What's in a dream?

We'll go directly into the passage here, but I have a question for you. You love questions, right? Have you ever been disappointed with God? God, that isn't exactly how I wanted this situation to turn out. That's not what I think God should have done. I thought, God, that you would do this. How come you did that? Maybe even mad at him.

Has that ever happened? Well, we'll get there. Now, we're going to take a look at this passage and just kind of take a sweep through the last roughly ten chapters. How's life been going for Joseph? Just think about that. We're going to kind of come in and do a little rating on the checklist. How's life going for Joseph here? Think about this.

Here's Joseph. He's the 11th of 12 sons of Jacob and certainly seems to have started off well. As a matter of fact, here's 12 sons and Joseph is the favorite. He is the oldest son of the favored wife. He is obviously the favorite. His father gave him uniquely this special colorful coat and seems to have given him also special attention above the rest. and would send him out on these little tattletale journeys.

So here's Joseph. Things started off fairly well, or at least so it would seem. Now, with that as a beginning, his brothers were jealous, of course, angry at him, hated him because his father put all the focus and attention on Joseph, and in summary, they sold him to slave traders. So, how's life going for Joseph so far? What do you think? How would you rate it?

We're not done. After earning the top position in Potiphar's house as a slave, Joseph is falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and is sent to the king's prison, which as we'll see happens to be right next door to where Joseph has been living and working in Potiphar's house. In the king's prison, you're in the top responsibility there, but as a prisoner, no doubt. Go directly to jail, do not collect 200 shekels. So, how do you think life's going for Joseph here?

How would you rate it? Not real good, if you were to measure it by any usual measure. But being in prison, of course, does have its advantages. Yeah. Okay. Being in prison has its advantage for Joseph. Certainly he's young. Lots of health and vigor and energy. And he seems to be learning fast.

No question about that. Matter of fact, for that, we'll give him two thumbs up. Okay? Two thumbs up. Okay. Joseph has another opportunity here in prison to rise to the top and certainly does that. Even if it is among the king's prisoners, he has a chance to rise to the top again. Two thumbs up for that? What do you think?

Anyway, now it's also a chance for Joseph to have contact with others of the king's court. Yes, they're in prison, but that's some kind of contact anyway, right? And one other thing, and it's really emphasized in the last part of the last chapter, chapter 39, the Lord was with him. The Lord was with him as he was there in prison.

Certainly that's got to be a thumbs-up kind of assessment, right? That's just really great. If you've got to be in prison, it's great to have the Lord with you. We get to the passage that Courtney introduced for us here, reading the first eight verses. Here's Pharaoh, and that's the title of the Egyptian king, Pharaoh. He was furious. That's not right. Yeah, that's better. Okay.

Pharaoh was furious with his cup bearer. The cup bearer is responsible for everything that Pharaoh drank. In other words, we might be inclined to think that a cup bearer is this guy who holds a cup. That was not really quite the total picture. He was responsible for everything that Pharaoh drank. Anything that Pharaoh drank, the cup bearer was the guy who was in charge. And if that meant going out in the fields and checking how things were harvested, what plants it's coming from, what's the processing, the whole thing from start to finish, that's his job. So it's a much bigger job than just holding a cup.

The idea of a cup bearer is really, that name is symbolic of everything up to the point of, here's what Pharaoh drinks. And then the baker, he's responsible for everything that the Pharaoh ate. Yes, certainly bread and baked goods, but really everything that Pharaoh ate passed under the baker's supervision and view there. Now, some people might have questioned, they say, a chief baker? Heaven sakes, is there really such a thing? Isn't this just made up? Well, actually, here's an example. Here's an ostracon. That's a piece of pottery.

They would use pieces of pottery for writing in those days. Signed by the chief baker for a shipment of wheat found at the Temple of Amun. So they actually did have a chief baker. And it's a real event. Here is on one of the pharaoh's tombs the bread making process. It was something that was, rather than being something relegated to a peripheral event, it was something that was actually considered very important. As a matter of fact, the Egyptian word for bread is the same word as life. They look at it as life itself. Now, I don't want to gross anybody out, but here's a several thousand year old piece of bread. from one of the Egyptian tombs.

And why was it in the tomb? It was because they thought this is the way the resurrected Pharaoh was going to sustain himself. Apparently he never ate any of it. But anyway, that's the idea. It's the idea that the bread was really, they looked at that as that's the source of life. That was very important.

And the chief baker's position was very important, not just a part of what Pharaoh ate, but that was representative of everything that he ate. We don't know why Pharaoh was furious. It doesn't spell that out, but we've got a good clue. It has to do with the cup bearer and the baker, sometimes called the chief cup bearer or the chief baker, but the idea is the same.

