Years ago a seminary student in Chicago faced a forgiveness test. Although he preferred to work in some kind of ministry, the only job he could find was driving a bus on Chicago’s south side. One day a gang of teenagers got on board and refused to pay the fare. After a few days of this, the seminarian spotted a policeman on the corner, stopped the bus, and reported them. The officer made them pay, but then he got off. When the bus rounded a corner, the gang made him stop the bus so they could rob him and beat him severely. He pressed charges and the gang was rounded up. They were found guilty. But as soon as the jail sentence was given, the young Christian saw their spiritual need and felt pity for them. So he asked the judge if he could serve their sentences for them. The gang members and the judge were dumbfounded. “It’s because I forgive you,” he explained. His request was denied, of course, but he visited the young men in jail and led several of them to faith in Christ.

Forgiveness is not just a feeling but it is also a commitment of the will. We see that in Joseph with his brothers in several ways. He tells them to go back for their father and come back to Egypt to live. All of you, do not tarry, hurry back! Forgiveness does not look like, Well, I forgive you, but I never want to see you again. Joseph then told them he would give them a place to live and it would be near him. “I will provide for you,” he says. In effect he said, “I will make sure that by God’s provision you will live and not die.” There were 5 more years of famine. To send his brothers back with his “forgiveness” and an order to fend for themselves in Canaan would have been the end of them.

Forgiveness is not just a commitment of the will, but it is also a feeling! Because Joseph chose to forgive his brothers, God brought a warmth into his heart for them. We see that as he “kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.” Derek Kidner wrote, “It was applied theology, God’s truth releasing the will for constructive effort and the emotions for healing affection.” After this, the Bible says, “his brothers talked with him.” What was that conversation about? We don’t know But I don’t think he was venting and rehearsing a list of all the ways they had hurt him. Oh, they had suffered for their actions against Joseph. Sin comes with consequences and is not without just punishment. But forgiveness looks beyond the sin to the sinner and the restored relationship that can now begin.

A couple married for 15 years began having more than their usual disagreements. They wanted to make their marriage work and agreed on an idea the wife had. For one month they planned to drop a slip of paper into a “Complaints” box. The boxes would provide a place to let the other know about daily irritations. The wife was diligent in her efforts and approach: “leaving the jelly top off the jar,” “wet towels on the shower floor,” “dirty socks not in the hamper,” and more. After dinner, at the end of the month, they exchanged boxes. The husband read the slips his wife had written and reflected on what he had done wrong. Then the wife opened her box and began reading. They were all the same; each one said, “I love you.”

When the brothers are brought before Joseph to face the music for their guilt in stealing his silver cup, Judah emerged as the group’s spokesman. What gave him the standing to take on this role? He had broken faith with his family by marrying a Canaanite. He had raised two sons who were so wicked that the Lord put them to death. He had treated his daughter-in-law as a prostitute. He had hatched the plan to sell his own brother as a slave. But the Judah we see in this appeal to Joseph is a different man. A man who has been changed by God.

He tells Joseph the story of a father who has lost a son, a son that was torn to pieces and for whom he still grieves. He tells him the brother of that lost son, from the same mother, is this younger son, the one they brought back with them to Egypt, and he is greatly loved by their father. So much so that he had refused to let them take him to Egypt, for fear that he too would be killed. His life, my father’s life, Judah says to Joseph, is bound up in this son’s life. If we leave that boy here as your servant, and we return without him, sir, we will “bring down the gray hairs…of our father with sorrow to Sheol.” Judah makes an appeal to the heart of this man who has all power in Egypt, not knowing that the father he is talking about who may die in grief if Benjamin does not return, is also father to the man listening to the appeal. The father Joseph has not seen in 22 years.

Then Judah goes much further than making an emotional appeal for Benjamin’s life. He offers his life in Benjamin’s place. He offers himself as a sacrifice. Allen Ross writes, “The passage teaches that, in order for brothers (and sisters) to live together in unity, they must have self-sacrificing love for one another.” Have the brothers had this before? No, they failed miserably. They are being tested to see if they have that love for one another now, love that is willing to sacrifice for the well-being of others. But notice that God is also leading them to a place where they can have their past sins uncovered. So they can be delivered from the deceit they have lived with for 22 years, and so they can come to realize how much they will need to love one another to prevent such evil in the family of faith from happening again.

