Genesis 41 Elevated

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the

Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.

Here's Pastor Don. Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. Glad that you're here this morning.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the Lead Pastor here. I want to start off by saying Happy Father's Day. Encourage you to please be sure to honor your father every day.

But on this particular day, he might be looking for a phone call or to go out for lunch or dinner or something a little bit special today, so maybe a phone call or just to say thank you for being my dad would be a great thing for you to do this morning.

Be sure to fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in. You all got that in that worship folder that's got some announcements and some activities.

But the real way that you would connect here at Recast is we send out a weekly email that gives all of the information that we want you to have accessible to you.

And the only way you're going to get that is by filling out one of those connection cards and giving us your email address. We promise we're not going to spam your inbox with tons of messages.

We send out one a week. And that one that you receive, except for, I've got to clarify that, on daylight savings we usually send out a reminder or something like that.

But we send out one a week, and you can unsubscribe yourself from that at any time if you want to, but we really encourage you to just keep that rolling into your inbox so you have access to that information when you need it and want it.

And then also on that connection card, there's a place to put prayer requests, a place to indicate that you're interested in taking part of the baptism that's coming up, or there's all different kinds of check boxes on that if you check that out.

And you turn those in in the black box that's right back there on the table with the red tablecloth on it.

That's also where any offerings you would choose to give go. We've provided you with an envelope. We don't pass an offering plate here because we want your offerings to be between you and God.

We don't want anybody to feel that pressure of the plate going by, oh no, I have to put something in. We want it to be an act of your worship to God in doing so.

If you would choose to use that, you can put those in the black box. There's a place to recycle that envelope if you're not going to be using that one this morning.

I know some people give once a month, some people just not working out right now, but you can recycle that back there so we can reuse those envelopes.

And then any gifts that are marked for expansion fund are going to go towards our eventual hope of getting out of the situation where we're setting up and tearing down every week.

I praise God for the Set Up and Tear Down crew. Go ahead and give them a hand. I'm just very grateful for the time and energy that they put in.

This Sunday is particularly special for them in that this is the last time we've got a set up because school is out now for the summer.

So we're going to be able to leave, yeah, and they're super excited about that. So we're going to be able to leave everything set up, all the chairs, everything up on the stage except for maybe a couple of weeks where they're going to come in and do a deep cleaning.

But for the most part, over the summer, it stays Recast Church. So we're grateful for that. One other thing before we jump into explaining the text is you'll notice that you receive something different than you usually receive when you walked in the door.

Just a flyer, a one -page document there just kind of showing the different ministries that we are currently supporting in this next financial year.

Some of you may be aware, some of you are newer here, our fiscal year, our financial year runs from July to June.

And so we've just recently gone through another budget cycle. We have all the budget information is always available for you at any time.

Again, if you get the e -cast, it's also available on the website. Am I saying that right? Is Kyle in here?

It's available for you through the e -cast and I think the link takes you to a place on the website as well. But we, if you ever have any questions about the budget, ever have any questions about where the money goes, we have full disclosure on all of that.

But check that out and be praying for that. We gave you that, we gave you that, Kyle, is that available on the web, the budget?

The budget is available. Not yet, but it will be soon.

Okay. Excellent. Caught you sitting there. And then just be, take that home, maybe put that on your refrigerator to remind you to be praying for those missionaries.

You'll notice that it's divided up between the local ministries that we support and then those that are further out. You'll notice a little bit of irony that the very first, the very first one on the foreign missions is the

University of Michigan, which I'm a U of M fan, so I think that when Kyle put that together, he put that one over on.

Yeah, so, but you'll notice that we've got, we're sending out one of our own who is going to be working with a crew over there on campus for the next year.

But let's get into the text here this morning, Genesis chapter 41, enough of announcements. We're going to be,

I'll just kind of set the stage, then the band will come and lead us and then we'll really dig into this. But sometimes

I think all of us can recognize that there are times in our lives when we look back on a string of events and we recognize how the smallest decision, sometimes the most insignificant things have resulted in dramatic impact on the things that we do in life right now.

The routine places that we go, the ministry that we're involved in, the work that we do, the person that we wake up next to.

Sometimes that was just a really seemingly insignificant decision to go to that place that day and now you can look back at the string of events.

How many of you, raise your hand if you can think of maybe a seemingly insignificant decision that you made that led to something that's a massive thing in your life right now?

I think all of us have that common experience where we recognize that that's the way that often

God works in our lives. For example, just to use myself as an illustration in this, I'm standing here preaching at Recast because Linda and I chose to visit a church back in the spring of 2004.

We were attending a different church at the time and just kind of checking out different churches. We visited this little church down in Portage, as a matter of fact, we didn't even know the name of it the day we were going.

We'd only ever seen it from 131. There's no sign out on 131 for that church and so we were like, what is that church?

So we drove, got off at the exit, drove around the corner, went to church there. It was probably May of 2004.

We enjoyed the church and to make a long story short, through an amazing turn of events, they didn't hire me the first Sunday I visited, but through a turn of events they hired me about a year later to be their pastor of Christian education and outreach.

Again, through now another amazing turn of events, five years later, they sent me and another four couples,

Linda and I and four other couples, out here to Matawan to start Recast Church and here I am today preaching because of what seemed like a routine decision one

Sunday morning to stop in and visit a church that we had never attended. You can probably look at strings of events like that in your own lives and see how

God has orchestrated things like that. Now we've been following the life of Joseph in the book of Genesis and we come to the text that many of us are very familiar with.

Joseph is going to be elevated. That's the title of my message, elevated. He's going to be raised up to enormous power and to a position second only to Pharaoh in Egypt.

