Today we work through chapter 40, see how much Joseph has changed since his time in his father's house, and mark how God uses circumstances to grow us.
Springfield Baptist Church
September 29th 2024 - Pastor James Tyler - Genesis 40 - "No Longer a Child"
Okay, so starting at verse 20 of Genesis 39, it says, "Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison, but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison, and the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, Joseph was the one who did it. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge, because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it seed." What we have seen so far is that Joseph has had a rough decade. When we're first introduced to him, my contention is that the Scriptures present Joseph as a tatty-tattyl male and daddy's favorite. If you were the sibling of a tatty-tale or daddy's favorite, then you already know how his brothers felt about him. Neither of those characteristics, I just realized I'm doing the Donald Trump. I'm sorry. I was playing the accordion. Neither of those characteristics make for strong fraternal relationship. If you're sibling ever sided against you with your parents, then you've experienced at least the first fruits of the kinds of feelings that Joseph's brothers had. To top that off, Joseph has a dream which he loosely interprets to mean that he's going to reign over his brothers at some point. Rather than keep the dream and his presumptive interpretation to himself, he goes and shares it with his brothers as if that's going to help. They scoff and mock him, which is understandable. I'm not saying it's right, it's just understandable. Then he has a second dream, which he interprets to mean that he's going to rule over not only his brothers, but his entire family and proceeds to go ahead and share that with all of them as well, because evidently he learned nothing from the previous experience. This earns the 17-year-old Joseph a rebuke from his father, where Jacob says, "Really, Joseph, you're going to reign over your mother and I too?" The Bible does say Jacob kept the dream in mind, suggesting that even his dad might have wondered if it didn't have some veracity to it. So what started as, I guess you could call it general interpersonal insensitivity on Joseph's part, escalates to the point where his brothers throw him into a well, leave him for dead as far as most of them are concerned. They did that after Reuben, the oldest brother, pushed back on their original plan, which was just to murder him outright and make it look like a wild animal had done it, because Reuben had plans, "If I can get them to throw him into the well, I can go back and rescue him later, when they're either calmed down or not paying attention anymore." So they throw him into this well, and then for some reason Reuben's not there, and the brothers see this band of Midianite traitors, slavers approaching and think, "Well, it would be much better to make some money off of this deal than just murder Joseph by privation." So they sell him, they pull him out of the well, and they sell him into slavery. Joseph's dragged off to Egypt. Remember, this is a difficult 10 years for Joseph. He's dragged off to Egypt and sold into the service of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard. And here's the first time that the Bible tells us explicitly that the Lord was with Joseph. So Joseph quickly begins to climb the ranks of service, setting himself apart from the other slaves and the other employees by doing almost a miraculously good job, which the scriptures are clear, that's attributed to the presence and companionship and fellowship and help of God. Joseph gets elevated to leadership and ultimately runs Potiphar's entire estate. The scriptures say that Potiphar only worried about what he was going to eat. That was it. Everything else Joseph took care of. Unfortunately, Potiphar, as I don't want to generalize, but it seems like it's often the case with wealthy and powerful men. Potiphar is married to an empty woman, and Potiphar's wife makes it her full-time job to try to seduce Joseph to sin, and he keeps rejecting her. And eventually, when she can't take his rejection anymore, she just frames him for rape. So Potiphar is faced with a choice, I believe. He can either believe his wife, or he can assume that Joseph is innocent, and he chooses the empty woman in spite of what seems some doubt on his part about her claims. So Joseph is thrown into another pit, this time of prison. And once again, the Bible tells us that the Lord is with Joseph. So last week, I made the point that the Bible frequently shows us that having the fellowship and love and friendship and companionship of God is not anywhere guaranteed to be reflected in our circumstances. Two times in chapter 39, the scriptures say God was with Joseph. But then if you look at what's happening to Joseph and the experience of Joseph's day-to-day existence, you would not assume that the Lord was with Joseph, because we live in a culture that ascribes the companionship of God that these characteristics, everything's going great, everybody loves you, you just kind of prance through life, everything you touch turns to gold. And there are moments to be sure where, to some extent, that's the case for Joseph. He does succeed in Potiphar's house and end up kind of taking over. But look where he ends up. We have to be careful about this. Perhaps the reason we have to be told that God was with Joseph is precisely because left to ourselves, we would look at his circumstances in the end of 39 and assume that God is not with Joseph. It's not unusual for a Christian to find himself going from the frying pan into the fire. Let me say that again, because it doesn't go without saying in 2024. It is not unusual for the Christian to find him or herself moving from the frying pan into the fire. And if you choose to gauge the affection and, I would say, proximity