Preached on Sunday, December 27, 2009
from
Genesis 39:9
Theme: A reverent fear of God in all areas of life is the key to a life of integrity.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
Every Sunday before the beginning of the New Year, it’s my habit to share something from the Scriptures that—I pray—will challenge us as God’s people to live more devotedly to Him in the year to come. And in seeking what to share, I’ve been led to the life that great, Old Testament hero of faith—Joseph.
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The life of Joseph has always fascinated me. Few lives were as eventful as his. He went from being a boy in a shepherding family to being sold into slavery; then from becoming the household servant of an Egyptian official into prison; then, in just one day, from being a prisoner to becoming the prime-minister of the then world-empire—second in authority only to Pharaoh himself.
What’s more, throughout it all, he remained confident in his trust in—and usefulness to—the God of Israel. While still in his youth—still laboring away for his father in the sheep-folds—God had revealed to him that his father and mother and eleven brothers would one day bow down to him (Genesis 37:5-11). It was his declaration of that dream, you’ll remember, that moved his brothers to sell him away into slavery. But their cruel act toward him was exactly what God used to get him to the place where he could keep his family alive during a time of famine; and to thus preserve the people from whom our Savior Jesus Christ would be born.
When he was in a position of great authority over the land of Egypt—and when he could very easily have punished his brothers for their cruelty to him—Joseph was confident enough in his trust in God to tell them,
“But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God has sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt” (45:5-8).
One of the great lessons we can learn from Joseph was his great confidence in the sovereignty of God’s hand on his life. I believe that the high point of that confidence was when he was able to comfort his brothers and tell them,
“But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (50:20).
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Joseph was the kind of man that God could entrust great authority and responsibility to—knowing that Joseph would use what was given to him for good. And that leads me to a particular characteristic of this great man that I’d like to point out to you this morning. You can see this characteristic hinted-at throughout the story of his life.
You find a hint of it, first, in the early part of his story—back when he was laboring for his father in the sheepfolds. We’re told that when his father Jacob sent his eleven other sons out to tend the sheep, he told Joseph, “Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Schechem? Come, I will send you to them” (37:13). Joseph reported for duty; and Jacob told him, “Please go and see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks, and bring back word to me” (v. 14). Joseph was the youngest of the brothers; and yet, I believe Jacob detected the kind of trustworthiness in his young son that moved him to place the boy in a position over the others.
That, of course, led those brothers to respond in jealousy. They devised a plan to rid themselves of Joseph by selling him into slavery to a traveling band of Midianite traders. Those traders, in turn, took Joseph to Egypt and sold him to an officer of Pharaoh—the captain of the guard—named Potiphar.
An it’s there that we again see a hint of this particular character quality in Joseph. We’re told that
The LORD was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD made all he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight, and served him. Then he made him overseer of his house, and all that he had he put under his authority. So it was, from the time that he had made him overseer of his house and all that he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the LORD was on all that he had in the house and in the field. Thus he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand, and he did not know what he had except for the bread which he ate (39:2-6s).
Now, you know the story. He was unjustly accused of wrong-doing; and was rashly cast into prison by Potiphar. But Joseph’s faithfulness to God remained unshaken. And so—even in prison—we see again this great quality of Joseph put on display. We’re told;
But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners who were in the prison; whatever they did there, it was his doing. The keeper of the prison did not look into anything that was under Joseph’s authority, because the LORD was with him; and whatever he did, the LORD made it prosper (39:21-23).
What an amazing demonstration of his character! Joseph was a prisoner; and yet, in time, the jailer was able—with total confidence—to hand the keys over to him and trusted him to take care of the other prisoners!
And as you know, it was from that prison that he was eventually called forth to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream. Pharaoh, in response, said, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God”? (41:38); and told Joseph,
“You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you” (v. 40).