And this is at a time when Egypt is arguably the most powerful nation on the planet.

So you're talking about the second most powerful person on the planet at the time politically and he is going to be raised up to that position and we're going to see, you've seen some of the circumstances that have led him there, routine things, mundane things, even from his perspective, tragic things.

I've mentioned before that the hand of God is best discerned in the rearview mirror of our lives, that I've used the illustration of our lives like driving a car, looking out the windshield, not quite knowing what the next turn holds for us, not having the full picture of what is out in front of us, but we can look in the rearview mirror and we can see

God's hand in the past and so we trust him for what is coming. We trust him for the future on the basis of what we can see about how he has dealt with us faithfully, generously, kindly in the past and so we can look in that rearview mirror and we can see the providential hand of God guiding us through the twists and turns of life to bring us to the place we're at on the road, but the only thing for us moving forward is not to, as we so often try to figure out, discern the will of God, what does

God want for me, but rather what he wants is for us to trust in him with the future, knowing who he is, knowing him, then we step forward and so sometimes, if we're honest,

I think all of us would admit that a lot of times in our lives that what we see out the windshield looks like an awful lot of fog, driving fast in the fog, right, and we just don't know what the next turn holds for us, we just don't know what's out there, but we know who is with us in all of those twists and turns of life.

For Joseph, he had to endure slavery, he had to endure imprisonment, really slavery and imprisonment over the course of 13 years.

We don't know what the combination was, but how many of you think it doesn't really matter if you're a slave or you're in prison, either one, it doesn't matter what the ratio is in there of those 13 years, all of it was pretty miserable.

He had endured betrayal, Joseph had endured false accusations, he had to put up with feelings of being discarded,

I'm sure at times he experienced what felt like hopelessness, we were left with a text last week that told us he was forgotten.

We've been talking about this in the last couple of weeks about how God, I mean how

Joseph endured all of these things without knowing how the story was going to end. And we have the privilege of having the whole story written for us so we can jump ahead a few pages and see how it all goes, and you already knew probably that this week was coming where he's going to be elevated up to a high office, so it's very easy for us to skip over that 13 years of misery in his life and just go, you know, wow, this guy is great, he's a hero of the faith, he's awesome, everything was just so good in his life,

I wish my life was more, no, you don't wish your life was more like Joseph's, you don't wish for that.

Sure, he had that dream that all of his family would bow down to him, it's very important, we use the word dream in a silly way in English, so I have a dream like Martin Luther King Jr.

had a dream, it's very different than the way we use the word dream, and I've read some things recently that really muddy the waters on the concept of dream, in particular in the

Joseph account, in the Joseph story, Joseph didn't have aspirations that his brothers would bow down to him, it wasn't like,

I have a dream, one day everybody will bow down to me, is that a different kind of dream? His dream was a literal, like, fall asleep one night, wake up in the morning and have had this dream in your mind, like a, you know, some kind of a manifestation of thoughts that happened in the middle of the night in a visual dream that he stalks, that represented his brothers and sisters bowed down before him, his parents bowed down to him, so it's not like he had this passionate drive that everybody would bow down to him.

But I imagine that the prison conditions and slavery warred against the trust that he had in that dream that it was given to him by God, that it indeed was what was going to come to pass.

Can you imagine those 13 years, is this really gonna happen? He's in prison, he's a slave, how is that gonna come about?

But God has his timing, God has his plans, God has his promises, and God ultimately has his people in mind.

And when it's go time, when God wants to elevate a person, they will be elevated.

And in our text, Joseph is grabbed out of the pit and thrown high up to the position of grand vizier over all of Egypt.

So let's read this text together, it's a longer text, I am gonna read it, it's in its entirety. Genesis chapter 41, you can turn in your own bible to that, or you can,

Mark is passing out bibles here, if you didn't bring one with you, it is good for you to have a bible, just raise your hand and that's great. If you have an app,

I mentioned this last week and I'm gonna probably mention it a few times in the future as well, but my favorite app, if you go to the iTunes store and type in ESV, the first app that's gonna come up is my favorite and the one that I use,

I preach out of the English standard version of the bible, nothing magical about it, it just is the one that I prefer, but that's a great app if you're looking for one and you can search and do all kinds of stuff.

Follow along as we read the very words of God to us here recast. Genesis 41, after two whole years,

Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile and behold there came up out of the Nile seven cows attractive and plump and they fed in the reed grass.

And behold seven other cows, ugly and thin, came up out of the Nile after them and stood by the other cows on the bank of the

Nile and the ugly thin cows ate up the seven attractive plump cows and Pharaoh awoke.

And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time and behold seven ears of grain plump and good were growing on one stalk and behold after them sprouted seven ears thin and blighted by the east wind and the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump full ears and Pharaoh awoke and behold it was a dream.

So in the morning his spirit was troubled and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men.

Pharaoh told them his dream but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.

The chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, I remember my offenses today when Pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard.

We dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own interpretation. A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard.

When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream.

And as he interpreted to us, so it came about. I was restored to my office and the baker was hanged.

Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph and they quickly brought him out of the pit. And when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh and Pharaoh said to Joseph, I have had a dream and there is no one who can interpret it.

I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream, you can interpret it. Joseph answered Pharaoh, it is not in me.

God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, behold, in my dream

I was standing on the banks of the Nile. Seven cows, plump and attractive, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. Seven other cows came up after them, poor and very ugly and thin, such as I have never seen in all the land of Egypt.

And the thin, ugly cows ate up the first seven plump cows. But when they had eaten them, no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were still as ugly as at the beginning.

