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The Truth About Temptation - Joseph: From Pit to Palace
77 Plays2 years ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron explores the power of self-care, the cunning nature of temptation, and the importance of staying rooted in God's word. He shares personal anecdotes, biblical stories, and practical advice, reminding us that we are not alone in our struggles. So grab your listening ears and prepare to be inspired as we tackle the challenges of everyday life with faith and perseverance.
Time Stamps:
[00:01:49] Reputation upheld, Joseph thrown in prison. Temptation and adversity explained.
[00:04:01] Temptation lures, but can make us stronger.
[00:09:28] Temptation strikes when we're at our weakest.
[00:13:22] Advertising spends billions using sex appeal.
[00:17:14] Busy sacrificing for family and career achievements.
[00:19:41] Taking care of myself without relying on God
[00:24:06] Apology for mistaken feelings, headed home.
[00:27:20] You are not alone; find freedom. Trust God, not me.
[00:29:15] Temptation resisted, sin against God avoided.
[00:32:06] Prioritize God's approval over peers', values over compromise, and commitment to the Bible.
[00:37:44] Joseph's actions had profound consequences.
[00:38:50] Contemplating sin, choices, and Jesus for freedom.
[00:41:57] Morning altar confession, spouse, family, friends, transparency, victories
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Transcript
Joseph's Journey: Slavery to Prison
00:00:00
Speaker
So we're back in Genesis 39 today, and if you were here last week, you're going, wait a minute. That's where we were last week. Yeah, that's cool in it. We're going to go back over the story. I'm not going to take the time to read it all this week. I just kind of remind you where we are. We are in the life of Joseph. Joseph, remember, was sold by his brothers into slavery.
00:00:17
Speaker
He arrived in Egypt at the courtesy of a Midianite caravan that took him there and they sold Joseph to a guy by the name of Potiphar who was a very prominent member of Pharaoh's court. Many believe he was the head executioner in fact.
00:00:33
Speaker
He is immediately, Joseph is immediately recognized as a true leader and so he's put into a prominent position in Potiphar's household where he is kind of put over everybody else and it isn't long after arriving that Mrs. Potiphar, because I don't know her real name, we're gonna call her that, Mrs. Potiphar looks at Joseph and says, ooh, he's a dude and he looks good, okay? So, did you know you could say that? Okay.
00:00:59
Speaker
He's a dude and he looks good. And so she begins to try to appeal to him. She begins to entice him, seduce him, try to work on a relationship with him. And because of Joseph's values, he time after time after time continues to reject her advances. Then comes the day when they are in the house alone. There are no other servants around. She tries one more time. He refuses and begins to flee. And as he does, he is torn away, leaving his coat behind in her hands.
00:01:27
Speaker
And she makes up the story when her husband arrives home to say, Joseph tried to make a fool of me and this is what I've got to prove it. Now, I believe, and we talked about this last week, I don't think that Potiphar really believed her story because if he did, I think that he would have instantly put Joseph to death, that there would have been no shame in doing that. It would have been expected of his position in that culture.
00:01:49
Speaker
But because he did have a reputation to uphold and his wife had made accusations, he actually threw Joseph into
Understanding Adversity and Temptation
00:01:56
Speaker
prison. And that's where we'll pick up the story next week. But this week, again, I want to go back and revisit this whole encounter, this interaction between Mrs. Potiphar and Joseph. And I want to talk about this issue of temptation and how you resist it. The difference between adversity and temptation in my mind, this is the definition according to Ridley Baron, not Merriam-Whibster or anybody like that, okay?
00:02:17
Speaker
The difference between adversity and temptation is this. Adversity is roadblocks, obstacles, challenges to your growth. Things that stand between you and your ultimate destination of being more like Christ Jesus. And ironically enough, when we go through adversity, they propel us more towards being like Jesus.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's why God allows adversity in our life. Temptation, on the other hand, are those moments in time where the enemy, and we'll talk more about what that enemy looks like in just a second, where the enemy offers something to momentarily derail us, which has the potential to permanently disengage us. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. That was audience participation time. You missed your clue.
00:03:02
Speaker
All right, so let's talk first about the reality of sin, and then we're gonna talk a little bit of, I mean, excuse me, reality of temptation, and we're gonna talk about the power of temptation, and then again, how to resist temptation. You see, temptation comes in very beautiful packages. We all know that, right? The Bible describes Satan as being an angel of light who parades around looking for opportunities, and what he does is he promises us all these good things, and he delivers on none of them.
