Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Lust: The Case of Joseph

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Joseph’s career was going along fairly well. He’d risen from servanthood to becoming, in a sense, the Chief Operating Officer of a huge estate. And then sex came. He wasn’t even looking for it, but it came at him. Things may be going very well for you, but sex will come—and it’s such a powerful force that how you handle it can make or break you. From Genesis 39, we can learn about what we’re going to call lust. We learn something from what we see Potiphar’s wife doing, we learn something from what we see Joseph doing, and we learn from what we see God doing.  Let’s look at 1) how to understand lust, 2) how to handle it, and 3) how to heal it. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 12, 1995. Series: The Seven Deadly Sins. Scripture: Genesis 39:4-21. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. You don't have to look far to see that something's deeply wrong with our world and with us. But is there an answer that gets to the root of why? In today's message, Tim Keller explores the human condition through stories in the Bible, uncovering what scripture says about sin and why it's the only explanation deep enough to face the truth about ourselves. Let me read to you the teaching scripture passage, the passage on which the teaching is based this morning. It's found in your bulletins. It's Genesis 39, and I'm reading from verses 4 to 21. The story of Joseph, Genesis 39, verses 4 to 21.

Joseph found favor in his eyes, as referring to his master, Potipher, an high official in the Pharaoh's court, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. From the time he put him in charge of his household, of all that he owned,

the Lord blessed the household of the agenda. Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. So he left in Joseph's care everything he had with Joseph in charge. He did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome. And after a while, his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me, but he refused. With me in charge, he told him. He told him, he her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house. Everything he owns, he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld

nothing for me except you because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. One day he went into the house to attend to his duties and none of the household servants was inside she caught him by his cloak and said come to bed with me but he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house when she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house she called her household servants look she said to them this hebrew has been has been brought to us to make sport of us he came in here to sleep with me but I screamed and when he heard me scream for help he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the

house. She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she said to him this story, that Hebrew slave you brought us, came to me to make sport of me, but as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. And when his master heard the story, his wife told him saying, this is how your slave treated me. He burned with anger. Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. but while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. This is God's word.

Well, we've been going through the seven deadly sins and finally we get to one that's interesting. Joseph, Joseph's career was going along fairly well. He'd been sold into the servanthood by his brother. but he had been bought by this high official in the society of Egypt and because he was such an incredibly good manager he rose soon to be in a sense the C.O. The chief operating officer of this huge estate.

His career was going very well. This is a lot like a lot of people in New York that I know. His career was going very well and then sex came. and sex will come and it's such a powerful force that how you deal with it can make or break you

haven't you been reading all the chastened kind of cautious books and articles coming out about sex in the last actually five, almost ten years a senior editor of the old Look magazine years ago was a he was really a proponent of what was then called sexual liberation in the late

60s and early 70s in the 80s he came out with a book called The End of Sex and in it he was so chastened he said in there I've finally come to see that every game has the rules and sex has rules and that unless you play by the rules you'll find that sex can create a depth of loneliness that nothing else can

isn't that ironic sex creating loneliness so it's such a you see your things may be going very well but sex will come joseph everything's going fine sex came he wasn't even looking for it but it came it came at him how you handle it will have a lot to say about how your life goes now what do we learn from this passage about it and uh at the seven deadly sins this one is called we're going to call it lust and i'll get to that word in a second but the thing that we learn here is we learn something from what we see Potipher's wife doing, and we learn something from what we see

Joseph doing, and we learn something from what we see God doing. And from Potipers' wife, we learned how to understand lust. And from Joseph, we understand, we learn how to handle lust, and from God, we learn how to heal lust, how to understand it, how to handle it, how to heal it. Let's look. First of all, When we see, you see, with Joseph and Potiphar's wife, we actually have two different cases. I call it the case of Joseph. Well, but in a sense, there's two cases here. Two cases of how sex, sexuality, lust is treated, and so we have a good and a bad example. And with Potipers' wife, when we see how things operate, we learn something about how,

we learn to understand what lust is. Now, some people are going to be kind of unhappy about me using the word lust. When Jimmy Carter talked about lust, poor Jimmy Carter, he said something. Didn't he confess that sometimes he had looked at a woman with lust in his heart, and I can still remember Dan Aykroyd took three months of jokes at Jimmy Carter's expense on Saturday Night Live, making fun of that. And some people would say even the word lust harkens back to regressive, repressive Victorian attitudes towards sex, and it can. And usually the word lust in the Bible is not used with reference to sex. but we can't try to be more wise than Jesus, and Jesus himself said,