Then I awoke. I also saw in my dream seven ears growing on one stalk, full and good.

Seven ears, withered thin and blighted by the east wind, sprouted after them. And the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears and I told it to the magicians.

But there was no one who could explain it to me. Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, the dreams of Pharaoh are one.

God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years and the seven good ears are seven years.

The dreams are one. The seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine.

It is as I told Pharaoh, God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt.

But after them there will arise seven years of famine and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt.

The famine will consume the land and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow for it will be very severe.

And the doubling of Pharaoh's dreams means that the thing is fixed by God and God will shortly bring it about.

Now therefore, let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one -fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years.

And let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities and let them keep it.

The food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of Egypt so that the land may not perish through the famine.

This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, can we find a man like this in whom is the spirit of God?

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are.

You shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will

I be greater than you. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, see, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, clothed him in garments of fine linen, and put a chain about his neck.

And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, bow the knee.

Thus, he set him over all the land of Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am

Pharaoh, and without your consent, no one shall lift up hand or foot in all of Egypt. And Pharaoh called

Joseph's name Zaphonath -Paneah. And he gave him in marriage to Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar, priest of On.

So Joseph went out over the land of Egypt. Joseph was 30 years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land. During the seven plentiful years, the earth produced abundantly, and he gathered up all the food of these seven years which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities.

He put in every city the food from the fields around it. And Joseph stored up grain in abundance like the sand of the sea until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.

Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar, priest of On, bore them to him.

Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, for he said,

God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house. The name of the second he called

Ephraim, for God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.

The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end, and the seven years of famine began to come.

As Joseph had said, there was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread.

Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, Go to Joseph, what he says you do. So when the famine had spread over all the land,

Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth came to Joseph, came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.

Let's pray. Father, we read in this account a story of your providence, a story of your movement in a person's life in amazing and glorious ways.

And I pray that you would not allow the message of Joseph to be lost on us. We have such a sense in our minds of the little guy raising himself up and elevating himself, and we see something very different in this text.

We see a guy being elevated, and there's a big difference in that,

Father. So as we come to worship you, may we worship you as the one who elevates, as those who seek in our own hearts to elevate ourselves,

I ask this morning that you would help us in humility to come before your throne in worship, that we would enter into your courts with praise and rejoice, and because you, if there is going to be any elevation that matters in our lives, it is going to come from you and you alone, and ultimately we know that any elevation that matters really comes through your son,

Jesus Christ, who humbled himself that we might be raised up. And so Father, I pray that we would worship you with hearts of gladness and joy, because you are the one that is in the process of elevating your people.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well that's our hope, is that God would speak to us in our hearts through the hearing of his word this morning, and that his spirit, which is alive in you, if you are in him with Jesus Christ, then the spirit is alive and can take his word and transform us and change us, and that's our hope.

So I'd like you to keep your Bibles open, we're going to walk through that same text, Genesis 41, that I read earlier, remember you can get as comfortable as possible, there's more juice, there's more donuts at the two stations up here, restrooms are out the door to the end of the hallway, men's upstairs, women's downstairs, if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, whatever it takes to keep your focus on the word of God while we run through this text.

We've got a lot of ground to cover, so we're going to jump in. Last week, we left Joseph forgotten and alone, in a place that he referred to, his own words, his word choosing, he called it the pit, okay, a term of endearment for his current residence.

And despite interpreting the dreams last week of two high -standing dignitaries, and requesting kindness from them that they might remember him before Pharaoh, remember his plight and how he's been treated unfairly and unjustly imprisoned, he ended up in the text at the same place he started.

As a matter of fact, I suggested last week that he ended up just maybe a skosh lower, in that he started out the text last week in prison, he ended up at the end of the text in prison, and the text said forgotten.

So it was not much movement in the text last week, as far as the geographical location of Joseph.

So we find out right away in our text this morning that two years have passed, and Joseph is still in prison.

Now how many of you would agree with me that two years is long enough to feel forgotten? With that,

I mean, two years go by, you're still in prison, you kind of get in the picture that the cupbearer hasn't remembered you before Pharaoh, nothing has occurred, two years is certainly enough time to feel forgotten, two years is enough time to lose hope of ever being released.

I would imagine, and I haven't experienced this personally, but I would imagine that two years in prison feels like 10 to 15,

I don't know, I would just imagine that having your complete freedom, you don't go to the store, you don't go where you want to go, you don't get to get out and sit in the sunlight, you don't get to go to the beach, you don't get to go to the cottage, you don't get to go to the summer home, you don't get to go, you don't get to go, right?

But at the end of these two years, the text tells us, moving on, Pharaoh, the king over all of Egypt, had a dream.

Now again, I need to emphasize this is not a Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream kind of dream, he's laying in bed asleep, he has a real dream.

There's a significant concentration of those types of dreams in the account of Joseph in the book of Genesis.

These two dreams of Pharaoh bring the total so far in this very short, brief period of time of Genesis to six dreams that have been recorded for us in the life of Joseph.

His brothers, remember, referred to him derogatorily as that dreamer, and he dreams, his dreams certainly play a part, and dreams, not just his, play a large part in the plan of God for this young man.

Pharaoh's first dream is about cows, just about cows. Now I'd imagine that, you know, probably not many of us have dreams that incorporate cows in them routinely.

Maybe if you work on a dairy farm, you have a dream, I don't know, you have dreams about cows once in a while, I would imagine.

Some of you, maybe you work in finance, you have dreams about finance, I don't know. But the thing about cows in Egypt is that it was a major, major part of their livelihood and their agricultural industry, their food came from cows.

