40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 51

Episode Date: June 23, 2016

Chad and Daniel talk about Joseph's time in prison, who he meets there, the dreams they have and what it means when God remembers. It turns out there are two ways to have your head lifted. 

welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament i am daniel emery price i'm joined by chad bird hey hey i'm here yes okay chad it's just me and you and joseph and a baker and a cupbearer today we are missing brandon yeah brandon's not gonna be able to join us for this uh for this interesting tale from genesis that's all right you never know he might just randomly show up yeah he'll swoop in at just the right time to to save us yeah well where are we at We've got some dreams and some interpretations going on today. Yeah, we're basically in jail. That's where we are.

We are in prison. Things have not gone well with us and our friend Joseph. Well, they have and they haven't. It's kind of a strange characteristic of Joseph's life. It's like even when things go bad, they don't go as bad as they might. it seems like no matter what situation joseph finds himself in he's always put in charge for better or worse you know he's uh he's putting he gets sold into into slavery in egypt but his master puts him in charge of the household because he sees he's such a good servant well at the end

of chapter 39 of genesis he gets thrown in in prison in jail because he's falsely accused of rape by his boss's wife. But even there, the jailer is so impressed with Joseph that he basically puts him in charge of the prison. So he's in jail, but he has the keys of power, if you will. He's the dude that's supervising everything in the jail. So it doesn't matter where Joseph ends up. He's the one who gets given the responsibility of leadership. so uh that's where we're at we're in jail and uh we'll find out today what happens when joseph is in jail we don't we don't know how long he's in jail that's part of the story that's left out we do know he was 17 years old when he was sold into slavery by his by his brothers and we know that

he's 30 when he gets out of jail and we're going to pick up the story here when he's 28 but we don't know for sure how long he was a servant and then how long he was in prison. But anyway, he's been in prison for a while. We know that much. So chapter 40 is where we're at. Joseph is 28 years old, a young man who has things that things have not gone well with him. And we'll see how things sort of begin to look up in this chapter, but not really, at least not for the foreseeable foreseeable future so of course joseph is not alone in prison he's got a lot of jail mates and among those uh some new guys that show up in jail are a couple of of high uh high level employees of the king of pharaoh you got the uh the cupbearer and the baker of pharaoh who get

thrown in prison they make they make pharaoh angry for some reason we don't know we don't know why they they tick him off but he throws them in prison both these guys so the cupbearer is the one who's basically in charge of the king's wine and the baker is the one who's in charge of the king's bread so at least from my perspective these guys have pretty good jobs you know the cupbearer is there to sample the king's wine make sure it's good enough before he gets into the king and make sure it's not poisoned. So he's drinking wine all day before he gives it to the king. And the baker is the one who is in charge of, you know,

making sure the Pharaoh has plenty of carbs in his diet. But both these guys end up in jail. They probably end up in jail because Potiphar's wife made moves on them too. Yeah, probably so. She got around, you know. The whole jail's full. i i was thinking that maybe you know the cupbearer tried to give some three buck chuck or something like that to pharaoh and he got he got upset about that they're in prison baker tries to put

him on a an atkins diet and so pharaoh throws them both in jail teach him a lesson my guess whatever the reason my guess is the baker was like i think that i i think that uh everyone needs to be gluten free and he's like let's put him in jail yeah we'll get that out of his system really fast so uh well whatever it was as well as we'll find out the story goes on the baker obviously made the pharaoh a little more angry than the cup buried it but i'm getting ahead of myself so they're in jail and uh one day one night rather they they have a dream each guy has has a dream and when joseph comes by to bring a breakfast in the morning, he can see all over their faces that they're upset about something. They looked

dejected, as it says here. So he's like, what's wrong? Why are your faces so sad today? He says in verse seven. And it's kind of interesting. They're not upset because they're in jail. They're not upset because they're no longer able to serve the king. They're upset because dreams, and there's nobody around to interpret them. Presumably, when they were, you know, there at the right hand of Pharaoh serving in his palace, there were plenty of dream interpreters around. We know that the king employed these professional dream interpreters. We'll hear about them in the next chapter. And, you know, I suppose they could have asked these dream guys, hey you know i dream this what's it mean i dream that what's it mean but no one is there they

