Joseph - Faith Under Temptation

June 29, 2003, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00 AM

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Everyone who enjoys talking to telemarketers, could you just raise your hand so the rest of us could see you? If you really like being interrupted in the middle of dinner to tell some stranger that no you don't want siding. You're not interested in refinancing your mortgage. Your carpet is just as clean as it ever could be, so no thank you. I cannot imagine anybody who actually enjoys picking up the phone and finding out it's a telemarketer on the other end. I can't think of anyone who actually enjoys talking to them. I've yet to meet a person who said they really thought it was a good experience to climb down from the tall ladder, out from underneath the car, or to wash their hands from the garden just so they could say no they're not interested in that free vacation to Aruba no matter how appealing it may be. Yet, even though I cannot think of one person that enjoys talking to a telemarketer, they must be successful. Over 100 million calls are logged each and every day, and they stay in business. So somebody must be saying yes. I don't know if it's the fact that they catch people off guard. Maybe it's the fact that they do catch them at dinner and, just to get them off the phone, they'll agree to anything, just so they can get back to what they're doing. But, whatever the reason, even though nobody likes them, they're effective.

Seems to me, in the same sense, I can't think of anybody that likes to be tempted. I can't think of any believer who really enjoys it when the devil lays out an assault and tempts us and takes us away from God or allures us with something that we know to be wrong. No one that I know of enjoys those kinds of situations. And yet, we know he's successful. We know it's effective. Not a person in this room has not succumbed to the temptations of the devil. No one that's sitting here this morning, at time or another, has not given in to the temptations that the devil lays out before us. Maybe he catches us at the wrong time. Maybe he catches us when we're busy, catches us off guard so we go ahead and do something just so that he stops bothering us. Whatever the reason, even though we don't like it, he's pretty effective.

Now, this past week, something's been done about the telemarketers. Maybe you saw it on the news or read it in the paper. Now there's a national registry. You can go on line. You can call an 800 number. You can log your telephone number in there and it says, by October 1, it will block 80% of the telemarketers calling your home. 80% of the calls are going to stop. You're not going to have to worry about it anymore. Unfortunately, God does not have a national registry in heaven. He doesn't have a special prayer for us to log onto so that we could stop 80% of the temptations coming our way. But God has done this. God has given us His word, and God has given us people like Joseph, people of great faith, people of astounding faith that we can use as examples, as inspirations, people that we can learn from. And, this morning, I believe that we can learn from Joseph what to do in times of temptation, how we can resist the devil, the world, those things that want to take us away from God, those things that want us to do what we know to be wrong. God has given us powerful witnesses, powerful examples for our lives.

The first thing that we can learn from Joseph is don't fall for the lies. Don't fall for the lies that the devil and the world are going to say to us. The lies that want to twist the truth around, the lies that want to make what is wrong sound oh so right, the lies that want to twist things and want us to see things from the devil's perspective, to see things outside of God's realm. Or the ultimate lie that the devil really wants is he wants us to start lying to ourselves. We have played into his hands when we start rationalizing and we start justifying what we're about to do or what we already have done.

