Dreams In The Darkness

The Righteous Sufferer: Joseph's Descent from Coat to Dungeon 0:26

In the history of raw deals, you could argue that few have had it worse than our friend Joseph. Now, there's times in life where you deserve what you get. There's times in life when you look at those circumstances and you know that you are the proximate cause for why everything's so bad. You look in the mirror and you know that the reason things are terrible is because of choices I have made.

I have sinned, I've erred, I've tripped all over myself, I've done all manner of things wrong and a few things right, and so here I am. For many of us, we can relate to what that feels like. But Joseph's story is not one of those. Joseph's story at this point in his life is not the case of a man who has erred or sinned so egregiously that he deserved what he got.

In fact, you could argue from chapter 37 through chapter 40 and on that Joseph was a veritable paragon of virtue and righteousness in the midst of darkness, and yet his situation keeps getting worse, worse and worse by chapter by chapter. Now, I recapped it before, but let me do it once again. At the very start in chapter 37, we were introduced to Joseph, we were introduced to his brothers, we were introduced to the father.

The father loved Joseph, the other sons maybe not so much. It was as if Joseph walked around with a shirt that said, number one son, except it wasn't a shirt, it was a coat. And when his brothers saw him approaching with this coat, they hated him, they hated the coat, they wanted to be done with him, they wanted to kill him, and instead they argued it down to just throwing him into a pit.

So Joseph is thrown into a pit, but he doesn't stay there. He doesn't stay there. He probably thought it couldn't get any worse when he was in the pit. It actually did get worse because he was sold off by his same brothers to slave traders who took him where?

They took him to Egypt, which is really not the place that you want to go. So he goes to Egypt, and at this point, he's now a slave. Now, fortunately for him, he's a slave in someone important's house, and he's given a great deal of responsibility. He's named Potiphar.

Potiphar was one of the head honchos there in Egypt. Potiphar actually means sun worshiper, so he was a real pagan man in a real pagan house, and that's where Joseph was. But Joseph was given some status there, and you could maybe see the trajectory starting to take off a little bit for Joseph.

Aha! Not so much. Because what happens? Well, what happened back in chapter 39, which we didn't cover, but I'll mention briefly, what happened in chapter 39 is that Potiphar's wife took a hankering, took a liking to Joseph and pursued him.

And of course, he was a virtuous man, and he said, not so much. Well, ultimately, she got frustrated that he was refusing her advances, and so she accused him of rape. She accused him of sexual assault. The husband comes home, is rightly furious at what has apparently taken place, and Joseph, this righteous man, is thrown into the place of unrighteous people, thrown into prison.

So that's a brief history of what's gone on, and for what it's worth, this isn't just any prison. You know, any prison in ancient Egypt couldn't have been that great, but this prison in particular was a prison for political prisoners. This is where you sent the people that you didn't want to do anything more with — you know, you lock them in, you throw away the key, and the like.

This was a deep, dank, dark prison, and he had every reason — Joseph had every reason, humanly speaking — to be very pessimistic about his future because the future for 99.9% of the people there ended in death, either by hangman's noose or just perishing there in one's cell.

"God Was With Him": Providence in the Darkness 3:32

“The LORD was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.”

— Genesis 39:2 (NKJV)

With that said, although his story from a human level was incredibly dark and dank and bleak and hopeless even, he did not lose hope. Why? Well, because we see something interesting. Four times in the preceding chapter, in chapter 39, we read that although his circumstances were bad, we read that God was with him.

Four times. Let me just cover real quickly. Genesis 39.2, the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Genesis 39.3, his master saw the Lord was with him, and the Lord caused all that he did to succeed.

Genesis 39.21, the Lord was with Joseph and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. So he was with Joseph there in Potiphar's house, but also there in the prison. Then Genesis 39, 23, the prison keeper paid no attention to anything in Joseph's charge because God was with him.

The circumstances were dark. Everything was bleak. Maybe you can relate to that and yet be encouraged because like Joseph, like Joseph, if you're a son and daughter of the most high God, God has not abandoned you. God was with Joseph in these cases.

Spurgeon actually, Spurgeon said this much when it came to Joseph. He says, Joseph's bio, if you were to write his Bible, you could write it in four words. God was with him. That's really the biography of our friend Joseph.

Everyone else was opposed to him. Just look at chapter 37, 38, 39 through 40. Everyone from his brothers to Potiphar, to Potiphar's wife, all these people were really opposed to him by and large, but God was with him. Nevertheless, his circumstances remained bad as we come to chapter 40.

