There is no sermon for Sunday, July 19, 2009 due to technical errors. We apologize.
Below is the re-cap of the sermon, taken from Genesis chapter 39, vv. 1-20:
1. For Joseph temptation and testing come at the time of his greatest success. Success often gives rise to greater testing than does failure or adversity.
2. Joseph succeeded in resisting temptation to sexual sin for several reasons:
-He rightly called Potiphar’s wife’s invitation to sexual sin what it was, a “wicked thing” and “sin.” He did not try to justify wrong behavior by calling it something else (“my wife/husband doesn’t understand me like you do,” “I’ve found my soul mate,” “What goes TDY stays TDY.”
-He realizes that ultimately he would be sinning against God (not just himself, Potiphar, or his wife)
-He took steps to avoid her (Romans 13:14)
-He fled the compromising situation
3. We must think through our strategy for dealing with sexual temptation:
-We must have a strategy for purity including things such as allowing our spouse free access to all electronic/phone communications (email accounts, cell phone, websites, etc.); except for work situations avoid being alone with a person of the opposite sex, etc.
-We must count the cost of moral failure. We should make a list of the people and things most important to us in life and then think through the devastation that our moral failure would bring to us and to them.
-We must immediately call upon God in the moment of temptation (1 Corinthians 10:12,13)
-We must be growing in our relationship with Jesus Christ (through the word, Bible study, prayer) we can pursue sin or Jesus but we can’t be pursuing both.-We must retain our thinking and attitudes about sex and sexuality so that they are Biblical.