Don’t miss the Gospel in this. Judah offered himself, and he was innocent in this case, to take the place of the one who appeared to be guilty. And he did so for the love of his father. Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus went on to demonstrate that for us, and he calls us to do the same. Claus Westermann wrote, “There is a path that leads from the Joseph story right up to the very threshold of community; the healing of a breach is possible only when there is one who is ready to take the suffering upon oneself.”

I listened to a podcast last week called “You’re not Crazy!” Ray Ortlund and Sam Alberry talk about churches that have gospel doctrine but are lacking gospel culture. Their question was, if we have orthodoxy of doctrine, and that’s critical, do we also have orthodoxy of community? In other words, we know what we believe and why we believe it and are absolutely committed to living in a way that corresponds to that doctrine. We are rightly captivated by truth. But, what if we have a blind spot to what that truth is meant to produce in me and through me in the lives of other people? Do we have a transparency and a humility about who we are and the struggles we have and the need we have to walk with others through that and not live as though we have it all sewed up? That attitude of thinking, that we “have it all together,” undermines the gospel culture that we must have if the church is to be healthy and to be attractive to the world around us. We see that gospel culture beginning to emerge with the brothers in Genesis, especially with Judah.

Do we see that same culture developing in our church?

Aristotle said years ago that a person’s credibility as a speaker is a product of his character and his competence. Someone said years later, “Your character is who you are in the dark.” When no one is looking, the choices you make reveal your true character. Your competence is your ability. When Aristotle’s students asked the famous philosopher which of the two was most important, he said, “If you can only have one, have character.” He explained that people will be persuaded much more readily by an incompetent speaker who is an honest man than by a skillful orator who is a liar. Given the landscape of politics and business and even church life that we see today, would the Greek great say the same?

Probably since the Watergate scandal in the early 1970’s, when Richard Nixon was caught in a cover-up that eventually ended his presidency, the nation has repeatedly asked the question, “Is there a connection between character and performance?” And we ask, “Should it matter how leaders carry on in their ‘personal lives’?  Kent Hughes says the comparison is often made between an airline pilot and a head of state. “Who would you rather have at the control of the plane? A competent pilot with moral weakness or an incompetent pilot with moral character?” The problem with comparing a pilot to a president is obvious, isn’t it? Flying a plane is not an intrinsically moral task. But piloting a nation is. That’s why the Bible says, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.” If we do even a cursory examination of why various kings of Israel failed, we find it was always because of matters of the heart, who they were, and not matters of intellect or ability. Their character was tried in the balance and found wanting, not their competence. Leading a nation is a moral task. The Bible makes that clear. So is leading a church. And leading a family. Even leading a business.

Paul compares the church to a ‘great house’ in his second letter to Timothy, and in every great house, Paul writes, are vessels of honor and dishonor. Timothy would have known immediately what Paul was talking about. I think we do, too. In our basement, for example, we have dog bowls that Buddy and Ginger ate from before they went to their great reward. We have never once used those bowls to serve guests their soup. We don’t bring them up from the basement and serve our grandsons oatmeal in them when they come over. No, they are dog bowls. We also have fine dinnerware that we pull out for special occasions. We never once let Buddy or Ginger use those. There is a clear separation in the big house between vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor. It is the same in the church. So, what does it take to become a vessel of honor in the church? Paul says it plainly: “If anyone cleanses himself…” The offer is to anyone. Tax collectors like Matthew. Sheepherders like Amos. Fishermen like Peter and John. The offer has a condition: the one who is most useful to the Master is a clean vessel. Before you run get the soap, the kind of ‘clean’ God is talking about here is of the heart, and only he can do that. And he does, with everyone who comes to him broken and repentant.

Is character connected to performance? Inextricably. It matters in every arena of life.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all… Romans 8:32

Who is He in this statement? God! What did he not do? God did not spare his own Son. What did he do? He gave him up for us all. God sent Jesus to the cross, what Martyn Lloyd-Jones called, “The most amazing spectacle the world has ever seen.” The cross was where “the immortal dies,” as Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn, “And Can it Be?” Isaac Watts wrote in his hymn the cross is where “Sorrow and love flow mingled down.” The writer of Hebrews wrote that Jesus “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” John Stott wrote, “What dominated His mind was not the living,                                                                                                                                        but the giving of His life.”