of your heavenly Father on how troubled or untroubled your life is, you're never going to be accurate. The most stark example of this that I can think of, because I'm not very imaginative, is one many of you are already familiar with. But when I first started attending First Baptist Church of Papillion, the pastor there unbeknownst to me or my folks or my brother, was either at the time or quickly after we showed up, engaged in an adulterous relationship with the church secretary. And after that came to light, and as these things do, because God's not a God of confusion and chaos, after it came to light, somebody was talking to the pastor and asked the question that you would ask a pastor who does something like that. Like, what made you think it was okay to do what you were doing? How could you get up and preach the gospel on Sunday after doing that through the course of the week? And his response was, the church was growing. It looked like we had God's blessing, so it seemed like God wasn't all that upset about my sin. Now, we scoff, but the fact is, we do tend to try to gauge how pleased or not God is with us based on our circumstances. And when things are going, well, we're like, all right, God's for me. And when things are going poorly, what did I do wrong? So Joseph's in prison now, but God is still with him. So even in prison, he's a blessed man, and as we'll see to this difficult decade has had an impact on Joseph. So now, in Genesis 40, which should be, I don't know if I changed it or not, it should be on the screen. If I didn't, I might have to learn these kids how to do it. Oh, look at that. Sometime after this, so after he gets thrown in prison, the cup bearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord, the king of Egypt, and Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cup bearer and the chief baker. And he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody, pardon me. So the kitchen staff at Pharaoh's palace have gotten themselves into a little bit of a pickle. We aren't told the offense. We don't even know if they're both guilty of the same thing. Did they get caught together in some transgression? Are they just suspected of something? We don't know. We don't find out. But we are told they join Joseph as one's accused of misconduct. I would point out who it is that appoints Joseph to attend the baker and the cup bearer. So it says in verse four, the captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with him. Let me remind you, unless this is just a, you know, a common position that lots of people held, we already know the captain of the guard. And that's Potiphar, who's not necessarily in charge of the prison, but evidently has enough influence to say, hey, if you want this job done right, this is the guy that you want to have to do it. It's almost like Potiphar recognizes who can really be trusted here. No doubt in Pharaoh's prison, whether you're the cup bearer or the baker or some other high official, there's two kinds of enemies I would imagine that you can encounter. Those who wouldn't mind doing a Pharaoh a favor and thus taking you out. And those who wouldn't mind doing Pharaoh a disservice and thus taking you out. So it'd be like going to the state pen as a police officer. Like, now all of a sudden you're in custody. This is where Pharaoh's prisoners are kept. And now his baker and his cup bearer, too pretty close to the throne, guys, are in there. So Potiphar, I think, recognizing that these guys need to be protected and taken care of gives Joseph the task because he understands Joseph can be trusted to do it. I don't know. Just lens validity to my suggestion that Potiphar had his doubts about his own wife's credibility. And of course I'm going to spin it whichever way I see it, right? Verse five, one night they both dreamed the cup bearer and the baker of the king of Egypt who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in custody in his master's house. Why are your faces down cast today? And they said to him, "We have had dreams and there is no one to interpret them." And Joseph said to them, "Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me." No, I, you know, it's probably worth pointing out that there was a high value placed on dreams in those days, certainly in the developed world. So I think it would have been especially important. Like, we've all had troubling dreams, right? And you get up, you're like, man, that was weird. Maybe you talk about it with one other person throughout the day, but you don't sit and ponder. I don't generally sit and ponder. I wonder what that meant. It would have been far more common in this culture for these guys to be really bothered by not knowing what those dreams meant. And it would have been important to them to understand why they had had them. Odds are, if you're the cut bearer and the baker in Pharaoh's house, you're accustomed to having access to professional dream interpreters. There's probably always somebody at hand that could, you know, shine a little light on the dream that you just had. That was all a bunch of spooky voodoo. None of it, I think, was legitimate, but it was just part of their culture. So let's take note of the obvious change in Joseph since Genesis 37. In verse 6, if we could back up a little bit, when Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw they were troubled. So the boy who couldn't discern that his own brothers might not be the best audience for his self-aggrandizing revelations has become a man who can now discern when foreign prisoners are troubled in heart. Why do you suppose this transformation has happened? Listen to 1 Corinthians 13, 11, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." And we all go, yeah, of course, all of us who are at least in figure, not children anymore, understand that there was a process we went through where we cultivated the maturity and the wisdom and the understanding that we have today. And now, most of