There is a battle going on over your soul.  And there is a battle raging over the soul of this church.  From the very beginning, the story of the relationship between God and man goes like this:  God has created us to enjoy the community of love that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be completely loved and valued and live a life in relationship to Him and each other.  But at the same time, we show an incredible ability to doubt God’s goodness and distrust the things that he tells us are good for us.  And this is largely due to the fact that there is an enemy, a tempter, who hates God and those who love Him and will do anything to destroy them.  As Peter wrote in 1 Peter 5:8 -  Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  The enemy will do anything he can to destroy you, to destroy God’s church, and to render us all ineffective.  Even though God is all-knowing and good, we are surrounded by temptations to doubt Him.

God has a plan for you that Jesus calls “life to the full.”  My vision for your life and for our church is one where we are focused on one thing, and that is knowing God and following Him.  But there are things waiting to tempt you, to try to convince you that there is something else better.  We’re in the second week of looking at the life of Joseph, and Joseph’s experience today is all about temptation – those things that try to lure us away from the life that God has for us and bring us death.  Joseph has been sold into slavery by his brothers, and now we pick up the story in chapter 39.  I said last week that the Bible is not primarily about Biblical heroes but about God’s grace transforming the character of people who don’t deserve it and using them to transform the world.  But sometimes they do act in ways that are worthy of emulation, and this is one of those occasions.  There are three temptations we see in this passage that may strike each of you in different ways – the power temptation, the sex temptation, and the despair temptation.