The Butler and the Baker: Trusted Servants Cast Into Prison 5:02

So what's going to happen? What's going to happen next? Let's return to verses 1 through 4, and kind of work our way through this text. So verse 1, it came to pass after these things — after all the sexual assault and accusations, after he's thrown into jail, and after he's given a little bit of a weighty position in jail, some authority — it came to pass, verse 1, that the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt had offended their lord — the idea they had done something wrong.

And so the king of Egypt was angry with the two officers, the chief butler and the chief baker, and so he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison, the place where Joseph was confined. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and Joseph served them.

So they were in custody for a while. All right. So in verses one through four, we're introduced to two individuals. We're introduced to the butler, or cup bearer, and the baker.

Now what we're told is that these men had offended Pharaoh. They offended the king. Insinuation is that they had done something wrong. So they're placed in this prison for political prisoners.

And at that point, the captain of the guard recognizes that these two men are still — even though they're just a butler and a baker — in the realm of butlers and bakers, these are the top guys in their fields. So the captain of the guard says, well, I'm going to need to have someone watch over them while they're here, for however long that might be.

And so he puts Joseph in charge. And the irony is that the person who put Joseph in charge of the baker and the butler might have been Potiphar himself, because you see a reference that it's the captain of the guard that charged Joseph with him, and the captain of the guard, or at least a captain of the guard in chapter 39, was Potiphar.

Whatever the case, these two men are thrown into prison. Now, what had they done to deserve it? That's what we all want to know. You look at this and go, all right, what did he do?

What happened? What was the crime that was committed? What did the butler and the baker do to be treated in such a way? In our culture, we have a saying, you know, the butler did it.

Well, in this case, we don't know what he did. With that said, there are a couple things that we should remember about these two guys that will help us understand their role and will help us understand what comes next. First of all, if you were the butler and the baker of Pharaoh, these were two of the highest roles in all of Egypt.

And the reason why these were two of the highest, most trustworthy, most important roles in all of Egypt was because those two guys had supreme control over what went in Pharaoh's mouth. Now, why was that important? Well, guess what the number one tool of assassination was in that age and in that culture?

Poisoning. Poisoning. You advance through poisoning your enemies and the like, right? They didn't have all the forensics and all the DNA stuff, whose fingerprints are on the glass, what have you.

It was a fairly immediate way to get away with something and no one knew exactly what happened. I don't know, you just keeled over. I don't know what happened, right? So poisoning was a big deal.

So if you didn't want to be poisoned, if you're the Pharaoh and you say, you know, I don't care to be poisoned so much this week or this year, what are you going to do? Well, the people you're going to put in charge of the cup you literally drink from, and the guy who gives you the food that you eat, these are going to be two of the guys that you're going to have the most confidence in in the world, and they're going to be elevated up in their positions.

Now, beyond that, not only are you going to elevate these trustworthy guys up in their positions because you have some confidence in them, but beyond that, they also must be two of the most capable men in their field to ever have gotten to that point. You know, the baker must have been the finest baker around.

To put it in a modern context, what's a famous baker now? Food's not my thing. Gordon Ramsay. I know he's not a baker, but think about it this way.

Pharaoh threw Gordon Ramsay in prison, and whatever the butler equivalent of that is. The butler and the baker were the highest guys in their field, the most trustworthy guys, the guys that Pharaoh absolutely relied upon. And so we can speculate that one of the reasons they might have offended him, as we saw there in verse two, one of the things they might have done to offend him is he might have perceived that they were part of some conspiracy to eliminate him, right?

He might have had a doubt or a reason to think, maybe these guys are part of something out to get me. Whatever the case is, he throws them into prison. And it's very possible they were guilty of that. Scripture gives us no sense these are innocent men.

It's 100% possible that these are guilty men who are guilty of something that warranted their disposition there in jail. So verses 1 through 4, Joseph is entrusted to be the guy to look after Gordon Ramsay, to look after these two important individuals. And what we'll see with Joseph is that throughout his time, whether it was in Potiphar's house, whether it's in the jail, or whether it's under Pharaoh, he had this amazing knack.

He must have been the world's greatest administrator. He had this amazing knack where he would get risen up, taken up by whoever was in charge, and put in a position of authority. Again, as administrators go, he must have been something else, because routinely, whether it's in a jail, it's in Potiphar's house, or even under Pharaoh's leadership, he's promoted and given exceptional responsibility.

Do Not Interpretations Belong to God? 9:36

“Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.”

