God Shall Stand By Thee

When Joseph was at Potiphar’s house, we read that the wife of Potiphar “spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her” (Genesis 39:10).  This wasn’t a one-time request, but rather she was putting constant pressure on Joseph to commit a great sin.  A lesser man than Joseph might have reasoned that his God had already forsaken him by letting him be nearly killed and sold into Egypt, so what allegiance did he owe to God’s commandments?  Or he may have rationalized that he wasn’t with his own people anymore, so why did he need to keep the Hebrew commandments that his fathers had passed down to him?  But Joseph showed that he was fully devoted to living the law of chastity he knew that God wanted him to keep.  His concern was not just for ramifications with Potiphar but with how God would view him: “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9)  Joseph knew that whether he was at home or abroad, whether with his people or among strangers, God still knew him and knew his actions.  There is no hiding from God, and he trusted that the Lord would bless his obedience, whatever the outcome. 

               Joseph’s decision to finally run must have been actually a difficult one.  Where would he go?  He was a servant in a strange land with no family, and surely he knew that if he ran away from her in such a dramatic way he would be wrongfully accused, causing all of the progress he’d made to rise up in his station at Potiphar’s house to be wasted.  But eventually he had to make the choice between keeping God’s commandments and keeping his earthly position, and to his great credit he chose to be faithful to the Lord, trusting that his faithfulness would be one day rewarded.  I wonder what kind of thoughts he had on his first night in prison.  Once again he was a prisoner with nothing, despite his goodness and faithfulness.  Perhaps he wondered something along the lines of Hugh B. Brown in his story of the currant bush.  When Elder Brown was rejected for an appointment he had been working towards in the military for 10 years he said to heaven: “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?”  Joseph could have said those same words to the Lord.  Perhaps in the still of the night on that prison floor the Lord came to Joseph as well with a message like the once Elder Brown received, remembering the currant bush he had cut down in his garden, “I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”  The Lord did not need Joseph in Potiphar’s house—He needed him as a ruler next to pharaoh in Egypt to save the land and to save his own family.  Joseph likely could not have seen how God was working in powerful ways to shape his life at that time, but looking back at the end of his life how grateful he must have been that the Lord found a way to get him out of Potiphar’s house.  The Lord knew exactly what He wanted Joseph to be, and to get there he had to be cut down for a time.  What surely felt like a great trial to be endured at the time turned out to be a marvelous blessing for thousands when Joseph was able to be in position to save the people from famine.   

My favorite words from the story are these when Joseph was put into prison, “The Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy… the Lord was with him, and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper” (Genesis 39:21, 23).  Everything was okay for Joseph because the Lord was with him.  It didn’t matter where he was or what his external circumstances were because God was with him internally.  His faith in Jesus Christ was not “dependent on outcomes” (see here)—he trusted in the Lord no matter where he was.  Whatever trials we have to pass through, if we can live with the faithfulness of Joseph, whatever the outcome, like Joseph of old and Joseph of our dispensation, “God shall stand by thee forever and ever” (D&C 122:4).