HEROES OF THE FAITH – JOSEPH
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 39:1-23
NOVEMBER 6, 1983
There are few countries in this world with histories more fascinating than the country of Egypt. It’s more than 5,000 this years ago that the ancient Egyptian Empire came to power on earth and when people think of ancient Egypt, they think of many things. Some people think of the Pharaohs, the souls of which the Egyptians tried to protect through the preservation of their bodies by mummification. Others think of the pyramids, the great stone mountains that the Egyptians used as burial chambers for their kings and pharaohs. The ruins of 35 of those pyramids still exist in Egypt today along the banks of the Nile and on the edge of the Great Sahara Desert. The greatest of those pyramids is probably the Great Pyramid, sometimes called Cheops, sometimes called Khufu. It was built 4,500 years ago as a burial chamber for King Khufu. It was built with 2,300,000 stones, each stone weighing approximately 5,000 pounds. It is said that it took 400,000 men 20 years to build that ancient tomb. And the base of that pyramid it is so massive that it covers an area larger than ten football fields. And yet other people, at when they think of ancient Egypt do not think of the pyramids all. They think of the giant sphinx that is built near Giza—240 feet long with the head of a man and with the body of a cat. It’s carved out of solid stone. Others think of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. Still others think of ancient temples such as the Temple of Amarna at Harnac, built 3200 years ago by Rameses II. Most people, when they think of ancient Egypt, think of the dynasties, thirty dynasties, spanning almost 3,000 years beginning with King Minis, 5100 years ago and continuing through Ptolemaic dynasties and the death of Cleopatra twenty years before Christ.
But you see, when the Jews or Hebrews think of ancient Egypt, they do not think of pyramids. They do not think of the giant sphinx. They do not think of pharaohs or kings. They do not think of hieroglyphics or ancient temples. They think, rather, of two people. They think first of Joseph, who took their people into Egypt, and they think then of Moses who led their people out of Egypt. It was 1700 years before Christ when a man named Joseph was taken in bondage down into Egypt. And by the hand of God, he rose to power and prominence in that land became Pharoah’s prime minister. He became governor of all of Egypt and the Bible tells us how, through bizarre circumstances, Joseph’s eleven brothers came to join him in the land of Egypt and how the Jews, then, began to grow from those twelve brothers 430 years, from the time of Joseph until the time that Moses led them forth towards the promised land. Joseph was the son of Jacob, the grandson of Isaac, the great-grandson of Abraham. He was a great patriarch of the Jews, and he was in Egypt’s history, with the possible exception of Moses, the greatest Jew ever to live in Egypt, and from his life, this morning, I have two teachings and first teaching concerns the subject of temptation,
The Bible tells us that as Christians we are at war. We do not battle against flesh and blood, but we battle against the spiritual hosts of wickedness. We are at war with sin. Temptation is the lure to sin and the Bible tells us that as Christians, we are to resist it. Now certainly, Joseph had many temptations in his life as we all do, but perhaps the greatest temptation in the life of Joseph was Potiphar’s wife. The Bible tells us that Joseph was handsome and good looking and that after a time Potiphar’s wife began to desire him and she came to him and she said, “Lie with me.” The Bible tells us that Joseph resisted, and I love the words that Joseph said. He said “Behold, having me, my master has no concern for anything that is in this house for all that he has he has placed in my hand, and he is not greater in this house than I am for he has not withheld anything from me except yourself for you are my master’s wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” You see, Joseph was loyal to his master, his earthly master, and he was loyal to God in heaven, and as Christians we are called to loyalty in the midst of temptation. Certainly, Potiphar’s wife did not quit. She did not cease to seek to seduce him. “Day after day” the Bible says, “she sought him, and day after day he resisted.” And then finally one day he went into the house to do his work and the men of the house were not there in the house and the Bible tells us that Potiphar’s wife grabbed Joseph by the loincloth, and she said again “Lie with me” and again he refused and he “left his loincloth in her hand and he fled and got out of the house.” You see, the Bible tells us that we are to flee temptation because we are to flee sin.