if you look on someone with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart. So let's not be wiser than Jesus. The word lust in the Bible usually is not got anything to do with sex, and the word lust means a desire that's out of order. A desire that's out of order. What do we learn then about sexual, about sexual, lust about sexual desire. We see, first of all, that Potipher's wife noticed Joseph. Now, you know, unfortunately, the English word notice is a little too weak here. The fact of the matter is

to notice somebody's physically beautiful, that's not lust. But that's also not what Potipher's wife did. Literally, in Hebrew, it says, she lifted up her eyes to him. And it means to contemplate. She contemplated his beauty. It says literally, it says he was beautiful. of form and beautiful of face. He had a great body and a great beautiful face. And she contemplated that. And then we see that she had spent so much time contemplating. She had gone to bed with him so often in her mind that finally, in spite of the dangers, and in spite of his refusal, she had to go to bed with him in reality. And so she tried. But finally we see when he refused again and again and when she realized she could not have him, she turned murderous and tried to kill him. And you

say, where is that? Well, what she was accusing him of was a capital offense. And we'll get to that later. What do we learn about lust? Okay, first of all, a negative and then the positive. Negatively, lust is not sexual desire per se. Joseph does not say this is a wicked thing because it's sexual. He doesn't say that. We'll see what he says in a second. He doesn't say it's a sin because it's sexual. The Bible never anywhere says sexual desire per se is lust. Sexual desire is wrong in itself. Sexual desire is bad, polluting, defiling in itself. Not at all. The Bible, as we're going to see, has one of the most glorious views of sex. In fact, I'd be very happy to say the Bible has the most exalted view of sex of any other holy book or any other religion

anywhere in the world. I don't mind taking it on than that. In Genesis 2, God makes male and female, and when he creates sexuality, we're told he looked at it, and right away, he says, it's good. them be fruitful, okay? We see in the Old Testament, in fact, I preached on this last year, in Proverbs 5, husbands and wives are commanded to be ravished with each other sexually. In the New Testament, in 1st Corinthians 7, the same thing is told to them. Husbands and wives are commanded to have, they're commanded to consciously cultivate sexual desire for each other. The Song of Solomon is a joyous and graphic celebration. of sexual love.

And traditionally in history, when the seven deadly sins have been looked at, lust is never at the top. It's way down the list. Let me show you what I mean. Pride, envy, greed, wrath, all of them have always been further up the list. Those things have always been worse sins. Why? Because the moral theologians of the Christian church have always known that pride, greed,

to want to hurt somebody, to want to steal from somebody. to want to put yourself in the center and trample on other people, that is not what the heart was built for. Those are unnatural. Unnatural. You weren't built to steal. You weren't built to hurt. You weren't built to hate. You weren't built to kill. But you were built for sexual desire. And that's the reason what, see, sexual lust, as we're going to see what it is, is a natural desire gone wrong. That's the reason why Jesus, do you realize what an affirmation of sexuality it was when Jesus said, to the moral and religious leaders of the time, to the religious leaders, proud, envious,

greedy religious leaders, he said to them, the prostitutes and the pimps are closer to the kingdom of heaven than you. That is an affirmation. Sexuality per se, intense sexual desire per se, is not only not wrong, but it's commanded in situations. So the idea that lust is any kind of sexual passion, that's just not true at all. Well, then what is sexual desire? How does it become lust?

And I'm going to say, from the passage we see, lust is three things. Three ways to understand it. First of all, lust is desiring out of control. I'll be real brief on that. Look at what the poor lady, once she's in the grip of her sexual passion, even though he's given her a very firm no, and not only that, Even though what she's trying to do is very dangerous to her personally, she can't stop after, day in, day out. Now, people will tell us that sex is just an appetite.

And she's like, any other appetite, and when you get hungry, you should eat, and when you feel sexy, you should have sex. And it's just an appetite, and it's fine, and nobody should think there's anything wrong with their appetites. Really? Really? There's no other appetite that I know that gets as obsessive as this so quickly. And of course, there's that writer who pointed this out, if you ever found a country where when young guys go off to college, they put these posters up of hamburgers and hot dogs all over their wall.