It has to do with something was wrong with what he drank or what he ate. Likely Pharaoh was concerned about a problem with the food or drink. It may have been something as minor as, this doesn't taste very good guys. That made my stomach feel pretty lousy. Maybe even a concern over there's a conspiracy to poison me. So anything in that range might have been possible. And Pharaoh would have had the authority to enforce some kind of action or at least have some kind of an investigation. And that seems to be what's going on here.

Put these guys in prison until I figure out which one of them is responsible for this food problem I've got. So, until that gets sorted out, these guys are in prison. It turns out, as we'll soon see, there's only a few days until this whole thing is resolved. Until they're sorted out with the food and drink, and the problem there, both the cupbearer and the baker are in this royal prison with Joseph.

He is essentially under their care, because Joseph has now earned the top position there in the prison, right under the warden, if you will. And it says, the Lord was with him. End of chapter 39. The Lord was with him in this. So here's Joseph. He's in prison, but the Lord's with him. No question about it. The text is clear.

Potiphar was part of Pharaoh's court. This is the one that Joseph worked for previously. Basically what happened is here's the place where Potiphar owns. It's a nice nobleman's home and he's got fields and animals and other things associated with that.

But Joseph just stayed right there even though Potiphar was in Pharaoh's court. Things were about to change. Now that Joseph was in the royal prison, he was in contact with others who were of Pharaoh's court with the opportunity that he might have some kind of contact, at least he was hoping, that would get him out of there and into a better position and place. Joseph didn't have to go very far to make this move from Potiphar's place to Potiphar's prison.

Potiphar was the captain of the bodyguard and the royal prison was right next to the house. That was the configuration. When Joseph was placed in the royal prison, he basically just kind of went next door. Sometimes the royal prison was built up against the house of the chief bodyguard or the captain of the bodyguard's house. So very, very close. And now the cupbearer and the chief baker here were placed right with Joseph under his charge. All of them were next to the house of the captain of the bodyguard, who was Potiphar.

Now, the scene started, as Courtney read to us there, with this dejected look. What is that? A depressed look. They just had all the air let out of them. They're depressed, they're disturbed. We've had these dreams. We have no idea what they mean. We're stuck here in this prison. We really don't know what the deal is. So here we are.

Started with this dejected look. Of course, it's inescapable. Joseph being right there, being in charge, looking at how everything is going, says, hey, these guys have a dejected look, okay? Chief Baker and the cupbearer each come in with this dejected look there in the morning. They've awakened, but they're not awakening happy. Joseph inquires, why this dejected look?

They said, we had a dream in the night. You know how dreams can be. First of all, you know about dreams? They can be just nuts. Just crazy. One of the reasons why these guys, however, would be looking for some kind of an answer is, in Egypt, dreams were thought of as communications from the gods, because they had 700 of them. How would you like to get that figured out? 700 gods.

They had a book that would help you to interpret the dreams, and in the court, if they were still in Pharaoh's court and not in prison, there was a guy there who would look in this book of dreams and tell you what all these things meant. They didn't have access to that guy, and they didn't have access to the book, and so they figured, well, we're out of luck. We've got these dreams, we have no idea what's going on, and so all the dream was was a frustration to them. Depressing, in fact. So they say there's nobody to interpret them. Oh, we don't have the court guy there and he doesn't have the book. We just don't have access to that.

Joseph, however, comes to them and he comes with a question and a request. The first is the question, don't interpretations belong to God? Now let's think about this. He's talking to two Egyptians brought up in the Egyptian culture who have been taught that God, well, there's 700 of them, right? What's Joseph doing talking about one? I think what's happening, in order for what Joseph said to have made any sense, this assumes that Joseph had already been talking to them about the one true God. Otherwise, that wouldn't have made any sense at all. As a matter of fact, the Greek Old Testament actually has a definite article, in other words, the God Don't interpretations belong to the one God?

Joseph had already laid the groundwork so that they made, well, I actually put a question to them. It had already made sense to them because he had laid out, there is one true God and I know Him. There is one true God and I have a relationship with Him. And that's why it would make perfect sense for him to say something like, tell them to me.

Daniel was the one who said something similar in Daniel chapter 2. And as King Nebuchadnezzar has this dream, he's wondering what it means. And here in verse 28, Daniel says, however, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days. God is the one who reveals things. God is the one who will let us know what this means.

So Joseph responds to them both with this question and the request, tell it to me. Tell me what this thing is. After all, I've been talking to you about the one true God and He is the one that will make clear. I'm Joseph, I'm here with you, but I'm not the center of this thing. But I do know God, and He can tell you what these things mean. Now we've got a good news, bad news situation. Which one do you want first? Well, it turns out you want the good news, because that's what comes first. Okay? Alright. It starts like this. The chief cupbearer first tells his tale. He tells his dream to Joseph first.

