Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured. (Gen 39:6). God calls that a “chosen and peculiar” person. [i] Why was that so important? Because the next passage provides the reason: “His master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, ‘Lie with me’” (Gen 39:7). And this was after “all these things” theretofore: “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man” in the house of his master, and even his master prospered because the Lord was with Joseph and the master was as well.
Joseph found grace, and because the Lord gave Joseph grace, so did the master (Gen 39:3). Joseph did no wrong with the master’s wife, but he was imprisoned even though he was innocent. Throughout the Bible the innocent men suffers persecution just because of their fidelity to God.
Why do you suppose that the master’s wife tempted Joseph? God could have struck her dead, but he allowed her to live to torment Joseph. Because Joseph was a goodly person and favored by God, God would allow Satan to test his faithful person just as he did with Job. All of God’s favored are tested by temptation; even Jesus himself had much the same temptations as Adam.
Temptations are milieus staged by Satan and his Watchers to make the righteous fall. If man could not fall, then Satan, with his knowledge of good and evil, would not set up the stage to make God’s favored people fail.
Why do Satan’s demons tempt Christians? To provide the stimuli to make them fall, and for men, that is specific, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).
What did the master’s wife present to Joseph? He could have already been proud because he was the overseer of his master’s estate. Satan was setting him up: You can have the master’s wife as well! You can be her master because she is a willing servant in your world. Joseph excused himself from her when he explained, “There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Gen 39:9).
She belonged to the master. Joseph was not privileged to have her. Certainly, the master withheld his wife; that goes without saying. Joseph knew what “wife” meant — that she and his master were one flesh, and that trespassing on her flesh was as if trespassing on the master himself who had so much good will for Joseph.
Many preachers have struggled with the explanation of a Godly-type of love; agape in the Greek. Agape is not an emotional state nor touchy-feely. It is simply “goodwill” toward God and others.
The master loved Joseph differently than his wife. He had emotions toward his wife, but goodwill toward Joseph, and because the master saw that Joseph and himself had prospered because of the Lord God, “Joseph found grace in his (the master’s sight” (Gen 39:4).
Deitrich Bonnhoeffer wrote of “cheap grace”. It is essentially thinking that grace comes with only minimum cost. The grace of Christians came with a great price — God gave up his own Flesh to be crucified so that sinners would not perish. The payment was high for sinners to be redeemed. “Cheap grace” is withholding agape love… withholding good will toward God from God. God does expect something from Christians in return for grace, and that is good will toward him for having Good Will toward men.
The angels in heaven praised God, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” when Jesus was born to be the sacrifice. Glory to God is good will toward God (agape love) and good will toward men is God’s Good Will for mankind. The entire Bible is “The Last Will and Testament of God” and it was finished [ii] on the Cross when God “probated” His Will, as Jesus gave up the Ghost.
Now back to Joseph and his master. The master is an antitype of God the Father. He had good will toward Joseph, so much so that Joseph became the overseer for the master, as the Chuch is today for The Master. As such, Joseph is the antitype of Jesus, the Son of the Father in that the master treated Joseph as an adopted son. Joseph was the living heir to all that he had except for his wife.
The wife, in this case, was the antitype of Lucifer in that she was beautiful, the temptress, and was cunning with her temptation. She knew that Joseph’s spirit was with God but that the fleshes of all men are weak, as the Jesus reminded His disciples: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41)
Why would Jesus say that? Because sin is from the world and the “antennae” for lust is the fleshes of men. Satan is not omnipresent. He must broadcast his will to Christians. As “Prince of the Power of the Air” [iii] the power of Satan is broadcast across the world to be intercepted by “receivers”. The flesh does the reception and the mind and body acts upon the messages.
Satan is stationary, or at best, with one person at a time. He was in Judas, but he broadcast his messages to those who crucified Jesus. Thus, sinners and unsuspecting Christians can be used to transmit temptation to even solid Christians.
Those who killed Jesus knew not what they were doing [iv] because they were oblivious to just who was their master. I suggest that Satan in Judas was orchestrating the mob that killed Jesus. I also suggest that Satan was directing Potiphar’s wife to tempt Joseph, and that she was acting on spiritual messages from Satan, using her beautiful flesh to weaken the flesh of Joseph. She was not trying to undermine God but to encourage the flesh of Joseph to be her flesh, so to speak.
However, the flesh of Joseph belonged to God; because he had found grace, and the body of Joseph was the Temple of the Holy Spirit; to wit: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own” (1 Cor 6:19)? Joseph knew that and fled.
It was not an easy thing to do because he knew that he would suffer persecution from her. He would become her slave if he submitted. The same goes with the Temptations of Christ. He could have been the prince’s (Satan’s) overseer in the world if he had fallen for the temptations of the Devil, but he chose persecution, imprisonment, and even death.
Joseph was the “bride” of Christ, the Bridegroom. He could never fornicate with another god, and if he had had the carnal knowledge of Potiphar’s wife, his new god would have been Lucifer. That is always the way of Satan — to steal away the “brides” of Christ and cause them to become “wives” of his own. (Pay little attention to Joseph’s gender as a “bride” because it is metaphorical. It comes from the Church as the “Bride’ of Christ, the “Bridegroom” [v]).
The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is a foreshadowing of the Devil’s Temptations of Christ. Likewise, the grace that Joseph had for his brothers who sought to kill him, foreshadow Jesus forgiving those who would crucify Him.
Joseph even had grace on the wife of Potiphar. Joseph could have blamed his lord’s wife, but he remained silent about his temptations from her. He was not sent to condemn his master’s wife [vi] but to save the Egyptians from perishing with the drought and subsequent famine. Potiphar and his wife, Zuleikha (‘brilliant beauty”), would be saved from death as well, although she tempted Joseph and Potiphar imprisoned him. Joseph desired that none should perish.
Like Jesus, Joseph was accused by Zuleikha, but made no defense on his own behalf. He paid the consequences for her sin, and that is what Jesus did for sinners of all eras, even those who mocked him as she mocked Joseph.
She accused Joseph of raping her: “She called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them, saying, ‘See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice’” (Gen 39:14). She accused Joseph of being the mocker but all the while she was! They had their own #metoo movement even back then; they believed the woman without question, in the same manner that white women were always believed when they accused their master’s slaves of rape!
Joseph, as with Jesus, endured severe persecution. And like Jesus will do when the persecution is over in The Great Tribulation”, He will return and rule, to oversee all that belongs to His Father as Joseph finally did with Pharaoh and saved the sinners of Egypt from perishing!
Joseph had little to do with establishing the Kingdom of Israel. His sons became the sons of his Father. That is the same with Christians. Sons of Christ become Sons of the Father by adoption. [vii] Although Joseph died in Egypt, his body was carried to the Promised Land, and so it was with Jesus! The Ghost of Jesus remains on Earth to Comfort Christians and the ghost of Joseph has no other purpose than to comfort the Jews and now the Christians who see “Jesus” in Joseph. He was there, keeping Joseph safe from perishing all along!
Joseph could have perished. Satan had that knowledge! That is why Satan tried to destroy him. Like Job before him, Satan’s goal is the perish Christians as well. Why Christians? Because the unsaved will perish by their own hand as Judas did. Satan did not kill Judas, Judas did! We too can kill ourselves, and that is how Satan operates.
(picture credit:: Medium; "Sacred Prostitute")
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