Have you ever done the right thing and somehow ended up paying for it?
You told the truth and got blamed for the problem. You kept your word, and someone else took advantage of you. You refused to compromise, and you suffered. You walked away from something you knew was wrong, and instead of feeling rewarded for your integrity, you found yourself dealing with consequences you didn’t deserve.
We like to believe that doing the right thing comes with a certain amount of protection. We believe if we’re honest, people will respect you. If we’re faithful, the Lord will bless us. If we make wise choices, the Father will bless us.
Those principles are true. Character matters. Wisdom matters. Obedience matters. Standing strong matters.
But a dangerous assumption hides underneath it all: If I do what is right, nothing bad should happen to me.
We’re not the first. In the Bible, Joseph is about to discover that assumption is false. Joseph has already made the hard choice. Potiphar’s wife repeatedly tried to seduce him, and Joseph refused. He knew what she was asking him to do was wrong. He understood that sleeping with her would betray Potiphar’s trust and, more importantly, would sin against God. He got out of there! And fast!
He did exactly what he was supposed to do, and that’s when everything went wrong.
Let’s read about it in Genesis 39:13-20a.
13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, 14 she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. 15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
Genesis 39;13-20a, New International Version
16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. 17 Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. 18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”
19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. 20a Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
Potiphar’s wife grabbed Joseph’s cloak as he escaped. When she realized he had rejected her, she decided to turn the evidence against him. She called the household servants and accused Joseph of trying to assault her. Then, when Potiphar came home, she repeated the story.
And she used the very thing that testified that Joseph had fled from temptation: his cloak.
That’s brutal.
Joseph did the right thing. And the right thing made his life worse.
Genesis 39:19–20 tells us that when Potiphar heard this, he was infuriated. And then he put Joseph in prison.
Joseph didn’t get a promotion, apology, or justice. He got prison.
And here’s where Joseph’s story confronts something in us: Doing the right thing doesn’t guarantee everything will go right.
Sometimes obedience costs us. Sometimes you can do everything right and still find yourself sitting in a prison you never deserved.
That doesn’t mean obedience was a mistake. It means obedience was never a bargain.
We don’t obey the Lord because He has promised that doing so will make our lives easier.
We obey Him because the Lord is worthy of our faithfulness, no matter what obedience costs us.
Joseph couldn’t control what Potiphar’s wife said, what Potiphar believed, or what Potiphar did in response. But Joseph controlled one thing: whether he would remain faithful to God when faithfulness stopped paying off.
That’s the test.
Will I still do what is right when doing what is right makes my life harder?
Joseph’s answer was yes. And eventually, we’ll discover that God was not absent from Joseph’s prison. In fact, Genesis 39:21 (next week for our study) will immediately tell us, “But the LORD was with Joseph.”
That’s the part we can’t miss.
Do the right thing even when it doesn’t seem to be working. Because our goal isn’t to make sure that doing right makes our lives go right.
Our goal is to remain faithful to the Lord, no matter where doing right takes us.
Sometimes the greatest evidence of faith isn’t that the Lord kept us out of prison. It’s that we remained faithful when we found ourselves there.
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