Sunday Night, December 15, 2019 PM

The Generations of Jacob and Joseph’s Dreams

Moses, the generations of Jacob. So we are under that heading, and we're considering what happened to the sons of Jacob. A larger story, of course, being told by Moses, is how it was that the sons of Jacob, or in other words, the children of Israel, how did they end up in Egypt?

Why is it that we're tramping through this wilderness to go back to a land that was promised to us, where our ancestors were? Part of the story is how in the world did they ever leave that place to begin with?

And so we are tracing the times, the life and times of the children of Israel, the generations of Jacob. Jacob's sons, of course, born from four different mothers, had their conflicts, especially with Joseph.

Joseph was favored by his father, and he had dreams in which it was very quickly interpreted by his brothers and father, the meaning of those dreams was that Joseph was going to rule, and that his brothers would bow to him.

And there was an image of stalks of grain bowing, and grain will be an important part of the future story of Joseph. And even stars and sun and moon bowing down to Joseph, and that language of the stars and sun and moon, when God created everything, he said the stars and the sun and the moon governed the day and governed the night.

In terms of governance, those became images throughout the scriptures of symbols of those who were in charge. Well, because Joseph's brothers were very jealous of him, they betrayed him, and they sold him to slavery, and lied to their father and said that he had been killed by a wild beast.

And then we heard the story about Judah and the mess in his family. Why would we even care about the mess in Judah's family? Why didn't we get any stories of the mess in Issachar's family? Why do we care about Judah?

Why not the mess in Gad's family? There's probably a mess in Gad's family. Why the mess in Judah's family? Why does he get singled out? This is trivia time. Why do we care about Judah? Christ comes from his line.

Think about Moses writing this in the wilderness. Israel has been wandering around. They are most likely encamped at the Acacia Grove in the shadow of Mount Peor, just on the east side of the Jordan. And they're going to be entering in, and Moses is writing all this information down.

And Judah is just one of 12 tribes. Why would anybody think of Judah as something special? Well, by the time we get to the end of Genesis, we're going to hear a blessing, a prophecy given by Jacob about Judah that is incredibly significant, and fits in line with all the other promises about the coming one, the promised Messiah, throughout the book of Genesis.

Judah, the Tabernacle, and the Promise of the Messiah

And so when we come to Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in Numbers, when they are organized in the wilderness, they are organized around the tabernacle in a very specific way. The tribe of Levi is encamped around the tabernacle, and then the tribes are organized always around the temple in the same configuration.

And who is at the east of the tabernacle? Judah is. Why does that even matter? Because it was at the east, it was at the east of the Garden of Eden, that it was the entrance to the garden where God set his cherubim to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

It was at the east, the opening of the tabernacle faced east, and the promised mediator who would bring man back to God, despite that separation, would come from a tribe of Judah who was camped directly east of the opening to the tabernacle, which was fashioned after the Garden of Eden, and the decor.

So all these things are significant, so we have to check in on the mess in Judah's line, and we find out that God is sovereign, and he works through it, in spite of man, to bring about his purposes, which is a smaller...

The story about Judah, and what happened with him, is tied in with the story about Joseph, because Joseph and Judah are going to have a moment near the end of this saga that is incredibly important, where Judah offers himself in the place of another, which is actually the moment where everything gets resolved between Joseph and his brothers.

Joseph in Prison and the Dreams of the Cupbearer and Baker

And so now we're following with Joseph, and Joseph, who was favored by his father, is also favored by Pharaoh, to whom he is sold, though he is falsely accused and put in jail. He is favored by the chief jailer, and the reason why Joseph is favored by his father, and Potiphar, and the chief jailer, is because he's favored by God.

He has been graced by God, and blessed by God, with wisdom, and insight, and he is being used by God, ultimately, to bring about a great blessing that we're reading about. So now in Genesis 40, we remember that Joseph is in jail, and the chief jailer is very glad that Joseph is there to help him with the prison.

So Genesis 40, verse 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. Pharaoh was furious with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.

Now I don't know what Pharaoh ate, and what happened that night, but the cupbearer brings him his drink, and he should taste it, test it first, make sure that it's not poison, it's not bad. The baker obviously made something.

Pharaoh obviously had a bad night, I'm imagining, and he was sick as a dog, and he is upset. It's got to be the cupbearer's fault, or the baker's fault, and he throws him in jail until he figures out who it was who gave him a rotten night.

I'm just guessing that's how it went. So verse 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. 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, meaning several days.

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. When Joseph came to them in the morning and observed them, behold, they were dejected.