During that twelve-year period of Joseph’s life, he went from the faithful service of his father in the sheepfolds, to the faithful stewardship of an Egyptian official’s household, to the faithful stewardship of the prison he was cast into, to—finally—the faithful stewardship of the governing empire over the known world at the right hand of Pharaoh! And in each step along the way, we find Joseph proving himself to be someone to whom those in power could confidently hand the keys, and entrust with the management of everything. No one had to check-up on him. Those in authority were able to trust to him completely.
Even to those who did not know the God of Israel, Joseph was a godly man of manifest integrity.
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“Integrity”—at least as I have come to understand it—refers to the quality of a fully “integrated” moral life. Someone who lives with “integrity” doesn’t keep the different areas of his or her life partitioned-off from one another; so that they become a certain kind of person in one area, but a different kind of person in another.
People who are one kind of person in one area of life, and a different kind of person in another area of life, may rightly be said to be living a “dis-integrated” life. And such people constantly struggle to maintain that “dis-integration” in such a way that what they are in one area of life isn’t exposed in another. But a fully “integrated” person doesn’t divide their life up in that way. They don’t try to be in public something different from what they are in private. They don’t try to be at church something different from what they are at work. They don’t try to be in one area of life something different from what they are in another area of life. They don’t have to keep one area of life a ‘secret’ from the people in another area of life. They are the same kind of morally upright person all the time. That’s what it means to live with “integrity”.
We live in a time in which, very sadly, “integrity” is rare quality. We’ve all discovered recently that a high-profile celebrity—a sports icon—was living a shockingly different life in private that the image that had been manufactured before the public. We’ve seen the immoral behavior of significant government leaders exposed in some of the most fundamental areas of life—only to hear them argue that such behavior only had to do with their “private life” and didn’t have anything to do with their “public service”. We’ve even seen—more times than we wish to admit—the private lives of Christian leaders and famous preachers exposed in such a way as to show that they were preaching one message in public, but living a completely different message in private.
And that last point particularly leads us to why this whole matter of ‘integrity’ is so important. If we, as professing followers of Jesus Christ, don’t live with integrity—that is, if we don’t make sure that what we profess to be and to believe in public is consistently lived out in every area of life—then we hurt the cause of the gospel we proclaim. Many unbelieving people have grown to reject the gospel of Jesus Christ because they perceive many of its preachers to be hypocrites; and sadly, they’re very often right!
This makes the integrity of Joseph stand out even more. And there’s a particular event in Joseph’s life that, more than any other, not only demonstrates his outstanding moral integrity but also gives us the key to its presence in his life.
Genesis 39 tells us the story of how he was serving faithfully in the management of Potiphar’s household. His master Potiphar had entrusted every one of his material concerns into the hands of Joseph. But in verse 6, we’re told, “Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance”; and it’s with those words that we’re introduced to how Joseph’s integrity began to be put to one of its greatest tests.
Verse 7 tells us, “And it came to pass after these things that his master’s wife cast longing eyes on Joseph, and she said, ‘Lie with me.'” I’m sure that this wasn’t an abrupt offer. I suspect that she had been casting sideways glances at him for some time, and dropping hints to him long before she came right out and said these words. Perhaps she had slipped her offer to him in a note. Or perhaps she whispered these words to him as they passed along the way.
“But”, we’re told, “he refused and said to his master’s wife, ‘Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand'” (v. 8). That was Joseph’s way of saying that his master had handed everything over to his care, and that Potiphar trusted Joseph to be faithful in his stewardship. Potiphar had even trusted Joseph to be faithful when alone in the house with his wife. Furthermore, Joseph accurately expressed the greatness of that stewardship when he said, “‘There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife'” (v. 9a). For Joseph, there was no moral ambiguities to the matter. He knew exactly what his authority involved; and he also knew exactly where that authority ended.