us are also engaged in some form or fashion in raising children to be not children anymore. And what has to happen in order for a child to not be a child anymore is, well, they have to slowly but surely over time stop thinking like a child and start thinking with something called accountability, personal responsibility, honesty, integrity. These things don't just, like, what's it good? Tarzan would not have just been a bit off-putting. If a dude were raised by gorillas, he would have no sense of how to behave in polite society. He wouldn't just be hot with long hair. That would not be the only outcome of being raised by gorillas. Children have to be trained. They are psychopaths. They have to be taught empathy. Yes, you have to train the psychopathy out of them and induce them towards empathy. It doesn't just happen magically. This whole idea of like, oh, what is it? I hate when I can't think of things. This is why I should write more things down in my notes. This whole idea that children are the result of the environment that they grew up in, that everything that's wrong with them can be attributed back to their upbringing has some validity to it in that, yes, enough of the evil was not trained out of them by the time they became adults. I would agree with that. They come out of the womb adorable and that's the only reason that they make it to six or seven years old. Because if they were hideous swamp monsters, why would you allow the way that they behave? Why would you invest any energy? They scream for no reason for years. When I was a child, I thought a certain way. I behaved a certain way and those things had to be trained out of me. God also puts into the father and the mother of a child an unyielding affection and profound love, which is why we cut off our own limbs and would give up our own organs to keep them alive and help them to function because we really do love them. We would spend anything to see to it that they become functional members of society. Joseph gets sold into slavery. Because it wasn't going to happen in Jacob's care. Jacob was busy giving him multicolored coats and telling his brothers how much better Joseph is than the rest of them. So this grace wasn't going to get cultivated in his heart, in his life, in Jacob's house. So his father in heaven saw to it that he goes through an experience whereby it is cultivated. So in John 15 1, Jesus says, "I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it might bear more fruit." So brothers and sisters who are walking with Jesus as best you can, I'm sure. Let me start with you. Why would life still hurt when you're walking with Jesus already as best you can? And my answer and the Bible's answer would be because you're not going to cultivate the necessary gifts and graces to be like Jesus except that you suffer, except that you learn obedience. The thing about the one who's dead, the branch that's dead, and there are dead branches at church, so you're going to see it at church. But I think mostly you'd see it out there in the world. Dead branches that get cut off don't give a rip one way or the other. They're always owed. They never owe. So everything, every slight inconvenience produces wrath and indignation from a dead branch. From a vine that's producing fruit, probably still a little too much wrath and indignation is being produced over life's inconveniences. I told Lisa yesterday, it was like I saw Jackie's text and I was like, "Oh man, that's terrible." They're cut off in, what's the, Asheville? Asheville, thank you, Bill. Listen, it sounds like I'm from Michigan. Asheville, Asheville, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Carolina. So at least I care, right? I paid attention, I know. They're cut off all around. There's no way in or out. I saw her text when it came and I'm like, "Oh man, Lord, help those people." Then I watched the Husker game and I don't know about all the, I know Owen will appreciate this, but a third of the way in, I'm like, I don't know, Kate, I think, or Audrey was like, who's going to win? I'm like, per do you? The refs, the refs are killing us and we're killing ourselves. Nothing's changed, nothing's ever gone out. And I was a little bit, like, emotionally, I was like, ah, I'm so sick of this. Meanwhile, meanwhile, as I'm having a bit of an inconvenient time watching football, unbeknownst to me, whole towns have been wiped out. And I don't discover this until I'm all done with sermon prep later on in the evening and I go to check social media. And the first thing that comes up in my feed is a video of, I mean, it's just a town buried in 15 feet of mud. How are you going to recover that? And I even, so I said to Lisa, I got after I doom scrolled for a little while I got up and I go to the kitchen to get some water and I said, I can't believe I actually got mad this afternoon or this was in the morning for crying out loud about a football game while people's entire lives were being destroyed. So something needs to be pruned here. Like my priorities get, all right, whatever. Just sit there and stare at me. That's fine. Guess what pruning looks like? Luke chapter 23, verse 31, Jesus says, Simon, Simon, behold, and he's talking to Peter. Satan demanded to have you that he might shift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you've turned again, strengthen your brothers. And Peter said to him, Lord, I'm ready to go with you both the prison and the death, which is exactly what any of you would say too. It's what I would say. But the devil do what he wants. I'm with Jesus. And then Jesus says, I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny three times that you know me. And so then Peter goes on to experience some profound personal failure, loss, and real hopelessness as a result of what he does next. His last interaction with a living Jesus is after he finishes turning the air blue with swearing about how he doesn't know Jesus, he turns and looks and locks eyes with