And in his dream, Pharaoh sees seven healthy, fat, and strong cows coming up out of the

Nile River. Now the Nile had, many of you already know this, it had major significance to Egyptian culture.

It was the place of sustenance. It was the place where all the crops received their water. It was a significant thing to them, to the degree that many in Egypt would worship the

Nile itself. And so they saw it as the place where all their livelihood came from. And so now the cows are coming up out of that place of sustenance.

The text in Hebrew says this next statement, and I've mentioned this before, but when you see the word behold, it's like a stark statement, check this out, something happened, okay.

Routine run of the mill, routine thing in Egypt, cows coming up out of the Nile, not a big deal. The cows would often actually be brought to the edge of the

Nile to get down in it to stop the flies and stuff like that. And so it wasn't very rare for cows to be in the river.

But now, check this out, seven unhealthy, thin, gaunt cows, barely even tell that they're cows.

They come up out of the Nile after the healthy cows, and they go all Hannibal the Cannibal on them, okay.

These cows, I mean, I wonder if they had the mask over their mouth and stuff to try to stop, never mind. But, you know, they eat the healthy cows.

Now how many of you are just kind of like, whatever that looked like in his dream, and it's not too graphic, not too detailed, but that would kind of freak you out just a smidge, watching cows eat each other, okay.

And he startles awake, it says that in the text, he wakes up, okay, what was that about?

Probably had someone in attendance in his room, most of the time these guys would have someone in attendance on them 24 -7, and so he probably just rattled off the dream, hey, record this dude,

I just had this happen, and then falls back asleep. Obviously wasn't so disturbing that he lost sleep over it, he was able to get back asleep and he saw again in a dream, he saw a stalk of corn.

Now that one I can relate to, because I detasseled corn for five summers, from middle school through high school, so dreams about corn,

I've had my share of dreams about corn. But in Pharaoh's dream, he sees seven plump, ripe, good ears of corn on one single stalk.

This is a fruitful stalk that is producing significant corn. He then sees seven thin and blighted ears form, and they overtake the healthy ones.

The text uses the word swallow them up, we know that corn doesn't have a mouth, and so do they overtake them, do they just kind of assume the position where they were or whatever, it's unclear, but these blighted, unhealthy, you know, and how many of you have ever seen that?

Have any of you ever opened up, like went to husk a piece of corn and found a corn borer in it or something, and it's like half eaten, and it's like, that's kind of nasty, that's the picture that we have here, these are just thin, gaunt, nasty looking ears of corn, and they've taken the place of the healthy ones.

So in the morning Pharaoh is troubled, the second time that we've seen somebody troubled as a result of their dreams, and so he calls all of his dream readers and all of his wise guys into his presence, but according to verse eight, none of the wise guys could interpret these two dreams.

Now at this point I'm wondering if these magicians couldn't come up with something, right? Weren't they used to just coming up with stuff off the cuff,

I mean, how many of you actually kind of think, okay, the use of the word magicians in the text and kind of dream readers and stuff like that, don't they just make stuff up?

Isn't that just what they would do routinely? Can't they just invent something? But consider what is at risk if they get this wrong.

They are in front of Pharaoh himself. To interpret this and get it wrong would certainly cost a person their life in the presence of Pharaoh.

Would you agree with me on that? This is going to be problematic if they interpret it and get it wrong.

This also makes me consider the reality, the reality of what we see in other scriptures of revelatory, that is revelation, that is miraculous, but yet is attributed to a manifestation of evil in scripture.

So in other words, can there be some evil manifestation of future telling? I mean, have you ever just kind of thought about that, is that possible?

Can a demon tell the future or something like that or does Satan have some ability to see the future?

Well we know that in Ephesus there was a girl, the text of Acts tells us there was a girl who was possessed by an evil spirit and she was able to tell the future and actually make a profit for, she was a slave and she was able to make a profit for her master by telling the future because she was possessed by a demon.

We also know that the magicians in Egypt a few hundred years down the road from the text that we're looking at now during the life of Moses are actually able to do some amazing things in mimicking what

God does in the plagues. They get like four or five in and they can do it just like Moses.

There comes a limit when they can't perform the miracle and he says they couldn't do that one. But they could do some of them.

Have you ever considered and contemplated that kind of dark magic that's going on here in this case? But here in our circumstance, here in our text, the dream readers are thwarted.

I can't see this one. I can't give you an answer Pharaoh. God will foil the works of evil when he wants to shine a clear light on his power and on his authority.

Like Jesus silencing the demons with a command, the magicians cannot open their mouths and interpret this one.

This one is for Joseph. They will not get this one. And it is intentionally ironic that we see in the text the first words we find from the cupbearer who had forgotten

Joseph is, the very first words from his mouth in the text is, I remember,

I remember. Since the word offenses is plural, it's likely that he's indicating that he's both remembering the offense that he had committed against Pharaoh that had landed him in prison in the first place, but then there's a secondary offense.

He has forgotten Joseph. And so he told Pharaoh all about this Hebrew prisoner who could accurately interpret dreams and immediately

Pharaoh sends for him. Now I don't know what Joseph was doing that day. You ever thought about that?

What was Joseph doing? Was he just bringing water to the, bringing water to the prisoners? Was he, you know, just his run of the mill daily activities?

I'm pretty sure that whatever he was doing that day, he wasn't expecting what's coming for him. Would you agree with me on that?

I mean just another day, just another day, mundane day, one more day in the pit, one more day removed from the house, one more day of sitting in prison, falsely accused, falsely tried, falsely imprisoned.

But I want to suggest to you that expecting the call and being ready for the call are two different things.

Today you might not be expecting God to call you, but are you ready for him to call you?