And what is crucial to notice in this story is what he said next. He said to Potiphar’s wife, “‘How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?'” (v. 9b). Please pay very careful attention to those words. Notice that he didn’t say, “How can I do this against your husband?”; because ‘how to do so’ was exactly what she was trying to propose to him! There most certainly would have been a way to have this affair without Potiphar ever knowing about it. Given the great authority that had been entrusted to him, Joseph’s unfaithfulness could easily have been hidden from Potiphar, his stewardship protected, and his outward appearance of trustworthiness preserved. But his question wasn’t how he could do this against Potiphar. It was how he could do this against God.
That was only the beginning of troubles from Potiphar’s wife. We’re told, “So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her” (v. 10). This intense ‘testing’ of his integrity was literally a daily event. “But it happened about this time, when Joseph went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was inside” (by arrangement of Potiphar’s wife, no doubt), “that she caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand and fled outside” (vv. 11-12). Joseph knew the principle that Paul later taught in the New Testament—”Flee sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18).
And as the story goes on, Potiphar’s frustrated wife then concocted the lie that Joseph had attempted to take her by force, and that he had fled when she cried out. She even called the other men of her house back inside and told them, “See, he has brought in to us a Hebrew to mock us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice” (v. 13). None of them, of course, dared to mention the fact that they never hear her shout anything! And, as a result of it all, Joseph was cast into prison—eventually to be called-out, in the perfect timing of God, to serve at the right hand of Pharaoh.
Now; what I’m seeking to point out in all this is Joseph’s integrity. It’s a moral quality that I believe God wants to develop in you and me in the coming year. I believe that God would have us become men and women who refuse to embrace sin even in secret—even when we know that we can cover our steps before other people, and can commit secret sins without hurting the public perception of our Christian faith. I believe that God would have us live fully integrated lives—so that we aren’t one thing in one area of life, and a different thing in another area of life; but that we are the same kind of man or woman of God in all areas of life, all the time.
And I believe that the key to such integrity is shown to us in Joseph’s question in Genesis 39:9: “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Joseph had cultivated a conscious, abiding, reverential fear of God that he had allowed to prevail in every area of life. And it was that reverential fear of God in all areas of life that kept him from sin even in the secret areas of life. It was the key to his integrity.
And if that same prevailing fear of God is allowed to permeate every area of our lives, it will help us live a morally “integrated” life before God as well.
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Let me expand on this idea by pointing out a few things that, I believe, Joseph himself understood about God. First, I believe that Joseph understood that . . .
1. NOTHING ABOUT US IS HIDDEN FROM THE SIGHT OF GOD.
There is no such thing as a “private life” before God. There are no “secret sins” in His sight. As Hebrews 4:13 says, “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” There are absolutely no areas of any one person’s life—at any time—that is not a completely open book to God. He sees and knows all that there is to know about every one of us.
God’s absolute, thorough, complete knowledge of everything about us certainly involves our actions. As 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” But His knowledge is much deeper than of our actions alone. It also involves our very words. Jesus once taught that
. . . out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it on the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (Matthew 12:34-37).
I don’t know how you respond to that, but I tremble at it! I look back with great regret at some of the things that I’ve whispered into someone’s ear or muttered under my breath! And God heard it all!
What’s more, His perfect knowledge even extends to our thoughts! You’d think that what happened inside your own head was private property! And it is ‘private’ to other people. But it’s not ‘private’ to God. As Psalm 139 says;
O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off” (Psalm 139:1-2).
When I consider the thorough knowledge that God has even of my private thoughts, I am ashamed of the lustful images that have passed through my mind, or the vengeful conversations I’ve played out, or acts of malice against another that I’ve imagined, or the arrogance and pride that I’ve harbored.
Now; when I say all that, I’m just as quick to say how grateful I am that ours is also a merciful God. Even though He sees and knows all things, He’s also ready to forgive us our sins of deed, or word, or even thought, if we will confess them to Him. I’m grateful that Jesus has completely paid the price for all those sins of mine on His cross.
But the realization of God’s thorough knowledge of every aspect of my being is a powerful motivation toward integrity in my life. I’m far from perfect; but knowing that God knows me so thoroughly makes me want to be pure in His sight. And it makes me cry out to Him, as King David did at the end of Psalm 139,
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).
