Ankerberg Show

Announcer: Welcome. Every one of us will face difficult seasons in life. Some of you have lost someone you loved. Maybe you've received a diagnosis you never expected. Perhaps your marriage is struggling, finances have been turned upside down, or you've been treated unfairly by friends.

Some of you have been praying to God, waiting for an answer, and you're still waiting. When life hasn't gone the way we planned, we all ask the same questions: God, where are you? Do you see what I'm going through? Will you help me?

Those are real questions, and the wonderful news is that God gives real answers in His Word. My guests today are Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright. They will assert that God will lead you through life's deepest struggles, and they will prove this by taking us through the remarkable story of Joseph.

Joseph was a man betrayed by his family and sexually tempted. He was a man who experienced injustice, disappointment, and years in prison waiting to be freed, relying on God's faithfulness every step of the way. Further, Joseph couldn't see what God was doing, but God knew exactly where Joseph was at and He had a plan for his life. God knows exactly where you are today and has a plan for your life. To hear more, join us as we begin this edition of The John Ankerberg Show.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg, and I've got a question for you today. Are you a Christian that is being tempted to have an affair with somebody other than your wife or your husband? Is it really getting to you? Are you going to do it? What's God telling you to do?

Let me turn it around. What if you're a college-age kid, a guy or a gal? Have you gotten into temptation? The statistics on how many college kids that go to church regularly have already slept with their girlfriend before they're 20 is fantastic. The numbers are almost 70 percent.

How are you doing that and reading God's Word? What do you think that does with your relationship with the Lord? There are other temptations that come, too. It starts with high school kids. We want to talk about temptation today, and I've got two folks that know what they're talking about.

We've got Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright. They've written this bestselling book, *God Won't Leave You There*. It talks about how God is with you when we are tempted. I want to talk about this in relation to the temptations that a person in the Bible felt and saw, and his name was Joseph.

Rachel-Ruth, start us off with a little bit of background for people that might have missed the first couple programs. Who was Joseph? What had he gone through up to this point, and how was he tempted with a woman?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: Joseph was a 17-year-old boy that went on an errand for his dad and had a bunch of jealous brothers that threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery. Joseph's life turned upside down in a second. He ends up going to Egypt and is sold to Potiphar as a slave.

Instead of getting bitter and angry and turning on God, he serves the Lord faithfully in Potiphar's house as a slave. God's favor is on Joseph. Potiphar's house prospers. Potiphar can just sit back while Joseph does everything. He's following the Lord step by step, no matter how hard his circumstances are, no matter how bad he wants to go back home.

He is serving the Lord faithfully to a T. Then Potiphar's wife notices him. He can have anything in Potiphar's house. He's taken care of everything. Nothing's off-limits except for Potiphar's wife, and Joseph stayed away. Potiphar's wife didn't want him to, though.

Potiphar's wife thought he was handsome and just thought she would go for him. She kept tempting Joseph day after day, coming up to him and saying stuff to him. He would try and keep his distance and not go near her. Then one day, she just decides she's just going to go after him.

She comes up to Joseph and grabs his cloak and says, "Come to bed with me, sleep with me." He refused. The thing that is so remarkable about this situation is that Joseph wasn't like, "I'm young, and you are good-looking, and what do I have to lose? I'm a slave. I'm not going to be able to date anybody outside of this, and I'm going to just go for it."

He didn't. Not only that, what he told Potiphar's wife wasn't, "I don't want to get beaten or thrown in prison." It was because he didn't want to sin against God. That right there shows you his deep love for the Lord. His relationship was there, and he had made the decision not to defile himself, not to go into this wicked relationship with Potiphar's wife.

That speaks volumes to me and to everybody listening. No matter how the temptation comes at you—because we all are going to get tempted every day—whether it's eating food we shouldn't be eating or whether it is a relationship we shouldn't be in, we have to be Joseph. Our hearts need to be so focused on the Lord that we say, "How could I do such a thing and sin against God?" That's what Joseph chose to do.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Anne, in our lives, there are situations that require tremendous focus when all odds are against us. I've seen this happen in church Sunday school classes where you've got the men and the women in the same class. They might have been there for 10 years, and all of a sudden, one person gets friendly with another person and they have an affair. You say, "Great Scott, they were going to the Sunday school class together and they were church members."

