Prospering in Lord's Presence

We are looking at Genesis 3.9 as we continue to walk through the book of Genesis. We've just started in our Joseph narrative, focusing on the life of Joseph, which is, as I said last week, one of everyone's favorite stories. A man who was abused, betrayed, and used greatly by God. As I look this morning, I want to start with a few questions. How do you respond to betrayal? How do you respond to loneliness? To being in a new place that's unfamiliar. To being falsely accused. From being trapped. Imprisoned. As I thought about this, fear is one of the things that overwhelms me. I would be overwhelmed with fear in all of these situations. Betrayed. in a lonely place, in a new place, with no one around, being falsely accused, fear would overwhelm you. All these events are what happened to Joseph. These are things that happened to Joseph and what stands out in the story is actually the absolute absence of fear. See, it doesn't talk about Joseph. We don't get an inside perspective on Joseph. We don't know what he's thinking. We only know what he says in one small paragraph. when he's resisting temptation. The point there is that this isn't about Joseph. The story, like every other story in Scripture, is about God. This story isn't about Joseph and how great he is and what an amazing moral example he is. The story is about God. And here is why I think this. There are a couple of phrases that are repeated throughout this narrative. that point us to this is about God and what He's doing through Joseph. Look in verses 2 and 3. The Lord was with Joseph and he became successful. Verse 3, the headmasters saw that the Lord was with Joseph. Look at the very last verses. Verse 21, but the Lord was with Joseph. And in the very end, and the Lord was with him. This story is about God's faithful presence. This story is about God's covenantal presence. His personal and powerful presence. This story is about what God is doing in and through Joseph. Not how great Joseph is. So, we looked this morning. This is about God. Now, I'm going to organize this. Well, I've organized this sermon like I have others, but it's different from what we've been doing recently. I'm going to walk through the different scenes of the story, and then I'm going to give application afterwards. So let me just go ahead and give you, there are four scenes in this story. Verses 1 through 6 make up scene 1. Verses 7 through 10, scene 2. Verses 11 through 18, scene 3. 19 through 23, scene 4. And if you'll notice in verses 7, 11, and 19, they begin with a temporal clause. At that time, one day, as soon as. Those temporal clauses are introducing to us these new scenes. They're marking them out for us. It's fairly easy to trace. And then after these four scenes, we will look at four applications. Here is our message this morning. Because God is with us, we must flee temptation and trust His purpose. Because God is with us, we must flee temptation and trust God's purpose. As I already said, this story is about God being with Joseph. It bookends it twice in the front, twice in the back. Let's look at our scenes. Scene 1, which is verses 1-6. Here we see God is with Joseph. so that he finds favor and success in slavery. Let's read this passage together. Now, Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites, who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of the Egyptian master. His master saw the Lord was with him and that the Lord calls all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptians house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field. So he left all he had in Joseph's charge. And because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. Here we see a parallel. We mentioned it last week. If you weren't here, if you look at verse 38, and it happened at that time that Judah went down. Judah's going down to get into trouble. It's parallel with chapter 39. Joseph is brought down. And God is bringing down, He's bringing Joseph down to accomplish His plan. So, he goes into Egypt, the captain of the guard, a very influential and powerful Egyptian man, a captain in the guard. He buys him. And Joseph serves. And we don't know how long it took Potiphar to recognize that everything Joseph did succeeded. We don't know how long he served until this Potiphar looks and says, everything he does is blessed by God. But it was obvious. It was abundant. And so, he puts him in charge of everything he has. Now, this isn't talking about what a great worker Joseph was. Remember, Joseph was at home while the rest of the brothers were out tending the flock. He was lazy when he was living with his father. But here, in his labor, God is with him. And God is blessing everything he does. Joseph has been transformed, I believe, sometime between being sold into slavery, or being thrown in the pit, rather, and now Joseph has been changed by God. He has been converted. And now God is with him, so everything he does is blessed. This is God's covenantal presence. This is God saying, I am with you to care for you and to prosper you. So, Potiphar, he sees