Hurting Others

(Lessons from Potiphar's Wife)

Sin hurts others. What Potiphar's wife did hurt Joseph. He suffered because of her sin.

That's the way life is. Our actions don't just affect us. It can affect everyone we know.

Sin never cares about the other person.

Sin is like a bullet that kills or injures, a knife that stabs and a fire that burns. It hurts!

I'm sure none of us would deliberately hurt anyone with these things, yet we hurt people far more with our mouth and with our actions.

Our words can hurt—criticizing, lying, gossiping, badmouthing etc.

Our actions can hurt—the silent treatment, snobbing, ignoring, disrespect etc.

 

I read a quote a while back which went something like this.

Christians would never purposely run someone down with their car, and yet they run people down with their mouths.

In the book of Proverbs, this verse is repeated twice.

The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. (Proverbs 18:8 and 26:22)

Another Proverbs says A man that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow. (Pro 25:18)

I never understood what this verse meant until I read it paraphrased like this “Telling lies about someone is as harmful as hitting him with an axe, or wounding him with a sword, or shooting him with a sharp arrow.” Wow! That's pretty serious.

As teenagers and adults, we usually care about people's bodies—we wouldn't hurt them physically—yet we often don't care about their feelings or their reputation.

If you disobey and disrespect your parents, you hurt them deeply. Teenagers who go off their own way have no idea how their sin hurts everyone they know—parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, nieces, nephews, friends, people at church, and the list goes on.

Do you realize how much your words, actions, decisions and attitudes affect others?