I'll interject right now. When we're following the story of Joseph, the story of Joseph began with Joseph having how many dreams? He had two dreams. Now here in the middle of the story of Joseph, we have a cupbearer and a baker in jail, and there are two dreams.

When he talks with Pharaoh later on, Pharaoh relates to him, two dreams. So these details are helpful, I think, especially remember that the Bible was written to be read aloud, and that the people who are listening to it will be listening to some things that repeat, and it's going to stick with them.

And this is the way that the story took place, and God is highlighting the dreams that come in pairs. And these men were dejected because they don't... These dreams obviously stand out for some reason.

There's something about these dreams that are not like the normal ones, like, you know, the ones where you're floating through the air, or the ones where you're under a lot of stress, or then you have nightmares, and you're just glad that you woke up.

It's not those kind of weird dreams. These, for some reason, are set apart and distinct. Very important. They are significant, and both the cupbearer and the baker know that they mean something, but they just don't know what it means.

So, verse 7, he asked Pharaoh's officials who were with him in confinement in his master's house, why are your faces so sad today? And 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. Now, there's a significant thing here. Joseph clearly points out that the dreams aren't up to you, just to anybody to interpret.

They're up to God, and God will tell the meaning of these dreams for you. We are reminded from the book of Hebrews that in many portions and in many ways, God revealed his truth before Christ came, and dreams were often one of the ways in which he would reveal some aspect of his truth to those to whom he desired.

Now, when Joseph says the interpretation belongs to God, he doesn't then say, tell it to God. Joseph says, tell it to me. Hang on a second. I thought you said the interpretation belongs to God. Why don't you tell it to God?

But no, he says, tell it to me. What is Joseph indicating by that? The interpretation belongs to God. Tell it to me, please. He's a man of God. He's someone who's been blessed by God with God's wisdom.

Joseph is self-aware of this. Later on, when he interprets the dreams for Pharaohs, he makes it very clear, hey, it's God who interprets the dreams here. Joseph is aware of his role in this as a mediator.

He is not the one with all the answers. He's the one whom God is going to use to help them understand the truth. So, Joseph is very clear about to whom the truth belongs, to whom the revelation belongs.

It belongs to God, and he's going to be God's man in this situation. He's going to be a servant. He's going to mediate the truth to them. Verse 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, and on the vine were three branches, and it was budding.

Its blossoms came out, and its clusters produced ripe grapes. 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. Then Joseph said to him, this is the interpretation of it.

The three branches are three days. 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.

Well, in that, we see that the interpretation of the dream is not, first of all, incredibly far-fetched. It seems to be fairly obvious in Hind's, oh yeah, that makes sense. So it's not a very strange interpretation of the dream, number one, but number two, it's not that Joseph is just going with the most plausible kind of explanation.

This is what God means in the dream, and God gave the dream to the cupbearer and kept the cupbearer in the dark so that he would ask, so that Joseph would interpret, so that the cupbearer would know that there is a God in heaven who interprets the dream and who tells the truth.

Now, think about what's at stake here. If Joseph was some sort of charlatan, if he was some sort of hack, he would say something that was very general and very easy to kind of keep yourself from being outed, and you would be able to say something, some sort of prophecy that could come true in some sort of sense, but this is very specific.

He's saying in three days, you'll be acquitted. In three days, you're back to your old job. That is incredibly specific, and if this doesn't come true, then either Joseph is a liar or God ain't real, and that's what's at stake when he says this.

Now, notice his request, verse 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, for I was in fact kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I've done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.

Joseph believes this is going to happen. He knows this is the word of the Lord, and he asks and appeals to those who are in charge to correct the injustice that he is currently suffering. That makes a lot of sense.

That's a good idea. Verse 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, 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.

Then Joseph answered and said, this is his interpretation. The three baskets are three days. 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.

Not what you want to hear. Isn't this just, verse 16, the way that it begins, isn't so natural to us, isn't it? The baker, oh, he got a good word. My turn. I want to hear my good news, but it wasn't good news.

So now, these two, now this is kind of like from the mouth of two witnesses. There's two different dreams, each with its own interpretation. They're dejected. They know it means something, but they don't know what it means.

Joseph interprets it for them, saying, hey, this belongs to God. This is God's truth now, and he says it to both of them, and look, they both come true exactly. Exactly. 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.

He restored the chief cupbearer to his office, and he put the cup into Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker just as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

God Keeps His Word, Mediates His Word, and Owns His Word

Okay, so what happens in this, what happens in the story? It's part of the story of Joseph in his waiting, in his suffering, in his patience for God to bring things about. Now, one of the things that happens here is just the fact that that God keeps his word, and the way in which this happens is that he gives these dreams to the chief cupbearer and to the baker, and has Joseph in play there to interpret those dreams, and then they come to pass within three days.