everything he does. And Yahweh is with him. He's not alone. And it's interesting, the real focus, I don't know if you heard it, but look back over verse 4-6. He gave everything into His charge. All of His house. All of His fields were in His charge. Everything He owned. All of it. It's redundant. Because Potiphar saw how abundantly God blessed him. And so he gave everything into His charge. was concerned about what he ate. Now, the scene really concludes with that comment. And I think if we were watching a play on stage, as everyone's exiting the stage, the narrator would come over and say, and by the way, Joseph was a handsome man. Fairly awkward. But I think this is more of a narrative declaration so that we know Why what happens next comes? It's setting up really the next scene. Joseph was handsome. And so we move to our next scene, verses 7-10. Joseph is tempted to sin against God day after day. Read with me. 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, the only words we hear from Joseph, 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? And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her, or to be with her. So, he goes into Egypt. He's purchased. He's prospering. And now Potiphar's wife is pursuing him day after day. He's handsome. She sees it. And she is trying to lure and entice him into bed with her. Lie with me. Very upfront and blunt. Very much like Judah was in chapter 38. Now let's look at the few words that Joseph actually shares in here. He gives three reasons why he can't. The master has been good to me, how could I do this to him? How could I respond to his goodness with this curse? How could I respond to his goodness with this evil? Secondly, he has not withheld anything from me except for you. So out of obedience to the master, I cannot do this thing. And then finally, the rhetorical question. How could I do this wickedness and sin against God? It's not just a horizontal relationship he's worried about. It's not just sinning against his master on earth. It's not just sinning against the man who has blessed him abundantly. It's sinning against God who has blessed him abundantly. How could he do this wickedness and sin against God? He has a divine perspective on sin. Now, this is the tension that's really building up the story. Day after day, he is tempted to lie with this woman who continues to make advances. Now, he's a slave. He has to go to work. He can't call in sick. There's no HR department to complain about this woman, too. He's stuck in a very difficult predicament. He has to go to work and serve faithfully and day after day be faced with temptation. There's really no help other than God Himself keeping him from resisting this temptation. Now, here's a question for you before we get into our bigger application. How often do we put ourselves in situations and keep ourselves in situations where we are tempted? Joseph doesn't have a choice. He's a slave. But how often do we keep ourselves in places of temptation, knowing that they are great temptations, maybe even enjoying the fact that they're temptations? thinking that I'll never buy into it, but it's at least fun to be enticed. It's fun to have a taste of the temptation. It's fun to flirt with the temptation, even though you think you have no intention of biting into that temptation. Friends, we must flee from evil. We must flee from every temptation. That's not something to be played around with. Scene 3, verses 11 through 18. but one day." So day after day, she is tempting him. Here we have v. 11, the next scene. Very focused, very precise. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment saying, lie with me. But he left his garment in her hand and fled. and got out of the house. And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house, she said, she called to the men in her household and said to them, See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house. Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home. And she told him the same story, saying, the Hebrew servant whom you have brought among us came in to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house." This really comes to the highest point here. Day after day, the temptation comes. She makes her advance. But then one day they're by themselves. They're by themselves. They're just together. And he walked into a very difficult situation. And this is a warning to never be by yourself with a member of the opposite sex because of the temptation and more so because of the possibility of a false accusation. One day, they're by themselves and she becomes more aggressive. She makes a more aggressive advance. She grabs his coach. Lie with me. He doesn't say no. He runs. It's an instinct. He's been training himself over and over again to be faithful to God and to resist temptation. And he just takes off. It's his natural inclination because he's trained himself to be faithful. He runs and the only problem with that is he leaves behind his cloak. And don't miss the symbolism here. This is Joseph with the fancy coat in the previous story in chapter 37. That cloak which