You get it? You hear the difference there? Expecting and being ready are different. Joseph is ready to meet this need that God is calling him because God has equipped his people to meet the needs that he calls them to perform.

Well, he's not completely ready because he has to shave and change his clothes. I don't want to make too much of that because he is ready in his heart where it matters most.

He is indeed ready, but the primary reason for this added preparation is cultural and probably just access to, access to shaving implements there in the prison would be slim to none.

But he would have shaved his face, I want to be clear with this, he would have shaved his face, his head, his neck, his arms, probably his eyebrows in preparation to enter the presence of Pharaoh.

The Egyptians, yes, as you might be thinking, like what's the hang up there, the Egyptians did not like hair.

They didn't like hair, for real. During the dynastic period, during the dynasty, this is the 8th dynasty approximately of Egypt, during the time of the

Pharaohs, they did not do hair, okay, there wasn't hair. It's actually well documented that they would have one or two barbers in their presence at all times in the event that a hair needed removal.

Just in case, on standby, 24 -7, ready, in a moment's notice.

Now there was a reason actually we have recorded for us in ancient documents and in hieroglyphics and all kinds of, actually why they had a hang up with hair, like what was it, it wasn't just like they were into manscaping and they were all metro or whatever, so they were just like, you know, just manscape this body, make it look chiseled.

It wasn't just that, it was that they believed that hair actually didn't just make us look more like animals, but actually brought out the animal instinct, for example, okay.

So they actually thought that you were actually becoming more hostile, more volatile, that they would associate a beard with a guy who is out of control and enraged and barbaric and so that would be the notion and I think some of our commercials are moving that way too, but I'm going to keep rocking this thing until my wife tells me no.

She's gotten used to it now. But so that was the deal, he had to shave, he had to change his clothes,

I mean he's entering into the presence of a dignitary and Joseph is rushed into Pharaoh's presence and Pharaoh cuts the chase.

I'm sure that he was used to having his way right away and so he immediately launches in. I've heard that you can interpret dreams as his very first statement to Joseph.

But Joseph corrects Pharaoh. This guy is prepared.

This guy is prepared for this. When I say to you that God prepares a man or a woman before he calls them, he doesn't just prepare their skills and their abilities, but he also prepares their heart.

He prepares them to give the right answer and to glorify him in that. And Joseph has had enough experience with dreams to know that interpretations do not belong to him.

No, it's not coming from me, Pharaoh. You're wrong. You've got it wrong. There is nothing in me that is going to be able to interpret your dreams.

But God will. God can do it. Joseph owns none of the glory due to God in this and he wants to make sure that God gets every ounce of glory for what he is about to do.

He is both confident that an interpretation will indeed be given because of his experience, because of that backwards look in the mirror of how

God has dealt with him, and he is confident that God is the one who is going to supply this, not him.

We already know the dreams, but here Pharaoh adds flourish above and beyond what we've already heard from the narrator, probably because it was his experience.

And so we're seeing him add a little bit in the context to what we've already heard.

He basically says, and what he adds is, these were the worst cows I've ever seen. He's the only one who can add that perspective, but he's like, these are the worst cows

I've ever seen. Now, I picture in my mind like a children's drawing of a cow. Picture a young child.

Have you ever had your young child bring to you a picture and say, look what I drew, mommy. Look what I drew, daddy. And it's like, you're like, yeah, can you kind of tease out what it is?

And they're like, well, guess what it is. Guess what it is. Look at it. Isn't it cool? You're like, is it a dog? No. Is it a car?

No. A giraffe? Bird? No. It's a cow. And it's like, oh, I see that now.

Yeah. That's kind of the way that I picture these cows that are coming up out of the water, like just this gnarly, like not healthy looking cows.

But Pharaoh also emphasizes something that the narrator didn't tell us, and that's that when the unhealthy looking cows eat the healthy ones, their appearance doesn't change.

It's not like they all of a sudden get fuller, get more robust, get stronger looking because they've eaten these healthy cows.

No, they just remain the same. They still remain unhealthy. And down in verse 25,

Joseph is immediately given the interpretation. There's no pause. There's no wait. There's no prayer. There's no, I'm going to take a few days to think on this.

I'm going to consult others about it. He is, in the text, immediately given the interpretation.

And first he sets a little bit of the ground rules, ground work, and he says, I want to tell you first that God is the source of these dreams.

God has given this to you, Pharaoh. He's the source of the dream. And not only that, but then he says, and the purpose of the dream,

I'm going to declare to you, it's to tell you what's to come to pass, what's going to happen. It's telling you the future,

Pharaoh. And he says these dreams are one in the same. They're the same dream. You had them at two different times, but it is the exact same meaning from the two dreams.

I'm wondering if we would have gotten this interpretation if we didn't know how the story goes. Like, have you ever wondered, like, if you just heard somebody came to you and told you these dreams, what would you have gotten out of it?

It seems like a pretty logical interpretation to me to see the years, the seven years of abundant harvest followed by seven years of famine.

That seems logical, but I don't know. To say with confidence in the presence of a ruler, that would be something different altogether, right?

Just to kind of take a guess at it versus actually state something with confidence.

And again, Joseph exhibits a crazy sense of confidence in God. He clearly had some strong indication that God was telling him the meaning here, and I mentioned last week in the interpretation for the baker and the cupbearer that I do not know and I cannot tell you as your pastor what the mechanism of that confidence is.

I know that Joseph was confident. I know that he was confident enough to tell a dude three days from now, you're going to be killed by the

Pharaoh. He was confident enough to tell a dude three days from now, you're going to be raised up to authority. He was confident enough to stand in the presence of Pharaoh and say, this is the meaning and we've got to get on it now, as we're going to see here in just a second.

