So listen now to God's word from Genesis chapter 39 beginning in verse 1. 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 his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused 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 that 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 that 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. 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, 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 you 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. 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 called to the men of her household and said to them, see, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came into me to lie with me and I cried out with a loud voice. And as soon as he heard, then 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 me 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. 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 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. Thus ends our reading in God's word. Let's ask his blessing now upon it in a word of prayer. Lord, we do come now tonight hearing your voice in the scriptures, and we pray that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand and believe that which is contained in your word. We pray, Lord, tonight that just as you were with your servant Joseph, so also you would be present here with us to bless us in the receiving of your holy truths. This we pray in his name, amen. Genesis chapter 37, you may recall, ended on a cliffhanger. Joseph, the favored son of Jacob, had been betrayed by his brothers and he had been sold into slavery. He nearly lost his life. But at the last minute, his betrayers decided that they wanted to make some money off of him rather than simply killing him. And so Jacob's other sons sold Joseph in the slavery to a traveling band of traders for 20 shekels of silver. Those traders then took Joseph down to Egypt and the last words of Genesis chapter 37 explain that the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. But as we saw a couple of weeks ago, Genesis chapter 38 interrupts the Joseph narrative in order to focus on developments in the life of his brother Judah. Judah was the one who first suggested selling Joseph into slavery and the course which his life takes over the next few years shows him to be a man who is at ease with sin. He's easily tempted and he is quick to transgress the law of God. In fact, we saw there in Genesis 38, how through a strange turn of events, Judah even has sexual relations with his daughter-in-law, who subsequently gives birth to twins. When we come to Genesis chapter 39, the story of Joseph resumes. Judah is set to the side for the time being, and we meet again his brother, in Egypt battling temptations of his own. Joseph is going to be forced to find his way in the house of an Egyptian official where he is accused of crimes that he did not commit. He's far from his father's household, seemingly without a friend, and cast out of the promised land. Hardly a more desperate situation could have been imagined for one who had received covenant promises from the Lord pertaining to a particular piece of land possessed by a particular group of people. And yet the Lord is with him. That is the refrain which is repeated throughout Genesis chapter 39. The Lord is with him. And thus it is the central theme of our sermon tonight. Through it all, the Lord was with Joseph because he sticks with his people through thick and thin. Simple message, important message. And with that in mind, let us turn to the text and observe three ways in which Joseph was present with Joseph, excuse me, which God was present with Joseph while in Egypt. First, we see that God was present with Joseph to prosper him. You can see this in verses 1 through 6 of the text. When Joseph was sold into slavery, the situation in which he landed wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. He was not relegated to back-breaking manual labor out in the fields. That's maybe where our mind goes when we think of slavery, but that was not Joseph's plight. Instead, he became a servant in the house of a man named Potiphar. He's given a very long description here at the beginning of our passage, but it basically boils down to he was an Egyptian official. He was an important man. He was someone who was known by the higher-ups within the Egyptian ruling class. That's who bought Joseph when the Ishmaelites put him up on the auction block. In God's providence, Joseph quickly flourished in the house of Potiphar. Verse two says that the Lord was with Joseph and he became a successful man and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. Please notice that Joseph did not simply luck into a cushy job in the home of one of Pharaoh's right-hand men. His situation was a reflection of the fact that the Lord was with him. The Lord was with Joseph and he became a successful man. God was giving Joseph success in Egypt. Indeed, Joseph's success and blessing were undeniable to those around him. Though Potiphar was a pagan worshiping the Egyptian gods, he could not deny that Joseph had someone, something, some force on his side. We read in verse three that his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. Joseph's prosperity was clearly supernatural in origin. And Potiphar, polytheist, he was willing to give the credit to