00:03:29
Speaker
All you get in exchange for following Satan is misery, despair, hurt, and death. In fact, Jesus says himself in the book of John that the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Those are his agendas for us. Even good things, really good things in life can sometimes be a temptation because what they do is they steer us off of our main focus with just to follow God with all of our heart, soul, and mind.
00:03:55
Speaker
And so good things even can sometimes lure us away. In James 1, verse 14, this verse you see on the screen, James compares it to basically like fishing. Some of you can relate to that, right? He says, but each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. So our evil desires pulls us away, lures us away to go after something that looks really nice, looks really shiny, looks really good on the surface. But underneath, again, what it holds is misery, despair, and death.
00:04:25
Speaker
After 10 years, it's now time for Joseph to enter into the school of temptation. And the question we might want to ask ourselves is why in the world does God allow us to be tempted? And the obvious answer is because it actually can turn out for our good when we fight the battles that are necessary to win against temptation. They make us stronger. They give us greater opportunity for victory. And with every victory, we become more fit for the task that God has called us to do.
Sources of Temptation
00:04:52
Speaker
Anybody God uses to further his kingdom must be willing to pay the price to be usable. And part of that price is standing in the face of temptation. So Ephesians chapter 2 verse 2 through 3. Excuse me, I have to scroll for a little bit here. Ephesians chapter 2 verses, actually let's go through verses 1 through 3. You may have to pull it up. I don't see it on my screen for some reason. It talks about the three enemies that we face.
00:05:22
Speaker
Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 through 3 it says when you were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you previously lived according to the ways of the squirrel according to the ruler of the power of the air the spirit now working in the disobedient
00:05:36
Speaker
We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts." So specifically he talks about three things there that create these lures of temptation for us. The first one is, of course, our culture. The world around us does not follow God. It has no desire to. It's always been very clear about that. The world pursues its own desires. And so the world, by its nature, has set itself up in opposition to the values of God.
00:06:04
Speaker
Entertainment, politics, media, sports, it all just naturally falls towards the enemy's camp. That's why it stands out so much when you find a good honest politician or a good celebrity who's willing to stand up for godly values. They are dark, I mean, excuse me, a complete contrast to the darkness of the world. The world's culture is always going to oppose God. The second enemy he talks about here is the real enemy, Satan.
00:06:32
Speaker
Satan, now we like to blame things on Satan, right? The devil made me do it. Some of you are old enough to remember the old comedian, Flip Wilson, who used to say, the devil made me do it, right? That was his little spiel, his little line. The devil is a real enemy. Sadly, in the church today, there are actually people who are teaching more and more that there is no real enemy, that Satan just is some mythological thing that stands for dark forces, et cetera, et cetera. The reality is that
00:06:59
Speaker
We don't believe in Satan like we should, but Satan very much believes in us. And he comes after us with every bit of his schemes, every one of his desires for us. And he wants nothing more to see us fall. Now, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, Satan is no less interested in you because if he can cause you to fall, look at the damage he does to your witness and his other people who are watching.
00:07:20
Speaker
But if you are fully in rejection and rebellion against God, you better believe that Satan will come after you to hold you tightly in his grip. I would argue, however, that Satan is more focused on the Christian than he is on the non-Christian. Why? Because the non-Christian already lives in his camp. It's real easy if you're already rejected God and turned your back on him for Satan to keep you where you are. What he's got to do is he's got to go after those who are at least entertained by the eye of Jesus or those who have committed themselves to Jesus.
00:07:48
Speaker
The third one that's mentioned here is, of course, the flesh, our fallen nature. I said just a minute ago, we really love to blame Satan for all of our problems and Satan's up to this or Satan caused me to do that. But let's just be honest, we're sometimes real stupid and we do stupid things. Look at your neighbor and say, good morning, stupid. Good to have you at church. This is the truth. Many of our problems are because we live
00:08:12
Speaker
Not smartly, okay? We choose to put ourselves in positions where we shouldn't be, we find ourselves in places we shouldn't be, we'll talk about that more a little bit later on.
Nature and Strategy of Temptation
00:08:22
Speaker
But just be aware, just be aware that there are three different enemies who are coming after us and they are creating a situation where they want to tell us, choose wrong, they're gonna tell us how fun it is when you do something wrong, even though they won't use the word wrong, they'll make it appealing.
