Lecture 1

Temptation


INTRO

The First Principle

Nature Of Temptation

Matt.   26

Genesis 39

Scheme of Temptation

Excuses for Sin

Strength of Temptation

Character of Potiphar's Wife

Review Directives



part 5
The Scheme of Temptation

Consider the scheme of temptation.  What was Potiphar's wife difficulty?  The question is "What was Potiphar's wife’s' problem?" The fact of the matter is, that she was being principally tempted by her own lusts.  Unknowingly, Joseph was a great temptation for her.  It was his youth and favorable manner that would draw out of her what she was by nature - an adulteress and an harlot.  She was also unsatisfied with the providential blessings of God, therefore, she was murmuring as well.  She did not appreciate what was given to her.  She looked upon Potiphar with disdain.  In her discontentment she wanted more.  Again we see the parallels with Eve. "Eve, you can have every tree of the Garden but of the Tree in the midst of the garden ye cannot eat"

Eve too, was dissatisfied.  Eve too, was tempted by her own lusts.  She wanted more.  The whole of the Garden of God was not enough.   There was that one thing forbidden, that she must have.  Before she was tempted and took, she obviously considered in her heart already how that forbidden fruit would taste.  Eve, before the fall, was asked to choose between good and evil, yet, would choose to disobey the Lord.  Potiphar's' wife, like Eve, though after the fall, her sin began in the eye.  She too was considering the forbidden fruit, Joseph, in her heart.

Temptation begins in the eye.

When Eve saw that the tree was good she was hooked.   So too was the wife of Potiphar hooked through the entrance to the heart, the eye.

Consider Genesis 39:7

"And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph"

Her sin began in her eyes.  She cast her eye upon him and desired what she was forbidden.

"Lie with me".

She was overtaken with his remarkable beauty and his remarkable comeliness, for he was a goodly person.  He was a young Hebrew man and by the words in the literal Hebrew text, we know that it means to be beautiful in form and appearance. Potiphar's' wife was falling under the dominion of her own lust by degrees as she entered in, first with the eye, and then with her actions.

Our Lord cautions all:

"Watch ye and pray that ye enter not".

But Potiphar's' wife, being in bondage to her own unregenerate condition and lusts, by degrees she lusts for Joseph, as he worked in the midst of the house.  Day by day, she contemplated Joseph.  Having her eyes filled with him, she plotted upon her bed how she may have him.  Potiphar's' wife had entered into temptation.  It began with the eye.  She was unsatisfied. Her eyes began to wander.  She became distracted by her lusts.  She forged excuses.  She began to look to this thing and to that thing. She considered it, consented to it, she plotted the right moment, and devised wickedness upon her bed.  And passing over the threshold of temptation, sin conceived and she was brought into the bondage of her lusts.   "Lie with me man of God".

The Lord by the inspiration of the Spirit writes by the Apostle James;

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lusts, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren".

Notice the admonition of the Apostle James.

"Do not err." i.e. "Be not led astray brethren"

The word err is to be led astray, to wander, to rove from true and solid and foundational doctrines.  In effect the Spirit warns us not to be deceived.

 

Doctrine: All that is evil and wicked, both that which is from within and without, desires to tempt us unto the destruction of our souls.

Potiphar's' wife would tempt Joseph just as the tempter would tempt Christ.  As the serpent would tempt Eve and as Eve would tempt Adam, so too does all that is antichrist tempt the body of the Risen Christ even the church.

Doctrine 2: We can learn secondly, that it is the nature of temptation, and sin, to seek to defile that which has its root in Christ.

 

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