Joseph's God, this Yahweh, this strange God from up in Canaan among this small family. And we see just how the ever-present God, Yahweh, prospered Joseph as we read the next few verses. Potiphar began to look kindly upon him, began to trust him. And before long, Joseph was overseeing Potiphar's whole household. He was running the show. And for Joseph's sake, God poured out his blessing upon this Egyptian official and upon his household. When Joseph was made overseer of Potiphar's house, we're told that the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field. God granted abundance to everything which Joseph managed. You see what's happening. God is fulfilling his promises to Abraham in the experience of Joseph. Way back in Genesis chapter 12, it's been a long time since we were in Genesis chapter 12, but way back in Genesis chapter 12 verse 3, God said to Joseph's great-grandfather Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Abraham is long dead at this point. But Abraham's God is keeping covenant with Abraham's offspring. Through Joseph, the families of the earth are being blessed and Potiphar gives us a living illustration of that principle. Therefore, Joseph the slave became the chief steward of Potiphar's affairs, and he was given charge over just about everything in the household except apparently for the supper menu. He didn't arrange the food, but everything else, Joseph was in charge of. This shows us that clearly, when Joseph was carted off to Egypt, God did not stay behind. God went with him. And God gave him the sort of blessings which you might have expected to only pertain to life in the promised land, in the land of milk and honey, in the land of Canaan. The Lord prospered his servant in a foreign land, mercifully shielding him from the sort of drudgery that a slave might ordinarily face. Brothers and sisters, we are never promised that we will be made rich simply because we are Christians. But if we want the blessings that matter, if we want to prosper in the sort of ways that count, then we need the Lord by our side. We need the Lord here with us to give us our daily bread. And Joseph's experience shows us that that is right where he will be if he calls us one of his own. Jesus says in the gospel, behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. That's God's promise to us who are his. And thus it is God's promise to us that we will be prospered in the ways that matter as we commune with the living Christ. So God was with Joseph to prosper him. But in a second place, we see that God was with Joseph to protect him from sin, which is indicated in verses six through 20. As we've already mentioned, the Judah story found in the previous chapter was a tale of temptation and transgression. The account in this chapter provides a stark contrast because while Joseph is certainly tempted, the Lord restrains him from transgressing. God preserves Joseph's holiness when he is placed in that testing place. And to understand this part of the story, we first need to know, the text supplies this information for us, that Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. He was quite a looker, so the Bible says. And evidently he got his good looks from his mother, Rachel, because she is also said to be beautiful in form and appearance back in chapter 29. So just as Jacob observed Rachel's beauty, so too a certain woman noticed Joseph's handsome appearance in short order. Unfortunately, the woman who noticed his good looks was his master's wife. After a time of waiting and perhaps watching, Potiphar's wife casts her eyes on Joseph and she begins to make propositions towards him. And her request is stated very briefly, but very bluntly in verse seven. She says to Joseph, lie with me. Now we can assume that she probably said a lot more than that over the many occasions when they spoke with one another, but that's what it boils down to. She wanted Joseph, even though she was married, to have relations with her. But Joseph sees the temptation for what it is. And he immediately lodges two objections against assenting to this woman's request. First, Joseph reflects upon the fact that he has been given privileges by Potiphar. He's in charge of everything. Life is going well. It's going well for everyone, actually, in Potiphar's household. And Joseph's already been granted access to everything except for Potiphar's wife. So why would he jeopardize his relationship with Potiphar and his prosperous lifestyle? That's his first objection. Secondly, though, to lie with Potiphar's wife would be adultery, and thus, in Joseph's own words, it would be a great wickedness and a sin against God. You see, while Judah jumped at the first chance he had to have relations with a prostitute, God brings his moral law to Joseph's attention. He places it on Joseph's mind and he places it in Joseph's heart. He fortifies Joseph's desire for righteousness such that that desire is stronger than whatever desire he may have had for his master's wife. He would need that divine fortification because Potiphar's wife is depicted here as being relentless. Verse 10 reports that she made these sorts of requests day by day. Some we can deduce were more forthright, lie with me. Some were more guarded, but no matter how she pitched it on any given occasion, Joseph would not listen to her to lie beside her or to be with her. That was no matter to her