was used by his brothers to lie about what happened to him. Here again, another garment will be used with a lie to doom him. We are supposed to pick up the use of these garments. And if you weren't here last week, the same thing happened in Judah. Garments were used to be used as a lie. Her lie is told twice, once for the servants and then once for her husband. And it's interesting, I don't like getting into these things, but it would be interesting to know, why does she blame her husband in the midst of the accusation against Joseph? It's added in. Look, you brought this guy in here. I think they need counseling. She doesn't need to do this to present the lie. She doesn't need this, but she has to blame her husband. Scene 4, verses 19-23. As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, this is the way your servant treated me. His anger was kindled. And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. But... What a great, abrupt change in the story here, as it always is. But Yahweh, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. Sounds very familiar. The ending. So, Potiphar, he's angry. The man he trusted, the friend that he had entrusted his entire household to, he thinks he betrayed him. And so, he throws him into the king's prison. Now, I'm assuming the king's prison probably isn't the posh country club prison of Egypt. This isn't the nice prison. This would be the horrible prison that everyone would be afraid of. The king's prison was not in any way luxurious. Those two great words change everything but God. In the midst of this despair, in the midst of this betrayal, in the midst of these lies, in the midst of losing everything, but God was with him. And there's something added here that wasn't in the first part with God with him. God is with him and gives him steadfast love. This is God's love that's never ending, never failing. Never incomplete. It's the perfect love that sustains and keeps God's people. It's the perfect love that comforts and cares for God's people. God granted him favor with a master again, and the master again gave him all things in his charge. The story ends with a fantastic emphasis. Yahweh was with him and gave him success. So, as you can see, the main point of the story is how God was with Joseph and gave him success. It's a simple story. It's a great story. It's one of the favorite stories of many Christians, many Muslims and many Jews. We all share this story. We have a real hero, a man of faith, a man of moral character, a man who is outstanding. When we think about the story, we need to guard ourselves from thinking about how great Joseph is, though. Because what we need to focus on is that Yahweh was with Joseph. It's what God was doing with Joseph. It's God's personal, powerful presence that makes His story truly special. It's the basis of all of our application. God is with us. We know that in a way that Joseph didn't know. We know God is with us because He has come down to take the form of humanity. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is now God with us. He took upon our very nature except for sin. He walked among us. God is with us in a way that's much more personal and powerful than Joseph. And even more so, it's not just that Christ came to be God with us in a covenantal, powerful, redeeming way. He has sent the Spirit to be with us. Not just with us, but within us. God is with us in a more personal and powerful way than Joseph. If you think about this, I want to think about how our standing with God, our relationship with God, God's presence with us is actually better than that of Joseph. So here's our application. If God is with us, we have a rescuer from sin and accusations. Our first point of application, if God is with us, we have a rescuer from sin and accusations. Now, this is a rare glimpse of goodness since Genesis 2. If you've been with us, Genesis presents all the grossness, all the disgustingness of our sin, of our evil, of our wickedness. It's a rare glimpse of good since Genesis 2, since after the fall. We have Abraham on Mount Moriah. in His faithfulness. But for the most part, we've seen murder, rape, incest, violence, adultery, lying, deception, manipulation, more lying, and so on. I find these moral texts more difficult to preach. You have to do a little more work. See, I'm not called to teach morality. Morality will not help you. I am not supposed to tell you how to have good manners and be good, moral, upstanding citizens. I don't believe that really helps. There's no final end and final purpose there. No, rather, we must see morality in light of the Master. See, we can only obey God Once we come to God, see our sins, see our need of Him, confess that sin, have forgiveness, and then seek to live a life that depends upon Christ, depends upon the Spirit, and lives for His glory. See, I'm not here just to teach morality. It can't be just be like Joseph, flee from sin. That can't be it. That's not good enough. No, what we have to do is see that our morality flows out of the fact that we are saved by a new master. Let me give you a view of how I