Genesis 40
Hillview Church Gloucester May 2008
The story of Joseph’s walk with the Lord reads like a great spiritual rollercoaster. Time and again we read that the Lord was with him, that he enjoys blessing and favour, then something dreadful happens. He knew the favour of the Lord as a young man with unique spiritual gifting and the favour of his father. And the gifting and his arrogance get him thrown in a pit and sold into slavery. I am sure he was an insensitive teenager. There are ways of saying you have had a dream that you will rule your brothers. But it’s the dreams they react against as much as Joseph: “here comes this dreamer”, they say. “Let’s get rid of him”.
Then in the household of Potiphar the Egyptian official, we read in 39:2 “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered” and everything he turned his hand to prospered. The Lord gave him success in everything he did. And he is falsely accused of a sex crime and thrown in the dungeon. And by the time we get to the end of chapter 40 in our reading this morning, he is still serving God, in the dungeon, still exercising his spiritual gift but forgotten and left to rot for two years with no indication of God being anywhere in the picture as far as he can see.
Humanly speaking this is the low point for Joseph, the time the wheels really come off the wagon. He really wants out. He says to the cupbearer “when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness and get me out of here.” But neither the cupbearer nor the Lord get him out.
That raises two questions for me, a theological question and a pastoral question. Here they are:
- If Joseph is rotting in prison, how is God’s plan to bless the world through Abraham’s family going to happen? Joseph is clearly the man. How is he going to save the day if he is in prison?
- If God wants to give Joseph success – and he does give Joseph success – why does he let this happen to his servant? Why does he let his servant become a hard-done-by, falsely accused victim in a horrible prison? How, by any measure, can that be described as God giving success?
A. How is God going to bless the world?
It looks like Joseph’s rollercoaster ride has come to a crashing halt, and God’s plans with it. We know that’s not the case because we have the advantage of knowing the rest of the story. And when Joseph gets to the end of the story he looks back and he knows that God was working through all this circumstance because he says to his brothers in 50:20 “you intended to harm me but God intended it for good to save many lives.” So he looks back at the whole rocky ride and says “that was all in God’s hands even when I couldn’t see it” as he certainly can’t in ch 40. All he has to go on is what he knows of God and whether or not he trusts him.
But there is no doubt that God is at work in this dungeon.
Read 39:21-23, 40:4
Now, what can God do to advance his plan to bring salvation to the world in a dungeon? It reminds me of Gideon and the battle against the Midianites. He gathers an army of 32000 and God says “that’s too many for me to beat the Midianites. Let everyone who is afraid go home.” It says 20000 went home. Then God said “10000 is still too many for me to beat the Midianites” and got rid of all but 300, leaving a humanly impossible task. When Midian is routed and crushed by the 300 everyone says “The Lord did this” not “Gideon did this.”
God says “I am the one who calls things that are not as though they are.” Like Moses, 40 years on his own with sheep in the back end of the Sinai. You don’t get much more “not” than that. He doesn’t choose princes with power. He chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong. At least one thing that is going on with Joseph is that God is setting things up so that when Joseph rises to power and rescues God’s people there won’t be any temptation for him to say “I did this by my strength.”
It's All From God
We see that God is only going to do things that are obviously from him by the fact that he chooses to advance his plan through dreams. Joseph’s story is dominated by dreams and this remarkable spiritual gift of interpretation God had given him. Its almost like we can trace out the pattern of someone learning to use a spiritual gift with wisdom and discernment. At the start there are true dreams but with insensitive interpretation that brings great pain to the family. Here in the prison there is faithful ministering, even though one of the interpretations must have been very hard to bring. Finally there is going to be an opportunity to bless the nation and the Pharoah and the nations with this gift.
But the key I want us to note here is that God gave these peculiarly prophetic dreams – we are told each one had a meaning of its own – and that God gave the interpretation. In v8 Joseph says “do not interpretations belong to God?” Later Pharoah will say to him “I hear you can interpret dreams” and Joseph will say “I cannot, but God can.” This is not manufactured, its not human cleverness advancing God’s purposes, not some kind of Derren Brown psychological trickery. It is entirely God’s working. He is stepping into this situation in which his man is reduced to less than nothing and saying “now I will work.” Joseph doesn’t add anything, he is just doing what God does. I think it must have been very comforting to him. What’s the one thing he has in special measure from God? The dream thing. Ah, here are people with particular dreams and God is bringing revelation. He is in prison and God showed him kindness.
Therein lies the answer to the theological question. How is Joseph going to save the day? He isn’t. God is. Joseph is completely helpless, totally unable to control events. He has no power to get these men or Pharoah to dream and no power of his own to interpret. But the power of God was present to bring himself glory. Praise God it doesn’t depend on people who are nothing and less than nothing.
Before we finish with the subject of the dreams I want to show you one more important detail. That is the difference between why the cupbearer and baker each want to hear an interpretation. To the cupbearer Joseph says “interpretations belong to God, so tell me.” And he does. He wants to hear God’s interpretation. The baker is different. Moses who writes this wants us to see clearly that this other man isn’t interested in God’s interpretation, he is interested in getting a comforting word. V16 says he came forward when he saw the favourable interpretation the other man received. Beware of that. There are some people who choose a church only according to whether they think they will receive a palatable message for their comfort. And sadly some ministers who feel drawn into responding to it. Now preachers aren’t to be insensitive, but preachers and churches are meant to receive the whole counsel of God, not just the pleasant bits. I come across people who jump churches when tough parts of the Bible are preached or there is a call for them to stop being passive receivers and be committed disciples. The baker warns us of that kind of warm fuzzy easy Christianity. I pray there is nobody here who comes to a building every Sunday just wanting someone to tell you something nice that will make you feel good. That’s not what you come to. Hebrews says Christians have come to:
The Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Living God, to thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the judge of all men and the mediator of a new covenant
This is not just a building. This is a outpost of ex-patriots from Heaven. Beware the baker’s temptation to only look for a palatable word.