There are many temptations in the world in which we live. Perhaps sexual temptation is as strong as any. Every year in the United States of America, millions of men and women commit fornication and adultery, and the Bible cautions us. You see, the Bible, Christianity, does not have a low view of sex. It has rather the highest of all views, and I’ve shared this with some of you before and it bears repeating. The Bible tells us that as Christians, we are to regard sex as a beautiful gift from God, but it is a gift that is meant to be opened only within the context and the confines of marriage. Sex is the highest expression of physical union between a man and a woman, and it is meant to be joined with the emotional and relational union, the spiritual union, called marriage. And whenever sex is removed from that context, it is tainted. It is tainted and it is cheapened, and this is what the world has done.
The Bible tells us, therefore, that sex before marriage or outside of marriage is a sin. And the Bible actually tells us that sexual sins can begin to taint and damage the human soul and spirit. It’s many years ago that a man named Roger Vadim made a woman named Brigitte Bardot an international sex sensation when he produced the movie, “And God Created Woman” starring Brigitte Bardot in 1956. In the seventeen years following that, Brigitte Bardot made forty different movies, all dealing with sexual themes. And certainly, her life, by her own confession, has been sexually promiscuous. She was interviewed in 1972 by TIME MAGAZINE. She was asked what it was, more than anything else, that she desired in a man. She said that “he satisfy me physically.” The interviewer was a little bit surprised, and he said “Well, how about intelligence and personality and all that?” Brigitte Bardot said, “I cannot concern myself with subsidiary qualities.” She said that “nothing was more important to her than the physical.” The interviewer said. “Well how about old age? How are you going to face that?” Brigitte Bardot said, “Time will destroy me one day as it does all things, but my species is unique. There will never be another Bardot and I am the greatest sex symbol of all time.”
It is interesting that this last October in PEOPLE MAGAZINE, there was an article concerning Brigitte Bardot. It describes how her life has reached a point of total futility. Before her 49th birthday, she took a combination of red wine and drugs. She went down to a European beach and there she sought to take her life. It not the first time that she’d tried to commit suicide. She said in that article that she is, “constantly preoccupied with death.” She said she “considers it to be her fate.” She says the “greatest sorrow of her life is the decomposition of her body.” She said, “I’ve spent my whole life trying to maintain my body and I have to watch it rot before my very eyes.” One cannot help but think of the words of the Apostle John where he said, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world, for if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father but of the world, and the world passes away and the desires of it but he who does the will of God abides forever.” The Bible says, “All flesh is like grass in all of its glory, like the flower of the grass. When the grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides” forever.
As Christians given the gift of eternal life, we are to take seriously the eternal word of the Lord. We are called to resist temptation and we are called to sexual faithfulness.
Certainly, Joseph was not only tempted sexually. There were many temptations in his life. He was surely tempted to seek revenge against his brothers for his brothers had betrayed him. They had sought to kill him. They had ultimately sold him into slavery in Egypt and by the providence of God, those brothers were brought before him 21 years later when Joseph was in his power. Joseph could have executed them. He could have put them into slavery for the rest of their life, but you see, in the final analysis, the Bible tells us that Joseph wept, and he embraced his brothers. He forgave them. And the Bible says he actually provided for his brothers the remainder of his life. And Joseph called his first son Manassas, which means “The Lord has enabled me to forget.” You see, sometimes in our struggle against temptation, we need the Lord’s enabling. That’s true whether we struggle with the temptation for revenge or whether we struggle with sexual temptation or drugs or slander or whatever it be. We often need the Lord’s help.