With his dream he saw a vine with three branches, as he explains to Joseph, and the branches went from blossoming to ripe grapes. It turns out here is a drawing from the tomb of an Egyptian vizier, one of the court officials, and it actually has grapevine with kind of the three branches kind of up on a trellis. And so that's what the cup bearer is describing. It's a situation very much like what's pictured on this tomb painting here.

So he spells that out to Joseph. And so the cup bearer with Pharaoh's cup in his hand, the dream continues, squeezes the grapes from the vine with three branches into the cup and sets the full cup in Pharaoh's hand. That's how the dream goes. He doesn't know what it means, but that's how it went. So, Joseph tells the cupbearer, this is what it means.

The three branches stand for three days. Three days from now, he tells him this. Three days, Pharaoh will restore you, Mr. Cupbearer, to the former place as the cupbearer in Pharaoh's court. You're going to go right back to the position you had. You'll be restored there. At this, I'm sure the cupbearer is going, wow, boy, was that a relief. And it seemed like really good news. Joseph asked the chief cupbearer, however, for a favor. The favor is this. Tell Pharaoh about him. Tell Pharaoh about me. That's all I ask. Just as you go and get restored, tell him about me, would you please? Why would he do that? First of all, he wants to get out.

Being at the top of the prison chain, maybe that's a good word, chain, is not the place he wants to be. Joseph, after all, was brought down to Egypt wrongly. He uses the word kidnapped. I was kidnapped and my brother sold me off. I was taken away against my will.

I did nothing to deserve being in this prison in the first place. And that's a very polite way of saying Potiphar's wife lied and accused me for what she did. But that was probably politically incorrect. So here he goes and just kind of softens it over. I did nothing to deserve being in here.

Now, remember we said good news, bad news? Guess what? Here's the next part, the bad news part. Bad dream, even worse news. Here's the baker hearing that the cupbearer's interpretation was favorable. He says, oh, that was great. That was good news. I'll tell mine, thinking probably I'll get a good interpretation as well. Not so much.

There were three baskets on his head full of baked goods for the pharaoh. The top one here particularly exposed at the top with baked goods for pharaoh. The baker said that the birds were eating the baked goods from the basket on his head, especially the one on the top there. Joseph said that the baker would be beheaded in three days, be hung and his body eaten by birds. He says, this is not so good. This isn't what the baker was hoping for.

You see, now we say hung, we think of hung because of our historical use as a method of execution. The Egyptians did not do that. What the Egyptians did was they would behead somebody and hang the body out as a way of disgracing the person. Hang the body out and have the birds just eat him. And they'd stick the head on a pole. That's what it's talking about here. So it's ultimate disgrace. in front of everybody and you've got three days and you're done.

So this is the message that Joseph had to deliver. He didn't ask for any favors of the baker. Now, as it turns out, three days went by and it all happened exactly as Joseph said it would. The chief baker is indeed beheaded and his body left to hang as food for the carrion birds who would come and pick it apart and that's exactly what they intended. that you'd have this horrible disgrace. Everybody would go, ugh, you know, and turn their head. The cupbearer, just like Joseph said, was restored to his place in Pharaoh's court and precisely as Joseph had laid out as well. Likely within three days, here's what happened.

There was kind of an investigation into, okay, what's the cause of my food problem? And the investigation ended up pointing the finger at the baker and relieving the cupbearer of any accusation. So it happened to be concluded in what was Pharaoh's birthday. So happy birthday. But the cupbearer forgot about Joseph. Well, that was exactly what Joseph was hoping for. Now we get back to our question.

Have you ever been disappointed with God? Or perhaps even mad at Him? It's easy to see, at least from a human standpoint, how Joseph could be or would have been disappointed with God or others. You would think it justified. Why would we say that? Well, being sold by his brothers in sort of a surprise kidnapping. Hey, let's sell this guy off. falsely accused. Here, Potiphar's wife was the one who was doing all the things wrong. He was doing everything right, still. Joseph, he's the bad guy. Sent to prison.

The request for the favor soon forgotten. I did this guy a favor. I told him, God will give you the interpretation. I've been telling him about God. I've been doing all the things right. He forgot about it. It's my only hope out of here, right? After all, the advantage is I'm in contact with the King's court. Something else.

You remember way back, by the time Joseph was 17, he had been given at least two dreams that clearly said he was going to rule over his family, basically. Both dreams said that and his family recognized it as that. very clearly he was going to rule over his family. Could he see any way that that was going to happen in the current circumstances?