Or you've got college kids that are saying, "I hear what the preacher is saying, but you're not at my college and it is really loose." I went to the University of Illinois myself and when they had a brand new student center there, it was covered with rugs all the way around. I remember taking out kids to train them how to witness to people, and I did it when people were having sex right next to us. It was just right out in the open.

It's happening. I'm talking to people that are Christians right now. Joseph withstood the temptation of this woman who would not give up. Anne, tell the folks about how many temptations he had to go through to remain in his job, but to remain faithful to God before she finally framed him.

Anne Graham Lotz: I think the decision was made way back when he surrendered his life to the Lord. That's where you need to do it, before you hit a crisis like that. You have to do it before the maid comes into your life. You have to make the decision that you're going to live for Jesus in public and in private.

It's shocking how many of these young couples are sleeping together before marriage. It's almost the thing to do. It's almost like when you're dating, you do that to try it out to see if it works, and then you get married. When you do that, there's so much harm that's done. You don't even realize you're destroying your own spirit, but you're also sinning against God.

The Bible says that for you and me, we're to be holy as He is holy. To me, holiness is just to be like Jesus. In Jesus, there was no unrighteousness, no sinfulness, no wickedness. We have to make that decision that we're going to be holy. I'll tell you something that shocked me years ago.

I was talking to the head of a big evangelical seminary president. He said the number one problem they had with their seminary students was pornography. They would get back in the stacks in the library thinking nobody could see them, and they'd get on their computers and they were into pornography.

Pornography is like black mold. Like in New Orleans after they've had a flood, the black mold creeps up and you have to rip out all the wallboard and do the mold remediation because it's a killer, it's a poison. Pornography is a poison. They say that it creates enormous loneliness.

Inside of you, you've defiled your spirit, so there's a guilt deep down. You're never satisfied in a relationship, and you're just destroying so much of your own life while you also are hurting whoever that other person is. God gives us guidelines.

When I drive, I've got the white line on this side and the yellow line in the middle. I stay between the lines. If I go outside of the lines, I'm liable to hurt myself or hurt somebody else. The lines on the road are there for our own good. God has given us lines, rules, and laws, but they're for our good.

You stay within those laws and you're safe and you don't hurt somebody else. You go outside and you have sex before marriage, outside of marriage, you're into pornography, whatever, then you're going outside those lines and you're going to wind up being hurt yourself and hurting somebody else. He gives us rules and laws not because He wants to take joy away, not because He doesn't want us to have fun. He's doing it for our own good.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Rachel-Ruth, I want to ask you this question. We're talking to a lot of Christians and we're talking to a lot of Christian leaders of youth groups, both high school, college-age, and to the adults. Would you advise them that somewhere on some Sunday they ought to devote a Sunday to talking about the topic?

Put out the statistics. In terms of pornography three years ago, the statistics showed that there's just one company here in the United States that has enough people watching just their site—and there are 32 other sites like this—but just this site had six times the population of the people on the earth that watched pornography on their site during one year. It's worse than that now.

I like what Anne just said. Could you ask them where they're at—high school, college, even the adults? Temptation is going to come your way. Would today you make a decision that whatever comes, you're going to be immovable and you're going to stand true? Say a word to those folks and challenge them to do it.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: I would say a word because there are so many temptations. The pressure, like Potiphar's wife, just kept coming after him, trying to break down his resistance. He still resisted. The enemy's going to keep coming after you. You have to resist that temptation and you can't fall for it because the onslaught is so heavy.

It's everywhere you go. There is going to be temptation on billboards, on your phone, and on TV. It's just splashed in front of you. The temptation is there to fall for the pornography or fall for the person wanting you to sleep with them and have sex with them.

You might say, "Why should I resist?" God sets up a rulebook. The Bible tells us how to live and it's not just a set of rules to make your life miserable or because He told you to. God's not like that. It's for your good. He knows what works. He knows what's going to be best for your body. He knows what's best for your mind and what's going to prosper you in life.