So, Joseph, how does he receive that then? Did not God give two dreams to Joseph, that he would rule somehow, that his brothers would be bowing down to him? Even his parents, his whole family, would bow before him as if he were some kind of lord and king, and look where he's at.

You know, he's in jail, he's in prison, but, and he knows that he's not there for something that he has done. It's an injustice that he's there. He's been kidnapped. It's all messed up, and he knows that, but think about this.

What God told Joseph is going to come true as certainly as what he said to the chief cupbearer and the chief baker is going to come true, right? Joseph, in his situation, how does this, yes, it's discouraging that the chief cupbearer didn't remember him, but look, God keeps his promises.

God keeps his word. What he says is going to come to pass is indeed going to come to pass, okay? So that's focusing in on the nature of God's revelation, that what he has said will come to pass will certainly, certainly will.

Now, but also something about God's revelation that we can see from this passage is that God sends word through Joseph, through dreams to the chief baker and to the cupbearer, but it's also through Joseph who interprets it for them, saying, hey, now this belongs to God.

So God keeps his word, but God also mediates his word, doesn't he? What does the mediate is it comes through something. God is talking, is revealing himself, revealing his truth through the dream and then through his chosen servant to interpret the dream for the baker and the chief cupbearer.

And in this way, God is revealing his word. There's certainly something else that we see. It wasn't a direct, it wasn't a, even in, for instance, we think about the way in which God was mediating his word prior to this.

We think of Jacob, Jacob's ladder, but what he sees and what he experiences in that moment is God reveals his word to him. The way in which God has been revealing himself is always somehow, some way the almighty creator is gracing his creatures, getting down on their level to say something to them.

That's grace that God mediates his word to us, that he would say something to us. And there's something else about God's revelation in this chapter. Do we see the difference in what Joseph says to the cupbearer and the chief baker?

Do you see the difference of what he says to the cupbearer versus the chief baker? But do you realize that for the stark difference for what he said to them, he was actually saying the very same thing to them.

He's saying the truth. It was the exact same for both of them. He spoke the truth to both of them. Joseph did not change what he said to the chief baker because it was bad news. It was good news for the cupbearer.

It was very bad news for the baker, but he didn't change what he said. Now, why didn't Joseph say something like, well, you probably don't want to hear this, or you'll find out. It's a bit foggy. Why didn't he change what he said to the baker?

I mean, he says it with all the clarity, with all the exactness, with all of the upfront honesty that he said to the cupbearer. Why didn't he change it? Right. And the interpretation belongs to who? Belongs to God.

That's what he began with. He said that interpretation belonged to God. So, it's not Joseph's to mess with, right? It's not Joseph's to modify. It's not Joseph's to change. By beginning with that, that this revelation, it belongs to God.

This is God's truth here. He's saying it belongs to him. It doesn't belong to me. It's not mine to modify and to alter as comfort demands. So, in this sense, it's good to remember that God owns his word, right?

It's his. It's not ours. It's not ours to do what we like with it. So, God keeps his word. What he says, what he reveals, truly is so. It truly comes to pass that when he speaks his word, he's mediating it to us.

For God, he's our creator. He is our maker. But he is not a man that he should have actual vocal cords and so on and so forth. But he mediates his word to us that we may know who he is. But he also owns his word.

So, it's not up for grabs. It's not up to be changed. Now, so these are the truths about God's revelation that we see here. How might this impact the Israelites who are listening to this story? I mean, here is one of their forefathers, Joseph.

He's the father of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who will be entering into the land. Here's part of the story of interacting what happens when they're in the middle of a pagan land. But God is still God, and his truth is still true, even in the middle of Egypt, in the middle of a pagan land.

If God reveals something to absolute pagans, the cut bearer and the chief baker of Pharaoh, well, you know what? It's still God's truth. It doesn't change. Later on, we'll have the story about, you know, Balaam's donkey.

But if it comes through a donkey, it's still God's truth. However, he mediates that. It's still true, and he's going to keep his word, and he owns it. And whatever he says comes true. These are, I think, some basic truths that the Israelites are going to need to remember as they enter into the promised land, as they go conquering the Canaanites.

When God says to them, obey me, humble yourself before me, follow my ways, and I will give you victory when it looks like victory is not possible. I'll send my hornets ahead of you and clear them out.