assume who is able to tell them what these dreams mean but joseph joseph ever ready seemed like he's always ready with the right thing to say he says uh don't interpretations belong to god so tell it to me there's no hesitation on joseph's part he he assumes he's going to be able to to tell them exactly what these dreams mean and and he does so here here's the first dream this is the cupbearer the wine guy he says well this is what happened in my dream there was this this vine in front of me and there were three branches on the on the vine and it buds these blossoms comes out and there's clusters that are just full of grapes and i've got i got pharaoh's favorite wine glass in my hand. And he takes the cups. I mean, he takes the grapes. He squeezes them into Pharaoh's cup.

And then he puts this cup into Pharaoh's hand. That's the dream. And Joseph, who's Johnny on the spot, tells him immediately what the interpretation is. He says, look, this is really easy. You got three branches. That means three days. In three more days, Pharaoh is going to lift up your head and is going to put you back in your office. And you're going to put the cup into Pharaoh's hand once more, just like you used to do. But then Joseph adds something. Joseph is quick. He realizes, you know what? I better take advantage of this opportunity. I've been in jail. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight for me. There's no light into my tunnel. So i'm going to take advantage of this opportunity so he says to the cupbearer he says look 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 then he goes on to say he was kidnapped uh from the land of the hebrews and he hasn't done anything wrong to to go to jail so basically he's pleading his case before the cupbearer. Look, I shouldn't be in Egypt at all. And I certainly shouldn't be in prison because I didn't do anything wrong. So look, I'm scratching your back. You scratch mine. I'm giving you a favorable interpretation. When you get out, hey, you know, say a good word to me for Pharaoh. Say, you know, there's this guy, he's innocent. He's in prison. He's a foreigner. He never should be here. Is there something you can do? Maybe pull some strings, get him out of

get him out of dungeon so that's uh that's the cupbearer but you know you can just kind of imagine the situation here so joseph is talking to the cupbearer and the baker you know he's kind of sitting over on the sidelines he's listening to this he's like kind of nodding his head like hey you know this this hebrew guy he's got this figured out i like that interpretation so i'm to tell him my dreams so that i can get a good interpretation too yes so yeah do it so the baker is like well i tell you what i had a dream too and let me let me tell you about my dream so look uh i deal with bread and so of course bread is part of my dream i got these three baskets of white bread on my head and in the top basket there's like all sorts of baked goods for pharaoh

you know you got cupcakes you got donuts you got bagels you got you got all this good stuff on the top basket and there's birds they're eating these out of the basket on the top of my head so that's a dream and once more joseph has the interpretation he immediately responds so uh okay this is this is the interpretation uh just like in the previous dream of the cupbearer your friend where the three branches were three days he says look these these three baskets they are three days so in three more days faber will lift your head from you and we'll hang you on a tree and the birds

will eat your flesh off you it's a very different way to have your head lifted up yeah very different way to have your there's more than one way to have your head lifted up true this was not what the baker had in mind but yeah

Joseph just interprets his dreams he's not there to sugarcoat things he simply says hey this is what it means I noticed that he doesn't say, and bro, remember me to this guy. Just before they decapitate you, will you say a good word for me? I noticed that he's a little more like, and let's keep this between you and me. Yeah.

Not much credibility going on there on the part of the baker. Poor guy. So I imagine the next three days of his life were not the happiest of days. and uh well that's what happened you know so three days pass the cup bearer you know he's he's giddy he's happy he knows he's about to be rescued the baker not so much he knows he's about to have his head lifted up in an unfavorable way you've never seen two guys that wanted a guy to be right and wanted a guy to be wrong simultaneously so bad more than these guys yeah that is the truth

the cupbearer is like man this guy I hope this guy is legit you know the baker is being like he's got Hebrew he doesn't know what he's talking about and then it all happens

of all days of all days that birthdays in the bible are not much that he says ask whatever you want I'll give it to you up to up to half the kingdom and her mom says uh bring me on a platter the head of john the baptist and uh anyway that's that's what happens here on pharaoh's birthday you've got uh uh this feast for all his servants and he ends up

