Monday, February 11, 2019

Better to Rot in Prison!

Sometimes it costs very dearly to be true to God.  Joseph lay now in a dungeon. But his loss through doing right, was nothing in comparison with what he would have lost had he done the wickedness to which he was tempted. His prison gloom, deep as it was, was as noonday, compared with what would have been the darkness of his soul under the blight of evil, and the bitterness of remorse. The chains that hung upon him in his dungeon, were but like feathers in comparison with the heavy chains which would have bound his soul, had he yielded to the temptation. Though in a prison, his feet hurt by the fetters, he was a free man because his conscience was free and his heart was pure!


No fear of consequences should ever drive us to do a wrong thing.  It is better to suffer any loss, any cost, any sacrifice than be eaten up by remorse!  Better be hurled down from a high place for doing right than win worldly honor by doing wrong.  Better lose our right hand than lose our purity of soul.  Better to rot in prison than to sin against God!


It was the prayer of a young queen, which she wrote with a diamond point on her castle window, "Keep me pure, make others great." That is the lesson of Joseph's victory over temptation: dishonor, loss, dungeon, death--anything before sin!


[J. R. Miller]

✞ ✞ 




Genesis 39:9 … There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?



Genesis 39:19-20 … And it came to pass, when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spake unto him, saying, After this manner did thy servant to me; that his wrath was kindled.  And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.



1 Corinthians 8:12 … But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.