Well good evening everyone and welcome to my forty eighth episode. Tonight, I present you with a sermon that I gave live at my church. The subject is Genesis chapter forty. Please enjoy.
Okay, so we are in part three of our series on the life of Joseph. Joseph’s life is a roller coaster of ups and downs and his life has many lessons to teach us. For those of you who were not here for parts one and two of this series – I want to give you a quick recap. Joseph is the youngest of all his brothers and he is the favorite of their father, Jacob, who God named Israel. Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colors and Joseph wears it proudly. Joseph is given dreams of his brothers bowing down to him. He tells his brothers about the dreams and they become enraged at his arrogance. Joseph’s brothers hatch a plan to kill him and throw him into a pit. Reuben stands up against the plan and so they do not kill him. Judah suggests that they sell Joseph to a band of Ishmaelite traders who are passing by. So that’s what they do. The traders take Joseph to Egypt, where he is purchased by Potiphar (who is an officer of Pharaoh). Joseph becomes quite successful by working in Potiphar’s home. Then, Potiphar’s wife begins making sexual advances on him. When Joseph refuses her, she accuses Joseph of trying to sleep with her. Potiphar hears about this and puts Joseph into prison. That is where we find him in chapter forty. So if you have your Bible’s I would invite you to turn to Genesis chapter forty. Let us begin with verse one:
Joseph Interprets Two Dreams
40 Some time later, Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer and chief baker offended their royal master. 2 Pharaoh became angry with these two officials, 3 and he put them in the prison where Joseph was, in the palace of the captain of the guard. 4 They remained in prison for quite some time, and the captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph, who looked after them.
I want you to notice the titles of these two men whom Pharaoh has put in prison. His chief cup bearer and his chief baker. These were important men to Pharaoh. These were men who he trusted. Holding the office of cup bearer meant you were the last person to touch the cup before Pharaoh drank from it. Often, the cup bearer would have to sample drinks given to Pharaoh in case they were poisoned. In a similar way, Pharaoh’s baker was in charge of preparing food for him. When you’re the leader of a powerful nation – especially an autocratic leader like Pharaoh – you are under constant threat of assassination. So anyone who came in close contact with a leader like Pharaoh must have been trusted. That means the cup bearer and the chief baker probably did something very serious for Pharaoh to imprison them.
I want us to take a moment to appreciate Joseph’s situation. He grows up as the favorite child among his brothers – so he likely has a pretty nice existence. Then his own brothers, the people he trusts, betray him by selling him off to Egypt. But Joseph rebounds from this betrayal and becomes successful under Potiphar. Then, he’s wrongfully accused of a crime and has to endure betrayal all over again. There are many people who wouldn’t even survive the first round of this. There are many people who would have thrown up their hands and accused God of being unfair to them. But not Joseph. When Joseph arrives at prison he knows that God is still with him and he gets to work by taking up responsibility. The keeper of the prison notices Joseph’s attitude and puts him in charge of many tasks and all of the other prisoners. That puts Joseph into the perfect position to be the one who gets to attend to the cup bearer and the baker when they are brought in. You can imagine this going the other way. You can imagine Joseph arriving to prison with a chip on his shoulder for all of the times he’s been wronged and using those tragedies as a crutch to justify a bad attitude. If Joseph was a terrible prisoner, do you think the prison keeper would have allowed him to attend Pharaoh’s officers? I think not. Having a bad attitude might have condemned Joseph to a lifetime in an Egyptian prison. But God had plans for him. Let’s pick up in verse five:
5 While they were in prison, Pharaoh’s cup-bearer and baker each had a dream one night, and each dream had its own meaning. 6 When Joseph saw them the next morning, he noticed that they both looked upset.7 “Why do you look so worried today?” he asked them.
8 And they replied, “We both had dreams last night, but no one can tell us what they mean.”
“Interpreting dreams is God’s business,” Joseph replied. “Go ahead and tell me your dreams.”
When was the last time you saw someone who you knew was troubled or having a hard time? Did you sit down and talk with them or did you decide that you’d rather not deal with them right now? Joseph’s example here shows us that God can bring us something we desperately need for ourselves in the package of someone who looks distressed and helpless. You know, it’s true that misery and suffering have a way of diminishing our capability to sympathize with others. It’s like when you stub your toe. For a few seconds, the only thing that matters in the universe is the pain that you feel in your toe. Emotional and psychological pain can have this effect as well. It is possible for a person to be in so much pain and in so much grief that they are incapable of acknowledging the pain of others. Joseph had real reasons to feel this way. If Joseph had not placed his faith in God then he likely would have fallen into this pit. And when he walked into the prison and saw that the cup bearer and the baker were distressed – he would have ignored them instead of asking them what was wrong. And this, again, would have condemned Joseph to a lifetime in prison because he would have missed this ticket to freedom.