00:08:40
Speaker
then they'll try to make you believe it's going to cost you more to refuse to follow that wrong path. So what is the power of temptation? Well, the power of temptation is this, Satan Sneaky. He's a very worthy opponent. In fact, if you go back to the story of Garden of Eden, it says that he was the slyest, the most
00:09:02
Speaker
smartest, the conniving of the animals. I can't remember the actual word it uses there, but it sets him up, the serpent, as being very, very evil, very, very wise, very, very tricky in what he does. And so we know we're up against a worthy opponent, and he's going to do whatever he can to sneak into our lives, undercover, and create problems for us. And many of you, if I gave you a microphone, could stand up right now and could say, give testimony to this, he always does it when we're at our weakest.
00:09:31
Speaker
So what does our weakest look like? When we're too busy to pay attention to God? When we're too busy to read the Word? When we're angry because we feel like God has somehow let us down? When we're feeling lonely, discouraged, frustrated, depressed? When we're overworked, under-arrested? Did you know that sleep is actually a biblical thing? God's gone. Take your nap today. Look at your wife and say, I'm going to be spiritual for about an hour.
00:09:59
Speaker
But rest is a good thing because physically, mentally, we have to be prepared for the work of the enemy. And he's constantly working around us. The power of temptation is so great that it even touched Jesus' life.
00:10:12
Speaker
It touched Jesus' life. Of course, we think about the first 40 days after he was baptized, he went into the wilderness and it says that three different occasions Satan came to him and tempted him with the lure of power and the lure of popularity and tried to entice him away from the plan that God had put out before him. But even later in his life, we read the story in Matthew chapter 26 where Jesus goes to the Garden of Eden.
00:10:37
Speaker
The night again that he was betrayed, we were talking about that earlier. And as he's in that garden, he's taken his three closest friends and he said to them, will you pray with me while I go up here and pray for a little while? Little lesson there, Jesus didn't want to take on Satan by himself. Why do you think about that? The son of God knew what he was about to face. The temptation for him was.
00:11:02
Speaker
to step away from what God's plan was for him to pursue his own desires, to remove the cup of wrath that he was about to take, and to allow Satan to win in this moment. And because he knew he was gonna be facing that battle, he said to those three guys that were closest to him in his life, please come and pray with me. And the power of temptation in that moment was so strong, the struggle was so real, the Bible says that Jesus literally was sweating great drops of blood.
00:11:32
Speaker
Ever been in an interview or some tough conversation where you literally feel the sweat rolling down your back? I mean, just think about this. This is Jesus sweating blood because he is struggling in spiritual warfare. Be reminded that every single day of your life, whether you know it or not, whether you are consciously aware of it or not, there's a spiritual war going on for your soul. There's a war going on in the heavenlies between good and evil that's fighting for you and against you.
00:12:00
Speaker
And this is why it is so incredibly important that as believers and followers of Jesus Christ, that we get into the Word, we stay in His Word, and that we stay connected to the Holy Spirit and what He's doing for us. Because that battle is real and it's going on all the time. Now I want to get back to our story with Joseph. I want to talk specifically about some
00:12:22
Speaker
some appeals that Satan made. Some of these may relate to you. You may connect to them. You may understand them a little bit better as we talk about Joseph's life. And then like I said, we're gonna get to the meat of this, which is how to resist temptation. The first area where Satan appealed to him was his appetite. I mean, let's get honest. Joseph was a young man. He had been in slavery or serving as a servant in Potiphar's
Joseph's Temptations: Appetite and Ambition
00:12:46
Speaker
house. The majority of his life, probably at this point,
00:12:50
Speaker
He had never been loved by his family. He was alone in a foreign land. Didn't have a wife. Never had somebody to court. I don't know if they courted or dated or what back in that day. But he never had that relationship. Never had that affection from the opposite sex. And so the appeal of what Mrs. Potiphar was offering him was real. And it was intense.
00:13:13
Speaker
You and I both know that one of the most powerful lures there is in culture today as well as back in Egypt is the lure of sex. That's why Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars every year bringing out half-dressed women and half-dressed men to advertise cologne. Have you ever thought about that?
00:13:33
Speaker
Or have you ever seen the commercials where they're advertising new truck tires and you don't ever see the truck tires? All you see is the girls that are advertising the truck tires and you're going, what's this got to do with the truck tires? Well, nothing. It's everything about appealing to you. I even took a class in college 15,000 years ago called persuasive techniques.