hangs him and this is how the chapter ends yet chief cupbearer did not remember joseph but forgot him now it's a good place to to uh for us to remember something to to remember about remembering in in the bible when you have both the verbs remember and forget used usually we're not talking about just a mental activity uh this is to remember in the bible is to do something to act upon a remembrance, not just in your head to remember someone or to remember something, but to let that mental remembrance incarnate itself, if you will, to become something, become some action. So when God remembers Noah and his family on the ark, he sustains them, He rescues them. He brings them out of the ark. When God remembers Israel and Egypt later on,

it's not like God had forgotten them. And all of a sudden, you know, he's thinking back and being nostalgic. And then he remembers, oh, I forgot all about Israel being in Egypt. I've got to do something. He always has them in mind. But when he remembers them, he acts to save them. And so this remembrance and the divine activity of saving are part of the same activity. Yeah, it wasn't as if this cupbearer, the second everything that Joseph just told him was going to happen, happens, which is pretty remarkable. And then Joseph just passed through his mind. That very moment, that was a complete amnesia to the most insane event of your life. yeah there's no way that that uh it's just kind of a mental forgetfulness this means that he didn't

do what he said he would do he didn't remember joseph he forgot him that is he did not follow through on what uh joseph asked him asked him to do it's as simple as that and while we're talking about remembrance uh just kind of uh to to take it a different direction too when uh when we when we celebrate the lord's supper and we uh you know we have this phrase uh in in remembrance do this in remembrance of me, that is the remembrance that God remembers toward us. That is, he is remembering us. He is remembering us to come to us, remembering to give us himself, remembering to give us forgiveness. And so when we do this in remembrance of him, we are doing something in which he remembers us.

he doesn't forget us instead he comes to save us to forgive us to give us his body and his blood and this is this is an ongoing remembrance that god does for us that's one of the reasons why in the actual text i mean do this in remembrance of me it sounds cleaner and makes more sense in english because it sort of says like okay we're gonna do this and remember god right but what it actually says is do this in my remembrance yeah which is different very different it's very different because if you're doing that in his remembrance you're doing this in the remembrance of god which acts which rescues which delivers which saves uh it's to say it's the same thing that the the jews did with the passover uh that it wasn't just let's uh let's make sure

that we remember this but they're they're they have this event where they remember that god remembered right and they do this and that and so in the lord's supper you're remembering but it's rad because god is actually remembering again you there a sinner who needs forgiveness that needs christ that he stands there uh and comes to you again and and you know that in that meal that he has not forgotten you pretty awesome yeah yeah it is it is pretty awesome uh and just like in the lord's supper so in the passover too when the israelites celebrated the passover they understood themselves to be part of that original generation that had been redeemed from slavery in egypt in fact part of the liturgy that they used at passover they talked about how we were slaves

in egypt and god reached out and redeemed us so they understand that the celebration of the passover is an activity a divine activity in which they participate in the here and now in that historic redemption that god accomplished for his people and it's very much like that in Lord's Supper, we don't go to the cross for forgiveness because we can't do that. We can't go back in time. Instead, what God does is he gives us the gift of the supper in which the past is brought into the present. So the gifts, that historic redemption that Christ accomplished for us in his life, death, and resurrection is transported to us now so that we participate now in that past redemption, which, uh, which Christ has, has won. So this is all part of

divine remembrance. Remembrance is always, always involves the past, but it's a way of God bringing the past into the present so that in the here and now we receive what God has accomplished for us in years gone by. So a lot, there's a kind of a whole biblical theology of remembrance and forgetting that's, uh, that's built into those two verbs. So remember that, right don't forget it all right well that's the end of chapter 40 two dreams two interpretations one promise and one guy forgetting to act on the promise that he made so poor joseph is uh this is this is a further disappointment for him In fact, in some ways, these next two years might have been the most disappointing years of Joseph's life.