And everybody, they all went running from room to room to look at them. And if you found a country where people paid money to watch someone slowly uncover cakes and pies, you would assume that that country was filled with starving people and And you would be astonished to say, not only aren't they starving, but the more they eat, the more they do this, that's an appetite out of order. There's something wrong. It's not just an appetite. You can't trust an appetite like that. So first of all, lust is desiring out of control. It's out of control. Secondly, though, and more importantly, lust is desiring pleasure without a promise. lust is desiring pleasure without a promise it's not just desiring pleasure we said that's fine it's first of all it's desiring out of order and then secondly it's desiring pleasure out of control secondly desiring pleasure without a promise now what does joseph say to her is wrong about this you are his wife and if we only saw this passage and we knew nothing else about the bible

If we knew no other parts of the Bible said anything about sex or adultery or anything else, we might assume that what he was saying was the real problem was only that she was married to him. And if she wasn't married and he wasn't married, it would be all right. But we know from the Old New Testament that that's not what he was thinking only. He was actually saying, when he said, you are not his wife, you are his wife, he was also saying, you're not mine. That's the problem. See, one's implied in the other. The Old Testament and the New Testament are crystal clear about this.

Sex is designed only and always between one man and one woman in a complete, exclusive, and permanent commitment called marriage. It's only and always between one man, one woman, in a complete, exclusive, and permanent commitment called marriage. It doesn't matter if one person happens to be married to somebody else. If they're not married to each other, See, that's what Joseph is saying. Joseph is not just simply saying

the fact that she's married means because you're married to him that that makes this thing wicked. What makes it wicked is not that it's sexual, but that we're not married. You're not my wife. Now, why would the Bible say such a thing?

And here's the reason why. You might believe that there's no purpose for sex. Sex is just something that happened. Sex is an accident. It's an accident of evolution. You're an accident. We're all accidents.

There's no rhyme or reason. None. No. Your reason, your perception, your memory, your creativity, your sexuality, all the things about you made believe that these things are accidents. And so they were not designed by anyone for a purpose. Now, if you believe that, of course, you're not going to like what I'm about to say, but you also have a lot more troubles, a whole lot more troubles. I mean, you know, you might have a license for.

sexual freedom, but there's no meaning in your life. You have no right to call anything right or wrong. You know, we have other problems, far more problems. I mean, if you decide, I want a meaningless existence so that I can have sex, you've bitten off a lot more than you can chew. The Bible says the reason that sex is only for marriage is because sex was designed for two purposes. Sex is a telos. Sex is telic. Sex has a design. Sex is a design. Sex is a design. Sex is a design. a purpose, a goal, two. Two purposes. And when Joseph says, we're not married, he's thinking of the first of the goal. Say the two goals of sex, one is the penultimate goal and one is the ultimate goal. And what Joseph is bringing out right here, when he says, we're not married,

he's bringing out the penultimate goal of sex. God intended sex, he invented sex as both a sign of and a means of achieving complete life unity between two people. God created sex to be a way of not only to be a sign. In other words, a means of expressing and a means of achieving and renewing, complete life unity between two people. This should be common sense, but sin blinds us to it. Here's what I mean. The physical union should be a sign of union in every other realm.

I mean, that's absolute logic, that's common sense, that's spiritual, makes sense, it's beautiful. The Bible says, you must not act out something physically, which is not also true, spiritually, personally, socially, legally, every other way. When Paul, you want to understand the biblical sex ethic, you have to see Paul saying in 1st Corinthians 6. He says, don't sleep with a prostitute, he says, don't you know that when you, whoever you sleep with you become one. with. Now, does that say, do you understand the logic there? Here's what he's saying. It makes perfect sense. In order to be physically one with somebody, in order to have sex with somebody, you've got to be naked. And to be naked means you get so vulnerable. Not only do people see you, the other person sees you as you are, but more than that, there is no less defensive physical

posture than sexual postures. When you're having sex, you are utterly vulnerable. You have no weapons. This is the reason why sexual violence is considered by everybody intuitively a moral evil, a moral outrage. Because when you're having sex, you are absolutely vulnerable. You could be utterly attacked, especially by the person you're having sex with, but you're totally you're completely vulnerable because you're one to become one you lose your physical independence you're not able to suddenly make moves you're not able to act independently you see not a good time to have a battle not a good time to defend yourself well the bible says Paul says the Bible says think what happens physically should be also happening in every other realm

The Bible says that sex is God's designed way to say to somebody else, I belong completely, exclusively, and permanently to you. Everywhere we look, we see brokenness, wars, cruelty, and heartache. We feel it in the world around us and in our own lives. How did it get this way? And what can be done about it? In his brand new book that's releasing this month, What is Wrong with the World?