So he had intense confidence that this indeed was what God was communicating, but I want to just caution us all to step carefully as we walk into the notion of the confidence of God over the things that he reveals.

And I would suggest to you that we hold everything very closely to what God has revealed to us in the word.

I hear people routinely and regularly tell me all kinds of things that God has told them and I'm like, it's not here. I've had people come to me and literally say

God has told me to divorce my wife. Any of you ever had that? Maybe a couple of you? You know, and it's kind of like,

I don't see it. I don't see it here. How many of you know that when it comes to things that God is telling you, you ought to go here, right?

You ought to come here and check this about what it is that God is communicating with you.

But, at the same time, I've got to be cautious to not overemphasize that side and say, I mean, here

Joseph is confident that God is revealing this to him. And so there is room for God to communicate with us in our spirit in a way that at least we're confident about it.

I don't know how that works and I'm sorry that I can't give you the mechanism of that. I wish I could give you a flow chart to determine that.

But that's not what scripture exists to do. It's painting these pictures of narrative for us that we can understand the kinds of things that God does in a person's life to lead them along.

Joseph emphasizes that the seven bad years will be so bad that the years of plenty will be completely forgotten.

That's how bad it's going to be. The emphasis in this, by the way, all throughout this text is how utterly severe the famine will be.

We're not given much indication at all about how good the years of plenty will be. Did you notice that in the text?

We're not given any kind of numbers to push out on and push against and go, well, it's going to be a five -fold increase over the seven years so that you can do the math and figure out how much they need to save each year in order to make cover the years of absence.

But we do see some indications that literally it is a five -fold increase and I'll get there in a second. But Joseph concludes his interpretation in verse 32 by declaring that these events are definitely fixed and imminent.

It's like he looks at Pharaoh and he says, the years of plenty begin now, right now.

It's happening now. We might be a month into the first part of the year of plenty.

So we need to get moving. This is imminent. It is fixed and it is happening now.

Now the phrase fixed, I want to be clear that just because the dream comes in two doesn't mean that now that makes this event fixed.

Like as if God just, only time that God ever fixes something in the future is when he reveals a dream by twos, okay?

It's that we know that it is fixed, I mean according to the text, and Joseph says, one of the indications to me that this is definitely going to come to pass is that God has revealed it to us twice now.

He's hammered it home. Are you getting what I'm saying? So there is a sense in which God, I don't want to go all back to the future on you guys, but I'm going to for just a second and clarify that movie all in one fell swoop.

The future is fixed. There you go. The future is done. It's taken care of.

Now that's something that boggles our minds and causes frustration to many people, maybe even some of us.

We know that we're making choices, right? But once again, God shows the future and it will indeed come to pass as he has declared it to.

It's fixed and the word is actually used in the text. This is fixed. It's going to happen this way. He's got those 14 years planned out for the world.

But knowing what the future holds, and this is, I want to sit here for just a minute. Knowing what the future holds leads

Joseph to action in the present. Knowing what the future holds moves him to behave in a certain way, to act in a certain way now.

And so knowing the future in scripture never results in human inactivity, but rather is given to us to focus our actions in the present.

Are you hearing what I'm saying? The future, the knowledge that the future is fixed never is meant to lead us to sitting back on our hands and just kind of going, okay, well, it's all going to be taken care of then, right?

But it moves us to action. For example, knowing that there is an eternal home and rest waiting for us helps us to focus our attention towards the things that matter most in this life, at least it should.

Knowing that Jesus will be exalted as king over all in the end helps us to focus on glorifying him in the here and now.

Knowing that the gates of hell will not ultimately prevail against his church ought to make us pour energy into the kingdom, bringing more and more people into his family.

That took a second, but you got it. Some of you have been watching the commercials. Knowing the future is not meant to cause us to throw up our hands and say, then why work?

Why pray? Why evangelize? But look at Joseph's response. Joseph knows that something is fixed and look at how he responds.

Knowing the future makes Joseph bold in the present. It makes him bold.

In a respectful third person tone, Joseph encourages, and by encourages

I mean gives advice to Pharaoh. He says, set forward a chief famine relief advisor over all of Egypt who will have then a team of overseers to manage a seven -year storage campaign to save this nation.

They will take one -fifth of the grain according to the text from each year as a special tax to store it up for the famine.

And if you just do some simple math, this presupposes a five -fold increase in what was consumed by the people for there to be the replacement over the seven -year period of to ultimately be able to replace what's lost in the seven years of a complete loss.

I looked at it as a story problem. That's one of the first math problems I've done as a pastor, story problems.

I wasn't a big math guy. Somebody can come correct me if I got my numbers wrong on there. But Pharaoh now questions his ability to find a man of this caliber.

He's reasonable in questioning whether he can find a person like this among his advisors. His current panel is already present there.

They've been trying to interpret this and have been blocked at every turn. And so you can imagine kind of the embarrassment among the magicians and the advisors and the spiritists who are all there present.

And how could he ever find someone, he says in the text, with the Spirit of God in him? It's likely that this is not some theological discourse about the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit as much as a general statement about spiritual wisdom.

In other words, what Pharaoh means when he says this is not some deep theological concept of the Spirit of God in the

Old Testament, but it is ultimately him saying, how could I ever find somebody with this kind of divinely infused wisdom?

Where am I going to find somebody like this? In the absence of any of his wise men's suggestions,

Pharaoh answers his own question and appoints Joseph to the office of Grand Vizier over Egypt on the spot.

In two short sentences, everything for Joseph changes. Look at verse 40 with me.

Look down at the text. You shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command.

Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you,

Joseph. Can you think of some sentences that you've heard that have carried positive life change for you?

Maybe not this dramatic. Maybe close. I can think of a few sentences that have carried that kind of significance for me.

One example, a two -word sentence that has had a dramatic impact on my life when my wife stood at the altar and said,

I do. One sentence that has changed me.

When a doctor said two times to me, it's a boy, and one time he said to me, it's a girl.

Sentences that have changed my life in a good way. Can you think of sentences that you've heard in your life?

And it could be, and I don't want to be neutral, you can make it family, you can make it whatever, but some of you got a promotion, you got a raise, all different kinds of things.

It could be that the doctor said your test came back negative, you don't have it.

It could be all different kinds of sentences that we could hear. But Joseph is way elevated in this.

This is not a rags -to -riches story, this is so much more than that. It is astronomical and beyond compare.

He goes from the pit to the throne room all before lunchtime.

Thirteen years of suffering. Do you think that thirteen years of suffering snaps into focus for him to some degree?

Yes. It's a powerful moment. The power vested in Joseph is immediate, complete, and clearly defined in the text.

He will be second only to Pharaoh, and even Pharaoh himself says I only reserve the throne for myself. You can sit anywhere else you want, you can't sit on my throne.

Other than that, you can do whatever you want. He will not rule locally. He will rule over all of Egypt, and the word all is mentioned multiple times in the text from here on out.

He is granted Pharaoh's signature power. He's given the very signet ring. He can sign stuff like he is

Pharaoh. He's immediately clothed in fine linen garments. He receives the gold chain around his neck of leadership in Egypt.

He is given a pimped out chariot, and everywhere he goes throughout Egypt, somebody runs along beside him or rides a horse in front of him and says bow the knee, and everybody falls before him as he rides through town.

Does that sound like power? Does it sound like authority? Does that sound like movement from the pit to the throne?

It's an amazing and glorious thing that we're seeing here that God is elevating him, and I wonder if every time he heard that phrase bow the knee, if he reflected just briefly on that dream that he had had in his father's house, that his brothers and his brothers and family would one day do what?

Bow before him. He's getting used to people bowing before him.

Joseph was given absolute legislative authority as well. In verse 44, he is given an Egyptian name.

He is given an Egyptian wife of high standing, the daughter of a high standing priest. And Joseph sets out around Egypt to manage a massive storage campaign that certainly involved building granaries, securing those granaries from theft, filling those granaries, and eventually selling grain from those granaries.

He was so successful in those seven years that they went beyond their ability to measure the grain that was stored, but it was not just the land that was fruitful during this time, but Joseph's wife has two sons during this time.

And I could have taken this in two chunks. I could have cut a little bit down and taken this as two separate sermons, but it really gets to the point by getting to where Joseph names his two kids.

That's the pinch point in this text. That's where we see him realize what is happening in his life finally.

The naming of these sons is a significant window into the heart of Joseph. You might wonder as you go through this, what's

Joseph feeling as he's raised up? What has Joseph felt like as he's been imprisoned unfairly?

What is Joseph feeling? And the naming of his sons draws out what he's feeling in his heart. I believe it's a bit of a play on words, both of them.

Since we saw that Joseph had been forgotten last week, so he also names his firstborn son

Manasseh, God made me forget. He has, in essence, he in essence says,

I've forgotten being forgotten. I forgot that I have been forgotten.

But the fact that he names his son, this shows that he has not forgotten. The fact that he is able to name his son after these events and these hardships that he has endured, he does indeed remember all of the hardships.

He does remember the heartache of being torn from his father's house. But God has elevated him, has raised him up, and he is making sense now of that hardship.

He's beginning to understand what these things mean in his life. And this shows even more in the naming of his secondborn son.

Ephraim means double fruitful, fruitful twice. And Joseph gives

God the credit for making him doubly fruitful in this land where he was afflicted.

Who is getting the credit? Who is getting the credit for him being raised up and elevated?

God is getting the credit. I love how Joseph is never willing to take any credit for what

God has done in him and through him. He never for a second is shown to take on himself the glory for interpreting his dreams or remaining faithful in Potiphar's house.

I would suggest to you that Joseph is indeed a great model for us and it's often been preached this way and often when

I've heard Sunday school lessons on this text, it's been like act like Joseph. How many of you think Joseph's a pretty good guy?

You're not going to find, the text doesn't tell you what he does wrong. So how often has the message from Joseph's life been do what

Joseph did? And I'm going to suggest that you indeed do what Joseph did, but, but what he did was believe

God. What he did was have faith and trust in God, even in the darkest times of his life.

He kept looking to God. I believe it's human nature for us to have this temptation to think in terms of what

God, what we do versus what God does for us.

Joseph is indeed a model for us, but not primarily as a do what I do model for us, but more in regard to his attitude.

All of us are tempted to view the Christian life as a life of what we can do for God, but I believe that that's just human nature.

We do stuff, we get credit for it, right? Isn't that the way we live our lives? I work, I get paid.

Joseph was the one who resisted Potiphar's wife, shouldn't he get something for that? Joseph was the one who spoke the interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams.

Joseph is the one who came up with the plan to save Egypt, but who gets the credit? God has made me fruitful.

God has elevated Joseph, and I particularly like the word elevated because when we apply it to ourselves, it's a passive thing.

It is not that we elevate ourselves, but it is being elevated that is the glory in this text.

In our human nature, we want to elevate. We want to lift ourselves higher, and often our speech, often our behavior, often the things that we do in life, if we are really looking at our motives, it is about making ourselves lifted up.

