The Servant Who Wouldn't Bend

The camels swayed all the way down to Egypt, and in a crowded market the traders sold Joseph again. This time he was bought by a man named Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard, in charge of the soldiers who kept the king safe.

Joseph was seventeen, a long way from his father, in a country where no one spoke his language. But the LORD was with Joseph.

It showed. Joseph hauled water, counted grain sacks, and ran errands, and everything he did turned out well. Potiphar watched him. "The LORD is with this young Hebrew," he said. "Whatever he touches goes right." So he put Joseph in charge of the house, then the fields, then everything he owned, and God blessed Potiphar's whole household because Joseph was in it.

(The Bible says Potiphar stopped thinking about anything except what was for dinner. That is a man with a very good servant.)

Joseph grew up tall and handsome, and Potiphar's wife noticed. She began asking Joseph to be with her the way only her husband should. Being faithful means keeping your promise to be one person's husband or wife and no one else's. Potiphar's wife wanted to break her promise, and she wanted Joseph to help her do it.

Joseph shook his head. "My master trusts me with everything in this house," he said. "Everything except you, because you are his wife. How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?"

She asked again the next day. And the next. Day after day Joseph said no. He would not bend, not even a little, and he kept out of her way.

Then one afternoon every other servant was outside. Joseph came in to do his work, and she grabbed him by his cloak. "Be with me!"

Joseph pulled loose and ran. Out the door, across the courtyard, into the hot sunshine he ran, and the cloak stayed behind in her fist.

She stood there holding it. Then she screamed for the servants. "Look! That Hebrew slave came in to attack me! When I shouted, he ran off and left this!"

(This was the second time someone had held up Joseph's clothes to tell a lie about him. The first time it was his brothers, with his coat dipped in goat's blood.)

When Potiphar came home, she showed him the cloak. "Your servant did this!"

Potiphar's face burned red. He did not ask Joseph a single question. He had him thrown into the king's prison, and the guards put chains on his feet.

But the LORD was with Joseph there too. He was kind to Joseph and made the jailer like him. Soon the jailer put Joseph in charge of every prisoner and stopped checking his work at all. (Joseph kept getting promoted. He just kept getting promoted in worse places.)

Joseph had kept his master's trust. But keeping it did not open the prison door, and it did not make the lie untrue. And Joseph said no to one wrong thing, in one house. Not one of God's people, not even Joseph, could say no to every wrong thing, every day, for a whole life.

The years rolled on, and God's people kept bending, and kept waiting for a servant who never would.

The one they waited for was tested too. In the desert the devil told him to turn stones into bread, to jump from the top of the Temple, and to bow down for all the kingdoms of the world, and he said no every time. People told lies about him to a ruler, and like Joseph he was punished for wrongs he never did. He was nailed to a cross, with no wrong of his own to pay for, so that people who bend could be forgiven and brought home to God.

His name was Jesus, and he never bent, not once.