Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God's Response to Dictators | Torah | Genesis 40

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Why do evil things happen? If God is in control, why do bad people come into power? How does God react to evil and brokenness? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Genesis 40 gives a peek into God's sovereignty over leaders of nations (even in 2022). Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 40 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. As I've watched news unfold from Ukraine, I found myself in a deep state of shock in mourning. I mean, these stories of residential neighborhoods shelled by Russians, hospitals, schools, and it seems like they're actually trying to kill civilians, to force people to flee and to ultimately leave their lives in rubble. It's awful. Everyday civilians are being forced to take up

arms to defend their lives, their country, their property. Shut-ins, elderly people who can't flee, they're being cared for by brave men and women who are willingly putting their lives at risk just to get these people food and water. And of course, the death toll has been awful. On both sides, tens of thousands of Russians, there's also Ukrainian casualties. These are all image bearers destroyed by bombs and bullets. And it begs a question, why? Why do these things happen? The answer in this case isn't hard to understand. The reason why is Vladimir Putin. COVID seems to have taken him out of touch with reality so much so that he actually thinks he is justified in invading Ukraine. But he's just like all dictators. They're all out of touch with reality in a much, much deeper way than just

whatever COVID isolation causes. They are out of touch with reality in an idolatrous way. Vladimir Putin has put himself into the place of God. He is redefining good and evil and forcibly taking lives as he sees fit. For him, there are no moral limits to power because he has the power. He can just do whatever he likes. And again, Vladimir Putin is far from the first person to do this. In fact, the Torah, which includes the book of Genesis, is arguably the first document in literary history to reflect the idea that there are moral limits to power. There are things that powerful people cannot do with a clean conscience.

And it actually all starts on page one. The Torah begins by saying that all humans are made in God's image. In the ancient world, it was just kings who were made in God's image. They had the divine right as God's image to rule over all the other people who aren't in God's image. They could define good and evil however they saw fit. They had the power of God to take life and to give life. The vast majority of people simply had to live under their awful, terrifying tyrannical rule. But on page one of the Bible, Genesis turns this idea upside down.

Genesis says that all humans, not just kings, all humans are made in God's image. Kings and pharaohs, they can't do whatever they like because they have power. And they can't because God is the one who has ultimate power. God is the one who defines good and evil. And because the people over whom they ruled, those people, they are made in God's image. They have incalcable worth before God, their creator. And yet, Genesis is sober about the reality of dictators and their mega-lemoniacal inability to see the image of God in other people. On a small scale, we see this in everyday people's lives when Joseph's brothers deny his humanity. They not only plan to kill him, but then they ultimately sell him into slavery. And we see it again, the way that people don't think

there are any moral limits to power, the way people think that not everybody's made in God's image, we see it in the story of Potiphar and his wife. Both have power over their servants. Both have power over Joseph and they use that power wrongly to steal Joseph's freedom, to cast him into jail as though his life isn't valuable, as though justice doesn't matter, as though truth isn't a reality. And then in Genesis 40, while Joseph is in jail, he is experiencing firsthand what tyranny looks like. While he's in jail, he encounters two people who served under the Vladimir Putin of their day, the Pharaoh of Egypt. And just like Joseph, they were the playthings in Pharaoh's hands. They were both cast needlessly into jail. And as we'll see, they both have dreams that underline Pharaoh's

idolatrous insanity. The way he puts himself into the place of God as the one who can give and take away life. Again, Joseph is still in prison. And he's speaking to these two people from Pharaoh's entourage who are both imprisoned alongside him. One's a baker and the other's a cup bearer. And they both seem downcast. We'll pick up the story in verse seven. So Joseph asked Pharaoh's officials, who were in custody with him in his master's house, why do you look so sad today? We both had dreams, they answered, but there's no one here to interpret them. Then Joseph said, do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams. So the chief cup bear told Joseph his dream. He said to him, in my dream, I saw a vine in front of me, and on the vine were three branches.

As soon as it budded, it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup and put the cup in his hand. Joseph goes on to tell the cup bear that this means that he was going to be restored by Pharaoh into his old position. Like God, Pharaoh was going to try to give him life. Let's continue on, verse 16. When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph,

I too had a dream. on my head were three baskets of bread. In the top basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head. This is what it means, Joseph said. Three baskets are three days. Within these three days, Pharaoh will lift off your head and impale your body on a pole,

and the birds will eat away your flesh. Now, the third day was Pharaoh's birthday, and he gave a feast for all of his officials. He lifted up the heads of the chief cup bearer and the chief baker in the presence of his officials. He restored the chief cup bearer to his position so that he once again put the cup into Pharaoh's hand, but he impaled the chief baker, just as Joseph had said to them in his interpretation. I realize this is a gruesome, awful story, and we have to be careful.

Let's not mistake Joseph's ability to interpret the dream as an affirmation of Pharaoh's actions. What Pharaoh's doing here is awful. The narrator of Genesis is using this story in these dreams to help us understand the true character of Pharaoh and of his descendants, the narrator's trying to get us to see that Pharaoh is the kind of guy who his idea of a fun birthday is toying with the lives and minds of people made in the image of God. It's wicked. It's pathological. And it's exactly what we see from so many people in the highest echelons of power. They believe that because of their power and their position, they can stand in the place of God. But of course, that's never true. In the end, God chasens Harrow and he elevates Joseph above him.

In the end, God chasen Pharaoh's descendants. He judges them worthy of death in the Exodus. God sees what Pharaoh is doing. God is not pleased. God is the only one who can justly judge. God is the only one who can justly give out life and death. And all dictators like Vladimir Putin should tremble in fear before the living God because they will be held accountable. Putin is no God. Pharaoh was no God. And when you make yourself into a God, you actually end up making yourself less human in the process. You end up becoming a wild, ravenous animal that feeds on blood. You become less than human.

You become animalistic. But you might be wondering, what does all this have to do with you and me? Well, you don't have the power of Vladimir Putin or the Pharaoh, but you do have some power. Maybe you're a parent with power over your children. Or maybe you're a business owner or a manager with power over your employees. Or maybe you're just a friend who has influence. influence over your friends. Where do you have power right now? How do you use it? Do you see the people around you as tools, as just means to your personal ends? Or do you see them as image bears whose worth

outstrips your imagination? Do you redefine good and evil in your life in ways that just kind of benefit you? Or do you follow the path of Jesus and lay down your life for the sake of others? Remember, Jesus had all the power in heaven and on earth, but he set it aside to become like you. Philippian says he came in the form of a slave, and he didn't just do that. He died on a cross for you to take away your sin and to give you resurrection life. You don't have to live as a mini dictator because you don't have to secure your life and your reputation. Jesus is king, not you. He's done it.

And this frees you to lay your life down in the exact same way. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.