— Genesis 40:8 (NKJV)

All right, let's look at verses five through eight. Then the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, they had a dream, and both of them, each man's dream in one night, and each man's dream with its own interpretation. And Joseph came in to them in the morning and looked at them and saw that they were looking sad.

And so he asked Pharaoh's officers who were with him in the custody of his lord's house, saying, Why do you look so sad today? And they said to him, It's because we've had a dream. We've each had a dream. There is no interpreter of it.

This must have been some dream. And so Joseph said to them, Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dream. All right.

Being imprisoned in a deep, dark, dank jail gives you a lot of reasons to be kind of morose. There's plenty of reasons for everyone to be frowning there in jail. With that said, on the morning in question, Joseph approaches these guys. And not only are they morose, but they're extra morose.

They're extra sad. There's something on their faces that, despite the fact that they probably rarely cracked a smile — there's something on their faces where he goes, ah, what happened to you during the night? And they say, well, we've had a dream. And you can see that the dreams each man had on the same night that weighed upon them must have been the most vivid dream.

And they knew it was important. They knew it was significant. And in Egypt, this was part of the pagan society, the pagan religion. Anything you dreamed had some sort of religious implication or significance.

Any dream you had, whatever it was, you should share it and work it through and try to identify what's happening. How are the cosmos aligning in my life that I would have such a dream at this time? In fairness, that's something that's been going on even in the centuries since. Sigmund Freud once wrote a whole book on the importance and the value of dreams.

I don't know if you put any stock in your own dreams. My family knows my dreams are downright silly. I'll have dreams that make absolutely no sense. I'll wake up and tell them, I had the oddest dream.

There's a famous one. I woke up one night and said, I had a dream that I was taking a shower in the refrigerator. We couldn't figure that out. But all my dreams are like that.

They make no sense. No sense whatsoever. If I was ever to have a dream where I was to eat a large bowl of celery, I can assure you that dream will have meaning. That's an apocalyptic vision.

The end is coming because I would never eat celery. So with that said, generally speaking, our dreams don't have any great significance, but on occasion it is God who delivers both the dream and then it is God who equips the interpreter with the knowledge of what it means. And that's what we have here.

These men have dreams. Their dreams came from God, but fortunately, the interpretation also came from God. Joseph shows up and he says, God is the great interpreter. Tell me what the dreams mean.

The Double Dream Motif in the Joseph Narrative 12:13

I'll bring it to Him and let's try to figure this out. Now, before I look at verses 9 through 23, I should mention this is the third set of double dreams you see in the story of Joseph. Remember Joseph — we talked about this last week — Joseph had these two dreams about how his whole family was going to be bowing down to him at some time in the future.

He had two dreams. Of course, everyone hated those dreams. Even his own dad rebuked him for having those dreams. But there were two dreams.

Well, here we see two dreams again. And next week, there's going to be another two dreams, two dreams of Pharaoh.

The Cupbearer's Dream: A Word of Restoration 12:39

So there's kind of a recurrence of these things. All right, let's look at verses 9 through 19. Then the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and he said to him, behold, behold, in my dream there was a vine before me, and in the vine were three branches. Now, this is the guy, the cupbearer, right?

The guy who brings the wine. So for him to have a dream about vines and fruit grapes, that's normal. So he says, in this vine with three branches, it was though it budded, its blossoms shot forth, its clusters brought forth ripe grapes. Then Pharaoh's cup was in my hand.

I took the grapes, I pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. Now Joseph said in verse 12, here's the interpretation. The three branches are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head, will lift up your head and restore you to your place.

And he'll put Pharaoh's cup in his hand, according to the former manner, just when you were with his butler. But remember me when he does so. Remember me when it's well with you, and please show kindness to me. Make mention of me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this house.

For indeed, I was stolen away from the land of the Hebrews. I've done nothing that they should put me in this dungeon.

The Baker's Dream: A Word of Judgment 13:42

Verse 16. Now, when the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good — imagine you're the baker. You stand there, and the butler just told you this dream, and it's going to be about his release in three days. The baker's got to be like, yes — excellent, excellent, excellent.

So he says here, when the chief baker saw the interpretation was good, he immediately says to Joseph, I also had a dream, and in my dream there were three white baskets upon my head, and in the uppermost basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, and the birds ate them out of the basket on my head — which is a little odd.

And so verse 18 is Joseph's answer. It says, well, here's the interpretation of it. The three baskets are three days — just like the other guy, three baskets are three days. Within three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head, just like the other guy.

And here's what changes. Here's the difference. Within three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and will hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh from you.