interpret these passages. When these men have behaved badly, when these men have clearly been pursuing and living in sin, I think it's fairly easy to apply those texts, because what we do is we simply say, I identify with that sin. I am like these liars. I am like these murderers. I am like these adulterers. I am like them because my heart is evil. I am wicked. I am a sinner. And what we do is we look at that sin and we meditate upon it and we think about how we're like them. And then we see we're in need of a Savior. And it's Jesus Christ. When the patriarchs are obedient and wise and good, we don't identify ourselves with them. We need to see how we can identify them with Christ. We need to see how they are foreshadowing and looking forward to the true hero who is truly good and truly wise. So here are the two rules. When sin, when there's sin in the text, we need to identify ourselves with that sin in order to promote a love for the Savior. When we see sin in the text, we need to identify with that sin so that we promote a love for the Savior. When there's a hero, when there's someone who's good, we need to identify that person with Christ so that we promote a love for the Savior. Now, I think Joseph is actually one of the clearest foreshadowers of Christ. David was clearly a foreshadow of who Christ would be. Moses also. Joshua also. The New Testament actually tells us this. Joseph is actually the clearest foreshadowing of Christ that the New Testament doesn't explicitly tell us about. But we know that all the Old Testament is pointing to Christ because in Christ, as Paul says, every promise is yes and amen. Or Jesus himself on the Emmaus Road in Luke 24 says, all of this was pointing to me. I think Joseph is clearly a foreshadow of Christ. He's betrayed by his brothers. He's given over to death. He's wrongly accused. He's ultimately used to save his family from certain death. He is tested and tried by sin. He forgives those who do evil to him. He forgives abundantly. He delivers the people of God from death. And let's remember that the bigger picture here, God is taking his people into Egypt. One, to save them from famine, but ultimately so that He could grow them up into a huge nation that will eventually be abused, be put into slavery, have their firstborns killed, so that God can reveal His love and His power by delivering them in the exile. This is the bigger part of the story, that God is taking them into Egypt so He can reveal His deliverance. Here, I believe we see a foreshadowing of Christ in his resisting temptation. Joseph's great. He's a good man. He resists temptation. He flees from evil like we should. But he's nowhere near as good as Christ. God protects him and he protects himself for a specific task at a specific time to save a specific people from a natural disaster. But Joseph isn't good enough. Jesus doesn't just resist one sin. Jesus resisted every sin. Jesus never sinned. Look over with me to 2 Corinthians 5, I'll begin in verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh. We regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. This is a key verse. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. See, Jesus took on our nature. He became like us in every way except for sin. He never knew sin. He resisted it all the time, all day, for his entire life. This reveals a, well, it's a divine power. He's God with us to redeem us. Joseph doesn't have the power to overcome sin. Joseph doesn't have the power to resist every sin. Joseph doesn't have the power to save you from your sin. Joseph doesn't have the power to save you from God's wrath. But Jesus does. Because He came, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, He came and lived a perfectly righteous life. He knew no sin so that he could become sin for us. He is a better hero, a true champion and a final and complete rescuer. See, Jesus is the new Adam, the new man. He's really the real Adam. The real man. Because we were created for God. We were created to be obedient to God. To know God's will and to follow it. That's what it means to be a human. To know God's will and to obey it. No one ever did that. But Jesus came. And He said, whatever I see the Father doing, that's what I'm doing. Whatever I hear the Father say, that's what I'm saying. Jesus is the only man who ever lived according to God's will perfectly and completely. He's unique because He's God Himself who came to do this in the form of a man. Why did He do it? Why did He lay aside all the trappings of glory? Why did He lay aside the heavenly estate to come down to this lowly form and be tempted constantly without giving in to sin? To have to walk here in the dirt? Because there's no other way for us to be saved, friends. When Christ died on that cross, He died in our place. You see, when we die, we will have to face a judge, and He is a just judge, and He will justly judge our sin. We are sinners, and our sin is offensive to God. And we need someone who is perfectly righteous to stand before us and take that judgment away from us. And Jesus Christ is that only substitute. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He died in our place. He took upon Himself our sin. He took upon Himself the penalty of our sin. So that when we believe in Him, we are no longer under condemnation. And it gets better. No longer are we condemned for our sins. And no longer does God look at us as children of wrath. But instead, when God looks at us, He looks at us as His own child. Because Jesus takes all of our sin upon Himself and then takes all of His righteousness and gives it to us. He gets nothing out of this. He's not made better by this. He does it because He loves us. He does it for our sake. He does it because there's nothing else that can help us. There's no other hero. There's no other champion. God alone had to come and save us. Jesus takes our sin and then He gives us His righteousness so that when God sees us, He no longer sees our sin. He sees us as the obedient children because His one Son was obedient. He lets us take credit. for what He accomplished. Friends, we believe in Christ. We're saved from our sin. We're saved from the wrath of God. We are brought into the family of God. What a sweet exchange. We gain everything because of what He gave up. I don't want to take away from Joseph. He's used by God in a magnificent way, but it's only a small echo. It's only a small reflection. of how God is going to give us a better Redeemer. How God has given us a better Redeemer. The perfect Redeemer. For you see, when God redeems and rescues, we don't get thrown into prison. No, we come to the banquet table and feast with Him forever. Friends, if you repent of your sin, if you place your faith in Christ, He will perfectly rescue you. If you believe in Jesus, no accusation can come against you. No more lies. No more accusations. He's able to perfectly deliver you and defend you. When Satan tells God about all the evil things you have done, Christ defends you. Because He disarms those accusations by taking them upon Himself and giving you His righteousness. Because God is with us, we have a Rescuer. But we must believe in Him. Secondly, if God is with us, He will give us success. If God is with us, He will give us success. Now, this is obviously looking at how Joseph was successful in the house of Potiphar and then in the house of the prison. Now, some people love to look at this text and preach a prosperity gospel. God's with us. We're going to have health and wealth and money and fame and prosperity and a luxurious leisure life. This is short-sighted. This is not looking at all of Scripture together. The Bible knows nothing of a prosperity without purpose. The Bible knows nothing of God giving us everything we want without God using it for His glory. He prospers Joseph, but we have to remember, he also let Joseph go through extreme trials. Almost murdered by his brothers, thrown into a pit to die, and then graciously sold into slavery. Then falsely accused, thrown back into prison. Then once he's in prison, as we'll see next week, he's forgotten about again. See, God uses us in our weakness. God prepares us for His purpose. God prepares us, usually by breaking us, by letting us suffer, by letting us go through trials. As Tozer said, it's a fantastic quote, it is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. If you're here and you're looking for success in a worldly measure, God's not in that business. God doesn't just give us good things so that we can use them on ourselves and enjoy a life of luxury and ease. No. God wants us to be His children who are obedient. Usually has to bring about a trial and a suffering so that our stiff necks are finally broken. See, the hurting deeply is not because God is mean. It's because we're so hard headed and hard hearted and stubborn. God success, God giving success does not mean there's no pain or suffering, so what does it mean? It means nothing separates us from the love of God. Being successful as a Christian isn't a matter of gaining wealth and material goods. It's not a matter of having a nice and easy lifestyle. No, being a successful Christian means we run the race with patience and perseverance until we receive the prize of a perfect life with our Heavenly Father. That's the success we read about in the New Testament. Being a successful Christian means we do not give in temptation. Being a successful Christian means we are patient and waiting for God's time, God's purpose, and God's power. We remain faithful to our calling as Christians, as husbands and wives, as parents, in the midst of a world that tempts us to give up these calls. It means we keep our focus on God who is and what He... who God is and what he has called us to. We do not get distracted by the glitter and gold of this world, but rather we keep our heart focused on being obedient to God. So we look at this, if God is with us, he will give us success. That is true. But it really all comes down to what are we expecting God to give us success in? What we must gear ourselves for, what we must put ourselves forward to, is that the success is being a faithful follower of our Savior. Application number three. If