Dreams In The Darkness

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What were the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker?

The cupbearer dreamed of a vine with three branches that budded, blossomed, and produced grapes, which he pressed into Pharaoh's cup. Joseph interpreted it: three branches were three days — in three days the cupbearer would be restored to his position. The baker dreamed of three baskets of bread on his head, birds eating from the top basket. Joseph interpreted it: three baskets were three days — in three days the baker would be executed. Both interpretations proved exactly accurate (Genesis 40:20-22).

2. Why did Joseph ask the cupbearer to remember him?

Genesis 40:14-15 records Joseph's request: "Please remember me when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit." Joseph's appeal was legitimate and human. But the cupbearer forgot — and Genesis 40:23 says simply: "Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him." This is the last verse before "at the end of two full years" (41:1). Two years of silence.

3. What do the two years of waiting teach?

The two years between the cupbearer's restoration and Joseph's summons before Pharaoh are among the most theologically instructive silences in the Bible. God did not forget Joseph — He was timing the moment precisely. Ecclesiastes 3:1 states: "There is a time for every matter under heaven." The cupbearer's forgetfulness was not a failure of the plan; it was part of it. Joseph needed to be in prison until Pharaoh dreamed. The lesson is permanent: God's timing is not our timing, and His silence is not His absence.

4. What was the significance of Pharaoh's double dream?

Genesis 41:32 provides the interpretive key: "the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about." Two dreams with the same meaning — seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine — was divine confirmation that the event was certain and imminent. Joseph interpreted both with the same meaning, then went beyond interpretation to give Pharaoh a detailed administrative strategy for handling the famine. This practical wisdom was itself a gift of God's Spirit (41:38: "Can we find anyone like this man, in whom is the Spirit of God?").

5. How did Joseph account for his ability to interpret dreams?

Both times Joseph was asked to interpret dreams, he deflected credit immediately to God. To the cupbearer and baker: "Do not interpretations belong to God?" (Genesis 40:8). To Pharaoh: "It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer" (Genesis 41:16). This consistent attribution is theologically significant: Joseph understood his gifts as God's, not his own. It anticipates the New Testament's theology of spiritual gifts — "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" (James 1:17). Joseph's humility before Pharaoh was genuine, not strategic.

6. What was Pharaoh's response to Joseph's interpretation?

Pharaoh's response was immediate and total: "Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?" He appointed Joseph second-in-command over all Egypt: "Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you" (Genesis 41:40). Joseph was given Pharaoh's signet ring, fine linen robes, a gold chain, and a new name. At thirty years old, the prisoner who had spent thirteen years in slavery and prison became the second most powerful man in the known world — precisely fulfilling the dreams he had been given at seventeen.

7. How does Joseph's exaltation picture Christ?

The pattern of Joseph's exaltation is one of the New Testament's most explicit types of Christ: humiliation followed by exaltation, suffering followed by glory, rejection followed by universal authority. Philippians 2:8-11 describes Christ's pattern: "He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death... Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name." Joseph went from the pit to the palace; Christ went from the cross to the throne. Both were exalted by the one who held ultimate authority — and both were exalted in order to save others through their position.

8. What does this passage teach about God's use of human gifts?

Joseph's interpretive gift was supernatural, but his administrative strategy was practical wisdom. God worked through both. The strategy he proposed to Pharaoh — a 20% tax during the seven years of plenty to stockpile grain — was logistically brilliant and saved millions of lives. God does not only work through miraculous gifts; He works through developed practical abilities placed in the service of His sovereign purposes. Westminster Confession 5.2 affirms that God uses "second causes" — natural abilities, human wisdom, and institutional structures — to accomplish His ends.