Jesus’ death on the cross changed the world. In his book, The Cross of Christ, F. J. Huegel writes about the days of rebellion in China in 1900, when a group arose in the country with the sole purpose of driving all the foreigners out of China, particularly missionaries from the west.  This group captured a mission school, blocked all the gates but one, placed a cross on the ground at that gate, and sent in word that anyone who trampled on that cross could go free, but that anyone who stepped around it would be killed. The first seven children trampled on the cross and were allowed to go free. The eighth, a girl, knelt before the cross and was shot. All the rest in a line of a hundred students followed her example.” Jesus’ death on the cross changed the world.

Listen to Paul’s argument. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? In logical terms, this is an argument from the greater to the lesser. From the harder to the easier. He gave up his Son. For us. How will God not give us much more that requires much less?

Several months ago, a number of us gathered outside at 8am for a first work day on the landscaping around the church building. Remember? We worked for 8 hours breaking up the soil around the flower beds, digging up roots, loading up the debris and dirt in wheelbarrows and hauling it to the woods. It was back breaking work. I remember watching John take a pickaxe to a crape myrtle root, hitting it with blow after blow, cutting through it finally. What if at church the next day, one who had labored with John asked him bring a cup of water from the kitchen? Would John do it? Oh, I have no doubt. John is a man who serves. But also, getting a cup of water from the kitchen is a whole lot easier than swinging a pickaxe, hauling a wheelbarrow, or riding a two-man auger on rock-hard soil, as some workers did all day. It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser.

Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed in a diving accident more than 50 years ago, recently said: “Don’t assume that all I ever do is dream about springing out of this wheelchair, jumping up, dancing, kicking, doing aerobics. No I’m looking forward to heaven because of a new heart, a heart free of sin, sorrow, selfishness. That beats having a new body any day.” Do you hear that? It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser! Her body will be healed but only because of the greater miracle: her heart will be made perfect, free from sin forever. Because of what God did.

What did God do? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. That’s the hard thing. The greater thing. The greatest and hardest work ever done in all the universe. To understand this work, this sacrifice, we have to give human terms to it. I know God is God and nothing is impossible with God, but that doesn’t mean that not sparing his own Son was easy. No! It was infinitely hard for an infinite God to sacrifice his only Son. Why did God do it? Because of your sin and mine. Because of his wrath against your sin and mine. Because of his desire to have your sin and mine, and his wrath against your sin and mine satisfied, so that you and I could be saved, so that you and I could be forever in his presence, happy and holy and without sin. Because there is nothing you or I can do to satisfy God’s wrath against our sin. He had to do it for us.

He gave the perfect gift. Paul adds, “how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If God did the hard thing for us, will he not also do the easy, small, even insignificant things for us as well?

A study in the book of Ruth is so many things, but on one level it is a picture of diligence and initiative. When Ruth arrived in Bethlehem, she was an alien in a foreign land, and a widow. Her only connection in the nation of Israel, her new home, was Naomi, who was also a widow. That did not deter Ruth in the least from taking the initiative to go out and glean in the fields, so that she and her mother-in-law could eat. It was her diligence that caught the eye of the foreman of the field she “happened upon,” and that work ethic was reported to Boaz, the landowner: “She has continued (to work) from early morning until now,” the foreman said, “except for a short rest.”

A companion piece to this encouragement to work hard can be found in the New Testament in the book of 1 Thessalonians. Paul encourages the church to do three things. First, live quietly. Why not forget the foolish notion that to be useful you have to be noticed? Second, mind your own business. If we try to mind ours and others, we make messes of both. Third, work with your hands. The result is a good testimony with outsiders.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I had a summer job working in a factory at RJR Tobacco Company in my hometown. There were other college kids like me working, and one stands out in my memory, but not because of his diligence. His motto must have been, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.” His job was to paint the guardrails in the factory, the ones that separated the floor where the forklifts roamed freely, and the walkways around the perimeter. The rails were probably eight inches in diameter, and metal. He painted them yellow. With a brush. Lying down. Moving. His. Arm. Very. Slowly.