Tim Keller offers a clear and compassionate answer. Drawing from a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Dr. Keller shows how the reality of sin explains the pain we see all around us, and how only the gospel offers lasting freedom and healing. Whether you're overwhelmed by the state of our world, struggling with your own mistakes or choices, or looking for hope and joy, what is wrong with the world will help you see how the gospel speaks to both the heartache of our world and the pain within each of us. This newly released book, What is Wrong with the World, is our thanks for your gift this month to help Gospel in Life share the good news of Jesus.

Request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. Now, if you say that and then say, I don't want to marry you, you're talking out of two sides of your mouth. You can't be completely exclusively and permanently committed to somebody unless you're married. When you're physically one, you've become vulnerable. But when a person says, I want to have sex with you, but I do not want to be married to you.

What they're saying is, I don't want to be so bound up emotionally. I don't want to be so bound up. Legally, I don't want to be so bound up with you that I can't make my own decisions. I want to be vulnerable to you physically, but not spiritually. Here's what you're saying. I want your body, but not you. I want to give you my body, but I don't want to give you me.

You talk about unnatural? The Christian sex ethic is utterly natural. It holds body and soul together, and any other ethic destroys them. It pulls them apart. C.S. Lewis was amazing when he said, to have sex without being married, to want pleasure without a promise,

to want pleasure without a commitment, is like trying to taste and eat food and then vomit it up. Let me tell you how profound that illustration is, even though it's a daring one. He says, a person who wants to taste food, but you don't want it to become part of you. You don't want the commitment that's entailed with eating. You don't want the consequences of eating. You don't want the ramifications of it.

You want all the pleasure, but you don't want to have any of the responsibility. You don't want to become part of you. we know what happens if you try to do that it's called bulimia and it ravages you physically it's utterly unnatural to separate tasting from digestion and lewis has the right to go around and say then don't you understand it's just as unnatural to abstract physical union from every other kind to say i want a pleasure without a purpose it'll ravage you spiritually sex is a way for you to say to somebody, I belong to you. It's not only a sign of the fact that you're already totally committed. I belong to you. You belong to me. You're not your own. I'm not my own. We're

one. That's what marriage is. And if you say, I want that physically, but I don't want any other way, what God has joined together, let no one put asunder. And that is utterly natural. And you see, therefore, let's see how Joseph handles it. Therefore, lust is not just desiring pleasure out of control, and lust is not just desiring pleasure without a promise. It's actually desiring pleasure without a person. Yes. Lust is the opposite of love. Love, you want a person. In lust, you just want the pleasure, and the person is a necessary commodity to get there. In love, you want a person, and if you have to forego pleasure, fine. It's the person that's non-negotiable, the pleasure that's

negotiable. In lust, it's the pleasure that's non-negotiable and the person that's negotiable. How do you see it? Look at what happened to her. Look what happened to Potipher's wife when she realized he had spurned her. She wanted the affirmation. She wanted the experience and when she saw she couldn't have him, she turned murderous. And it's not just when you can't get the person that you really see that what you thought was love was really lust because it turns murderous. Sometimes even when you get the person, in 2nd Samuel 13,

there's an amazing story about David's son Amon, and Amon slept with his half-sister Tamar. He got her to bed, he seduced her, incest. We're told that before he seduced her, he was sick with love, but if you ever read that, it's in 2nd Samuel 13. It's an amazing passage.

As soon as he had done consummating sex, It said, suddenly, he hated her with a hatred that was greater than the love with which he had loved her, and he got up and said, arise and go. What did happen? Lust is wanting pleasure without a person. Lust is getting incredibly in love with somebody you don't even know. All you see is what you think they can get. give you. You don't even know them. You have no idea who they are. See? In other words, sin takes lust. A good thing, sexual desire, and sin turns sexual desire into lust

because it makes sexual desire an end in itself instead of a way of serving somebody and through which you can learn the incredible pleasure of giving pleasure. Instead of learning the pleasure of giving pleasure, instead of using sex as a way to serve somebody else, serving, somebody you're committed to, somebody you're trying to give pleasure to. Instead, it becomes an end in itself, and a person just happens to be a necessary commodity. So we can discard the people. And we do. As time goes on, as long as we have the thing. Now, how does Joseph handle it? He teaches us something pretty remarkable. As you can see, sin makes sexual desire a very powerful thing. Well, how does he handle it? He handles it like this. First of all, well, there's two things he does. One is pretty obvious. One is he controls his actions. You notice it says he would refuse to be with her.

