GOD MEANT IT FOR GOOD – CHAPTER 6
A NEW KIND OF TRIAL
Little did Joseph know that some day he
would look on his 11 brothers and say “You meant evil against me, but God meant
it for good” Genesis 50 verse 20. If he
had known, he might well have endured these trials with a feeling of lightness. He could have just said, “This is part of the
training”. But he was in an alien
country and humanly speaking had no hope of ever seeing any good come of what
had happened to him. The glory is that
he kept his faith in God through it all, but now a new kind of trial was
looming up before him.
He was faced with sexual temptation. What is remarkable about his reaction to this
temptation is that he did not know God was testing his mettle to see if he
could be trusted with truly great responsibility. We are not talking now about a man in public
life – like a minister or a deacon or some godly man who has so much to
lose. Many people maintain a moral
standard for the sole reason that they know what they would lose. So they resist temptation, managing somehow
to go on without falling into this kind of sin.
But look at Joseph. Here was a servant, a slave in a foreign
country with little to lose. Even if he
did give into the temptation and was subsequently found out, he had no family
nearby to be hurt and no reputation to defend.
Yet what we find is when this man Joseph was put to a most severe test,
he passed it with flying colours and nobody knew! He was accused of sinning as though he had
done it. What is more, he was punished
for it.
Hezekiah “God left him to try him that he
might know all that was in his heart” 2 Chronicles 32 verse 31. God hid his face for a moment. When God shows his face, it is the most
wonderful feeling in the whole world.
When God lets us feel his presence, we feel joy in our hearts. We read the bible and want to read for hours. When we pray, we talk to the Lord as though
he is right there. We sometimes think if
we open our eyes we will see Jesus right before us. This is how real the Lord can be. When things are like that, we can go along
singing and whistling, feeling really good wherever we are – on the subway
train, or bus. There is nothing to
compare with the feeling of God’s presence.
When God withdraws the light of his
countenance, we pray and feel like God is not even listening to us. We read the bible, and our eyes stare at the
same verse for 30 minutes and we think, “I’m not getting anywhere.” We pray again and the Lord apparently is not
there at all. And this is how we
discover what we are really like – for example, whether we will go on and pray,
as Paul put it, being “in season, out of season” 2 Timothy 4 verse 2. “In season” is when the Lord shows his face,
“out of season” is when he hides it.
Yet another principle emerging from this
part of the story is that we should not expect a new kind of trial to come our
way, unless we have made it through the old one with dignity. If we are experiencing a kind of trial such
as we have never had before, God has paid us a high compliment. I fear there are Christians who never have a
truly new trial – it is the same old kind.
That is party because God in his kindness continues to allow another
chance to dignify the old trial, by working through it without murmuring and
complaining. The purpose is to come
through tried as gold. If we do, then we are able to move on to a new vista or
a new horizon. It means we have passed
the test.
When God allows a new kind of trial,
remember he notices everything about it – every thought and move we make. Most of all, remember the trial is never
without significance. No matter how
senseless it may seem to be – God is watching every move we make. Remember also that if God allows a new kind
of trial to come along it means he has definite plans for us.
Joseph had been faithful in Potiphar’s
house. Furthermore, God had blessed
Potiphar because of Joseph – Genesis 39 verse 5. Everything good was happening to Potiphar
just because Joseph was on the premises.
One day the wife of Potiphar cast her eyes on Joseph, who was
“well-built and handsome” Genesis 39 verse 6.
She made a move toward him for which he was not prepared. Normally it is the man who is attracted by
sight – not the woman. Normally it is
the man who sets something in motion, not the woman. But here is young Joseph, having been put in
charge of Potiphar’s household and living right there in the house, becoming
the target, not the instigator, of sexual overtures. So one day Potiphar’s wife thought “I’ve got
to have Joseph.”
As for Potiphar himself, the man who is
likely to be forgotten in this episode, we would think he had it made. He was a very prosperous man, with nothing to
concern himself with except to come to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Joseph had taken over, and everything was
going well. Never once did it seem to
enter Potiphar’s mind that young Joseph was a potential threat to his marriage. Potiphar trusted Joseph, if only because
Potiphar knew how much Joseph loved God.