Perhaps some years ago, some of you saw the movie on television called “Eric.” It was about a little boy who had cancer, terminal cancer. Eric was near his death, and he said to his father. He said “Daddy, remember how I wanted to swim the Channel with you and when I was halfway across, I couldn’t go any further and I said ‘Daddy, help me?” His dad said “yes,” and Eric said “Daddy, that’s how I feel now. I can’t go any further. Help me.” In that movie, the father put his hand down and he grabbed that little boy’s hand, that little boy’s arm, and he said “Eric, I will help you and we’ll face this together.” The Bible tells us that when we as Christians, as children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, come to the Father and we say “Father, I can’t do it alone, I can’t go any further,” that he reaches down and he says, “We’ll face this together.” He will help us in our temptation. No matter what your temptation is you can’t go it alone but if you really want to overcome it, if in your mind and your will you have made that decision that you want to overcome, even when you are weak then He is strong, and when you come to Him by the power of His spirit and you say “Lord help me” and you mean it, His power is made available to you. The Bible says “Since therefore we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, let us hold firm our confession for we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who, in every respect, has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. Let us, therefore, with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find strength to help in time of need.” We have this first message from Joseph’s life—that we are to resist temptation, that we are to be faithful—and in that great struggle against sin, we are to seek the enabling power of the Lord.
Now there’s a second and final message from the life of Joseph that I feel led to share with you this morning, and it concerns not temptation, but it concerns rather the subject of tribulation. Why must we as Christians, experience suffering, trials and tribulations in life? Certainly, Joseph had many tribulations in life. Perhaps he may have had more tribulation than anyone this world has ever known. Joseph was the eleventh of the twelve sons of Jacob. He had ten half-brothers, only Joseph and Benjamin were borne to Jacob through Rachel and Joseph’s ten half-brothers hated him. They were jealous of him because he was the privileged recipient of visionary dreams and those visionary dreams seemed to prophesy his ascendancy over his brothers. That made them jealous, and they were also jealous because Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son, born to him in his old age and through his favorite wife, Rachel. And as the jealousies grew in those ten brothers and their hatred grew, they finally one day resolved that they would kill Joseph. One brother protested, and so they threw Joseph into a pit. They left him there to die. That one brother, perhaps, would have come back to save him, but then they saw a caravan coming by on its way to Egypt. An Ishmaelite caravan, and the brothers through, “We can make some money and get rid of Joseph as well and so they sold Joseph as a slave, and he was taken down into Egypt and there he was—no more than human flesh to be bought and sold and he was a servant in the house of Potiphar. Now through Potiphar’s wife’s’ treachery, Joseph then, as she lied concerning Joseph, falsely accused him, Joseph then was thrown into prison and he remained in prison for years, and he suffered many hardships. And the Bible tells us “Joseph was separated from his loved ones and from his family for 21 years.”
Certainly, Joseph experienced an incredible amount of tribulation in his life, and yet, you see, the story of Joseph is not really a story of tribulation. It is a story of God’s blessing through tribulation. God is actually able to bless us in the midst of our trials and our sufferings and our tribulations, and the story of Joseph proves that.
Joseph was taken bondage into Egypt it is true. He was a slave in the house of Potiphar it is true, but you see, the hand of God was upon Joseph and God raised him up, and Potiphar gave all that he had into Joseph’s hands. Joseph then was betrayed by Potiphar’s wife who accused him falsely and he was thrown in prison, but again, God’s hand was upon Joseph even in prison and God raised him up, and the keeper of the prison put all the prisoners in the prison in Joseph’s charge. And ultimately, by the hand of God, God raised Joseph up till he was prime minister of all of Egypt with the second highest authority in the land. You see, the life of Joseph is living testimony to the power of God to use tribulation for blessing and God wants us to understand that truth.