“I thought the boy was dead for a while there.” That was the comment of one seasoned veteran of Factory 51. I’ll call him Salty. He spit tobacco juice into the empty Pepsi can he was holding and shook his head with disgust. “I tell you one thing,” Salty continued, as the others in the break room nodded, “If that was my boy, I would wear him out. He wouldn’t be too old to spank in my house, I can tell you right now. That boy is pathetic.”

Just as an aside, you may have figured out that this salty character from my past was not known for his timidity. His motto may have been, “Often wrong, but never in doubt.” One day another man was complaining about his dog to the rest of us in the break room. “You want to know how crazy my dog is?” he asked. “When people ring the doorbell, he doesn’t bark. When they come inside and sit down to visit, he doesn’t make a peep or do a thing. But when they get up to leave, that’s when he tries to bite them!” Most of us just laughed and shook our heads at the idea. Not Salty. He squinted at the dog owner and said with every ounce of sincerity, “You need to get rid of that dog.” Or actually, “that dawg.”

Well, the point is that whether you agree with Salty’s child training or his dog whispering, he was greatly offended by the college boy’s approach to work. If the college boy was a Christian, his testimony among outsiders was a lousy one.

It’s good advice: live quietly, mind your own business, and work hard.

It was the summer of 1986 and Cindy and I were in Haiti with a traveling singing group, young people of diverse racial backgrounds who loved the Lord and wanted to serve him. We had also been traveling with a smaller ministry team, and it was during those two years I had found a passion for preaching. I saw a hunger for the Word in many churches we visited, and I also discovered that being a traveling evangelist was not what I ultimately wanted to do. I remember preaching in a church in Ohio where I was told the pastor, who did not attend the services we held in his church that week, mostly talked to the congregation on Sundays about his belief in things like the “power” of crystals. These folks were starved for biblical preaching. God began stirring in my heart a desire to be in one place with a community of believers where we could grow up together in our faith and love the watching world by proclaiming the truth of the Gospel in word and deed. Hmmm, where could I possibly do something like that? Of course, God was calling me again, as he had done when I was 15 and as he had done when I was running from him in college, to be a pastor. And the exciting thing for me in the summer of 1986 was that I had been told by my pastor that he wanted to bring me on as his associate when we returned from Haiti and our itinerant ministry was done. That didn’t work out as I had hoped, and I was hurt and not a little bit frustrated over what I believed at the time to be a broken promise. My thoughts were ten times more on what I perceived men were doing to me than on what God was doing. God had another plan for me, but all I could see and feel at the time was betrayal.

I have heard it said we live our life forward, but it only makes sense when we look back. But we must see and understand the providence of God in our lives! John Calvin wrote, “Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it.” 

John Piper has written extensively about God’s providence and I will use some of his notes here. The word “providence” comes from the Latin word for “provide” which has two parts: “pro” (“forward or on behalf of”) and “vide” (“to see”). So you might think that “provide” would mean: “to see forward” or “to foresee.” But it doesn’t. It means “to supply what is needed; to give sustenance or support.” And so the noun “providence” has come to mean the act of “providing for or sustaining and governing the universe by God.” We say in English: “I’ll see to that,” meaning, “I will provide for that, or I will make sure that is taken care of.” We do that on a small scale when our wife mentions the trash being full and we say, “I’ll see to it. I’ll take care of it.” God does it on a much larger scale. He says, “The universe has needs. I’ll see to it.”

We see this in the book of Genesis. Remember the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac his son? Before they went up the mountain, Isaac said to his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And when God had shown Abraham a ram caught in the thorns, “Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide.” Abraham saw the providence of God.

Remember when his brothers came to Egypt and Joseph revealed who he was? Joseph’s truth-telling in Genesis 45 exposed their past sins. He says twice to them that they sold him. “You sold me here.” He does not sugarcoat that or dismiss it. You did this. But look at what is most important. Joseph says, “God sent me here.” You sold me, but God sent me. You exercised agency in this, and you are responsible for what you did, but God is ultimately responsible. He says, “God sent me before you to preserve life.” Providence. God saw to it.

It is the same with Jesus’ death. Peter told the crowd on the day of Pentecost that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” God saw to it. But Peter also says to the Jews, “you crucified and killed (Jesus) by the hands of lawless men.” They were guilty of Jesus’ death, as are we all, but his death was the perfect plan and providence of God.

When you look back at the long and winding road you have traveled, what do you see of God’s providence in your journey? He has been there all along, carrying you, leading you, sometimes pushing you.