Do you see that? He says not only refused to go to bed, whether he refused to be with her. He stayed away from her. He stayed away from temptation. We talked to them all about that last week. But the other thing he did, he didn't just control his actions. He controlled his thoughts. You know, James Fix, the guy who wrote the Complete Book of Running,

there's a fascinating place in that book in which he says the hardest thing about running a marathons is your mind. He found in the early stages of becoming a marathon runner that what will happen in the midst of the marathon is the fatigue will be so great that your mind will say why did you ever start this race?

What was it that attracted you to distance running? And James Fixed said I would find that I had no answer. I couldn't remember why I wanted to. He says, one time he dropped right out of a marathon because your brain plays tricks on you, he says, when the heat's on. And the brain will suddenly, he will just decide to forget the reasons that you love running, the great benefits of running in general for you, the great benefits of this race

and you can't even remember it. So he said he learned that one of the most important things to do, if you're going to stick with that marathon through the hard time, he says beforehand, you've got to practically memorize the reasons you love running. Memorize the reasons. This is an important race. Memorize the reason so you can tell your brain that. But he says, you know, if things really get bad and he can't remember everything, you know what he says? He says, the final thing I used to trick I used to play on my brain is I'd say, well, I know when I get there, I'll remember it. I know I had a good reason to start.

And when I get there, I'll remember it. Now, there's a lot of wisdom in this, and this is what Joseph does. Joseph says, how can I then do this wicked thing and sin against God? Now, there it is. Now, he says two things to himself. First of all, he says, how can I then do this wicked thing? Now, then refers to the fact that we're not married. And so what he's doing is he's reminding himself of the penultimate purpose of marriage.

And the penultimate purpose of marriage is absolute union of body and soul, not pulling them apart, but keeping them together. And so what does he do? He says to himself, I will not be a monstrosity. not ravage myself. I will not, that which God has joined together, I will not put asunder. But I suppose if Joseph was completely blanking out, here's what you can say, by the way, if you totally blank out, you say, look, no sex outside marriage, this is the one thing that for 2,000 years, every branch of the Christian church has agreed on, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, all of these centuries of these great

religions who disagree on so many other things, they all agree with this. They all believe this. The only people who don't believe it is something. This is just a belief that just come up very recently in very, very small little bubble pockets of people, you know, like Manhattan. And so what you have to say is, I know there's a good reason. I just can't remember. When I get there, when I get to the finish line, it'll all come back. That's not the only thing he says. he remembers he fills his mind with a pen ultimate goal but he also fills his mind with the ultimate goal he says how can I do this thing and sin against God

now how could this be a sin against God now it could be a sin against Pottafer the husband yeah he could be a sin against Potipher's wife it wouldn't be that hard to say if he had given into her in the midst of her passion that he was giving in he was sending against her he certainly could say was sinning against himself in his own body but how God and here's the reason because I told you there were two goals for sex, and this is the ultimate goal. And the ultimate goal of sex is to be an appetizer and a sign of the absolute ecstasy and joy of complete union with God.

Sex is a sign, and an epitical, according to biblical theology, sex is a foretaste and a signpost pointing toward the unbelievable joy and ecstasy of complete union with God. God. In Ephesians 5, the New Testament says that when a husband and wife unite, it's a great mystery, but it tells us, it shows us Christ uniting with his people. In Romans 7, Paul is so explicit, he says, just as a husband and wife get into each other's arms and through sexual union, fruit is born into the world through the woman's body. So when Christ and the believer are in each other's arms, Christ's fruit is born into the world through you. Unbelievable. It's what the Bible says. Sex is a foretaste of that. When sex is the best possible here, what do you want? What do you get? You want somebody to see you completely

and not just tolerate it. See you naked, not just tolerate it, but you want to see their delight in you. As they see you, you want to see in their eyes them looking at you as if you are holy and without blemish. This is the reason we look in mirrors. This is the reason a lot of people don't want to have sex or get married.