00:13:54
Speaker
And the one thing we spent most of the semester talking about is how advertising, how Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars of research to find what causes us to click, to connect with things that they're trying to sell, and sex is easily one of them. There's all the now blatantly obvious symbols that are out there, but there's also a lot of hidden symbols they use to use the lure of sex into causing us to spend our money on whatever product it is they want to offer us.
00:14:22
Speaker
Now, sex is not a bad thing. Let's be very clear about that. I want to be sure that our church always makes that point very, very clear. But sex is only good in marriage. It's only good in marriage because inside marriage with sex you get what's beautiful and it's purposeful and it's intimate and it's the way God created it to be. Outside of man and a woman in marriage, what you get is heartache, you get frustration, you get destruction.
00:14:49
Speaker
So, sex in itself, not bad, but when it's used in a lot of other ways, it becomes a downfall, mostly for men, but also for women in greater and greater numbers these days. So, the appeal of his appetite. Secondly, we look at the appeal of his attitude. The attitude.
00:15:11
Speaker
I'm gonna walk away from this because it's annoying me. His attitude. Imagine Mrs. Potter for giving Joseph reasons why she needed him. Why she maybe deserved him. You know, Mr. Potterfer's not being kind to me. Maybe Mr. Potterfer's abusive. Mr. Potterfer's not paying attention to my emotional needs. Mr. Potterfer is working too hard, many long hours. There's all kinds of reasons. And there's something about a man that desires to rescue women.
00:15:41
Speaker
Okay, if you've ever read John Eldridge's book, Wild at Heart, he talks a great deal about this. Why? As I said to you before, the number one need of a man is respect. It's esteem from people. And so when a man can rescue his woman, instantly he feels the respect, the acknowledgement, all those things that he desires, okay? And so men are constantly trying to rescue their women. I know you probably look at him when he throws his underwear on the floor ladies and think, he's my knight in shining armor. But it's the truth, that's what we desire to do.
00:16:12
Speaker
And so in that moment, Joseph probably had the appeal of going, you know what, I could come in and I could rescue this woman. Oh, in exchange, there would be great reward. But I could rescue her and I would be acknowledged by her and maybe by others of her, her peers around her. And so that would be very appealing to me. Thirdly, his ambition, his ambition, you see,
00:16:35
Speaker
Mrs. Potterfer offered Joseph more than just physical intimacy. Women in Egypt had great influence. She could have very easily had him promoted. She could have gotten him great wealth. She could have gotten him great success. There's nothing like materialism to push you up the ladder of success in the world's eyes. I mean, the more you have, the more people think you're being blessed, right? She could have rewarded him with promotions, with big houses, big cars,
00:17:04
Speaker
boats, money in the bank. You may have to cut a few ethical corners, she would say, or you might have to make some compromises in your values, she might add, but you'll get there and it'll be worth it and you'll love it. Those are the pills we make to ourselves sometimes. How many times have we convinced ourselves that we may be just a little too busy for our family, but I'm doing it for them, right?
00:17:29
Speaker
And I know I haven't seen my kids in like three weeks or I know I've been working 75, 80 hours a week. I know I've got this and that on my plate, but surely they'll understand that I'm doing this all for them. But when you add up the benefits, the price is really more than you're willing to pay.
00:17:51
Speaker
And it's not just men, it's women, increasingly so. Women are being urged to pursue those kinds of achievements, to get the advancement in life. If we can get that next office, if we can get that next accomplishment, if we can get the next plate on our door office saying we've accomplished these things, it's why the world pushes so hard for women to pursue those things. It's appealing to our ambition.
00:18:17
Speaker
It appears, it appeals to his anarchy or his anger. You see, every human being has a rebellious spirit. The Bible's very clear about this. Galatians chapter 5 verse 16 and 18, it says that we have this fleshly spirit that desires the things of the world. We want to do what's right, but we also very strongly want to do what's wrong. So Joseph's anarchy was fueled by his anger. You might go, well, what anger are you referring to? Well, think about it. He had gotten a raw deal in life.
00:18:44
Speaker
He had been taken from his family, a family that really didn't love him in the first place. He had been sold into slavery. He had been put into prison falsely at the end of the story. There's all kinds of reasons why he could have asked the question that many of us have asked. What good does being good do for me? Any of you ever ask that question?