For your sake and for his glory.

Pharaoh has two dreams and in the first he was standing by the Nile and in the second he was standing next to a wheat field. Seven fat cows come out of the Nile, where they were probably standing for relief from the heat and the bugs. But right behind the seven fat cows come seven skinny and ugly cows and they eat the fat ones. But, as he would tell Joseph later, when they ate the fats cows, the skinny cows were still skinny. And ugly! In the second dream seven ears of grain are blowing in the breeze, fat and happy, when seven skinny ears, come along and they are nasty looking, blighted by the blistering desert wind. And they throw down on the seven plump ears, licking their glutenous chops and belching happily.

When the Pharaoh woke up, he was deeply troubled in his spirit and probably keeping one eye peeled for any maniacal cows coming through his bedroom door. He doesn’t know what in the world this dream could possibly mean, but to his credit he understands that it means something. God was not going to let him miss that. So the Pharaoh calls for the people he would consult on such matters: the magicians and the wise men. The word Moses used in Genesis 41 referred to people who were experts in Egypt in handling spells and using magic and, in this case, studying the volumes of literature available on dreams. It’s interesting to me that more than 400 years later, another Pharaoh would summon his magicians to the banks of the same Nile river that Moses and Aaron had just turned to blood.

But for this Pharaoh, the magicians and the wise men had no answer to him about his dreams. I love the last part of verse 8: “But there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.” Now, dear readers, don’t miss this. The Pharaohs of Egypt were considered the mediator between the people and the gods when they were alive. When the Pharaohs died, they were worshiped as gods themselves who had now become divine and had passed on their sacred powers to the new Pharaoh, their son. So? Well, here is this Pharaoh who supposedly has a direct line to the gods of Egypt, but he cannot understand his dream, and neither can his dream experts. Only one can interpret it, the one who has, as the Pharaoh will proclaim later, the “Spirit of God” in him. Kings and rulers and governors and congresses and houses of Parliament cannot understand the sovereignty of God over all the affairs of his creation. Only those who have the Spirit of God and to whom he reveals his plans and purposes.

The Pharaoh greets this young Hebrew stranger, fresh out of prison, with high praise, and three times he says “you.”  “I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph’s response was not to shrug and say, “Well, you know, some guys got it, and some don’t.” No. He corrects the Pharaoh, a dangerous thing to do. “It is not in me,” he says, and that phrase is a single word in Hebrew! NO! It is not I who can interpret dreams. We see the humility of Joseph here, and that humility rests upon his great faith in Almighty God and produces courage. Joseph is not afraid to speak the truth to a man who has authority, but not ultimate authority, over his life. I am reminded of Proverbs 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

In the final analysis of Genesis 41, the Pharaoh seems to understand that he and his nation are not his at all. No matter how powerful and how prosperous a nation or kingdom on the earth becomes, that nation and that kingdom is absolutely and totally under the control of the sovereign God, the one who created the universe. And we as believers can and should rejoice in that.

Joseph found himself in prison one day with two important officers of the king, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. What do you think of when you hear “cupbearer to a king?” Right, Nehemiah! He had a huge influence the king he served. The cupbearer to a king had many responsibilities, not the least of which was opening and tasting the king’s wine before it was served to the monarch. He was responsible for the quality of all that was presented to the king. He put his life on the line as poisoning of kings was not uncommon. The chief baker was the head chef and responsible for the food that was served to the king. This meant that the quality of the food and the gastronomical results from the food were on him. These men had done something to deeply offend Pharaoh and incur his wrath. Perhaps he had a bad reaction to a meal and suspected these two for plotting to take him out. Whatever the case, these two men are in chains and they both have dreams they don’t understand. Joseph tells them he knows the one who can interpret dreams, and with knowledge only God could give, he interprets them. The cupbearer will live and be restored to service of Pharaoh, and the baker will be hanged. Joseph asks the cupbearer, “Only remember me…and mention me to the Pharaoh.”