God is with us, and you get that everything is based upon that. When God does something to us, everything else flows from that. If God is with us, we must flee from temptation. I like about Joseph, and I think he is an example here. You know, oftentimes in ethics classes, you'll have the question, so if the Nazis, if they come to the door and they demand the Jews you're hiding, what are you going to do? As if you're going to make that decision right there on the squad and you, I don't think the ethics is about what you're going to do in that exact moment. Ethics is about what you're training yourself to do so when that moment comes, you do the right thing. See, Joseph had been training himself for that one day that she was going to make this aggressive advance. He had been training his heart and his mind so that he had the character it took to do what was right. See, we're made up of all those little decisions we make. Those little decisions each affect us and change us. There's no small decision. We are being built up and created by every little decision we make. And so when you make a little decision to sin, it's not a little decision to sin. It's a little decision that's going to change your heart. What I like about Joseph is how he has prepared himself to do the right thing. How do we resist sin and flee from it well? That's the question I'm posing. How do we resist sin and flee from it well? First, we must see sin as sin. We must see sin as sin. We can't downplay sin. We can't think it's something that's just fun for a little season until I decide not to play with it anymore. It's not something to be flirted with. See, it's easy to rationalize. It's easy to soften. It's easy to think, how is it good? Let me give you a scenario. God has made us with a desire for a relationship. What happens when that desire is not fulfilled? Maybe it's not fulfilled because you're single. Maybe it's not fulfilled because you're not being satisfied in your relationship with your spouse. God has made you with a good desire for a relationship. How do you respond when that relationship desire isn't satisfied? If you're single, you're longing for a partner. There's not one. Do you reason? Well, this desire is not being satisfied. The temptation is crushing in on me. How can I get a little taste of satisfaction? Maybe you go to pornography. Maybe you find someone to spend time with that's not a Christian. It's hoping that they will fill that void until you find that Christian spouse. You see, whenever you are longing for something and it's a good desire and you start making excuses, you've just lost. See, what you're doing is you're trying to fulfill a good desire with a sinful fulfillment. You cannot satisfy God's good desires with corrupt things. Maybe you're married. Maybe your spouse hasn't been what you hoped she would be. Maybe sexually. Maybe intellectually. Maybe relationally. Maybe your wife's not showing the respect you desire at home. Maybe your husband's not giving you the attention you desire at home. You have a desire to have a fulfilled relationship with your spouse. How do you fulfill that good desire? Do you look to pornography? Do you look to romance novels? Do you look to some other person who you work with or who you're friends with? When you think something else will satisfy what this person's not doing, you just lost. You believed a lie that something evil can fulfill and satisfy a good desire from God. See, God's given us good desires. And we have to wait patiently for God to fulfill them. When we try to fulfill a desire for a relationship with something like pornography, what you're doing isn't in any way satisfying that desire. What you're doing is corrupting that desire. What you're doing is taking a good desire that God's given you and you're adding poison to it. You're making the desire perverse and corrupt so that when God does give you that spouse, your desires are corrupted. It's like trying to quench thirst with seawater. It doesn't help the thirst. It doesn't help the need. It only makes it worse. You see, friends, sin is destructive. Sin is dangerous. We like to think that it's something we can play with. Like it's a puppy, but it's a grizzly bear. We like to think sin is something we can just play with and flirt with for a season, and we'll stop whenever we want to. Remember from Genesis 3, sin is sitting at your door, not to be played with, friends, but to devour you. As you think about the sin you're playing with, as you think about the sin that you're constantly tempted with, Stop flirting with it. Flee from it, because it's going to destroy you. It's going to destroy your relationships. It's going to damage, endanger you. It's going to take you out of the purpose for which Christ has saved you. Scenario three. You continue to abuse a means of entertainment that is not evil in itself, but becomes such a habit that you crave it. Alcohol, maybe it's television, maybe it's Facebook, maybe it's Angry Birds. It's amazing how any little thing can become a craving. You do it so often, it becomes a pattern of the way you think, it