Jesus. That's his last interaction with the Lord before the Lord is hung up on the cross and dies. So a few days later, when Peter is like, I guess I'm going fishing. I guess I'm going to go back to what I used to do. You can understand that. Well, why does this happen to Peter? Because he needed to be pruned. Yeah, he loved Jesus, but he needed to be pruned. So life hurts. One of the greatest disservices, in my opinion, that preachers and commentators do is portray anyone in Scripture other than Jesus as somehow upright and innocent and good. Because if you look at Joseph at 17, and this is how a lot of preachers, he's just a good young man doing the best he can. And his brothers resented him for it because he was so good. And his dad, just appreciated that he was such a good, righteous and upstanding young man. I think that's a giant disservice because if you if you miss this fact that Joseph needed to grow up and that God used Egypt to make it happen, you miss out on applying all of that reality to yourself and your own life. And then you have to operate on the expectation that, well, when I'm in pain, it must be because I did something wrong, not because God's faithful and he's maturing me. I mean, really consider the difference Joseph kicks in the door and goes, hey, brothers, that are already resentful toward me because I'm dad's favorite. Guess what I dreamed? Twice two, hey, prisoners who might actually deserve to be here more than I do. What's going on? Why are you discouraged? Why are you downcast? That's a giant maturation right there. All right, verse 9, Genesis 40. So the chief cup bearer told Joseph, told his dream to Joseph and said to him, in my dream, there was a vine before me. And on the vine, there were three branches. And as it butted, it's blossomed shot forth in the clusters, ripen into grapes. And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand. And I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. Then Joseph said to him, this is its interpretation. The three branches are three days and three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to office. And you will place Pharaoh's cup in his hand as formerly when you were his cup bearer. Only remember me when it is well with you. And please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this house. For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews. And here also I've done nothing that they should have put me in the pit. Now I'm not overly concerned about the dream or its interpretation. I think there are two kind of key points here. Joseph understood that if the dream had revelatory value, meaning it was going to reveal something about the future or prophetic value. If it has that value, God would be the one to expose that. God would be the one to explain that. So I would caution you again. I know I said this back in Genesis 37 but it bears repeating here. In Ecclesiastes 5 verse 3 it says, a dream comes with much busyness and a fool's voice with many words. Same thing in the wise man's eyes. Dreams and a fool running his yapper. Same value. Then in verse 70 it says, when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity but God is the one you must fear. The point of this narrative of the cup bearer and the chief baker sharing their dreams with Joseph and him interpreting it is not, the point is not to induce you to become overly preoccupied with dreams or their interpretation. That is not the point. All right, let me say, personally, personally, I think that dreams sometimes have value. I think that dreams are not always just random neural firings that happen while you're asleep. They may carry meaningful narratives. They may be like reflecting something to you about unresolved conflicts, unaddressed responsibilities, undelt with trauma. Surely that's possible. The dreams you have are related to the experiences you've had while conscious. That God might even use a dream to get you thinking about something. I'm not saying they have no value. But I don't think the point of the narrative is to induce you to become overly preoccupied with dreams and their interpretation. Dreams like conscious thought need to be brought under the supervision of the word of God. So whatever you dreamed, if it's not honoring to him, repent for it when you wake up. What's that my fault? It's your brain. It's your brain. So the other thing I would point out is Joseph does finally, finally, after two chapters, reveal his desire for deliverance, which I appreciate. Only remember me, verse 14, when it's well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh and so get me out of here. For I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I've done nothing that they should have put me into this pit. And Joseph's complaint shows me two things. Number one, why not go ahead and denigrate your brothers? None of these people know them. Why not tell the whole story? My scoundrel brothers all banded together and threw me in a pit and then sold me into slavery. Why not? And maybe he didn't. It's just not here, but I don't think so. I think he says what he said. I was stolen out of my land. Why not denigrate your brothers? He's been pruned. He's been grown and matured. And second, his complaint shows me he is frustrated with his circumstances. So banish from your mind this ridiculous idea that in all things being content means you lie about whether you're happy or not. Yeah, you can be content while simultaneously acknowledging this is not optimal. I'm content. I am. I don't know how I'm going to pay my property taxes in 2025. It's suboptimal that we have a criminal county government that arbitrarily decides to charge me to live on land that I supposedly own. But I'm content. It doesn't mean that everything is great. Rick's in a fight with the homeowners association. But he's content. Maybe I don't know. Fight might be over at this point. There are things you might have cancer and it's painful and the treatments are