I'll send wild beasts to clear them out. One of you will chase off ten men, and ten of you will chase off a thousand. And when he says all these things, will he keep his word? Yes, he keeps his word. And when he says, if you basically play the fool, and you intermarry with them, and you begin to worship these Canaanite gods, and you become Canaanites like them, then I will bring all these curses upon you.

Will he keep his word then? Well, absolutely he will. And so I think there's an important note for the Israelites to think about where Joseph's at. There are all sorts of wonderful things that God has told Joseph that are not yet true, and he's in the middle of a bad situation.

But what is he supposed to think? Well, hey, stay the course, be true, God keeps his word. So there are all sorts of valuable things for the Israelites to think about when they think about the person of Joseph in the story.

Christ the Mediator and the Word of God

So what do we think when we think about God's revelation out of Genesis 40? We are reminded that God keeps his word, he mediates his word, and he owns his word, and it's not up for change. Well, we know this, that God keeps his word, and he keeps his word through his son, Jesus Christ.

He keeps his word, and he keeps it in his son, Jesus Christ. And when he mediates his word, he is mediated through Jesus Christ. He is the one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. And we talked a lot about that this morning in the sermon, and that God owns his word, which means it's his.

We are reminded time and again that when Jesus came in his full divinity, in his full humanity, he was still humbly submitting to his Father. And when he was saying, I'm not speaking on my own authority, on my own accord, I'm saying what the Father has told me to say, right?

And he's acknowledging that even the tough things that he is saying to the people, and in challenging them, he's saying, this is the word of the Lord. This is what the Father has told me to tell you. This is his word, and emphasizing that.

I think when we think about the way in which God reveals himself, and the way he has supremely revealed himself through Jesus Christ, I think that we can make proper application to our own lives. I think about the fact that God owns his word.

What does that mean for us, that God owns his word? And that it is, you know, it is the purview of the king of kings. It is the purview of the ruler of the kings of the earth to give proper expression to the word of God.

That if we want to know what, who God is, and what he has said, we look to the person of Jesus Christ. How does that impact the way we talk about what God says? I mean, Joseph encounters these two pagans, and they're having a bad day, and they want to know something.

They need to know something about what God has said, and the first thing Joseph says is, it belongs to God. Hey, it's not me. It belongs to God. Okay. Well, I think about Thessalonians, in First Thessalonians, and chapter two, about the way in which Paul talks about how he is to speak the truth of God.

You know, Joseph was very clear, you know, hey, the revelation belongs to God. You know, we can have that same conviction looking at Christ, and First Thessalonians chapter two, Paul is explaining and kind of relating how it was that they first came.

His group first came to minister in Thessalonica, and he says, for yourselves know, brethren, that our coming to you was not in vain, but after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition.

For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but as God who examines our hearts.

Right? You know, I think our tendency is towards maybe, you know, not being so hard on the chief baker. It's not our word to modify. It's not our word to modify. It's God's word, and he always keeps his word, and what he has said, he has said to us supremely in Christ, and it's not to change.

It's not ours to modify. It's ours to say. It's been given to us to follow and to obey and to apply and to speak, but it's not ours to change. We are to speak, not as pleasing men, but as God who examines our hearts.

Joseph, the Exalted Son, and the Hope of Absolute Victory

Okay, so I think that's a significant lesson that we need to apply when we think about the way that God reveals himself, reminded from the story of Joseph. I think the other thing is this, that God's chosen servant, upon whom he has had favor, is Jesus Christ, and indeed, he is at the right hand of God, and indeed, all will bow before him, and that being the case, that God always keeps his word, and he has kept and is keeping and will keep his word concerning his son Jesus Christ, that should have an impact on what we're thinking when we're in low points, just like Joseph was.

It should have an impact on our thinking. The fact that God keeps his word, he's going to accomplish exactly what he said he will, and that's nothing short of absolute victory, right? God is not a God of bringing about absolute defeat for himself and for his son and for his people.

He's going to bring about absolute victory for his son and for his people, and it's important to remember that, even if things are not looking up at the moment. It's good. Okay, all right, any questions or thoughts before we close up Genesis 40?

Yes, Ken. Yes, yeah, my brother was here a couple of weeks, or how many, long ago, several weeks ago, I think, when we talked about the dreams of Joseph, and he observed afterwards that Joseph's brothers fought against and raged against that which was going to save them.

Like, the fact that Joseph was going to be reigning over them, that was going to save their lives, because he was going to be giving out grain to all the earth because of his exalted position, but the very thing that was going to save their lives, they were raging against and hating on, and a remarkable, remarkable story.

Yes, all right, well, let's close by singing the doxology.