because her lust was strong. She was always looking for an opportunity to seduce him or at least to entrap him. And then one day the opportunity came. Verse 11 explains that one day Joseph went in the house to work when none of the other servants were around. And there she was. It was just Joseph and this woman. So she seized the moment by seizing Joseph's clothes, demanding that he lie with her. I want you to think about the fact that if Joseph wanted to give in, he could have done so. He might've gotten away with it. No one was around. No one was watching. There are no eyes upon him. But Joseph knew that God's eyes were upon him. God was with him. You know, unfortunately, people tend to read this story as a story that's mainly about exhibiting good morals and resisting temptation. And we can learn from Joseph in this regard, don't get me wrong. His conduct is exemplary on this occasion, especially when we compare it to Judah's. If you're going to pick an example to follow, it's going to be Joseph, not Judah. Again, the emphasis in Genesis chapter 39 isn't so much on Joseph's exemplary piety, though that's present. The emphasis throughout the chapter is, as we've already said, on God's presence with Joseph I mean, his trials. The point here is that the sanctifier had sanctified Joseph, and he would providentially preserve Joseph through this ordeal. He would lead him not into temptation, but deliver him from evil. So rather than giving in, Joseph fled from the house, leaving his garment in the hand of Potiphar's wife. In that moment, she had not gotten what she wanted, but she must have realized that things could not go back to normal now. She had been harassing him for some time, but she'd crossed a line at this point. Joseph might go out and tell his side of the story, and she couldn't let that happen. So she thinks fast and she jumps into action. And when she realizes that Joseph is gone, having left very conveniently his garment in her hand, she starts screaming. She begins calling out for help. Help, help, help. Joseph has left his garment here beside me. When the other male servants come in to see what all the commotion is about, she begins to weave this web of deception. Here's how she puts it. She said, see, he, being Potiphar, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came into 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 he fled out of the house. Notice how when she tells the story to the servants, Potiphar's wife strategically seeks their sympathy. In this rendition, it's Potiphar who allowed this to happen to them by bringing in a Hebrew to laugh and to mock at them. She associates herself with the servants. Potiphar's done this to us. And now that Hebrew has tried to rape her and she is escaped by the skin of her teeth. She tells the story again to her husband when he comes home. And she still shifts the blame primarily in his direction, but the focus here now is on the alleged actions of Joseph. She says, the Hebrew servant whom you have brought among us came in to laugh at me. Now that's somewhat euphemistic, we can deduce. In other words, he came in to fool around, he came in to humiliate, he came in to have his way. Fortunately, she cried out in the nick of time. Joseph fled like a coward and he left the garment which he had taken off to seduce her behind. That was her story. She was sticking to it. And obviously Potiphar was not happy to hear this. He must have felt betrayed to some extent. His arrangement with Joseph had formerly worked out so well Regardless, he knew just what to do. Potiphar was the captain of Pharaoh's guard, after all. He would throw his wife's attempted rapist in jail, which was really the last severe punishment, which is interesting. Scholars, if you read the commentaries, will speculate on why it is that Joseph was not just immediately put to death, and we don't actually have an answer for that, at least in human terms. It could be that Podfor had such a high regard for Joseph that he simply couldn't fathom putting him to death. It could also be that perhaps he had some nagging questions about his wife's testimony. But regardless, he places Joseph in prison when he could have been executed. So we don't have a human answer as to why that happens, but we do know that it took place in God's providence. Again, God is with him, God is protecting. And in God's providence, it was into the prison that Joseph went where he would suffer alongside the other prisoners of the king. You might be wondering at this point, and I think this is a valid question, what good did it do for God to be with Joseph if he still wound up in prison? It did a world of good. It did a world of good. Because it is far better to be in jail over false accusations and retain one's righteousness than to sin and be free. God had been with Joseph to protect him from sin. And thus, He was giving Joseph the better lot. Scottish Minister Alexander McLaren put it like this. The lesson reinforced by the picture of Joseph in his dungeon and which young beginners in life have special need to learn is that come what will of it, right is right and sin is sin. That consequences are never to deter from duty and that it is better to have a clean conscience and be in prison than do wickedness and sit at a king's table. The Lord had protected Joseph that he might give him the better lot, the lot of holiness, of innocence and service to the Lord, despite persecution which it caused. So believer tonight, when you are faced with temptation, no matter how enticing that temptation may be, remember that the Lord is with you. The Lord is with you as you are being tempted. Seek his help in resisting sin, knowing that a clean conscience before God is a far more worth than anything that this world has to offer. That's easier said than done. That's easier to believe than to live out. But it's true. God was with Joseph to protect him from sin and He can do the same for you. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13 promises that 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. That is God's promise for you. For God was with Joseph to protect him from sin and he is with us as well. Lastly, we see that God was with Joseph to prepare him for the future. God was with Joseph to prepare him for the future, verses 21 through 23 draws this out. When Joseph was thrown into prison, he was, you might imagine, in an exceedingly vulnerable position. Once more, God was with him in that place. Verse 21 explains, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. When Joseph was in prison, God was demonstrating his steadfast love, his hesed, his faithful covenant loyalty and love towards Joseph. You see, by allowing Joseph to be falsely accused and brought low, God was actually getting him in position for his exaltation to the right hand of Pharaoh. The Lord was moving him into the place where he would need to be if he ever planned on saving his family from starvation, which is the situation which would present itself in a number of years. So the Lord was favoring Joseph, and as the Lord continued to favor his servant, the keeper of the prison began to favor him too. And Joseph quickly rose up the prison ranks. He'd never been popular among his brothers, but he's popular just about everywhere else he goes. He'd been in charge of Potiphar's house before, now he's in charge of the prisoners. Joseph is, again, granted special privileges and special responsibilities. And verse 23 explicitly attributes this to the Lord's presence. One more time. 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. God exalted and favored Joseph even in prison. And he exalted Joseph in prison so that Joseph would be appointed to accompany Pharaoh's cupbearer and chief baker when they were later thrown into prison because that's the connection which would eventually bring Joseph face to face with Pharaoh. The chief cupbearer, we're gonna see all this, Lord willing, the chief cupbearer will go on to commend Joseph to the king on the basis of their experiences in prison together, and that's the point at which Joseph will be appointed to a position of great power and prestige in the land of Egypt. And that's how God sets the stage for the redemption, the preservation, the salvation of his people. Congregation, when the Lord When the Lord allowed Joseph to go to prison, it was no sign that the Lord had abandoned him. On the contrary, God was with Joseph to prepare him for his future exaltation to the right hand of Pharaoh himself. God was using outwardly dreadful circumstances to sovereignly bring about the salvation of his covenant people. And according to Genesis chapter 39, God was with Joseph every step of the way in order to make it happen. Folks, the good news tonight is that God is with His people through thick and thin. That's the real lesson of Genesis 39. That's not changed. God is with us to prosper us, to protect us from sin, and to prepare us for the future. He was with Joseph in that way, and we read from 2 Timothy chapter 4 earlier. He was with Paul in that way. And there's no better testament to that reality than the incarnation of Jesus Christ. After relating the news that Mary would bear a son named Jesus who would save his people from his sins, Matthew chapter 1 verses 22 and 23 says that all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. God's presence with Joseph in Genesis 39 anticipates his presence with the church in the person of Jesus Christ. He came down from heaven and took on flesh so that he might dwell among us. The Bible calls him Immanuel, God with us. And it is plain for anyone who has read the New Testament that he wasn't just committed to being with us in the good times. Those sinless, innocent, we might say like Joseph, and yet far more innocent than Joseph could ever be. Our Emmanuel was falsely accused, abruptly jailed, and crucified. Yet he did not flinch or avoid his fate. He could have called down angels to come and save him, to come and deliver him, but he did not ask for that. He suffered so that we might be forgiven. He suffered so that we might be redeemed, and He suffered so that we might remain with Him for eternity through faith, that we might go to that heavenly kingdom that Paul spoke about in 2 Timothy chapter 4. And at present, He dwells with us through His Holy Spirit. So no matter what you're going through right now, whether you consider this a good time or a bad time, a happy time or a sad time. Remember that God is always, always, always with his people. He will not leave you. He will not forsake you. If you are trusting Jesus and resting in his finished work, then be assured that God is present with you to prosper you, to protect you from sin, and to prepare you for the glorious future with swipes. Let's pray.