Think about it for a moment from the perspective of Joseph, how much rationalizing Joseph could have done, how he could have justified his actions with Potiphar's wife. Think about it for a moment. Joseph, at this point, is in his early 20's. He was 17 when he was sold into slavery. We'll give him a couple of years to move up the ranks in Potiphar's house, so somewhere in his early 20's. And now Joseph is in charge of the entire household. Potiphar doesn't worry about a thing with Joseph in charge. All he has to worry about is how much he eats each day. That's how much authority, how much power Joseph has in this household. That has got to feed the ego. It has got to feed the ego especially of a 20-something young man that he has this much authority, he has this much power. And now what happens day after day after day, Potiphar's wife is badgering him, badgering him, trying to allure him into a relationship which he knows to be wrong. How hard would it have been for Joseph to rationalize that, to justify that? Well, Potiphar's put me in charge of everything. I'm supposed to do everything he says. This is his wife. I guess I should do everything that she says, too. That could roll through his mind. He could rationalize it away. Maybe Potiphar had something on the side. Well, if Potiphar's going to do something like that, leaving his poor wife here all alone, maybe she's hurt, maybe she's lonely, maybe she's emotionally distraught, Joseph could be there to bring comfort to her. He could be there maybe even to share God's word with her. All the rationalizations, all the justifications that could have taken place, but then you've fallen into the devil's trap when you start lying to yourself, when you start lying to what this is really all about. No matter what the situation is, no matter what the circumstance is, no matter how wrong it may be, your thoughts, your rationalizations, your justification can make it seem oh so right when, in fact, it's not. If you deal with the truth, when you deal with the real truth of the situation, there's no room for lies. If you want to make the devil run, then speak the truth to the devil. The number one lie that he wants you to do, the goal that he has is to pull you away from God and to pull God out of the situation so that you don't even think about Him. You think about everything else when, in reality, the truth of the matter is every sin concerns your relationship with God. Did you note what Joseph said in the scripture reading? He said why would I do such a wicked thing and sin against whom? Sin against Potiphar? Sin against his wife? Sin against God. What Potiphar's wife is asking Joseph to do is to break the relationship that he had with God. The sin would be against God and only God. Even David recognized that when he confessed his sin with Bathsheba. In Psalm 51, he says, "Against you and only you God have I sinned." If we don't remove God from the situation, if we deal with the truth of the situation, the truth is that every sin separates us from God, that every sin involves our relationship with God, it sure makes it a whole lot easier to resist. The devil wants to remove God from the picture. Then it's easy to rationalize. It's easy to justify. But deal with the truth. The truth is every time we go against God's will, it interferes with our relationship with Him. If you want to resist temptation, deal with the truth. Deal with the fact that this has got something to do with your relationship with God.

The second thing that we can learn from Joseph is that we have a choice. We really do have a choice. By God's power, by God's spirit living in our lives and in our hearts, we have a choice. We have the ability. We have the awesome power to say no. But if we convince ourselves or if we let the devil convince ourselves that we have no choice, then we have just removed ourself from all responsibility. If we say to ourselves, well I couldn't help myself, that anyone else in this circumstance would have done the same thing, that the temptation was too great, that my mind was too clouded, that my judgment just wasn't what it should be, that I really had no choice in the matter, if you say you have no choice, you remove yourself from the responsibility and it is so easy to fall. It is so easy just to go along with whatever the temptation may be. But recognize this, if you're saying that you have no choice, then you're actually blaming God for the sin you're about to commit. If you say that you have no choice in the matter, that you couldn't control yourself, that anyone else in this situation also would have fallen, then what you're saying is that God put you in that situation, that God allowed the circumstances to come around you where you would have no escape, you would have no idea except just to fall to what was happening. Isn't that what Adam and Eve did when God caught them? Adam said, "God, I'd like you to know something. This woman that you put here, she's the one that gave me the fruit." And what did Eve say? "God I'd like to point out to your attention. It was the snake. You may recall that you created the snake. Just wanted to point that out. It was the snake who lured me into biting into the fruit." If we say we have no choice, we remove ourselves from the responsibility of what we're doing and it's so easy to fall. The fact of the matter is that we do have a choice. We do have the power to say no.