You think about it. Okay, he's been in jail. I mean, a lot of years have gone by, right? A lot of years have passed, 11 years up to this point. Several of them he spent in jail. And if I were Joseph, I would think this is the best shot that I've got to get out of prison. I mean, I've been here a while. And yeah, I'm in charge, but I'm still in jail. But look, now I've got a guy with influence. I've interpreted his dream favorably. And I've asked him to remember me. And now he's going to be in daily contact with the most powerful man in the nation. so that you know this would be like a prisoner in one of america's jails becoming uh you know

doing a good deed for some guy that ends up being the secretary of the state or something like that you know he's he is right there next to next to the president so joseph probably got his hopes up immediately in fact i would bet that the next few days uh he was walking around with a smile on his face because he thought yeah you know what any day now the cupbearer is going to come through and he's going to say a good word for me and Pharaoh's going to pull me out of this place. And then a week goes by and then a month goes by and then 12 months go by and still nothing.

So it's one of those cases where you get your hopes up about something and then your hopes are dashed. At least they seem to be. At least they seem to be dashed. That disappointed hope is one of the hardest things to deal with. And Joseph had it every day for the next two years. You know Joseph is thinking like, man, just like telling people what dreams mean thing has not worked that well for me.

Yeah. I've got this gift and it just like doesn't pay off at all. Man, up to this point, yeah, all his dreams, everything connected with his dreams have been nightmares, right? Yeah. he's had the two dreams he told to his brothers and then his dad and well that ends up causing nothing but hatred and then uh his brother stabbing in the back and he ends up in in uh in slavery then he interprets these dreams and same thing so joseph's dreams have ended up being more

like nightmares at least so far but uh you know things are gonna things uh things are gonna turn around like they like they always do uh i was reading i was reading luther on this uh on this story and a couple things uh that uh that i'll read i'll read of his that i think are are significant to kind of put this in a broader context first of all i love the way that throughout this story when uh when luther's talking about it he he connects it with the life of with the life of Jesus. In fact, he sees perhaps more in Joseph's life than in the life of anybody else in the Old Testament, kind of a foreshadowing of what's going to happen to Jesus. Let me just read this short section for you. This is Luther commenting on the very verses that we've been

talking about he says and so the very saintly and good joseph was crucified died was buried and descended into hell during these two years now the lord will come and will liberate glorify and magnify him just as he called justified and gave the holy spirit and his son who went down with him into the prison. Now the Passion Week is at an end for Joseph will be restored to life and will rise again. So he talks about how these two years that Joseph is about to endure are his crucifixion, his death, his burial, his descent into hell, because it looks like it's over for Joseph. He has lost everything. He's lost his freedom. He's lost his family. He's lost his hope. He's lost his dignity. He's lost everything that you can imagine. In fact, the dreams that he

had back when he was a kid, really, they've come back almost as a mocking promise is the way they seem. If God gave him those dreams back then, they have to seem as if they were lies now because none of this has come to pass. None of it whatsoever. In fact, just the opposite of what god promised joseph in those dreams came to pass and so joseph is now at a point that is the hardest point for a christian to endure where everything in your experience contradicts everything that god has promised in his word so it's like it's like this when you're at the lowest point in your life which some of you might be in right now and some of you uh may have already been through but whatever the whatever the situation is you know when you when you are

hopeless when you look around you and there is nothing but nothing but what you can see is despair and depression and there's there's absolutely no life at the end of the tunnel so that's what you experience i mean that's what you feel but then you have you have god's word saying i am with you i will bless you i will rescue you i will redeem you it's like your your experience is so loud that you can barely hear god's promises they're barely audible because everything that you're feeling everything you're going through says one thing but then everything that god says says something to to the contrary that that is the hardest place to be because that that's really when you are you're being crucified that's when you're you're descending

into the grave and it seems as if uh your experience is true but god's word is lying to you hard place to be yes it is but uh you know that that is it's one of the it's one of the things that luther brings out in the rest of this rest of uh his commentary on this is that even though even though that's the hardest place to be the good news is that you know the burial the death the crucifixion the death and the burial is followed by the resurrection and light and life and they will come they always do this is the way that god works god god always works contrary to what we expect him to i mean we really want god just to be to make us happy and to to fill our lives with with smiles and giggles and everything is just

you know running the way that it should be but that's just not the way it works and so the way that god works is he he puts to death he puts us to death in order to bring us to life he wounds us in order to heal us he crucifies us in order to resurrect us this is the this this is the pattern of the christian life and so he puts us to death in order that we might learn through that suffering not to trust in ourselves in fact to put our trust completely in him who brings life out of death he's he's doing the same thing in the life of joseph that he does in the life of jesus and then the lives of all of his children he he reduces us down to nothing, in order that He might recreate us anew to be the way that He wants us to be.