As you grow in your relationship with the Lord, you can't help but want to follow Him like Joseph and make the decision now. That was the decision I made. I didn't even kiss my husband until we got engaged. Just make the decision to follow the Lord with all of your heart and that you wouldn't do anything against what He's asked you to do according to His Word.

Save sex for marriage and cover your eyes. Don't watch anything. Don't even put a movie on that you know is going to have something in it that you shouldn't watch because the temptation will get there and feed inside of you and you've got to let it go. It is worth it. God's ways are perfect and His ways prosper us and bless us. He has so much in store for you, but the enemy wants to wrap himself around you so that he can bring you down. He's there to kill, steal, and destroy you. He's using messing up sex that God designed to destroy your life. It looks like it's going to be great, but it's going to destroy your life, so make the decision.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Anne, God had a plan for Joseph's life. So far, it's a lousy plan. Everything is going wrong for the poor guy. Now he's in charge of Potiphar's house, everything except his wife, and the wife goes after him. Tell the story and then what Joseph told her. He said, "How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" What did she do and what were the consequences?

Anne Graham Lotz: She kept after him, of course, and then she seized him and accused him basically of rape, of attacking her. But temptation gets worse the more you resist it. I use a silly little illustration. I love birthday cake, and I just had my birthday and had a piece of birthday cake on the counter.

I know I can't eat it because it's just too many calories, but I don't destroy it. I leave it on the counter. I pass it by the next day. It's still sitting there. I'm so proud of myself that I haven't eaten it. I leave it on the counter and the next day it's still there. By about the third or the fourth day, I think, "I've resisted so many times, now I deserve it," and I eat the whole thing.

Then I feel sick because it's just too much. I think we resist and resist, but when it keeps coming at you, your resistance breaks down and you give in. I should have thrown the cake away. I should have thrown the cake away so it wouldn't sit there.

When you're tempted, if there's a person that's tempting you, if there's a situation that's tempting you, if it's something on your computer, shut down your computer. Don't go on that website. Don't meet with that person. Don't go to that restaurant. Don't look in that magazine. You just cut it out before it gets to that point.

The more you're tempted, the more you're going to feel like you deserve to give in. It's a disaster. As Rachel-Ruth said, the devil never wants your good. He's wanting to bring you down. If you sleep around, you'll never experience sex the way God designed it.

Sex was God's idea. He's the one that came up with that first, so He knows how it works and how it's best experienced and how it's most enjoyable. He says it's between a man and a woman in a marriage for life and you have the security and the trust in each other. To experience it like an animal does is a lot lower level than what God intended.

If there's somebody watching and you have not been true—you have committed adultery or fornication, you've stepped outside of marriage, you've slept before marriage—you can come now and ask God to cleanse you and make you pure. He can do that. He can just redeem that.

Ask Him to wash you clean and take that guilt away and make you fresh and new on the inside. Then you choose to put a guard over your eyes. You're not going to give into it. Jesus was tempted in all ways like we are, but He never gave into it. He understands the temptation, but He never sinned. His Spirit within you can strengthen you against that temptation if you surrender to Him.

Dr. John Ankerberg: What happened when he turned her down and she grabbed his cloak, and then she went into theatrics with the staff and with her husband? What happened to this guy that actually played by the rules and obeyed God?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: He flees, he runs, and she holds on to his cloak. He just left his cloak behind and he runs out. She's just so angry and she leaves the cloak right next to her. She's probably laying on the ground screaming so all the servants come running.

All those servants knew that Joseph would never have done that. She was saying he had raped her, and they knew that. She just kept laying there holding on to the cloak until her husband came home. She makes up this story about Joseph.

I'm guessing he probably knew his wife and knew how wonderful Joseph was, but just angry at the whole situation, he throws Joseph into Pharaoh's prison. Joseph, who did everything right, in a sense got the rug pulled out from under him. He gets thrown into prison, which was worse than where he would have been in Potiphar's house. Now he's in a dark prison cell. It was described as a dungeon. The Bible does say he was in shackles.