Take a look at Joseph once again. Talk about a person who's put into a no-win situation. Talk about a man who could have said, "I had no choice," it was Joseph. On the one hand, he has his boss, Potiphar, who's entrusted everything to him. On the other hand, he has his boss's wife trying to lure him into an affair. This is a no-win situation, folks. No matter which way he goes, he's not going to win. If he goes off with Potiphar's wife, he knows that sooner or later, Potiphar will find out and he'll be imprisoned. If he keeps resisting her, he knows that sooner or later she's going to take her revenge. She's going to have vengeance upon him, and he's probably going to end up in prison. There is no escape for Joseph. It would have been easy for him to say, "I have no choice." To throw up his hands and to succumb to the temptation that was there, but he didn't. He realized that he did have a choice, that God had empowered him, God gave him the strength, and he said no day after day after day. He kept saying no. Scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has seized you which is uncommon to man and God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can handle." God will never put you in a situation that you can't walk away from. God will never allow you to be tempted so much that you have no choice, that you can't resist that temptation. You have that promise. You have that guarantee. Remember, you do have a choice. You can say no. And sometimes the best choice is to walk away. Remove yourself from the situation. Get out of there. Remove yourself from the temptation that's around you, the circumstances, and the situations. Many times, the best thing to do is for you to just run. That's what Joseph did. Joseph just ran away. He realized that if he stayed one more moment in that household, one more moment talking to Potiphar's wife, he probably would give in. He would probably succumb to the temptation. So he made the choice to leave, to get out of the house. Sometimes, that's what we need to do. To, first of all, not put ourselves into situations of temptation and, second of all, when we're there, go ahead and leave. We can't fool ourselves into somehow thinking that we're stronger than what we are, to test God out, to see if He's really not going to put us in a situation that will push us too far. God expects us to use our brains. God expects us to use some common sense. You know, there was a TV show on, I think it was last winter... I don't know… it was on Fox, I never watched it, but it was called Temptation Island. Now if I understand the context of this show, you take couples that are having trouble with one another to begin with, you put them on an island surrounded by buff men and beautiful women, and they have the intention of pulling you away from your spouse. And this is supposed to be good for your relationship? This is supposed to make it stronger? It's the dumbest show I've ever heard of. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Why would you do that? There are times when you remove yourself from the temptation. You just remove yourself so that you don't have to deal with it anymore. That's what Joseph did, and sometimes that's what you and I need to do.

Here's the final thing that we need to know from scripture. The final thing is there is forgiveness. This morning, I don't want you leaving without being reminded that there is forgiveness, because everyone of us will fall to temptation. Even if we remember all the things that we learned from Joseph, even if we're diligent about our bible study and our spiritual walk with God, on this side of heaven, we will fall. Scripture doesn't record for us in any specific way in the way that Joseph fell, but you can be assured that he was a human being on this side of heaven and he fell. He sinned against God, and he did things that he regretted. But the same faith that gave him the ability to resist temptation is the same faith that told him of God's love, God's grace, and God's forgiveness, the same faith that will empower you to resist temptation, to walk away from temptation is the same faith that will tell you of God's love and God's grace and God's forgiveness. Scripture even tells us that, while we were yet sinners, Christ Jesus died for us. While we were still falling to the temptations of the devil and the world, while we were engulfed in our own sinful selves at that moment, Christ was dying for us. He was taking our place, taking on our sin so that we could stand before the Father forgiven. And each and every day is a fresh start for you. You can't fall for the devil's other tactic, which is accusing you, saying that you're sinful already, what's the use, you might as well keep on going. No. Once God announces His forgiveness to you as He did this morning, as He does each time that you pray to Him, the slate is wiped clean. You are sinless in front of God. You are spotless in front of God. You start out fresh all over again. The devil cannot accuse, because he doesn't have a foot to stand on. We need to know and be assured of the fact because of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, we are forgiven and we can stand before God just as holy and as perfect as His son, not by what we have done but by what Jesus has done for us. So each day we can start out again, start out again with our minds set on being faithful to God and resisting the temptations that come our way.

I wish there was a number or web site that we could log onto and block out 80% of the temptations that will come in our lives, but now we'll just have to be satisfied that's what will happen to telemarketers. But God has given us something more powerful than that. He's given us His word, and He's given us His promises. When we stick with the truth of the situation, we have enough sense to walk away. When we know of God's love and grace, we can resist the temptation that comes in our lives. Amen.

Copyright 2003 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church