Law and Grace: Sovereign Distinction Between Two Guilty Men 14:33

You know, I said earlier on, this text, today's text, does not tell us whether these guys were guilty or innocent. I'm inclined to think that they're guilty. I mean, we want to feel a little bit sorry for both these poor bakers and butlers and the like. We want to feel a little sorry for them is if Pharaoh, you know, his wrath was an arbitrary, capricious thing, which it could be.

Undoubtedly, the Pharaoh could do things on a whim, and so we want to think maybe they didn't do anything. There's these harmless guys, but the reality is they probably did do something. Verses 1 through 4 says they offended Pharaoh in some significant way. With that said, presuming that they are both guilty of whatever the crime is, what do we make of the dreams then if they're both guilty?

Well, here's the thing. If they're both guilty, then these two dreams are really pictures of law and grace. Law and grace. What do we mean by that?

Both guilty men. One of them. One of them is saved from death by the sovereign grace and mercy of the king, the one who had authority over them. The other suffered the punishment that was due to lawbreakers.

Just like the story of Isaac and Ishmael or Jacob and Esau, the butler and the baker reflect some sort of sovereign distinction, some sort of sovereign choice between the two. And it stands out especially to us if we understand that they were in all likelihood both guilty. One was spared and one was not.

One got what he deserved, the other was lifted up by one who had a sovereign authority over him and whose good pleasure it was to set him free in spite of his guilt.

The Faithful Preacher: Joseph's Clarity in Declaring Hard Truth 16:07

We're given no reason to think that one of these men deserved a better outcome than the other, and yet one was spared. With that said, notice that despite both dreams having very different outcomes, notice Joseph's absolute willingness to be crystal clear to both men, irrespective of whether they would like the news or not.

The first guy got news that he was going to be freed. This was a sermon, so to speak, that Joseph preached, and it found its mark, and the guy received it gladly and went out, you know, celebrating. This is a good day for the butler. What about the other guy?

Well, the sermon, so to speak, that Joseph preached to that guy — or at least what he told the other guy, what he tells the baker — is that you're going to die as a result of what you have done. And we have to admire Joseph's clarity. He knows this man is not going to like the news that he's going to give him.

He knows the man in front of him still has some clout in the empire, so to speak, even though he's in jail with him. But he doesn't hesitate. He says, here's the news — brace yourself. In three days, not only is Pharaoh going to lift up your head like the other guy, but when your head is lifted up, it's then going to get put in a noose.

You were going to be hung, and then those birds you were dreaming about, the birds are going to eat your flesh. He told them the totality. He told them everything you needed to know here. Now, James Montgomery Boice, a famous Presbyterian pastor, he said this.

He says, how many modern ministers, how many modern pastors are willing to preach the cupbearer's sermon, the butler's sermon, but unwilling to preach the baker's sermon? Joseph routinely said that which was clear, that which was important, that which was right, that which was conformed to the word and will of God, come what may.

Sometimes that got him into trouble, like when he told his brothers the dreams that God had given to him. Whatever the case, he did not hold back.

Fulfillment on the Third Day, and the Butler Who Forgot 17:48

It's one of the reasons he was such a virtuous man. All right, let's look at our last verses now, verses 20 through 23. Now, it came to pass on the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants. Let's stop there for a moment.

Just like us, Pharaoh celebrated his birthday. It's funny to think that all those centuries before, they still celebrated birthdays. But one of the things different here was that Pharaoh — the king, the leader in this case — he didn't sit there and receive all the presents per se, but he grants presents, he grants good things to his people.

Verse 20, it came to pass on the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants. They didn't make a feast for him, but he made it for his servants. And then he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants.

And then he restored the chief butler to his butlership again, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh's hand. But, verse 22, but he hanged the chief baker as Joseph had interpreted to them. And then, then we come to the saddest verse in the whole chapter. And yet, and yet, the chief butler did not remember Joseph, but rather he forgot him.

You know, the chapter started off with God was with Joseph. God was with him. And if you're Joseph, at some point in this narrative, you had to think, this is the moment, right? Have you ever been head faked by providence a little bit where something happens?

You go, well, clearly this is the ramp up to — everything I ever wanted is now going to happen. God did this one thing here and we're going nothing but rocket ship to the moon. Everything is going to go great. Well, in all likelihood, after these interpretations were given, in all likelihood, Joseph probably thought, this butler, man, he owes me one.

This butler, he owes me one. After all these years in prison, everything going so terribly, here's my moment. This is going to be it. But he tells about — just remember me, you know, when you go to Pharaoh, don't let me hang out here.