On April 30 of this same year, a woman named Lois Maines was driving her car through Pleasant Valley in California. She was driving to a little city, a little village called Coalinga. Lois Maines was just returning from a Christian conference there and the Lord had touched her life very much. When she got back to her little town of Coalinga, she couldn’t sleep that night. She began to feel a burden for that little town. She began to feel like something ominous, something horrible was going to happen to that town and so she got up out of bed in the middle of the night at 4,100 and she felt led of God to pray for the town as though God was saying, “Pray for the people in this town.” She felt led to leave her house and walk throughout the village. It was a small town of 6,700 people. As she walked through the town, she could see the various places of business and she knew the people who owned them, and she prayed for all those people as she walked around the town. She had never done anything like that before in her life and then she returned to her bed, knowing she had done what God had instructed her to do and she went back to sleep. What Lois Haines didn’t know is that same night, two other Christian women in her same church had also felt this burden for that little town and they also got up – in the middle of the night, at different hours – and they also walked around the whole town and prayed for every name they could think of. All three of them did it. All three of them did it at different times and none of them had ever done it before. They all felt that a horrible thing was about to happen to that village, and they all believe that they were called to pray. Now it was that very day, May 1, at 4:45 in the afternoon that a horrible earthquake hit Coalinga. The earthquake fault runs right underneath the San Diablos mountains and the epicenter of the quake was squarely under that little town of Coalinga. It’s impossible to describe the damage that was done there. In the home of Lois Maines, the ceiling, the plaster from the ceiling literally fell. The bricks in the fireplace fell to the around. Many buildings were destroyed, some partially, some totally. The hospital was flooded and the grocery stores, everything was emptied, so that debris throughout the supermarket was three feet deep. And yet a miracle happened because when the earthquake was over, the 6,700 people in that town found that not one single person was seriously injured. And they began to pull themselves out of the debris and they began to share what had happened to them, and miracle after miracle was shared. Some people literally fell on the grass in front of the house and began to thank God. Some people began to accept Christ. Lois Maines’ own husband accepted Jesus Christ through that earthquake and today outside the town of Coalinga, there is a sign which has a rainbow and a dove on it, and it says, “Jesus is Lord of Coalinga.”
We all have earthquakes that come to our life. Every one of us in this room. But when you make Jesus Christ Lord of your life, when you come to Him and you say, “Be my savior and be my Lord’, He makes a covenant. He makes a covenant with you. He says “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” He says, “No one will be able to snatch you out of my hand.” So, no matter what you’re going through in life, He wants you to remember this—that He will not fail you, no matter what tribulation, no matter what hardship, no matter what earthquake—He wants you to trust Him.
You know a few weeks ago, Barb and I and some others of you here from the church were in Athens, Greece. We were able to get on the Stella Oceanis and take a Mediterranean Cruise. Some of us were concerned about getting seasick and Barb had some medicine which looked like a little band aid and you put that band aid behind your ear and it lets medicine go into your body, into your blood for four days and it’s supposed to keep you from getting seasick, and so all of us decided we would do that We all took this little band aid and we stuck it behind our ear and everyone could see. it. We got on the boat and no one else had one and they thought we were part of a strange cult until they got to know us and then they knew we were part of something strange. But in any event, those band aids worked for four days and sometimes the seas were rough. One night, Barb’s and my room was actually four decks above the level of the water, and one night the water was so rough it actually hit the window of our room and yet none of us got sick. Don’t you wish that, in the midst of all the storms of life, it would as simple as putting a little band aid behind your ear and that would take care of everything? But it’s not like that, and the Bible tells us that the only means of stability in the midst of the storms and seas of life, the only means of stability, the only band aid is Jesus Christ. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever and He has power to take care of you and 2,000 years ago when He was on the Sea of Galilee with his disciples—they were going from the western shore to a place on the eastern shore—they were getting away from the crowds—it was late at night and there was a great storm, and the waves began to break against the boat — and Jesus was asleep on the boat – and the waves were so bad and the wind blowing so bad that the boat began to flood and it began to sink. The disciples were trying to throw the water out but they could not clear the boat and finally they ran to Jesus and they woke Him up and they said “Master, do you not care that we perish?,” and Jesus stood and he ‘rebuked the wind” and He “calmed the sea by the mere command of His voice,” and He said to the disciples “Why were you afraid, oh ye of little faith.”
You see, He comes to us in the midst of the storms of life and He says, “Do not be afraid, do not fear.” He says “Only have faith. Believe that I will provide for you.” And He will.