It is about raising ourselves up just maybe a skosh above others. A lot of gossip, a lot of slander, a lot of pain that we inflict on others is so that we look better than them, right?

We often do this. As a matter of fact, the original sin that's recorded for us in Isaiah 14, the original sin, not back in Genesis where Satan has already fallen, we're talking about Satan's fall here, in Isaiah 14 where the king of Babylon is used as a metaphor for Satan.

And he said this, listen to the words of the king of Babylon, listen to the words of the evil one even through him.

He says this, I will ascend, does that sound like elevation? I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high.

I will elevate, I will lift myself up above the very throne of the

Almighty. Elevating ourselves is a huge problem, as a matter of fact,

I would suggest to you the most dangerous endeavor we can partake in. Jesus said whoever exalts, whoever elevates himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted, lifted up, elevated.

So don't merely act like Joseph, but believe like Joseph. Joseph believed that good, healthy, true elevation comes from the hands of God and he takes no credit for his high standing.

His elevation is so complete that at the end of the seven years when people began to run out of food due to the famine, Pharaoh pointed people to Joseph, he didn't take credit himself.

And how many of you know it's not normal for a king to point to somebody else and say go to him? How many of you, some of you have served and worked with bosses that every good idea is theirs, right?

And yet when people would come to, people would come to Pharaoh and say save us from this famine, he would point to Joseph and say that's the dude over there, go to him, he'll save you.

And in verse 56 through 57 as we wrap this up, we find that all of Egypt and all the rest of the world began to show up on Joseph's doorstep looking for food and God elevated the right man at the right time to bring about salvation in the midst of deep and very severe worldwide famine.

But we know that it is more than bread that God is offering to the world, but he is offering protection for his people through these events, that they might weather the storm of this global famine with the final goal of eventually blessing all the nations through one of their offspring who will be born of their line and his name is

Jesus. There are three applications that come to mind before we come to communion and I hope that none of these interfere with what

God is dealing with you in your own heart about, but these are things that struck me and they might be helpful to you and the first is that God is equipping you.

Not everyone is going to be raised up to global fame and power by interpreting dreams, but everybody has a part to play.

Joseph was ready and willing to speak truth when he was called upon. Despite sufferings, despite the hardships, despite being forgotten, he kept the big picture of God in mind and continued to honor him and to exhibit faith in him.

When God calls you, will you be ready to respond? Or is it a situation where when God calls you, he will find you in a pile on the floor in misery, only thinking about yourself and only concerned for yourself?

The second application, let the knowledge of the future motivate you. God has promised that those he has chosen, those he has saved will be presented before him faultless.

How many of you are excited about that? To stand before God someday faultless, without blame, without sin.

I rejoice in that day. I look forward to it and I hope it's soon, but it's a very weak faith that says, well, if he's promised that, then now

I get to do whatever I want. Strong faith says, I want my life to blaze the glory of the one who has saved me and sealed me.

I want all my days to honor the one who promises me endless days. I do not want to rest until every corner of my life is filled with the glory of the one who has promised me eternal rest.

God will indeed elevate every single one of us who are his children. And in the same way that in one moment

Joseph went from the pit to ruler, if we're just honest with ourselves, the majority of us will one day likely go from a hospital bed with little dignity to the very glorious and majestic throne room of the almighty, where we will hear, well done, good and faithful servant, from the pit to glory.

And lastly, the only way to obtain this elevation is to be elevated.

Since the first sin of Adam and Eve, humanity has been trying to elevate ourselves. The very sin committed was a sin of doing it our way.

And we try all types of things to elevate ourselves. Some of these things look really good on the outside. We may try to elevate ourselves by giving to the poor.

We may try to elevate ourselves by attending church. We may try to elevate ourselves through pleasure or through drugs or through all different kinds of things that we think are going to take us to the next level.

But our only hope for real elevation is that God would lift us up through the sacrifice of his son,

Jesus Christ. And we come to communion every week to bring our thoughts back to that main point of our faith.

The place of our elevation is indeed the cross of Christ. The cross is the humbling of God for the elevation of his people.

He became nothing in order to give us nothing less than his own righteousness. If you have been elevated by asking

Jesus to forgive you and asking Jesus to be your king, then you can get up at any time during this next song and remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you that has brought you to a place of elevation.

But if you're here and you've not yet asked Jesus to save you, to forgive you, to be your king and master and lord, then sit back and just take in this song and consider what it is that's holding you back from acknowledging all that God has done for you on the cross.

If you would like to talk to me about how you can know that your sins have been forgiven, if you'd like to talk with me about how you can know that you indeed are elevated, you can catch me after this service.

Let's pray as we go to communion. Father I thank you and I rejoice in this elevation that you are modeling as an example for us here through the life of Joseph and it wasn't just some figurative notion or some story, he was a real guy in history who experienced this amazing and radical transformation from the pit to the throne.

But what a model and what an example and what a metaphor that is for our lives and the way that you elevate and raise up the lowly, the sinners, the broken, the weak, the meek, the crushed and you take those who have endured injustice and pain and suffering and you can take us out of that mess, even sometimes self -inflicted messes and you take us from that position and you can lift us up to a place of joy and peace and love and forgiveness all through your son.

I thank you for his ultimate humility in coming here. I thank you for the opportunity that we have even now to remember his amazing and glorious sacrifice through his body that was broken for us and we take the cracker to remember that and his blood spilled out for us and we take the juice to remember that.

And Father I pray that you would help us as we walk out into this week to remember that it is not us elevating ourselves but it is you who elevate.

And Father to use the opportunities that we have to declare your glory and your majesty to give you the credit alone and not take any of that for ourselves in Jesus' name.