I also want you to notice the way that Joseph presents his ability to interpret dreams. He gives God the credit. He says interpreting dreams is God’s business, not Joseph’s business. Imagine being able to do what Joseph could do. Imagine being given an amazing gift from God and being the only one around who could do it. How easy would it be to use that for your own advantage? How easy would it be to convince yourself that because of your gift, you are more valuable than other human beings? This is a fantastic demonstration of humility on the part of Joseph. Approaching the cup bearer and the baker with this humility allows them to trust Joseph enough to open up to him about their dreams. And that’s where we find ourselves in verse nine:
9 So the chief cup-bearer told Joseph his dream first. “In my dream,” he said, “I saw a grapevine in front of me. 10 The vine had three branches that began to bud and blossom, and soon it produced clusters of ripe grapes. 11 I was holding Pharaoh’s wine cup in my hand, so I took a cluster of grapes and squeezed the juice into the cup. Then I placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.”
12 “This is what the dream means,” Joseph said. “The three branches represent three days. 13 Within three days Pharaoh will lift you up and restore you to your position as his chief cup-bearer. 14 And please remember me and do me a favor when things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh, so he might let me out of this place. 15 For I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of the Hebrews, and now I’m here in prison, but I did nothing to deserve it.”
Joseph has just given wonderful news to the cup bearer. He’s going to be able to go home and be restored to his position at Pharaoh’s side. I think it’s interesting that Joseph decided to tell the cup bearer about the good news before submitting his request to mention something to Pharaoh. It could have gone the other way: Joseph knew the message of the dream was a good one as soon as the cup bearer finished telling it. Joseph could have dangled that good news over the cup bearer’s head and made him promise to do the favor before letting him in on the interpretation. When was the last time you had something that you knew someone else really wanted? Did you give it to them and trust God that you would be rewarded in the future? Or did you hedge your bet and try to get something out of the person before giving them the gift? Joseph spoke freely to the cup bearer, then he told the cup bearer the truth about why he was in prison and how Pharaoh might help him. Now, it’s easy to be the messenger when the message is good – but what about when you have bad news? Let’s pick up in verse sixteen:
16 When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given the first dream such a positive interpretation, he said to Joseph, “I had a dream, too. In my dream there were three baskets of white pastries stacked on my head.17 The top basket contained all kinds of pastries for Pharaoh, but the birds came and ate them from the basket on my head.”
18 “This is what the dream means,” Joseph told him. “The three baskets also represent three days. 19 Three days from now Pharaoh will lift you up and impale your body on a pole. Then birds will come and peck away at your flesh.”
Imagine being the baker. You just saw Joseph give the cup bearer the best news of his life. Now you’re excited to know what your own dream means. Imagine being Joseph. Having this guy look at you with hope and excitement in his eyes. Then he tells you the dream and you know that you have to crush that hope and extinguish that light. You might think that sounds harsh. You might think that maybe the baker deserved his fate. But I can tell you that sometimes this world just isn’t fair. Sometimes an officer has to tell a wife that she’s a widow and her husband is not coming home. Sometimes a person is deeply in love with another who doesn’t love them back. Hopes, dreams, and happiness are crushed out of the eyes of people every day. Before I finish this sentence someone, somewhere will be faced with the worst news of their life. This is what it means to live in a fallen world. This is what it means to live in a cursed creation. But if we put our faith in Jesus now, then we can be sure that he will be here for us and that he will show us a day when we can leave the pain behind.
Joseph is honest with the baker. He gives the baker this news in a straightforward manner. I think that is the best way to give someone bad news. Don’t try to make it sound like it’s not as bad as it is. Don’t rob them of their grief by telling them that their pain in not valid in light of the gospel. These things take time, and I believe there is a reason God gives us all this time to be in this life. If you are faced with the moment where you have to be the one who crushes a person with bad news, then tell them the truth. If they don’t know Christ, offer them the love Christ has awakened inside of you. Then pray. Pray that he might do a work in their life and give them the courage to face what’s in front of them. Verse twenty:
20 Pharaoh’s birthday came three days later, and he prepared a banquet for all his officials and staff. He summoned[a] his chief cup-bearer and chief baker to join the other officials. 21 He then restored the chief cup-bearer to his former position, so he could again hand Pharaoh his cup.22 But Pharaoh impaled the chief baker, just as Joseph had predicted when he interpreted his dream. 23 Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer, however, forgot all about Joseph, never giving him another thought.
So despite Joseph’s good faith and good actions toward the cup bearer, he has been dealt yet another unfair blow. To keep track: he’s been sold by his brothers; he’s been wrongfully convicted; and now he’s been forgotten by the one person who could have helped him get released from prison. And as we’ll see in the next installment of this series, it would be two full years before Joseph would get another chance at freedom. I can only imagine what those two years were like for him. It’s a terrible thing to be ignored and to be forgotten. Did you know it’s true of human beings that they would rather be hated than ignored? Especially children. One of the worst things that a child can endure is the sense that they are unwanted or unnoticed. Adults can’t handle this treatment very well either. One reason is obvious: it’s because we all have a need to feel loved.