00:19:02
Speaker
We ever asked, you know, what good does it do to follow Jesus Christ? What good does it do to be a good person? Because here I am struggling to make ends meet. Here I am with a broken marriage. Here I am with this illness in my life. Here I am with all these things. And it seems like everybody out there is succeeding but me.
Resisting Temptation Effectively
00:19:21
Speaker
And you're not alone because the book of Psalms, that's what many of the psalmist write. You know, Lord, I've honored every one of your statutes. I've always kept your commands. Where are you in this moment?
00:19:31
Speaker
And if they're being really, really honest, you go, you haven't kept all his commands. So it skews our vision and our anger causes us to lash out. And the first thing we think is, okay, how do I just take care of me? How take care of me? If God's not going to do it, I'll handle it myself, which is putting ourselves in obviously a worse situation.
00:19:53
Speaker
So what I want to do is, like I said, spend the bulk of our time here talking about how to resist temptation and to be successful at it. But before you do, I wanted to share something with you. It kind of connects part two of the sermon to part three. Years ago, I had the opportunity to go speak at one of the hospitals I speak with on a regular basis. It was up in Indiana. And I was going by myself, which I usually don't do on trips or didn't used to do very much on trips.
00:20:22
Speaker
And as fate would have it, or I guess properly say, as Satan would have it, as I was getting ready to walk out the door, Lisa and I had one of our not finest moments. It was really ugly. Real bad conversation.
00:20:38
Speaker
Because I had to be at the airport, there was no time to resolve this. I went out the door and I'm driving down the road to the airport and my sweet wife is texting me and because I'm angry and I'm just blowing up, I'm just not answering the phone because I just think at this point it's not gonna be helpful. It's probably just gonna aggravate the problem. Things are just gonna get worse. Got on the airport, flew up to Indiana, got met by a couple that was picking me up at the airport. They took me to the hotel room that night, got up the next morning,
00:21:08
Speaker
and went to the hospital, the same couple picked me up, took me to the hospital, got there and I was speaking a couple of times that day and then doing dinner with some of the VIPs from the hospital that night. But after I spoke at the first event, I'm standing there talking with the lady who had brought me from the hotel that morning and we were supposed to like go eat a lunch there on the hospital grounds and then she was going to take me in the hotel room, things like that.
00:21:32
Speaker
Anyway, she looks at me and she says, I have a very busy day. I had some other meetings that have come up, those kinds of things. I've gotten somebody else to drive you around. And then comes this young nurse. Well, um, I wish with all my might that I could tell you that you're strong, powerful, spiritual leader, pastor said, not today, but instead I said, okay, that's fine.
00:21:58
Speaker
So we spent the rest of the day. I did the extra presentation. We stayed there at the hospital, but then she came to get me after that second presentation. She said, would you like to see some of the town before dinner tonight? And I said, sure. Right at that point, I guarantee you at that point, the Holy Spirit was saying to me, what are you doing? And at that moment, there was a sign of that said, do not disturb. Why? Because I was angry. Why? Because I had let my guard down. Why?
00:22:27
Speaker
because I'm stupid. Okay? So she shows me around. We finished up the little tour way earlier than we anticipated. So she took me to a little coffee shop right there in the parking lot of the restaurant where we were eating. We began to sit and talk and she began to take advantage of the fact that I was a pastor and have a free counseling session. And she began to talk and she began to share. She started talking about her job, her broken marriage,
00:22:57
Speaker
how the doctors at work flirted with her, how she was interested in many of those relationships outside of her marriage, which was still going on at the time. And it just began to get really uncomfortable, and I began to hear that little voice inside of my head going, Ridley, what are you doing? Ridley, what are you doing? And instead I ignored it. So we went to dinner. She took me back to the hotel room that night. Some of you are already scared to death where this is going. I can see it in your eyes. No, she did not come back to my hotel room.
00:23:27
Speaker
But I got up the next morning, went to the lobby to have breakfast, and she was there waiting on me, about 45 minutes earlier than she was supposed to get there. She had breakfast with me. She made several comments that looking back, I thought, shouldn't have entertained those thoughts. We finished up the thing. I did my last presentation of the day, and she took me to the airport. And as we were pulling, maybe not even getting into the airport, between the hotel, I mean the hospital and the airport,
00:23:54
Speaker
It was at that point that God said, okay, Ridley's a lonkhead. He's not listening to my Holy Spirit. And he pulled out that holy two by four and he hit me upside the head and said, ding dong, wake up. And as I got out of the car, I looked at her and I said, I owe you an apology. And she said, why? I said, because I'm headed home to a beautiful wife who I love very dearly.