Why Does God Let it Happen?
The second question was a pastoral question. Why does God let this happen to his innocent servant? Why does he let it go on so long? The reality for Joseph was horrible and it gives us a chance to look close up at hardship.
I find the biggest challenge to me is the statement that the Lord gave Joseph success in everything. Which did not mean that he got let out of prison. Which did not mean that his innocence was recognised. Which did not mean that he didn’t get forgotten by men. Joseph didn’t like his situation. He asked the cupbearer to get him out of it. But still he recognises that God is blessing in this situation, in the far from ideal times.
It is so easy in this culture to get into a kind of consumerist mindset that says good people deserve good things from God as a reward and bad people get bad things. Outside the West no Christian thinks that. In most places in the world being a believer and doing good will see you persecuted and punished.
I don’t know any of your current situations. It would be unusual if nobody here is wrestling with distressing realities over which you have no control. Which is a long way from where you would like life to be. I want you to see from Genesis 40 that this doesn’t mean that God isn’t blessing you. The Lord showed Joseph kindness in a situation of human disaster not by taking him out of it.
I was recently chatting to a young man in his first experience of Christian ministry. He told me some of his hopes and dreams for the future, which are exciting. I asked him what he would do if it didn’t work out like he hopes. What if God puts him in a dead end prison rather than the youth work paradise he wants? His answer was “well I will do whatever God wants, but I can’t think he would ever lead me to anywhere like that.” That wasn’t Joseph’s experience. The power of God was with him, but not to get him what he wanted.
In fact, if Joseph had got the release he wanted, he wouldn’t have been in the position to minister to Pharaoh two years later. And so the question raised for me by Joseph is not so much why God doesn’t give his servant what he so clearly desires, or remove the trouble that is so clearly and unjustly distressing him, it is how does this man of faith live with this situation? Is there consistency in Joseph? Will he be the same person here as when he was flourishing in his father’s house? Will he witness here when he could easily ascribe his circumstances to God bashing him? Will he just fall into depression and resignation? Years later when they were trapped in prison Isaiah said that Israel complained “God has forgotten me, my way is disregarded by my God.” Is Joseph going to do that?
That is easy to do. Droves of people leave churches saying “I tried the God thing, he didn’t come through for me, he didn’t fulfil my expectations, I found myself in difficulty and he seemed to be silent, so I will walk away. God isn’t doing me good. In fact life is harder as a Christian than it was before.”
The Testing of Character
What does Joseph’s testing produce? Firstly it produces service, not resignation. In v4 we read that the cupbearer and baker were assigned to Joseph and he ministered to them. When you would expect him to say I am a bad situation, I just need to get through this myself, I don’t have the emotional resilience to deal with others, instead we find him ministering. Where his faith can’t take dramatic initiatives but can only respond to situations, as soon as the opportunity arises, that’s what he does. In God’s great plan it looks very small. What it opens up is two men who tell him about their dreams.
Secondly, the testing produces a man who sees himself as a person of God. When they tell him they had dreams he could have ignored it. He could have said “oh, I know a bit about dreams.” A chance to raise himself up in their estimations. Instead he says “God is the interpreter of dreams.” In the prison, Joseph is determined that everyone will get to see what kind of God he has.
Thirdly, the testing gave opportunity to use a very significant spiritual gift for witness, for guidance into these men’s lives and eventually that led to the opportunity to speak into Pharaoh’s life. The New Testament says “make the most of every opportunity.” You don’t know where opportunities will lead. Neither did Joseph when he exercised the gift. Jesus said those who are faithful with little will be faithful with much. And therefore entrusted with much. Those who are faithful in the darkness will be faithful when the dawn breaks. And therefore be entrusted with much.
Why does God let the bad things happen? With Joseph we have the luxury of being able to see the whole picture. With our lives we don’t. But what we do is we look at this episode, we see the man of faith still being faithful when there is no light at the end of the tunnel – and won’t be for years, and we carry that into our circumstances with faith. We say to the Lord “I am in the dark, I am suffering unjustly, I don’t know why you don’t get me out or take the pain away, and I don’t see how there is a happy end to my story. But with faith I trust the same God Joseph trusted. With his help I will see myself as a person of God in this situation you have put me in. By faith I will serve where that is possible and not be resigned. I will use the spiritual gifts I have, even here.
I will take seriously the New Testament writer James when he urges me “to count it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds because we know that the testing of faith produces perseverance.” I will take seriously the writer to the Hebrews when he says “endure hardship as discipline. Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace by those who have been trained by it.”
The Antidote to the Zeitgeist
Joseph is the antidote to the spirit of instant gratification that says I must be happy, I must be satisfied, I must be pleased and entertained, now. God must do as I wish now, or of what value is he? No, he is trained by circumstance that he might share God’s holiness. His was a situation of severe mercy, but it was mercy nonetheless and the faith it produced was tough and mature. And it produced a harvest of righteousness and peace. And, of course, in Joseph’s case a great harvest of grain for the saving of many lives.
Let everyone hearing God speak through this passage this evening commit our way to him in our suffering as well as our joy. Let us be determined to be men and women of God in the darkness as well as the light. Let us decide to exercise faith and service when we can’t see the end of the tunnel because we know the God of Joseph who shows kindness and favour to his people even then.