Another reason is a little more elusive: it’s because you actually use the feedback that you get from other people to maintain your sanity. The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of. You are far too complicated to be fully understood by yourself. From early childhood and throughout adulthood you use the response of the people around you to gauge whether or not you are thinking and behaving properly. This is part of the reason why it is so easy for people to gather into groups or mobs and do absolutely horrendous things without any sense that they are walking out of step with normalcy. If everyone around you is doing it, and if your norms are not grounded in absolute truth, the you will follow the crowd. Satan knows this and he uses it. So, being in a group without being moored to any first principles is bad. But, this need for fellowship is good and is a godly thing. When you pair this fellowship with a group of individuals who are well versed in biblical principles, then you have a recipe for success. And as I said, this reflection we get from other people during fellowship shores up our defenses against insanity. Being in solitary confinement or being forgotten is very hard on a person’s mind. Joseph, by the strength of his faith in God, endured two full years of being forgotten.
So the next question is: why did the cup bearer forget about Joseph? You’ve all experienced a time where you did a really good thing for a person and when an opportunity came for them to pay it back they acted like you didn’t exist. You’ve all experienced feeling valued one moment and tossed aside the next. This happens because most people, most of the time, are thinking exclusively about themselves. The proof of this fact is that the Bible is just replete with admonitions and instructions against this all-too-human behavior.
Philippians 2:3-4: Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
2 Timothy 3:2-4: For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
1 John 3:17: But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
1 Corinthians 10:24: Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor
Galatians 6:2: Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
I could go on and on because this theme runs the whole way through the Scriptures. The facts on the ground are that most people are way too caught up in themselves to be thinking about you. This is bad when you are in a situation like Joseph is – being forgotten and unloved by people who are supposed to be there for you. But interestingly enough there is actually an upside to this truth of human behavior. I don’t know how many of you have social anxiety or how many of you spend a lot of time thinking about how others perceive you. It turns out that if you really grasp the reality of how little time they spend thinking about you – then much of this anxiety will just melt away. This concept is so true that you can literally stand up here on a stage and put your foot directly into your mouth and people will not talk or think about it for more than a few days. God forgives and forgets your mistakes because he loves you. Human beings forgive and forget your mistakes because they simply don’t bother to remember.
So that’s Genesis chapter forty and that makes up our third installment in the series on the life of Joseph. The most important lessons I want you to take from this sermon are these:
- Whether or not God gets you out of a situation is going to depend on your attitude. If you walk through life with the wrong mindset you could easily miss the opportunity that God keeps trying to give you. You can help yourself to maintain a positive attitude in the midst of being wronged by remembering that God is with you and that he loves you. You must remember that adopting this positive attitude in the midst of terrible circumstances is purely an act of faith. It’s not going to feel like it makes sense until you come through the suffering and are able to look back.
- You may discover that you have a gift like Joseph’s gift of interpreting dreams. You might be the only one in the area that can do something truly amazing. If this happens for you, it is absolutely crucial that you remember to give God the credit. If you consider yourself as the source of your own greatness, you will fundamentally damage your psychology and render yourself incapable of viewing reality properly. Anyone who has known someone with a narcissistic personality construct – someone who’s high on themselves all of the time – knows how damaging this can be. Pride always comes before a fall.
- There may come day when you have to be the one who gives a person the worst news of their life. This will be hard. This will be excruciatingly hard. But you must have the courage to tell them the truth plainly. You must have the courage to love them the way that Christ loves you. And you must have the courage to intercede for them in prayer. Most importantly, you must have the courage to hold on to your faith while staring directly into the face of the brutality of life.
- You should embrace your desire for fellowship. You need other people in order to maintain a firm grip on reality. If you’re feeling forgotten, I know that you are in a terrible place. I know how tempting it is to think that the world is wrong for moving on without you. I urge you to dispel with these thoughts – get rid of them. These thoughts are given to you by the evil one. Instead, you should know that you are always on God’s mind and that he will never forget you. He has people that he wants to bring into your life but he can only do that if you let him. If you spend more than a few minutes a day stressed out over what other people are thinking about you, I would urge you to let go of those fears. Those fears are also given to you by the evil one. It is one of humanity’s greatest downfalls that we spend most of our time concerned about ourselves. But out of one of our greatest weaknesses God has given us a great strength: that is our ability to forgive and forget the mistakes and sins of others. Our Lord forgives us of our sins because he loves us. In the same way, we must forgive our brothers and sisters of their sins because we love them.
Please pray with me. Father, we can’t thank you enough for another day on this earth. Another day full of opportunities to shine your light in the dark places. Another day for you to restore wholeness and love into the hearts of men and women through our work. We ask that you continue to grant us these opportunities and that you continue to fill our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose as we carry them out. Father, gives us the strength and the wisdom to maintain a positive attitude and a steadfast faith during the moments when things look bad. Give us the wisdom to redirect the praise and give the credit to you when things look good. Father, be with us in the moments when we have to break bad news to those we love – and give us the words that we might do so in a way that brings glory to your name. Last of all, Father, we know that we are not alone – but sometimes it feels like we are. I would ask that you reveal yourself to us in these moments and that you would open our hearts so that we might receive you. Father, guide our steps in the coming days and direct our paths so that we may make it home to you. We pray it now in Jesus’ name, amen.
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