There is just no other way. God specializes in death and resurrection, crucifixion and rising, darkness and light, wounding and healing. This is just the way that He is. That's the way that He deals with us. And so is there hope? Of course there's always hope. There's abundance of hope because Christ is raised from the dead.

Is there hope for healing? yes of course there is because god not only wounds he heals and even though it doesn't feel that way when you're in the middle of suffering god's word is always truer than our feelings and he says i'm with you you're my child you're baptized i love you i will heal you i will restore you it might not be on our own timetable it rarely is but uh it uh it all will it all will come to pass because as God has promised, and God is always true. Yeah, I mean, obviously this is speaking of Christ when he says this, but it's the whole, unless a seed goes into the earth and dies.

Yes. He does that to us as well, where he says, I'm going to put you in the ground here, and you're going to die a little bit, and then I'm going to make something else. It's funny that you quote that verse, because you're very Luther-like, whether you realize it or not what can i say it's a that's a that's a matter of opinion i'm sure i'm sure that i think there's a great many people that would disagree with that but no actually when i was reading this this morning that is the verse that uh that luther refers to when he's talking

about this not only in reference to christ but to joseph and all of us that is the way that it works you know he he plants us like a seed in the ground that is to say he puts crosses on us and suffering and death. And then from that rises fruits that we, you know, could never have, could never have envisioned happening to us. I mean, just look at the, look at the example of Joseph here. What is the best that Joseph could hope for? Well, the best he could hope for probably was just what, if not just to survive, maybe to get out of jail. You know, if I could just get out of jail that's that's like the his the abundance of his hope is restricted to that yeah you know so so that he's kind of like if he's planted as a seed in the ground he's thinking oh

if i could only come out as a little bitty seed then that would be good but god has greater things in mind for him because god is not only going to bring joseph out of jail he's not only going to let him survive, but he's going to give him abundantly more than Joseph could have ever dreamed or asked for, which is the way that God works. He ends up giving us more than we ever dared to think that he would give to us, because Joseph is not only going to be brought out of jail and survive, but he's going to be exalted to the right hand of Pharaoh. He's going to be the the vice pharaoh of all of egypt and he's going to end up saving saving a whole nation not just that nation but nation surrounding them from from from death by famine and he's going to end up not

only being restored to his family but rescuing his family being uh reunited with him and settling them in the best land in egypt now if you would have told joseph that in prison it would have been too good to believe too good to believe no way he would have thought that would happen but that's the way that god surprises us with with blessings oftentimes well god is going to use these circumstances to bring those original dreams to fruition which i'm sure joseph would uh was not i'm sure that was not on joseph's mind no i i i think probably at this point in his life Joseph has discounted those dreams as nothing more than

the vain dreams of youth. He's probably forgotten about or not forgotten them, but rarely imagined they could come true at this point. Not with everything he's experienced. Not with all the deprivation

and betrayal and imprisonment and disappointment. He thinks now there's no way that this could come to pass. But boy, is he going to be surprised. yeah yeah bring it yeah let's uh let's jump ahead here so that's the end of chapter 40 but chapter 41 takes us to uh the next the next uh big phase of joseph's life we have more dreams here so two years pass and uh during those two years of course joseph is still in prison and it says pharaoh

it's it's time for now pharaoh to have a dream the cupbearer had joseph had his dreams the cupbearer had his dreams the baker had his dreams and now pharaoh's gonna have a couple of dreams of his own everybody has two dreams in these stories and the both of these dreams take place at uh at the nile river so pharaoh has his first dream and he sees these uh seven cows and they're sleek and fat and they they come out of the nile river they graze in the marsh grass and then he sees these seven other cows and they're they're ugly and gaunt and they stand by these fat and sleek cows and all of a sudden the ugly and gaunt cows eat up the sleek and fat cows and then favor wakes up and then he falls asleep again and he has a second dream and the second

