Welcome to today’s Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation covering Genesis 39:7-9 wherein we see the honorable Joseph resisting temptation because of his God motivation.
And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”
Recently a famous golfer issued an apology for his damaging and irresponsible personal behavior, sharing a bit of his faulty thinking as he was engaged in these acts. He recalled that he thought he was entitled to do what he wanted after working so hard for so long and being rewarded in many ways for doing so. We can all understand that way of thinking to some degree. At the end of a busy week we might experience the desire to simply have what we want, to engage in something that we feel will give us a little relief. Perhaps we struggle in this area when it comes to food, TV, sports, movies, etc. It’s not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but we might be tempted to abuse them. Really, it was the same with the golfer I mentioned and his sexual sins. It wasn’t wrong for him to want that pleasure, but he should have enjoyed the intimacy at home with his wife alone.
Notice the interaction here between handsome young Joseph and his master’s wife. Potiphar was an important person in Egypt and so probably had managed to get a good looking lady at his side. It’s likely that he was tied up a good amount of the time, and since he trusted Joseph to manage everything while he was gone, how easy it would have been for single Joseph to let the well-oiled machine of the household run on it’s own for an hour and take a corner room with a woman who was salivating over him. Talk about temptation! But Joseph resisted day after day for two big reasons we see here. He first respected his master and apparently trusted him to set good rules in place. Potiphar didn’t worry about anything while Joseph was around and didn’t put any restrictive access on him except for one thing: Mrs. Potiphar. She was like that forbidden tree in the midst of an entire garden of holy pleasures. That was the first, and I would argue lesser, reason for Joseph’s resistance. The ultimate one is what sets Joseph apart from so many others that we observe in the Scriptures. Did you hear what he said? How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Above and encompassing everything else, Joseph resisted temptation because of his God motivation. We can address it this way: Why did Joseph ultimately stand strong?…because of God. This is incredible and fits in so well with what we observe in the rest of the story about Joseph. In this chapter alone we see him multiple times live with a kind of integrity that God smiles at, an integrity that had to be based upon faith, and that God rewards by putting him in places of honor in the most unlikely of circumstances. O how we cannot miss this foundational element of Joseph’s life! O how we must learn this same God motivation today!
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