00:24:20
Speaker
And I've allowed you to think things that you shouldn't and to say things that you shouldn't. And I probably have even said things that encouraged you in ways that it shouldn't. And I should have never done that. So I just want you to know I'm going home to my wife. Well, I wish that could be the end of the story, but I went home. I don't remember what the event was going on in our family that night, but was it a birthday?
00:24:47
Speaker
Somebody, one of our kids' birthdays, I walked in, set my luggage down and everybody's like, they're the house gathering. And I said, I need to talk to you right now. Pulled her into the bedroom, shut the door, took her on the far side of the bed, set her down and said, I need to talk to you. And she goes, you're scaring me. And I told her everything and I apologized to her. Some of you know my wife's story. I lost her trust in that moment.
00:25:17
Speaker
Not because I came home and told her the truth, but because I had been stupid from the very beginning. I had let my guard down because of my anger. I had allowed things to be in my life that shouldn't have been in my life. And so I had some ground to make up. Do not let your anger take you places you don't want to be seen. So I just said to her, I said, look, here's the deal. I said, from this point on,
00:25:46
Speaker
because she usually negotiates all my contracts for speaking. I said, from this point on, we will negotiate a travel fee for a companion to be with me at all times. Most of the time, it's you. If not, it would be another man in our church. Number two, if they will not do that, then they will rent me a car for me to drive myself and there will never ever be anybody else driving me around. Now, here's the words of encouragement I want you to hear before we get into this.
00:26:15
Speaker
If someone, you have let someone down in your life because you have given in to temptation or you have even toyed with temptation in a way you shouldn't, go take care of that right now. Because your sin isn't just against God, it's against the person you have broken their trust. Now if you are that person who's being confessed to, you have to give room for grace in that.
00:26:41
Speaker
I'm not saying you have to be happy. I'm saying you have to smile all the way through it. I'm not saying you have to say, oh, everything's forgiven. Let's move on. What I'm saying is you have to give room for grace because if you shut the door on that, then you will never get that kind of honesty again. Now, why did I just tell you that story? Number one, I want to remind you that your pastor is just as human as you are.
00:27:08
Speaker
I need God's grace every single day of my life. Number two, I want to remind you that at this church, transparency is always a welcome thing. I want you to know that whatever you're struggling with, you are not alone in that. There are others in this room who have felt that, who have experienced that.
00:27:38
Speaker
And today could be a day of freedom for you. You don't have to hide. It's exactly what Satan wants you to do. And then this little reminder, maybe specifically just for the ladies, but maybe the men too. The greatest thing my wife can do for her well-being is to not trust me, but to trust the God who is in charge of me.
00:28:06
Speaker
And so instead of worrying and laying awake at night and going, what could happen
Commitment to God and Avoidance Strategies
00:28:11
Speaker
next? What's going to happen tomorrow? The best thing she could do is day by day, night by night turn me over to Jesus. Because I don't know this for a fact, but I'm pretty doggone sure that in that moment where Jesus was warming up his two by four, it was because my wife was praying for me.
00:28:42
Speaker
Every one of us faced temptation, all of us. And I'm very obviously grateful for my wife and what she did for me. And I'm emotional about that, but I'm more emotional about the fact that some of you are sitting here today and you're going, I can't do that. I can't be transparent. I can't confess. I can't trust people. I can't open myself up to people. And you are playing into the hands of Satan.
00:29:15
Speaker
That's exactly where He wants you. The Bible tells us to bring our sin out into the light because it's then and only then that the Holy Spirit can do what He needs to do in your life. So how do we resist temptation? Well, I believe, if you look at chapter 39, verses 9 and 10, I believe that the key to how you resist temptation is found there.
00:29:41
Speaker
It says, Joseph said to Mrs. Potiphar, no one in this house is greater than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except you because you are his wife, so how could I do this immense evil and how could I sin against God? I remind you, Joseph knew that his sin was against God and God alone, okay? But keep on going, it says, although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with him. He refused.
00:30:09
Speaker
How do you and I resist temptation? We make up our mind before the temptation ever comes that we are going to be committed to God. The time to decide is here and now. So I wanna talk to you very quickly through four commitments that I think Joseph made that saved him from temptation. I would encourage you, these are temptations that you should, I mean, some commitments that you should make. Number one, commit that you're gonna serve God.
