Dr. Ron Sumners
October 25, 2009
Potiphar's wife's attempts at seduction had failed. Joseph had lost his cloak but not his character. He had kept his purity, but was about to lose his position. He had previously dumped into a cistern by his brothers, and now he was about to be thrown into a dungeon by his boss.
Having had the run of Potiphar's house, he was now thrown out of the house! The one who had been in charge was now charged with a terrible crime.
We have a pretty good inkling of what Potiphar’s wife was like. She didn’t hesitate to lie about her encounter with Joseph, and unfortunately Potiphar believed her. That’s how Joseph ended up in an Egyptian dungeon.
Joseph himself referred to his prison as a dungeon (40:15). There can be little doubt that it was a dreadful and sunless hole. Dungeons are deep and cramped and devoid of a significant supply of oxygen, certainly not the kind of place you would want to spend a great deal of time.
Prisoners in dungeons were manacled, and the chain fastened to a central pillar. Any movement was defined by the length of the chain.
Years later, the Psalmist referred to Joseph’s imprisonment. “They bruised his feet with shackles; his neck was put in irons, till what he had foretold came to pass, till the word of the Lord proved him true” (Psalm 105:18-19).
Joseph was in the dungeon because of a woman who would surely have been on the society pages of Egypt, if they had such a thing. Mrs. Potiphar had prestige and position. She was one of the beautiful people, yet her life was in absolute shambles.
This woman was like so many people in contemporary culture. She looked good on the outside. She had it all; she was nicely put together. If you saw her you would assume she had everything going for her.
But she didn’t. She was a walking disaster zone. Many gods surrounded the wife of Potiphar, but she didn’t know the God of Joseph. She believed a fine perfume was more prestigious than a fine name. She had health, possessions, and influence but lacked the ability to enjoy them.
Mrs. Potiphar would doubtless have agreed with legendary actress Sophia Loren, who said some time ago, “In my life there is emptiness, it is impossible for me to fill.” Potiphar’s wife had a lot, but it was the wrong stuff. If we had seen her in the mall, we might have envied her, but her glamorous facade was a thin disguise for her flawed character.
First of all, she had an adulterous heart. She was consumed with lust, and she was on the prowl. It would be surprising if Joseph were the only man she had ever attempted to seduce in the course of her marriage. Of course, the others were probably willing partners.
Second, because of her consuming lust, the wife of Joseph’s master could not bear to have her evil desires unfulfilled. She was used to getting what she wanted. She was prepared to go to any length to get what she desired, and her failure to do so drove her to the worst of actions toward Joseph.
Third, Potiphar’s wife was a liar. She made lies her refuge. As soon as the circumstances went contrary to her desires, she began lying. She lied about the whole incident with Joseph even as she gazed straight into the eyes of her husband.
Fourth, she was capable of murderous hatred. I say that because Joseph could have easily been executed instead of thrown into prison. That would have been the expected penalty for a slave accused of assaulting the master’s wife. Mrs. Potiphar’s approach was, “If I can’t have him, I’ll make sure nobody else gets him.” Maybe Potiphar knew his wife well and that is why he put Joseph in prison instead of having him executed. Perhaps his anger was more toward her than him. Maybe it was only to save his wife’s reputation, and his own, that Joseph was thrown into the dungeon!
Fifth, she was a skillful manipulator. She insinuated that Potiphar was at fault for what had happened. “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me,” she told her husband (v. 17).
In other words, “This is all your fault, Potiphar. If you hadn’t bought this slave, this wouldn’t have happened to me.”
Taken all together, this is quite a personality. Potiphar’s wife did her evil and then stepped off the scene. Joseph was caught in the wreckage that was left behind.
And so, under the influence of anger and possibly shame, Potiphar sent Joseph to the dungeon. My imagination sees Potiphar leaving Joseph there with the slow steps of a heavy heart and grief. He was forced to choose between a slave and his wife, what else could he do?
This godly young man was back in the hole again. Joseph seemed to either be moving at full speed or grinding to a dead stop in his life. There was little middle ground.
As the warden of the dungeon put the shackles around Joseph’s ankles and the iron around his neck, what do you think was going through Joseph’s mind?
Was there at least the fleeting notion; is this what I get for doing what was right? Maybe I’m missing something here.
These thoughts may have raced through Joseph’s mind, but I believe that, somehow, Joseph knew better than this. He made the decision concerning Potiphar’s wife based on the strength of principle, not what was the easiest course of action.
It wasn’t only that adultery would hurt the people involved, or that it was a bad idea, or that they might get caught. The issue for Joseph was, “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (v. 9)
This is the thing that will keep us on the narrow way. Jerry Bridges says, “The narrow way was never hit upon by chance, neither did a heedless man live a holy life.” The thing that keeps a man or woman true to God is not pragmatism (doing the easiest thing), but principle!
Joseph had reasoned in his heart concerning the seductions of Potiphar’s wife, if this comes my way, this is what I will do, and whatever happens, so be it. Now it had happened and he was in the pigsty of a dungeon.
In a change of jobs, a change of schools, or some other change of circumstances, most of us have known that lonely feeling of being by ourselves, of not having anyone around who can even remotely be considered a friend. This is especially painful for a new student at a new school. In the middle of all that you say, “I wonder if I will ever have a friend again.” But then, from the most unlikely place God raises up a friend for you. He did that for Joseph. He was the most unlikely friend of all; the prison warden.
