugly. Or not so well built. Indeed, we often see our limitations as curses rather than blessings. But an awkward, plain, chubster probably never would have ended up in Potiphar’s prison for the simple reason that no one, including and especially Potiphar’s wife, would have wanted to have sex with him. Just saying.
Our weaknesses are so very often great blessings in disguise (Romans 8:28).
Fourth, Potiphar’s wife had the time to indulge in lustful fantasies exactly because she was blessed with the material abundance the world craves! She possessed the sort of abundance many in America think will make them happy. But comfort is not and should never be confused with character and the Lord is concerned with the latter for us, not the former.
The pursuit of wealth should never draw us into a compromise from our life’s faith-based order. A job that takes us away from our family as a rule not the exception should, if all else is equal, be rejected. Any pursuit that supplants prayer, Scripture reading, worship, and Godly contemplation and fellowship, should be cut off and/or properly categorized in our lives. Wealth and leisure (both their pursuit and attainment), are very often doorways to temptation.
Finally, Joseph resists the easy sin not because he’s ethical. That would mean he’s a good person in and of himself. Let us beware of this thought, for it is of Satan. No. He rejects the offer of sexual sin precisely because he has somehow, by the grace of God, stayed properly focused on the Lord. Even in his humiliation and slavery. How easy it would have been for him to reason with himself something like: “…well, a lot of good God has done me here…I’m a slave…my family hates me…I’ll never see home again…so, why not?”
Note how Joseph doesn’t gripe about his circumstances. All of us need to beware of how easy it is to complain. Had Joseph caved in to sin he never would have spoken of Potiphar as his master. Instead, he would have highlighted his enslavement. It’s the trick of the Tempter in the Garden. He calls attention to the one thing we don’t have. David was convicted of this by the prophet Nathan and we should heed the lesson too:
“I gave you your master’s house and his wives and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And if that had not been enough, I would have given you much, much more. Why, then, have you despised the word of the Lord and done this horrible deed? For you have murdered Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites and stolen his wife. From this time on, your family will live by the sword because you have despised me by taking Uriah’s wife to be your own.”
2 Samuel 12:8-10 NLT
Complaining and griping will always and inevitably lead us to sin. Joseph stayed faithful and in his response to his temptress he shows how his ethos are from God – rooted in Him – and not influenced by the morals around him. It is evil, Joseph says, to sleep with another man’s wife because God says so. And that’s that. Jeremiah says, “for the customs of the people are a delusion (10:3).” Later, he drops this hammer blow to humanism: “Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge (10:14).”
Joseph avoids great sin in slavery, but King David fell at the height of his power.
Yes, indeed, every man is stupid when he seeks to define himself through the lens of humanism, regardless of the filter he adds. When he does that he thinks the Devil’s thoughts after him, rather than God’s (Proverbs 1:7; 3:5-6; 14:12). Ultimately, he’ll end up focused on what he doesn’t have rather than what he does. Such is the seed of sin. Envy (idolatry) is easily confused in man’s mind as ambition. Such is the brutal seed of chaos and much misery.
Faithfulness is the antidote. Gratefulness and trust of Him who saves us is the key to all of life…business, family, marriage, politics, education. All of it. Let us pray that we are never conformed in any way to this world’s principles. And let us pray continuously with the habit of praise and gratitude.
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