What a terrible thing. You think you're doing everything right. You resisted the temptation and then your life goes from bad to worse. Joseph's did, but he still didn't get bitter. He still didn't get angry. He chose to follow the Lord now in worse circumstances in prison.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Potiphar got ticked and threw him into the dungeon, Pharaoh's dungeon. This was worse than the prison. Joseph, all the time, had done what was right. He ends up in the prison. He had another reason for saying, "God, I've tried to follow You all this time. I'm out of here."

He didn't, and God knew that. He was testing him all the way along the line. Now the fact is that in that condition, if there are people watching and they're saying, "If I turn down this good-looking babe or I turn down this good-looking man or I give up this thing, I'm going to regret that."

No, you won't. You'll follow and God knows your attitude. God knew what Joseph had done and what happened. He started bringing him up again.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: While he was in prison, instead of just laying on the prison floor and saying "I give up," he went to work. He was the best prisoner he could have been, to the point that the prison warden was so impressed with Joseph. He started giving Joseph more and more jobs to the point that Joseph was running things in the prison. The warden could just sit back, just like Potiphar was sitting back. God's favor still was on Joseph and God blessed him even in prison and used him.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Just as Joseph had a surprise from being a young man with everything and all of a sudden the floor fell out from underneath him, life changed in a moment. Then he's got all of these years where he's got these bad things that are happening to him when he's doing the right thing. He still obeyed God.

God had a plan for him. Just as fast as the world can turn upside down on you, God can turn it the way He wants it to. Before we get to that, which we're going to do next week, God is with us while we are waiting. I want you to talk to kids and adults, college-age people that go to church and they've already fallen.

We need a prayer of forgiveness, and we're going to be talking about reconciliation here in a little bit. Right now, we need people to say, "God, I was wrong, and I'm sorry, and it stops now." You repent. If you haven't, you say, "Stop the temptation and I'm saying no to it." Pray a prayer that they can pray and they can ask God and really mean it. We've got a tough society in our country, so it's a prayer that really has a lot of meaning.

Anne Graham Lotz: In Corinthians, it says that there's no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, that God will give you a way of escape that you can bear it. God's not going to give you more temptation than you can handle, but you have to choose to resist it and take that way of escape. It may be a friend, it may be this conversation. Let me pray for you for a moment.

Dear God, we come and thank You that You love sinners. You know us, You understand us. You saw us when we were sinning and thinking nobody else knew, but You knew and You know. Lord God, we just bring that to You right now and confess by name what it is that we've done.

I'm just going to leave that blank and let those who are listening just fill in the blank. I confess to You my... and then you fill in the blank. Thank You, dear God, for the blood of Jesus that's powerful even in this day and time to cleanse me of all my sin.

I'm asking You now to wash me clean, make me white as snow in Your eyes. I accept Your forgiveness and I choose to turn away from my sin. If I've become addicted to pornography, if I've become addicted to overeating or not eating enough, if I've become addicted to too much exercise or not any exercise, if I've become addicted to just nursing my grievances and my misery and the memories that haunt me, Lord, I just turn away from that and ask that Your Holy Spirit would help me to close the door on all of that.

From this moment forward, I choose to live in a fresh way. I choose to walk in the newness of life. You've created me, Lord, You've given me a new creation on the inside and I want to live in that new person that You've created me to be. I give You my life and ask that You would help yourself, wash me clean, Lord, use me for Your glory. Set me free from this temptation.

Give me strength to resist, and even if I don't feel strong, I choose to say no and I turn away from it. Then use me, if it would be Your will, to help others who need somebody to come alongside and say if He could do it for me, He could do it for them. Lord, we look at Joseph. If You could do it for Joseph, You could do it for us. We thank You for the strength, for the blessing, for coming alongside, for not leaving us in Potiphar's house, not leaving us in prison. You are there with us when things go from bad to worse. You are with us, and so we give You praise and thanks, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Joseph goes from Potiphar's house and he's thrown into the dungeon of Pharaoh, a really smelly, bad place. He could have given up on God there; he didn't. He served God, and it was for years. He was waiting and nothing seemed to be happening.

Next week, maybe some of you have been serving the Lord and all of a sudden it stopped and you're waiting and waiting for something to happen and it hasn't happened. Hang in there because God's got a plan and we're going to talk about how God used the waiting period of Joseph next week. You won't want to miss it.

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