Let’s pause the story of Joseph’s life for a moment. We need to notice something about the promise God gives in Romans 8:28, the verse that is the theme for Joseph’s life story.
The truth of Romans 8:28 is far more than just kitchen-verse theology. Let me explain what I mean by that.
Kitchen-verse theology is when we take the plaque with a verse on it and stick it above the kitchen sink, with the idea that when we say it over and over again as a sort of Christian mantra, it will somehow start working for us. This is often accompanied by the notion that working for “our good” will mean an abundance of sunshine and the absence of rain. But the idea that Romans 8:28 is only at work in the good times and not the bad times produces a faulty theology.
Such a perspective fails to deal with life when the clouds come out and the wheels fall off. We need to learn that God’s providential hand is at work at all times. He works for the good of those who love Him in all things; not just in the triumphs and successes. He is even at work in the dungeon. The “good” of those who love Him is ultimately our conformity to Christ.
We need to recognize that when God, in His providence, shines His light into our darkness, as He did in the dungeon for Joseph, He is not doing it because we have merited His favor. We don’t merit His favor. He doesn’t repay us for the good things we do by making the sun shine on us. If Joseph, or you, anticipates that, how do you explain being thrown into the dungeon for making the right choice? How do you explain the deaths of the firemen and policemen who died making the right, God honoring choice of entering the World Trade Tower on September 11th to rescue people?
Joseph responded to temptation with absolute integrity and purity, and what was his reward? He got a trip to the dungeon. But then, in the midst of that experience, the clouds parted and the sun shone upon him in the person of the warden.
God chose to do this out of His own goodness, motivated by nothing in Joseph and driven by nothing in the circumstances, but only by His sovereign plan and purpose.
Some of us are still living with a form of cause-and-effect Christianity. But think about the way we love our children. We say “no” to them in certain things. The children don’t understand, and they complain. But we remain firm because we understand that it is for their good. And sometimes, when they are the least deserving, we lavish our attention on them to open their hearts to repentance at the awareness of our unconditional favor. We do so because we love them.
God is far more willing to bless us than we are to take the time to even ask for His blessings. And when He shines the sun of His providence into the life of His servant, it is not because that servant has merited God’s favor. It is simply God’s goodness, not our worthiness.
So, when we sing, “God is so good. He’s so good to me,” we have to acknowledge that this remains true even in the dungeon, because God is working all things out in conformity with the purpose of His will.
Our problem is that we have a limited perspective. All we can see is earth, not what God is doing from heaven’s side to bring about His good purpose in us and others.
If we could see all that God is doing, we would say, “Yes, Lord!” But, instead, we are tempted to say, “I don’t think I should be here in this dungeon. I haven’t done anything to deserve this! This isn’t fair!”
That is exactly why we need a theology. We can’t live wisely without biblical doctrine. We will live on as foolish, shortsighted people without an understanding of the true nature of God.
What about the warden of the dungeon? If you remember those old movies about medieval England, you know that this man didn’t get his job because he was a nice guy. When they interviewed him, they weren’t checking his fingernails to see if they were clean, and they weren’t giving him personality inventories to see if he was a people person. All that mattered was how good he was with the ax and the screws. It was a position that called for brutality.
Joseph had no reason to think that this warden would be anything but his enemy. But God had other ideas. The Lord turned the warden’s heart toward Joseph.
If we had asked the warden, “What do you make of all this?” he would have said, “I don’t know. In all my life, I’ve never met anyone like Joseph. I’ve never experienced anything like this. I never saw Potiphar soften the way he did in his relationship with this young man. And frankly, I can’t explain the change in my heart toward Joseph.”
The key is the hand of God moving among the personalities of the story. Simply put, the Lord was with Joseph!
Why did Potiphar spare Joseph’s life and the warden show him favor? The answer is that Joseph was the object of God’s sovereign care, and so are you!
I don’t know your circumstance right now. You may feel that you are in a dungeon. You may be suffering mistreatment. But the Lord knows. He is not taken by surprise. And he loves you with an everlasting love.
In the mid-1960’s there was a horribly violent uprising in the newly independent African nation that had been the colony called the Belgian Congo? Many people, including dozens of missionaries, were brutalized and murdered. Right in the eye of that storm was a group of medical missionaries, including Dr. Helen Roseveare.
Dr. Roseveare went to serve Christ in the Congo, only to find herself in the midst of unbelievable chaos. Before her eyes, some of her colleagues were shot through the head and dropped into an open grave. She and other young women were brutalized at the hands of the rebel troops. The story is told in Dr. Roseveare’s book, Give Me This Mountain.
She said, “The phrase God gave me years ago, during the 1964 rebellion in the Congo, in the night of my greatest need, was this: ‘Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience, even if I never tell you why?’” Dr. Roseveare was able to say yes to that question.
What a tremendous challenge! You see, we have no right to demand of God an explanation. He has every right to ask of us genuine consecration and devotion.
As it was with Joseph and Helen Roseveare, so it was for Jesus Himself. “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).
May we follow the example of Joseph, and Jesus and place ourselves in the caring, loving hand of God.
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