dream is a lot like the first except this time he sees these seven ears of grain come up on a single stalk and they're plump and they're good. And then there's seven ears of grain that are thin and scorched and they sprout up beside them. And these thin ears swallow the seven plump and full ears. And then once more, Pharaoh wakes up and realizes he's had a dream. Now these were the kind of dreams that, you know, are not just kind of garbage dreams like I usually have, where you just have a bunch of stuff jumbled together that makes no sense. Pharaoh is convinced that these dreams are uh are full of meaning so in the morning he uh he gathers all the uh the magicians of egypt and he tells him the wise men he tells them his dreams and it says there was no one who

could interpret them to pharaoh nobody nobody knew what these dreams meant i suspect what was happening here was that god was hiding the meaning from the magicians because nobody had any inkling what this might mean i guess i didn't for whatever reason it doesn't seem like the the hardest thing to make up right i mean like yeah i mean i'm not a dream interpreter but you know it does seem pretty straightforward right at least in its general contours i guess i guess maybe uh i guess maybe dream interpreter back then was sort of a uh you better like it's this sort of thing that you don't get, like, a lot of strikes on the Dream Interpreter. Right, right.

You better get it right the first time. I mean, this is the guy that, like, threw it, you know, like, cut the baker's head off. Maybe it's just, like, if you're not real certain you know, you're like, yeah, I'm going to pass. I'm going to pass. Yeah, I'm going to pass on this one. That's a good point.

Fabro, judging by what we know of him, was not the most agreeable of characters when it came to dealing with his employees. So maybe they're just playing it safe. But all of a sudden, our friend reemerges into the narrative. The chief cupbearer, the wine guy, he says to Pharaoh, yeah, boss, I would make mention today of my sins. Then he tells a little story about how Pharaoh was mad at him

and he got put in jail, him and the chief baker, and they had this dream and then he says there was a hebrew youth who was in prison with us and we told him our dreams and he interpreted our dreams to us and lo and behold that's exactly what happened here i am today standing before you serving you and the baker he got he got hanged just like this Hebrew youth said he would. So once Pharaoh hears this, he immediately sent and called for Joseph. No hesitation whatsoever.

That in itself is pretty remarkable, that on the basis of this one testimony, Pharaoh was willing to take a chance and bring, of all people, a Hebrew youth. I mean, he was a foreigner. He was in jail. He was a young guy. It wasn't like he was one of the magicians.

It wasn't like he was skilled in the Egyptian arts. For all Pharaoh knew, this guy was a charlatan. But on the basis of the cupbearer's testimony, he calls him, he summons him. So they clean Joseph up, says he shaved himself, he changes his clothes, and they bring him to Pharaoh. and as the story goes on pharaoh uh more or less just relates the dream once more to joseph and joseph just as he did with the baker and the cupbearer immediately tells pharaoh what the dream means he says the seven good cows the seven good years that are coming up just like the seven years

of grain are seven good years that are coming up you're gonna have a seven years where you have abundance of crops in Egypt more than you ever have had before. And then these seven good years can be followed by seven years of famine in which the whole land is going to be devastated. That's what's going to happen

and it's going to happen for sure. That's the reason that you had these two dreams. And then just like he did with the cupbearer, he takes advantage of the opportunity. He doesn't even pause. He interprets the dreams.

And then he says, without even letting Pharaoh respond, he says, now, if I might make a suggestion, Pharaoh should look for a man who's discerning and wise and set him over the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh should also appoint overseers in charge of the land and take 20 percent, take a fifth of the produce of the land the next seven years and lay it up in storehouses so that when the seven years of famine come, you're going to have plenty of food so that you're prepared for what is to come. So Joseph interprets the dreams.

He lays out a plan. And then with a wink, he says, you know, if I can make a suggestion, you probably should look for somebody that's really wise and discerning to be responsible for this whole plan. He needs to be about six foot one. yeah it probably maybe uh it probably speak hebrew be good yeah be good if he if he wasn't

from around here yeah right well that's that's uh that's where we're at to leave it i think our 40 minutes are up 40 minutes is up that's it yeah i wonder i wonder if joseph's gonna end up being the guy yeah you cannot read ahead nobody read ahead you gotta wait until we tell you the rest to the story. Joseph may be the guy. Joseph may not be the guy. He might end up back in prison. We don't know. We'll find out next week. Alright, man.

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