We do not know much about Potiphar’s
wife. It is possible she was a
fashionable woman. As an officer’s wife,
she moved in circles that made it likely she would normally have little to do
with a servant or a foreigner like Joseph.
But she came directly to Joseph: “Come to bed with me” Genesis 39 verse
7. Joseph refused her and gave as the
final explanation for his refusal, “How then can I do this great wickedness,
and sin against God” Genesis 39 verse 9.
It will be our love for God alone that will
in the end keep us from falling into sexual sin, assuming very acute
temptation. For when it is a case where
we have nothing to lose and we are unlikely to be caught, only our relationship
with God will stop it. Many people are
able to maintain a certain moral standard only because they have so much to
lose or they are afraid they might get caught – or perhaps because they have
not met Potiphar’s wife. If we are ever
in a situation (no doubt we have been or will be) where it would appear that we
could do it, and nobody would ever find out, one thing and one thing alone will
keep us pure – our love for God. Nobody
is exempt from the temptation, but if we do not have a love for God that is
greater than the intensity of that temptation, we will give in. It is then that we discover what we are
really like.
The beauty of this story is that Joseph
gave as the bottom line reason for refusing, “How can I sin against God?” This is the level of devotion that God wants
from every Christian. For if we have a
love for Jesus Christ that is so powerful and so real that we could go around
the world and not sin against God, we show we can be trusted with great things
for God. The fear of offending him must
be the worst thing we can imagine.
Potiphar trusted Joseph utterly and he was
certainly justified in this trust. He
was sitting on top of the world – no cares and no worries. Yet, when we are sitting on top of the world,
we are in a rather dangerous position for we have no place to go but down. When we are on top of the world, the devil
can take advantage of that situation.
Some interpreters make the point that
Potiphar neglected his wife and had Potiphar himself been the kind of husband
he ought to have been, Potiphar’s wife would not have come to Joseph like
that. That is sheer speculation. Whereas in some cases this may serve as a
small part of the explanation, there are many cases where the husband or wife
have absolutely no excuse. Most
adulterous situations come because someone thinks the grass is greener on the
other side of the fence. And there is
one reason for this: it is sin. We may
come up with a psychological explanation for it. We may say, “it is due to the way I was
brought up – my father was like this: my mother was like this: or this
situation happened to me.” There is
almost always a psychological (or sociological) explanation for sin. We may call it immaturity. We may say a person suffered from an arrested
emotional development at this or that age or lived under adverse conditions. But the reason is still ultimately sin. No amount of understanding of our background
will guarantee control over sexual sin.
We can go to a psychologist, even spend years in psychotherapy or
psychoanalysis and be no closer to mastering ourselves. The only thing that will ultimately keep a
person from falling into sin is his love for God.
If God has a work for us to do and he wants
to use us, we should not be surprised if at some stage we are confronted with
the kind of temptation that we are talking about here. It is to see whether God can trust us with
other things that he has in mind for us.
“We did this because we were in love” it is
often said. Some even go so far as to
say that Potiphar’s wife really loved Joseph.
Love is often the excuse for sin, as if to say “If it’s love, it is all
right”. Remember this: any sexual
involvement outside of marriage is sin and it is not real love that motivates
it. It is never love – it is lust. It will appear as love at the time, but it is
not. The proof that Potiphar’s wife did
not love Joseph is the way she turned on him when he rejected her. If she had really loved him, she would never
have lied about him. It was her own
lustful nature that had to have him. The
devil is so crafty. He will make us
think something is rather noble so we will go on and do it. Any sexual involvement outside of marriage is
sin.
But what about a person who is neglected or
lonely? What compensation is there? Ultimately there is only one answer: our love
for God. God can give us a love for
himself that is so real and so great that it is actually greater than the
temptation or loneliness that plagues as at the moment.
Joseph, faced with this new trial, resisted
the temptation. He would never be
sorry. What is more, he qualified for
greater trials that promised incalculable blessing.
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