Season 4 Genesis 39: 6-10 (Sue Wiberg)
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Week 8 Genesis 39:6-1
Who are you, God, and what are you like? Presupposing goodness of God. Seeing Jesus through the lens of Joseph.
Vs. 6b Joseph is very handsome and well-built.
Yape-handsome, beautiful, fair, goodly, pleasant, well
Toar-form, shape, outline, figure, appearance. Favored included in Strong’s def. Countenance.
Mare-appearance, what is seen (similar to both above) shape
Joseph yape toar yape mare- handsome in form, shape, and appearance. Double whammy!
Ancestors of Joseph had some of these words: Rachel yape mare and yape toar. Sarai is very yape (beautiful).
Thought of Jesus in Isaiah 53:2: He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He had no toar and no mare that we should be attracted to or desire him. Whoa!
Phil 2:5-8 (came as a common man, servant) You must have the same attitude Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.John 1:11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.
Hebrews 4:15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.
And yes, Joseph is beautiful to look at. But the true beauty that Potiphar’s wife was attracted to was Jesus in him!!!! The One who came to serve us all, that by outside appearance we saw nothing.
Isaiah 52:14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man.
And even more than that, His appearance (mare) and form (toar) was so disfigured.
The One true servant did this for us, that when we take this gift from Him, He makes beauty from ashes! What an exchange!
This is truly the most beautiful man of all.
Vs. 7 Potiphar’s wife calling to Joseph to sleep with her.
Joseph also had one that was attractive before him. We learned yesterday that Zuleicka’s name (Zule) means beautiful.
Sin is attractive and beautiful in appearance and form. And it promises to give us something.
Gen 3:6 The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful, and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.
And Joseph shows us the picture of Jesus, who comes as a man, not seeking to fill His own desires, but to follow the plan of the Father to bring true filling to the hearts of His Children. He sees us as God made us to be.
He does not take advantage of us in our weakness, but takes our weakness and brings us to be who He made us to be!!!!
Back to Genesis 3, sin brought hiding from one another and God and shame. Man blamed the woman; woman blamed the serpent (satan). Woman would now desire man to fill her needs, man would rule woman to fill his.
This is not life being made in the Image of God but the consequence of sin. Looking to humans, self, and others. Great harm comes.
Micah 2:1-2 What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night, thinking up evil plans.You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out simply because you have the power to do so.
2 When you want a piece of land, you find a way to seize it. When you want someone’s house, you take it by fraud and violence. You cheat a man of his property, stealing his family’s inheritance.
Joseph does not condemn this woman but continues to serve His master.
Jesus did not come to condemn us but to serve and save us.
John 3:17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
The picture here is of the two choices we face every day, even as a Jesus’ follower. Will we take matters into our own hands to fill our needs, or will we rely on God and His promises and His timing? Temptations will always come.
Wisdom is required. This woman pictures the adulterous wife that we all are when we follow our way to fill our needs. God calls his people this many times. The book of Proverbs portrays this, too.
Prov 2:16 Wisdom will save you from the immoral woman, from the seductive words of the promiscuous woman.
Prov 3:5-8 open and read
Prov 5: 1-6
Prov 8:35-36 For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord.
36 But those who miss me injure themselves. All who hate me love death.”
Living by God’s Wisdom and not your own is Fear of the Lord-Reverence
Wisdom is a person-Jesus
Prov 3:18 Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her; happy are those who hold her tightly.
Adulterous is taking into your own hands, taking from the tree of knowledge of good and bad. Not waiting/relying on God to give you what you need when you need it!
God’s heart is broken by His adulterous wife over and over.
Ezek 6:9 Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices.
Ezek 16:32: “‘You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband!
Hos 1:2 When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife, this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”
Jesus also called this out.
Matt 16:4: A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.
James 4:4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
But God!!!!
Hosea 3:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.
Jesus died for us while we were still adulterous sinners
Romans 5:6-9
Enemy loves to put humans together that have God-sized holes in the heart to look to each other for filling—intertwining sin and dysfunction into lots of addiction and codependence.
The only answer is each heart to bring their brokenness directly to Jesus, who can reveal the sin, harm, and unmet needs. He meets us with Grace, which is a greater power than the shame the enemy tries to keep us cloaked in.
Vs. 8 Joseph see that he has everything he needs in His Master! He has entrusted all of it into his care.
Back to Genesis 1. When God made us in His Image, He told us to “fill the earth and govern it”, along with all animals. That is, He has given us everything in Him to walk in intimacy with Him and to be what He made us to be.
Vs. 9 Joseph knows he has been given authority, as God has given us in Him. Only one thing has been withheld, just like the fruit. The one thing he probably really wants as a young man in his twenties, and yet he has put his desire in God’s hands. He knows what God has for him and the timing and way will be life. This other would be death, sin!
Wages of sin is death!
It would be a power play against his master and His God!!!
Picture the devil tempting Jesus in the desert to bow down and worship him, and the devil would give him everything he saw.
Matt 4:8-11
Vs. 10 This went on for a long time.
Temptations will always come.
Sexual temptation is one of the enemy’s favorite tools, knowing we are made for intimacy with the Father and one another. Jesus is the only way back to the true intimacy we were made for.
Fleshly desire vs Godly desire. Starts with an unmet need. Great question to ask God: what are the unmet needs of your life? Places you have been hurt and harmed by others!
Joseph had hurts from humans. Place we need to grieve with Jesus and bring that unmet need to Him. He alone can fill.
When we go there to these painful places with him, the temptations often lose their teeth. Not that we don’t always rely on Jesus, but He brings us to a new, healed place. He supplies our every need! He leads us out of temptation!!
1Cor 10:13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
Phil 4:19 And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.
Matt 6:8 Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! Pray like this: goes on to give the Lord’s Prayer.
Matt 6:32-33 These things (worrying and trying to fill needs) dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously (believing/relying/waiting on God to meet needs), and he will give you everything you need.
Romans 8:32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?