Last week we studied the life of Joseph. One of the people he encountered first when he arrived in Egypt was Potiphar’s wife. Genesis 39 describes this brief but deadly encounter.
Like last week, Joseph is usually the subject of this story, but today we are going learn from one of the original bad girls of the bible.
WHY?
I Cor. 10:11-12: These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age. If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.” (NLT)
Today we learn from a bad example. Genesis 39 summary.
1. Wrong desires can result from a lack of
Gen. 39:6-7 So Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. With Joseph there, he didn’t worry about a thing—except what kind of food to eat! Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man, and Potiphar’s wife soon began to look at him lustfully. “Come and sleep with me,” she demanded.
A. Prosperity doesn’t lead to
• Here is a woman who has everything. She has wealth, servants and her husband held a prominent position within Egyptian society as captain of Pharaoh’s body guard. Yet, despite all she had, she was obviously unfulfilled.
• Her behavior was not normal for Egyptian culture. It was dangerous and risky behavior for a wife to commit adultery. Many women who were caught were executed.
• A fulfilled Egyptian wife would have never propositioned a Hebrew slave.
• Countless studies reveal there is no connection to wealth and overall life satisfaction.
B. Lack of fulfillment can make us
• When we are unfulfilled, we gravitate towards the things we believe will provide us with something to
• Dr. Henry Cloud – “The Power of the Other” The four corners of relationships.
I Tim. 6:9-10 “But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” (NLT)
• When we feel unfulfilled, we want to gravitate towards something that will fill the void. There is a vacuum internally that desperately wants to be filled and we often start pursuing
• This is why if we are married we work at marital fulfillment. We can make our marriages vulnerable by a lack of fulfillment sexually, emotionally, relationally, even spiritually. If there is a void, we are
• When we are unfulfilled in areas of our lives we expose ourselves to our fleshly desires and Satan’s temptations. We make ourselves more vulnerable and exposed than we need to be.
• Everyone has wrong desires from time to time. It’s just part of our fallen humanity. But is your
• These feelings of being unfulfilled are warning to us from God that something needs to change. If we don’t listen to these feelings, we risk the wrong desires getting worse.
2. Wrong desires left unchecked are
Gen. 39:10 “She kept putting pressure on Joseph day after day, but he refused to sleep with her…” (NLT)
A. Entertaining our wrong desires makes them more
• Just look at what Potiphar’s wife did. She looked at Joseph with desire/propositioned Joseph / tempted him every day/and then orchestrated a detailed plan to have her wrong desires fulfilled. See the progression? See the growing intensity?
James 1:14-15 “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” (NLT)
• If we do not check our wrong desires, we will
There is a
• This isn’t just true with alcoholics and drug addiction. Our bitterness can be progressive / our materialism - greed / pride / our lust / unforgiveness and hatred. Wrong desires are never static. We either choose to
• Wrong desires are like a fire. The more you stoke the fire the bigger it becomes. You have to keep providing fuel for the fire. The more we expose ourselves to people / activities / images / locations / thoughts / that fuel the wrong desire, the more progressive our wrong desires become.
B. Entertaining our wrong desires will make us feel like
• I can’t even begin to tell you how many people over the years have told me they couldn’t help themselves. But this is the result of never stopping the wrong desires from progressing in our lives. They will control us if we let them. They will feel
Rom. 6:16 “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.” (NLT)
• The more we continue to give into our wrong desires the more
o Spool of thread illustration
• When we give in to our wrong desires, they create destructive behaviors and attitudes that enslave us. It’s not just the desires that are enslaving, it is also the behaviors that accompany them.
3. Wrong Desires Left To Progress
Gen. 39:16-18 “She kept the cloak with her until her husband came home. Then she told him her story. “That Hebrew slave you’ve brought into our house tried to come in and fool around with me,” she said, “But when I screamed, he ran outside, leaving his cloak with me!” (NLT)
A. Wrong desires never care about the
• When we entertain wrong desires, it’s all about
• She didn’t care about Joseph. Now that he refused her again, she wanted to hurt him / she wanted to see him punished for rejecting her advances. She lied and had him thrown into prison hoping he would rot there. (A woman scorned)
• This is the tragedy of our wrong desires when they are allowed to progress. They keep us from truly loving the people around us. The self-centered nature of wrong desires hinders our ability to care for one another.
• If left unchecked, they progress to a point where we no longer genuinely care about the needs of the people closest to us; we only care about having our wrong desires fulfilled.
• The result is that this creates a
B. Wrong desires result in
• If we continue to pursue our wrong desires and see them frustrated or exposed, we can even become malicious towards whoever represents the blocking of this goal. Sometimes unintentionally…sometimes it’s intentional like in the story.
• The progressive and enslaving nature of wrong desires blind us from the pain our actions cause to those around us…even to those we say we love the most.
• This is how a spouse can say, “I love you, but I’m still going to have this affair / end the marriage / continue drinking / be a workaholic / still going to take prescription drugs to make me feel better. “I love you, but I’m still going to pursue having my wrong desires fulfilled in a way that hurts you!”
• Wrong desires can’t love…they can only
• This is where we believe the lie that says, “What I do is my business and my behavior has no effect on other people.”
By looking at the life of Potiphar’s wife, I am not saying we are all just like her in her specific behaviors. I am saying that we are all just like her that if our wrong desires are not taken to Jesus every day, then they will take us in a direction we do not want to go.