Joe

Reggie

Shelley Norman

September 7, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: Joel

Weekly Memory Verse: 2 Corinthians 5:17

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

Daily Reminder, pray for the "Forty days of purpose" that is coming up on September 25th at 9pm each evening.  I am going to a meeting on this tonight, I am looking forward to the weekly meetings at Starbucks with many of you.

Genesis 40:1-23 (NASB95)
¹ Then it came about after these things, the cupbearer and the baker for the king of Egypt offended their lord, the king of Egypt. ² Pharaoh was furious with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker. ³ So he put them in confinement in the house of the captain of the bodyguard, in the jail, the same place where Joseph was imprisoned. ⁴ The captain of the bodyguard put Joseph in charge of them, and he took care of them; and they were in confinement for some time. ⁵ Then the cupbearer and the baker for the king of Egypt, who were confined in jail, both had a dream the same night, each man with his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation. ⁶ When Joseph came to them in the morning and observed them, behold, they were dejected. ⁷ He asked Pharaoh’s officials who were with him in confinement in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so sad today?” ⁸ Then they said to him, “We have had a dream and there is no one to interpret it.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell it to me, please.” ⁹ So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream, behold, there was a vine in front of me; ¹⁰ and on the vine were three branches. And as it was budding, its blossoms came out, and its clusters produced ripe grapes. ¹¹ “Now Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; so I took the grapes and squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and I put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.” ¹² Then Joseph said to him, “This is the interpretation of it: the three branches are three days; ¹³ within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you will put Pharaoh’s cup into his hand according to your former custom when you were his cupbearer. ¹⁴ “Only keep me in mind when it goes well with you, and please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house. ¹⁵ “For I was in fact kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.” ¹⁶ When the chief baker saw that he had interpreted favorably, he said to Joseph, “I also saw in my dream, and behold, there were three baskets of white bread on my head; ¹⁷ and in the top basket there were some of all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, and the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.” ¹⁸ Then Joseph answered and said, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days; ¹⁹ within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh off you.” ²⁰ Thus it came about on the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants; and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. ²¹ He restored the chief cupbearer to his office, and he put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand; ²² but he hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had interpreted to them. ²³ Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.^[1]

Joseph was thrown in prison for not going to bed with Potiphar’s wife.  His imprisonment was unjust and unfounded.  Can you imagine how this worked away at his conscience as he rotted in prison?  Then consider the fact that God had raised him up to a position of authority in the prison, he may have been questioning in his mind if he was being teased by God and if this sham of authority was all there was ever going to be in life.  Think about how the Joseph had the dreams which caused him to be sold into slavery by his brothers.  All of his apparent dreams turned out to be nothing up to this point. 

Joseph demonstrates two interesting characteristics that I see right off the top.  First he still had an undying faith in God.  He believed that God ultimately held the interpretation for dreams, and was not bashful to point that out to complete strangers.  The second thing that jumps out to me is that Joseph demonstrated an impatience in waiting for God to do his work and started sowing seeds with these two men to remember him when they got out of prison.  Notice though, Joseph believed in the interpretation that God had given him, he asked the chief cup bearer to remember him, but said nothing to the baker. 

The cupbearer may have intended to pass the word along to Pharaoh, but consider his position for a moment.  He had just gotten out of prison for some unknown crime involving serving the King.  The time of his pardon was not a time where he would want to speak up to the King and say "by the way there is a Hebrew in jail that is innocent".  Everyone in jail is innocent, he would have been a fool to have mentioned Joseph.  It may have landed him back in jail, or even caused him to join the baker at the gallows.  He was wise to keep his mouth shut just for self preservation.  The scripture says that he forgot, I think that there is a point where people want to forget the dark areas of their lives and to move on. 

What did this do to Joseph?  He had given glory to God, and had interpreted dreams by the inspiration of God that was a far reach.  Imagine taking such a stand on dreams, and boldly proclaiming what both dreams meant without worrying about any recourse on his predictions.  He took a stand on the dreams, and boldly stated that they would be fulfilled within three days!  Not much room for error there, and consider that his credibility was certainly at stake.  The only thing that Joseph had in life was his credibility, if that were destroyed, could he have maintained a position of authority over the prisoners?  Joseph risked everything that he had earned in prison up to this point by making the interpretation of the dreams. 

God fulfilled the dreams just as Joseph had predicted that they would be fulfilled.  This did one thing for certain to Joseph, it verified to him that God still was working through him and that he was not forgotten by God.  A divine message was sent to Joseph through this ordeal letting him know that he was certainly in a place where God wanted him, otherwise God may have been silent when Joseph made the bold statement that his God interprets dreams and to tell Joseph about the dreams.  Just as God had given him dreams in his youth, God was still speaking through him.  It was a touch of God, where God touched Joseph with the reassurance that he was right in the center of God's will. 

My question in all of this is when we get into a time where things do not seem to be going the way that we feel God has directed us, do we lose trust in God?  Does our faith continue regardless the circumstances in our lives, or are we hooked to the circumstances in viewing God in our lives?  This story is for all of us, we don't need to be hooked to the circumstances, our God is always faithful, even when we seem to be getting treated wrongly for our actions.  God chooses times in our lives to be silent and to allow us to go through hard times, our choice is to either keep Him first, or to lose our faith in Him.  Joseph demonstrated for us that we are to keep the faith regardless of our circumstances.  God is always faithful, therefore we should determine to be faithful to God regardless what things appear to be in our lives.

I am going to close here.  If you have differing opinions on this chapter, be sure to write in.

Father, as we consider Your faithfulness to us when things look bad, keep our eyes fixed intently upon You, and give us the hope that we can cling to.  I ask that each one of us will take this lesson to know that we are not bound by circumstances, but by Your divine will in our lives.

In Him,

Joe Turner.