Not even sort of. There was no way in view that anything was going to get any better. There was no way in view that the prophecies he'd been given through dreams were going to come to fulfillment. There was nothing in sight that looked like things were getting better and God was answering and God was listening. God, what are you doing? God, this isn't what I had in mind. Lord, don't you know what I've planned? None of it had come to pass. Imagine, here's Joseph. He's had these dreams. Did those dreams and their message mean anything now that he's in prison? How is this working out? This is terrible.

Later on, and we'll get there, it's only ten chapters away, Joseph would say to his brothers, as for you, you meant evil. You're the guys that sold me, right? But God meant it for good. Why? It's going to preserve my whole family. My whole family will be preserved here.

The ultimate good that resulted here when he says God meant it for good, the ultimate good was visible and earthly. It meant that God's promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob would be fulfilled because God's chosen people were preserved. That's the good that he saw coming from his difficult circumstances. Here we have the Apostle Paul writing in Romans 8, 28, and 29. We know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, to become conformed to the image of the Son. The ultimate good in this passage that Paul wrote about was also a fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob, in you, all the nations will be blessed. That's you and me, through Christ. And what is the ultimate good? Is the ultimate good that everything that happens here on earth is pleasant and wonderful? We're just on a smooth highway to goodness and worldly success. That's exactly what the Lord promises, right?

Not so much. He is using all the circumstances, all of them, to conform us to the image of His Son. That's what's going on. It's not my plans. It's not what I plan and lay out, and God, you better comply. After all, I'm doing everything right. It is instead, what's God doing while we're here on planet earth? He is in the process of conforming us. That's what he's doing.

So how about this anger and disappointment with God or with others? Our anger and disappointment is often because we've got our agenda and God's not going along with it. That's what the disappointment and anger is frequently centered around, isn't it? God has a plan and agenda, and what He is doing, or seems to be doing, doesn't fit in with our own. Here we are on planet Earth, and it's easy for our own plans, our own agenda, all to fulfill itself within this present Earth.

But you know what? That conformity, that ultimate conformity that you've been predestined to, that conformity to Jesus Christ, where is that going to be ultimately fulfilled? What's that for? Is that for here? You are being conformed now by the circumstances that God puts you in, in order that it might have its fruition and fulfillment when we see the Lord face to face.

Our own plans and agenda are for time here on this earth, time that you can measure. God is conforming us in time for a purpose that one time won't mean very much for a future time. There will come a time What is He going to be doing in the ages to come when we're through here, when we're done with this conforming process? He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus when we're done here, after we're through here. God's doing all the things He's doing here not so that we'll come out smelling pretty or looking fine. He's doing everything He's doing here to conform us to the image of His Son for eternity, for after the time when we walk through heaven's gates. When we hold to our own plan, our own agenda rather than God's, life will almost certainly bring us to anger and disappointment with God and with others because we do not understand what God is doing.

Lord, I'm supposed to be successful. I'm supposed to be healthy. How come my body is not cooperating? How come it isn't doing all the things I want it to do? I didn't have this on the schedule. This part stopped working and this other one started doing something it wasn't supposed to. That's not on the schedule.

The Lord said, oh yes it is. That's part of the conforming process. God's plan is for conforming and transforming. Conformed by circumstances. Notice that God causes all things to work together for good. How's that conforming process going in your life? Ultimately, the Lord has His intent for it.

As a matter of fact, it's predestined. People sometimes get freaked out about the idea of predestination. What's predestined is that you be conformed. That's what's predestined. Not every single little move you make. It's the conformity. That's predestined. And this is the miracle. That God causes all things to work together for good. That's miraculous. And it's the miracle we frequently don't see.

We are to be transformed, notice a different word, transformed by God's word, 2 Corinthians 3.18, but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, beholding the Lord through his word, are being transformed into the same image. What image?

The glory of the Lord. growing from glory to glory. It is a work of the Holy Spirit, conformed by the circumstances that God works together for good, transformed by his word as we behold him. Those two processes are both intended to bring us to the image of Jesus Christ. God is using both of those processes here and now.

That's why we're gathering here this morning, to behold him through his word. So when we look at Daniel, and we look at the circumstance, we think, oh, heavens! Here the Lord promised that he would have this situation where his brothers and his sisters would all bow down to him, and right now he's stuck in prison, and the one guy who owes him a favor has just forgot him. Ultimately, Joseph is the one seeing. seeing that God is working all things together for good. God has his purpose in the difficult circumstances we're going through. God has his purpose in our gathering here this morning that we be conformed and transformed.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look here at this passage, how precious just to ponder the process that you're carrying out here. We have just a short while here. The time passes quickly. And in that, through that, you're preparing us for eternity. And your preparation is very specific by conforming and transforming. We are being made into the image of your Son. That ultimately will take place. We thank you for that assurance that we have. We thank you for the insight that we have because of your work. In Jesus' name, Amen.