Three days later, everything plays out exactly the way Joseph described it. Every detail of the dream, as Joseph had told these two men. God had given him the meaning and through this, God gave Joseph hope and courage that his days in this prison were numbered. But not like Joseph imagined it, I’m sure. Because read in the last verse in Genesis 40, “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.” Hard to understand, isn’t it?  There is no human explanation for it. Don’t you think one of the first things you would have told everybody, the Pharaoh, the officers of the court, your family, your friends, and perfect strangers is that you had this dream in prison and a man interpreted it to meant you would be released and your life spared!? And that the man was exactly right about you and about the poor baker? If this happened today, there would be a book written in 30 days and a documentary about it in 6 months. “Dream Whisperer! On sale at bookstores everywhere.” But no. The cupbearer went on happily with his life and forgot the man who had helped him in prison.

Do you know who did NOT forget Joseph? The God who created the universe and holds everything in his hands. The Son of God of whom Paul wrote, “And he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.” The Psalmist wrote, “The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand.”

George Mueller used to say, “the stops of a man are also established by the Lord.” Joseph was walking toward the prison door for an early exit, but God stopped him. We don’t know anything about those two years while his feet were hurt with fetters and his neck was rubbed raw by a collar of iron. But God was faithful. And Joseph did not lose hope. He still believed that the dreams he had as a young man would come true.

He is about to see how God, the One who does not forget, will unfold that for him.

We don’t know how long Joseph was in charge of Potiphar’s whole household before his wife made a move on the young Hebrew slave. But this story of temptation and response to temptation is a powerful one with lessons for all of us. The first thing we see is that Potiphar’s wife is the initiator of the temptation. Which we never want to be. She was like the woman in Proverbs 7 who is loud and flirtatious and dressed like a woman of the night to appeal to men who were led by their flesh. But Joseph is not like the one in Proverbs 7 who is described as “a young man lacking sense, passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.” That young man lacked sense, or another way to say it, he was led by his glands and not his mind. He was in the wrong place on purpose, because he walked down “the road to her house.” And he was there at the wrong time, in the “night and darkness.” The young man in Proverbs 7 was seeking temptation and that is always a recipe for a fall. But Joseph was doing his job, minding his own business when                                                                                                                              Potiphar’s wife cast her eyes on him and said, “Lie with me.”

Now listen, this was a temptation. Joseph was a single young man with all the desires that God creates in every young man. He was tempted and it was not a unique temptation. None are. None of us can ever say, “Well, nobody has been tempted like I have.” That’s categorically denied by the Word of God. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” What was the way of escape God provided for Joseph in this first attempt by Potiphar’s wife? Joseph refused and explained why. Notice what he didn’t do. He didn’t engage in flirtatious banter. He didn’t say to himself, Hey what would it hurt if I dabble around the edges a little? He didn’t see how close he could get to the line without crossing over into sin. He simply said no to her and appealed to the trust his master and her husband had placed in him. He has placed me over everything and has not kept back anything from me…except you, Joseph said. And then he looked at her and said, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

That’s a question to put on a posterboard or a sticky note at least, nearest to the place where the temptation to sin for you is the greatest. “How can I do this thing and sin against God?” Joseph had it imprinted on his mind, and it lived in his heart. And one huge motivation for Joseph was that he knew that God had something important for him to do, and that strengthened his resolve against giving in to temptation. It is the same for you and me. We will probably never be the number two man or woman in charge of a nation, but God has important work for us to do. Every. One. Of. Us.

Well, Potiphar’s wife was not done. She was nothing if not persistent, as tempters often can be. The narrator says she pursued Joseph in this way day after day, but he would not listen to her to lie beside her or to be with her. Temptation offered and refused, over and over, until finally one day, she went from talk to physical aggression. Potiphar’s wife grabbed Joseph’s outer garment and demanded he lie with her. He left the garment in her hand as he ran away. Paul may have been thinking about Joseph when he wrote, “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” (2 Tim. 2:22) The reason Joseph was able to run from what was wrong was because he was passionately running after what was right: righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

You know the rest of the story. Potiphar listened to his wife, never sked Joseph his side of the story, and put Joseph in prison. When Joseph was thrown into the pit, it was because his brothers rejected him. When he is thrown into the prison, it was because Potiphar rejected him.  There, for at least two years, his testing continued. He had done what was right and he suffered for it, but even in prison, Joseph remained faithful to God. And God was with Joseph. As he is with you and me.