You're afraid of what people are going to see. You can cover it up. There's always cosmetics. There's all sorts of ways of covering up. But here, the idea that somebody will see you, what you really want in sex, does somebody see you and know you completely, and then delight in you as if you were holy and without blemish?

and then you want somebody's arms to come around you and give you a cradle of absolute security for your moment of absolute vulnerability and you want to do the same and you know what nobody can do that what's funny is when sex is going well and when love is going well

the only way we can talk about it is in religious language this is the sexual proof of the existence of God that sex love makes you talk about things that aren't true you start to say i will love you forever you know even the crate even the drippy songs they go on and on they say longer than there've been fishes in the ocean higher than any bird ever flew longer than there been stars up in the heaven i've been in love with you and we go oh why because your sexuality is pointing to the eternal even when you think you've got it you don't have it

it's an illusion your sexual desire wants a kind of cosmic closure that no one here on earth can give you nobody can love you like that nobody will ever be able to truly say I will never ever ever ever ever ever forsake you because people die people are sinners

nobody can look at you and see you holy and without blemish except one who does say i will never leave you and or forsake you who does say in my sight you are holy and without blemish because i've died for you and i've closed you with my own righteousness you know i've decked you with jewels you know it's a great sin against god to try to get closure out of somebody else that only god can give. And so Christians are able to demystify sex, and that's what he was doing. A Christian is somebody who says, if my sexual desires are out of control, it's because I'm trying to get closure out of somebody who can never give it to me. I'm going to demote it. Sex is a great thing.

I hope I will have a wonderful sex life someday. But if I let this drive me, I'm trying to get something that it can never give. Trying to get something out of it can never give. Self-control comes not by thinking of sex so negatively. Christian self-control comes by thinking of sex so gloriously that it puts it in a sense in its place here and now. What God does, if you're obedient like Joseph, what does it say? Verse 21, God was with him. if you're obedient like Joseph, you're going to experience rejection, you're going to experience

temporary isolation, you're going to have people laugh at you, just like Joseph. But you know what? Potiphar must have actually trusted, he must have at least doubted. Joseph's integrity must have been so incredibly good that when his wife came and accused him, there must have been doubts in Potipher's mind because what he was accused of was a capital offense. We know that. And so Potipher must have had doubts. His integrity was so great that it saved him Even at a moment like that

God was with him and he'll be with you But what, I know somebody's asking What if Joseph's not really my model What if I'm a lot more like Potipar's wife What does Jesus say to me He says the same thing to you That he said to the woman caught in adultery He stood there before her

And what did he say to her? He wouldn't cast a stone. Why? He said to her, go in sin no more. Neither do I condemn thee. And you know what's so amazing? When he said that, first of all, he called sin sin. He said, don't sin anymore. He didn't say it wasn't a sin. Sexual sin is sin. But then he said, neither do I condemn thee. Wait. If you say someone's guilty, then you have to condemn them. And if you say they're not condemned, then they must not be guilty. Jesus says, you're guilty and I don't condemn you. How could

he say that. I know why. Do you know what was going on in his mind when he was saying that? He was saying, my dear sister, you're guilty, but there's no condemnation for you because I'm not throwing a stone at you because I'm going to take the stones that should come to you. I'm going to take the spear. I'm going to take the thorns. I'm going to take the fever and the bloody sweat so that in your, in my sight and in my father's sight, you can be holy and blameless. If you receive Christ, one of the greatest things that happens in the, in the genealogies of Matthew, Matthew chapter 1, verse 1

and following, it gives you the family tree of the Messiah, and in the family tree of the Messiah, is Tamar. Tamar, the incest victim, Bathsheba, the adulteress, Rahab, the prostitute. Mary, a single unwed

mother. What are they doing in the family tree? Jesus Christ says, I'm proud of you. I don't care what you've done. I don't care what you've done. If you receive me, I'm proud of you. Go and sin no more, and neither do I condemn thee.

If you name your sin, he will say peace to you. But if you say peace to yourself, he will name your sin. That's how it works. Come to him. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you would make us so aware of the glorious nature of this sexual nature that you've given us, that we might find ourselves in wonderful self-control. Teach us how to understand, how to handle, and how to be healed

in those aspects of our sexuality where we are wounded and broken because of your son, who said, neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel. gospel and life podcast. We hope that today's teaching encouraged you to go deeper into God's

word. You can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospel and life.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 1995. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you.