00:30:37
Speaker
commit that you are going to serve God. You see, Joseph in that moment didn't look at Mrs. Potiphar when she tried to entice him and go, well, let me pray about it. Let me think about this. Give me 24 hours to consider the possibilities. He said no. Immediately, frequently, consistently, he said no because he had made up his mind. The time to make up your mind about the temptations that the world and the devil are going to bring you, the time to make up your mind is here and now.
00:31:04
Speaker
You don't wait until you're at the party to decide whether or not you're going to choose to drink or do drugs. Young person, you don't wait until you're in the back seat of the car with your boyfriend or your girlfriend to try to decide what your sexual values are going to be. Business person, you don't wait until that moment when you are offered an opportunity to compromise ethically in your business to decide what kind of man or woman you are going to be. You make that decision now
00:31:33
Speaker
and you make it firm. The story of Daniel, it says that he chose not to drink the king's food and wine. Why? Because he had determined long ago that he was God's and he would always follow God. He didn't look at the menu and go, well, let me see what's for lunch today before I decide. He said, I'm going to choose now that God and God alone will be the audience that I perform for. Now, I want you to hear that. If you decide that God is the audience that you live for, then you don't care what the world thinks about you.
00:32:03
Speaker
That is huge. That is huge. Guys, when you go to work, if you care more about what God thinks about you than what your peers think about you, then you're not willing to compromise on your values in order to do what's right. Ladies, if God is who you are concerned about, then you're not going to get up in the morning and dress thinking about the guy at work that you really shouldn't be thinking about because your husband's at home. Young person,
00:32:31
Speaker
You're going to make your determinations when you decide about following God. You're going to make your determinations based on the fact that God is the one you live for the approval of, not your peers at school who walk with you down the hallway. Second thing you got to do is you got to make a commitment to live by the Bible. Now that may sound like it's kind of redundant, repetitive, because we obviously are going to follow God, but you need to understand that God and his word are two different things. The world
00:33:00
Speaker
many in the world will tell you they believe in God. By the way, Satan believes in God. Did you know that? Satan does very well who God is. He used to serve God as an angel himself. The determination to follow the Bible means that I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and it's the direction for my life. It is the guidebook for my life. It is how I'm supposed to live. God's will is found in the Bible, not in culture.
00:33:30
Speaker
God's truth is timeless. It's eternal. It's not based on the latest opinion poll. It's not based on the latest cultural trends. It is based on the reality that God himself is truth. He is light. And because of that, he alone can give us the directions for our life. Egypt was a very sexually permissive society. It would have been very easy for Joseph to say, oh, those are the old values. I'm going to live by the ones that I'm currently a part of.
00:33:58
Speaker
But God's word was unchanging and it is unchanging. And when you're determined to live your life by the word, you have values built into you that keep you from the temptations around us. The third commitment, I'm not gonna flirt with temptation. I'm not gonna flirt with temptation. It says he refused to even be with her. In verse 10, as strong as Joseph was and as much a man of character that Joseph was, he also knew he had weaknesses.
00:34:25
Speaker
For Joseph to go in there day after day and to put himself in the company of that woman would be like a drunk who walks by a bar every day on the way to work to prove he's strong enough to handle it. That doesn't make any sense. Or the young person who hangs out with kids who aren't making the right choices, who aren't doing the right thing and believes that he somehow can withstand the pressure of that. The Bible very clearly says that bad company corrupts good character.
00:34:52
Speaker
Being in the company of people who compromise and choose worldly values over God are always going to cause you to fail. Our best plan is to run away and to stay away. James 4, verse 7, Jesus' brother writes these words. He says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. You have to be willing to run in the other direction when you see trouble coming.
00:35:21
Speaker
The last commitment you've got to make is you've got to know that you're not going to follow the majority. I'm not going to follow the majority. Joseph decided not to follow the crowd. Again, the Egyptian culture was very corrupt, very immoral, followed pagan gods. It was an anything goes kind of mentality. Can I just tell you that your choice is this. Do I choose to do what God has commanded me to do or do I choose my way? Do I choose what makes me feel good or do I choose what makes him feel honored and worshiped?