Genesis 38 is a difficult passage to read and no walk in the park to preach. Why is this story here? I think there are two reasons, the simplest being– it happened– and it further illustrates the decline of the covenant family into corruption. The second reason, and the most important one, is that from this ungodly situation, the family line of the Messiah is preserved. The story opens with Judah choosing a Canaanite woman to marry. What do we know from the patriarchs about the covenant people of God choosing to marry Canaanites? Right, it was forbidden. But Judah does so anyway, and we are told his never-named wife gives Judah three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah, an unfortunate name for a boy. He learned to fight; had to.

Judah chose a wife for his firstborn, Er, and her name was Tamar. But we are told that Er was so wicked in the sight of the Lord that the Lord put him to death. Tamar was a childless widow, and the Levirate custom of the day demanded that her husband’s closest brother be given to her so that she could produce an offspring to carry on her dead husband’s name. And so she would have children to support her in her old age. This would become law in Deuteronomy 25, and if a man’s brother refused to perform his duty, the elders of the city would take him before the widow, and she would pull off his sandal and spit in his face. You see that in the story of Ruth when the closest kinsman redeemer refused her and pulled off his own sandal. She spared him the spit, happily married Boaz, and eventually became grandmother to David.

Back to Tamar and her dead husband. Onan, the second born son was called to fulfill this obligation on behalf of his brother. And he was happy to play the part with Tamar and go through the motions several times, but he made sure that he did not help her have a child. Why? Moses tells us, “because he knew that the offspring would not be his.” I told you, it’s a sick and sordid tale. This selfishness of Onan was wicked in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life as well.  The action God took against Er and Onan, Kidner writes, “emphasizes the steep moral decline in the chosen family, which only the outstanding piety of Joseph would arrest for a while. This tendency to an immediate plunge from grace, whenever faith is no longer an active force, is evident more than once in Genesis, but the pattern is most explicitly worked out in the book of Judges.” There is one bright spot in this story. Tamar. But she was told by Judah to go home and wait until his third son, Shelah, was ready to marry her and carry on the family name.

Tamar must have spent years wearing a widow’s garment, waiting for the time when Shelah would be old enough and that time had come and passed. Tamar knew that Judah would not keep his word and give his third son to her. He had deceived her, so she planned to deceive him. Tamar changed out of her widow-wear, put a veil over her face so she could not be recognized, and went to a place where she knew Judah would be traveling. Tamar knew enough about Judah and his character that if she posed incognito as a harlot, just for him, she would be successful. But she was also risking her life. Allen Ross writes, “Tamar qualifies as a heroine in the story, for she risked everything to fight for her right to be the mother in the family of Judah and protect the family…She did what justice and the death of her husband demanded of her—but by a very dangerous scheme.” Did I tell you this was a sordid story?

Judah gave her his seal and his staff as a promise that he would send her a goat in exchange for her services. But she had no use for the goat, which is why she wasn’t in the same place when Judah’s man came looking, dragging a kid goat behind him. It was the signet she had wanted, and it was the signet of Judah that would save her life. Allen Ross writes, “It is not appropriate to judge her by Christian ethics, for in her culture at that time, her actions, though very dangerous for her, were within the law.”

When it was discovered that Tamar was three months pregnant, Judah heard about it and called for her to be burned to death. Bring her out! Set her on fire for this terrible sin! As they dragged her out to be burned, Tamar sent word to her father-in-law that the man who was responsible for the baby she was carrying is the owner of this signet, cord, and staff. Judah’s gear. It was then that her exoneration came. Judah said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son, Shelah.” Yes, Judah, she was! If it were left up to Judah, the covenant family of God would have assimilated with the Canaanites and been destroyed. Tamar was the rescuer.

God’s plan is perfect and it is eternal. When Peter wrote to the “elect exiles” in his first letter, he says they are (we are!) elect exiles “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” The foreknowledge of God with regard to his people does not mean that God looked down the long corridor of time in eternity past and said, “Hmm, there’s a couple of good ones. Tamar is good. Ruth is good. I will save them.” No, these were broken women in a corrupt and broken world! Same as you and me. To be foreknown by God means that Tamar and Ruth and you and me who are saved and co-heirs with Christ were the objects of God’s affection and loving concern from all eternity, along with God’s own Son!

Ruth’s rally and Tamar’s triumph helped secure our victory over sin and death through their descendant and our only Savior, Jesus Christ.