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I believe Joseph understand that truth about God—that absolutely nothing about us is hidden from His sight. That’s why, even with everyone else out of the room, and with Potiphar’s wife having a vested interest in secrecy, he was still able to say, “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
And in addition, I believe he also understood that . . .
2. EVERYTHING WE HAVE IS GIVEN TO US AS A STEWARDSHIP FROM GOD.
Did you notice that, even though it was Potiphar that had commissioned him to the task of managing everything for him, and that had entrusted all that great authority to him, Joseph still felt himself responsible to God most of all? He considered that to take Potiphar’s wife was a violation of the trust he had received from God! It wasn’t only because it would have been a sin against Potiphar that Joseph refused his wife. It was because, most of all, it would have been a sin against God.
The reason you and I must live with integrity in every area of life is because every area of life has been given to us as a stewardship—ultimately—from God Himself; and we will one day give an account to Him for we have managed and used what He has given us. The apostle Paul once broke this truth down to just about every meaningful area of life—even those which we consider ‘private’—and made us ultimately accountable to God for all of it. He wrote;
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ. But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.
Masters, give your bondservants what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven (Colossians 3:18-4:1).
Again, we fail in many ways in the different areas of life. We often fall far short of what we should be. And once again, I praise God for His amazing grace through Jesus Christ. When it comes to my record of performance concerning the things God has entrusted to me, I’m going to have to lean heavily upon His mercy and grace on the great day of accounting.
But the realization that all that I am, have, or do, is a stewardship that has been given to me from God—and that I must, one day, give an accounting for my management of it all—helps keep me faithful to my duties, or from trying to cover-up any ongoing sin.
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So; I suggest that Joseph understood that nothing is hidden from the sight of God, and that everything that he had was ultimately a stewardship from God for which he must, one day, give an account. And these things motivated him to live with integrity in all that God gave Him to do.
But taken by themselves, they would have made Joseph’s integrity a product of being afraid of God—and not a product of love. And so, I’d like to suggest one more thing. I believe that one of the truly great motivational truths that Joseph knew was that . . .
3. GOD HIMSELF ACTS WITH INTEGRITY TOWARD HIS PEOPLE.
I see this in the fact that Joseph asked Potiphar’s wife, “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” How could He do such a thing against such a God as He?—especially considering how gracious God had been to him so far; and how great a promise keeper He would yet prove to be!
My wife has told me that, during her growing-up years, there were some bad things that some of her friends had tried to get her to do that she wouldn’t do. And she said that the reason she wouldn’t do them was because of how it would have hurt her parents if she did. She loved her mother and father; and because she loved them, she didn’t want to violate the trust they had placed in her. And I believe that the same sort of motivation was at work in Joseph’s life, and kept him from being unfaithful to the God who had been so wonderfully faithful to him.
God had allowed Joseph to be taken far from his home, and into slavery to Egypt. He had become the servant of a foreign master. But do you remember how the Scriptures said, “The LORD was with Joseph, he was a successful man . . .” (Genesis 39:2); and “that the LORD made all he did to prosper in his hand” (v. 3). Then, He allowed Joseph to be thrown innocently into prison; but even there, we read that “the LORD was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison” (v. 21); and that “whatever he did, the LORD made it prosper” (v. 23). I believe that the reason Joseph wanted to live faithfully to God in every area of life was because God had proven so faithful to Him. His integrity before God was a response of love to God’s love for him.
Jesus Himself modeled this for us in His own life. He said;
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:9-10).
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Joseph understood that God knows everything there is to know about us, entrusts everything we have to us, and Himself acts with consistently faithful love toward us. And his deep knowledge of these things was the key to his life of integrity. They were what led him to say—at a time of great testing—”How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
May God so sink these truths about Himself into us over the coming year that we ourselves—like Joseph—live with integrity in the sight of God and men.