You know, I can't do this any longer. I'm an innocent man, by the way. So he says all this, and he had to be thinking that things were going to turn up. And yet, although God's plan 100% involved it turning up well, it was not going to be yet.

He would still spend two more years in this state. In any case, across verses 20-23, Joseph's interpretations had been very specific. They had a three-day window of fulfillment. If you ever watch the televangelist late at night — that's, I guess, a trick statement.

Don't do that. Don't watch the televangelist late at night. But if you were to do so, sometimes they'll give prophecies, and they'll talk about all the things that are going to happen in the most vague of terms and so forth, allowing them the biggest window of possible fulfillment. Where here, Joseph boxed himself in.

In three days, that's going to happen to you, and that's going to happen to you. Well, what we see in verses 20 through 23 is that it unfolds exactly as Joseph had anticipated, or as he interpreted. Everything that Joseph said had unfolded on schedule, and if you were the butler, again, you must have been ecstatic.

The third day comes. You're called before Pharaoh. It's his birthday. He tends to be in a better mood on his birthday, right?

This is going to work out, and sure enough, the butler, you're free. Your head is lifted up. You're restored to service. Give me my cup, right?

So you're the butler. You're very excited about this. And yet the same butler forgot the promise that he'd made.

The Fingerprints of Providence in Your Own Story 21:00

Joseph, once again, is left to languish in a pit, so to speak. With that said, what did we say at the outset this morning? What was the Spurgeon quote about the biography of Joseph? We said the biography of Joseph could be written in four words.

God was with him. That hadn't changed. That hadn't changed no matter what was going on with his circumstances. In fact, his circumstances were absolutely 10,000% being crafted by God to an outcome that was even better than Joseph could have expected here.

You see, I don't want to fast forward and spoil the next couple weeks' worth of sermons, but I'll give you this much, this much information to work with. It turns out really well for Joseph. Joseph's story is not only going to involve exaltation to the highest role he could conceivably be in with the most power and most authority he could possibly have, but it's also going to involve reconciliation with his brothers and his father and his household and all this sort of stuff.

And ultimately, it's going to involve the salvation of Israel itself. Things couldn't possibly turn out any better. And yet here, here you can't see that. But Joseph had seen God's fingerprints.

Have you ever looked at your own life and said, I have no idea what's going on here. But I see God's fingerprints. I see providence. I see signs.

I can't understand them. I can't even explain them. But I see them. For many of us, if you walked in faith for a period of time, if you have a little gray up top or what have you, you've done it for a period of time, you can look back and see those fingerprints and then see how they were utilized to bring about good things in your present.

Things in the past have happened through the will and volition of a sovereign God, in such a way as to create your present reality that includes you sitting in this room this morning. With that said, whatever scary things are on your radar right now, guess what? He's doing the same thing He did then.

God shapes and crafts and creates good and wonderful outcomes using terrible, terrible circumstances very often. It's the story here of Joseph. Everyone else forgot him. Everyone else forgot him, but God remembered him.

God not only remembered him, but God was working through these circumstances to bring about good outcomes. God remembered him in the pit. God remembered the promises that He made to him and to the other patriarchs.

This Is Not the End of Your Story: Hope Beyond the Darkness 23:16

And in time, he would fulfill them. In closing this morning, let me suggest this. For some of us, maybe not all of us, but for some of us, this has been a really bad 12, 18, 24, 48 months, whatever it is. For some of us, the past year, two years, three years, five years, whatever it is, whatever the season, maybe just the past week has been difficult and dark and unpleasant.

We don't know what's gone on. We don't like it, and the future doesn't look much better. I'd say raise your hand if that's you, but I think we'd be shocked how many hands might go up at that. With that said, this is not the end of your story any more than being in the deep, dark, dank jail was the end of Joseph's story.

God will work through your circumstances to refine and shape you, ultimately to place you in a situation that is far better than when you're at the present. With that said, there's no better estate than where we'll be when we dwell with Him on that high, glorious plateau yet to come, and all of us can look forward to that great and glorious day.

No matter what tomorrow might bring, no matter how bad our life might be today, no matter what might happen to us tomorrow, there is a future that surpasses it all. And it's a future so bright that Scripture says we won't even bother remembering these hard days. That which occurred before will not even be worth remembrance, God tells us.

Whatever your present looks like now, tomorrow — if you're anything like Joseph, if you're anything like a son or daughter of the Most High God throughout the pages of Scripture — tomorrow will undoubtedly be better, whatever tomorrow is and whenever it comes. Let's pray.