00:35:52
Speaker
There are two prices that come with your freedom when you make this choice. Two prices that come. Number one, the price of responsibility. You see, God's gonna hold you personally accountable for your choices. You, not anybody else. When you're standing in front of God, you won't be able to look at him and say, it was all those friends I hung around. When you're standing in front of God, you're not gonna be able to say, but you should know who my parents were and what they did to me.
00:36:24
Speaker
You can't look at him and go, but God, did you see the city I lived in and how immoral it was? It was hard to live like that. You alone will be held responsible for your choices. Consequences is the second price. You see, God punishes us for wrong choices and he blesses us for right ones. That's the simple practice of the Bible. God will discipline you when you choose to do the wrong thing, when you choose to go down the wrong path.
00:36:52
Speaker
But he will honor you when you choose to honor him.
Consequences of Choices in Temptation
00:36:57
Speaker
Let's face it, all of our life is one big test. One big temptation. The question that you and I have to deal with literally on a day by day, sometimes moment by moment basis is, are we gonna serve God or are we gonna serve ourselves? My grandmother used to always say this and I used to always roll my eyes when she would start to say it. You sow and act, you reap a habit.
00:37:23
Speaker
When you sow a habit, you reap a character. When you sow a character, you reap a destiny. You see, the choices you make in those seasons of temptation have the power not only to change your eternal destiny or even your lifetime's trajectory, but they also have the power to change lots of things around you.
00:37:44
Speaker
If Joseph had given in to the sin that day, if he had chosen to take just one moment's delight with Mrs. Potiphar, there's a good chance the rest of Genesis does not happen the way we see it. That Jacob and his family die because of a famine in Canaan where they don't get the relief that they need because Joseph has never let out of prison to tell Potiphar what his dream means.
00:38:09
Speaker
And because Jacob and his family are destroyed, the lineage that God had promised is taken away, that Israel never exists. The entire Middle East is a totally different story today based off of one change because of Joseph's choices.
Finding Freedom Through Faith
00:38:26
Speaker
First Timothy chapter one, verse 15. This is how I want to end this, because we've talked a lot about sin. We've talked a lot about temptation, but this is the power of the gospel right here.
00:38:36
Speaker
This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst. I am the worst. Contemplate what that means for you today. When you understand the level of your sin, when you understand the level of your ability to do wrong,
00:38:59
Speaker
When you understand the potential for right choices versus wrong choices in your life, then maybe you and I can begin somehow to understand the weight of what it took for Jesus to do what he did for us. And today could be a day of freedom for you. Today could be the day that that sin that has plagued you, that temptation that constantly comes at you, that it's broken ultimately and finally for the last time.
00:39:29
Speaker
that God provides the deliverance you've been seeking, that He provides the rescue that you've always wanted, that you finally get the way out from under the temptation that you've dealt with. I use the word addiction a lot and immediately people talk about or think about drugs and alcohol, which obviously are the two big ones, but think about all the other addictions you and I have in our life. We're addicted to power, we're addicted to popularity.
00:39:57
Speaker
We're addicted to certain emotions that make us feel happy about ourselves. Some of you are addicted to gossip because it lets you make you feel in control. Some of you are addicted to a person in your life. And as I say that, their image pops into your head right now in this season. You can be addicted to a whole lot of things and there's only one key to that freedom and that's Jesus. So this morning,
00:40:29
Speaker
Right here, right now, it's your choice. Do you continue to live on a path that takes you through the consequences of bad choices you've been making? Or do you receive the forgiveness that Christ died to give you? Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you this morning for the freedom granted to us by the power of Jesus Christ.
00:41:01
Speaker
We thank you for taking all of our sin as a burden for yourself on the cross. We thank you for bearing that weight. Even now, right now in this room, there's temptation that's being thrown at us. Some of us are thinking ahead to this week, something's going on, something that we're tempted to compromise from a place where we're tempted to lie or to cheat or to steal or to cover up.
00:41:30
Speaker
Maybe there's a temptation to go back to some feeling that makes us somehow feel complete. And we keep going back to that over and over again, almost like it's a drug. The Lord this morning, it's our prayer that we receive full and total freedom from that. Your invitation is to come, to have those burdens removed and to take your yoke upon us because it's easy and light.
00:41:57
Speaker
So this morning, if there's anyone here who's feeling that need to be at this altar, to confess before you or maybe to take the hand of a spouse or a family member and confess to them or to find a friend and come open before them, be transparent with them. I pray that that freedom exists in this room. We pray that there are victories won in the name of the Jesus that we pray to. Amen.