becomes a pattern of the way you desire. Any good thing can be taken by us and corrupted. That's what we do. We take God's good gifts and we corrupt them. Friends, we have to go to recognize these sin patterns. I confess, as I was preaching this to myself, it was revealed to me that chess on my phone is this for me. Every spare moment I have when there's a lull in the day, I get on my phone and I play chess. I'm not even good at chess. But it was just something I would fulfill myself with. Every time I had the break in the day, I would long for it. I would look forward to it. It's a simple game. It's a fun game. It's an intellectually stimulating game. But I was abusing it. So, it's no longer on my phone. Finally, I want to give one challenge to our college students. You came to college to prepare for an occupation, I hope. I assume you also came for a new experience. I want to challenge you because these are very formative years. You are making decisions on your own for the first time. as Joseph needed to make small decisions so that he was able to make the right decision when it came time. You need to be training yourself now with small decisions to make the right decisions later in life. You are training yourself in the way you're going to act and behave and choose in the future. You are now training yourself for the kind of spouse, parent, employee and Christian you will be when you leave college. You must learn discipline and self-control now. You are creating in yourself patterns of thought, patterns of behavior, and patterns of desire that are going to stay with you for a long time. Commit yourself to daily Bible reading. Commit yourself to praying and fasting. Commit yourself to one church. Don't train yourself to be a church hopper. Commit yourself to one college group. Commit yourself to one group of believers who will invest in you and be committed to you. Quickly, as Mike took up all my time. Secondly, we need to see sin as sin, and we need to see sin as God sees sin. Notice what Joseph does whenever he responds to Potiphar's wife. How can I do this wickedness and sin against God? Sin is offensive to God. It's not just damaging for us practically. It's not just destructive to us and who we are and how we relate to others. It's offensive to God. When we're tempted to sin, let's look to the cross. Let's look how offensive sin is. Let's look at what God has to do to overcome our sin. Let's look at how deadly sin is. Friends, if you're being overwhelmed by temptation, don't hide it. Don't protect that temptation and that sin. Talk to other believers about it. Let others counsel you with the cross. Let the Word of God and the Spirit and prayer counsel you with the Word of the cross. Finally, and I actually mean it this time, if God is with us, nothing can separate us from the love of God. If God is with us, nothing can separate us from His love. He's sold into slavery by his brothers. He's carried in. He starts to actually have a life for himself. Joseph actually has a good life in slavery. And then he's falsely accused and it all goes away. You don't see him despairing. You see him being faithful while in prison. He remains faithful. Trials and tests, they're usually complex. They're usually piled up. What we have to realize is that we must be ready to look to God in these times. That's why we're preparing ourselves. So that when trials come and they pile up and they pile up, we're faithful to God. One trial I want to talk about is death. Death is a trial. Many of us think about death. I praise God for our senior saints, and I want to encourage you. Death is not the end. Death is not the end. Death is the beginning of eternal life. Death puts away this corrupt nature we've been talking about, and death gives you a new life, a life where you can actually see the Father face to face. Let's not be afraid of death. Let's not be afraid of what happens when we die. With courage, let us see you cling to the Gospel. With courage, let us see you look at death and know that Christ has forgiven you of your sins and you know you'll be marched in to the heavenly realm to feast with the King. Friends, let me encourage you. Death is not the end. Death is the beginning to eternal life. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Almighty God, we thank you that you are with us. Because if you're not with us, we are alone and helpless and hopeless. If you are not with us, sin will destroy us. And death will destroy us. We praise you, God, that you have come to be with us in Jesus Christ. Who lived a life of righteousness so that we can be called righteous, so that he could take upon our sin. We praise you, God, that you are with us in your spirit to convict us of sin. I pray that everyone who is convicted of sin today will not refuse the opportunity to flee that sin and that temptation, but they will talk to others and have accountability for that sin. Lord, I pray for anyone here who does not know You as their Savior. Convict them and convert them so that they will know You and know the hope that You give. In Your holy name we pray. Amen.