disruptive. And there's no promise that at the end of that you're even going to be better. And you can go, ow, this hurts. Oh, not trusting Jesus, huh? No, no, I'm content. I'm trusting God. But I'm also going to let you know I'm struggling. Don't spiritualize the stoicism. Share with your brothers and sisters what's going on. You got to struggle. You got trouble. You want some prayer. You need some encouragement. You want good counsel. What do you have to do? Well, every now and then drop the facade of everything is great because I'm a Western Christian. Drop the facade and go, yeah, I'm hurting. How are we supposed to bear one another's burdens if we never let on that we have any? All right. Enough of that. 16. When the Chief Bigger saw that the interpretation was favorable, he wanted in on that action. So he said to Joseph, I also had a dream. There were three Kate baskets on my head. And the uppermost, there were all sorts of big food for Pharaoh. But the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head. Joseph answered and said, this is its interpretation. Three baskets are three days. In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you. And on the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, he made a feast for all the servants and lifted up the head of the chief cup bear and the head of the chief baker among his servants. And he restored the chief cup bear to his position. And he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cup bear did not remember Joseph but forgot him. And then look at verse one of Genesis 41. After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile. Joseph's interpretations are exactly correct, right? The outcome? Two more years in prison. So it may be with us. I just love that Joseph, not Joseph, Job's wife is included in the account in the scriptures. She is there because you needed a mirror to look in, right? Here's Job, righteous fellow upright. No complaints from God about Job. And then Satan says, yeah, of course he's righteous. His circumstances are amazing. Why wouldn't he honor you, God? He has nothing to complain about, and God says, all right, try him. So he loses his house, loses his kids. He's sitting by a fire covered from head to toe in source, scraping the source with a shard from a broken pot. And his wife says, how long will you hold fast to your integrity, curse God and die? And all of us are like, I mean, if we're honest, we're like, yeah, let's, why keep doing what's right if this is the payoff? In our flesh, I'm not saying that she's right. Don't get me wrong, but in our flesh, we're like, well, like, how long am I going to keep on doing what's right and keep on suffering? What is my motivation to press on Joseph, interprets the dreams. He says, look, brother, just do me one favor. Remember me when you get back to your place in the kingdom. That is not a big ask. Don't forget the guy who told you everything was going to be okay and took care of you while you were languishing there in prison. Do you think you get out of prison and just like forget all about it? So if you've been to jail and you'll never forget it, let alone the state pen, that would change you. You would remember everything forever because you'd be in therapy. I think for the Christian, the answer is simple. What am I owed and what do I owe? So when you consider your own struggle and the unceasing nature of it, when Joseph's story reminds you how people have wronged you again and again in life, when you start wondering how much longer you can hold fast to your integrity, I'd point you to another time in Scripture where someone asks someone to remember them when he came back into his place in the kingdom. In Luke 23, 39, one of the criminals who was hanged next to Jesus, railed at him saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself in us. But the other rebuked him saying, do you not fear God? Since you're under the same sentence of condemnation and we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man Jesus has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus said to him, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. Well, that thief dies. His circumstances don't change until he dies. And then, boy, did they ever change? I know you sometimes want to give up because I know life hurts. Believe me, I know. You wonder why you bother doing what's right, like when evil keeps winning. All I can tell you is, keep in mind that there is one who remembers you and will finally deliver you from all of this. That's the promise that we embrace in Jesus Christ. In Revelation 21-1, with this I'll close. It says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I saw a loud voice, or heard rather, a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. So there's a moment coming where all your struggle that you're so tired of struggling and all the tears that have been shed over your own pain and discomfort and frustration and heartache, all of that's going to cease. There won't be any more tears because Jesus himself is going to wipe them away from your eyes. And in that moment, you're going to be like, okay, this is a bridge too far. I just wanted the suffering to end. There's no way I could demand that my Creator condescend to wash my feet. But here's the thing, while the struggle we'll cease and the tears we'll cease in Psalm 56, 8, the Psalmist says, you've kept count of my tossing. Behold, all my tears are they not in your bottle. So maybe there will be no more new tears in heaven, but it would appear that God is holding on to the ones you've already wept. And like a good father, he is determined to mature you and grow you and beat the psychopathy out of you and make you more like his son. That's why you suffer. For Joseph, it's another two years, another two years in the prison. After he blesses this ding-dong cup bearer, we'll see what happens in the weeks to come. Let me pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]