Historians tells us that perhaps the worst jockey in all of history was a man named the Duke of Albuquerque. With a name like that he had two strikes against him at the beginning. He was a Spanish aristocrat who often raced his horses in Britain and experts say that few jockeys were so regularly parted from their horses. It has been said of the Duke of Albuquerque that he “equally divided his time between the saddle and the stretcher” and he seven times, entered the Grand National Race in Liverpool, England, and the result was always the same. He usually would start out with the others and then on his horse he would gallop for a little while and then he would wake up in the intensive care section of the Royal Liverpool Infirmary. In 1952, he entered the Grand National. You see, the problem were the fences. In this kind of racing, you had to jump fences and in 1952 he entered the Grand National and his horse threw him at the sixth fence. He almost broke his neck, and it took him years to recover. In 1963, he entered the Grand National and this time his horse threw him at the sixth fence! In 1965, he entered the Grand National, and this time his horse died and fell from beneath him in the middle of a race. In 1966 he became the first jockey in all of history to have 66 to 1 odds against his even finishing the race! In 1973, he entered the Grand National again and this time his stirrups broke, and he hung on gamely until the eighth fence when his horse threw him, and he did a 360 in the air. In 1975 his horse threw him in the warmups, and he broke his collarbone, and he broke his right leg. In the infirmary the people there were surprised to see him so soon. They put a plaster cast on his right leg and then some friends of the Duke of Albuquerque took him back to the racetrack. They put him on a horse, and he entered the race anyway and he actually finished the race for the first time in his life. And afterwards they asked him what happened, and he said, “Well I sat on the horse like a sack of potatoes” and he said, “I wasn’t able to help the horse in any way” and most authorities think that’s the only reason that he was able to finish that race.
Now you might feel today that life is a horserace and you’re the Duke of Albuquerque. Maybe the fences are different. Maybe your fences are economic. Maybe you just don’t know how to make ends meet financially and you’re concerned. You can’t pay those bills. Maybe that’s the fence that you have ahead of you. Maybe your fence is medical. Maybe you have some health problem that you’re really concerned about today. The Lord wants you to trust Him. Maybe your fence is relational, and you have a marriage that is crumbling, or you have some friend that you have some hurt with or maybe your children you’re not getting along with and maybe that’s your fence, or maybe it’s spiritual. But you see, God comes to us, and He says, “Trust me.” He says, “In the midst of the tribulations, in the midst of the earthquakes, in the midst of the storms, in the midst of the fences, He will be with us by His power.” That’s why James is able to say, “Blessed are those who endure trial, for when they have stood the test, they will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to all who love Him.” You see, God wants the temptations and the tribulations of life to lead to blessing. They actually only serve to make us strong.
I would like to conclude with this story. When I was in college, I went out for the track and field team and the coach had me lift weights, and I did bench presses and I did military presses, and I did full squats, and I did curls, and I did bent-arm pullovers and upright rows. I worked out with weights six days a week, two hours a day, for four years. I took high protein drinks with desiccated liver in them. I did everything I was supposed to do, and after four years, my bench press had gone from about 170 pounds up to almost 400 pounds. Now I couldn’t, in the beginning, have taken that 400 pounds and even attempted to bench press it. It would have gone right through my chest—kind of like it would today. But you see the coach, the coach actually was able in small increments, little by little, help me gain strength as he would put a little more weight on each time and increase the resistance—not beyond what I was able to endure—but enough to test me and gradually I would gain strength. And all for a beautiful purpose—that I might be a better athlete. Now you see God is a loving coach and He wants to help us grow through the temptations and the tribulations of life- He won’t allow you to be tested beyond what you’re able to endure. but He’s also not going to allow you to just go through life with no testing because He loves you too much for that He wants you to grow and He wants me to grow, and so He brings little tests, little tribulations, little trials, sometimes big ones, to our life in order to help us grow. We’re not training for a track meet. We’re training for heaven. We’re training for eternity. We’re training for the kingdom of God, and the blessing of God is sure. He will bless us forever in the life to come and He will even bless us in this life for our faithfulness as He did Joseph. And that’s why James is able to say, “Count it all joy when you experience various trials for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you might be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Shall we pray.