Genesis 40

¹ Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord the king of Egypt. ² And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, ³ and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. ⁴ The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody. ⁵ And one night they both dreamed—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison—each his own dream, and each dream with its own interpretation. ⁶ When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. ⁷ So he asked Pharaoh’s officers who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” ⁸ They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.” ⁹ So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, “In my dream there was a vine before me, ¹⁰ and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. ¹¹ Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” ¹² Then Joseph said to him, “This is its interpretation: the three branches are three days. ¹³ In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office, and you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand as formerly, when you were his cupbearer. ¹⁴ Only 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. ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream: there were three cake baskets on my head, ¹⁷ and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.” ¹⁸ And Joseph answered and said, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days. ¹⁹ In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from you!—and hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you.” ²⁰ On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. ²¹ He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. ²² But he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted to them.²³ Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

Last Tuesday night I had something unbelievably unpleasant happen. It happened around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. I had the most horrible and unbelievably realistic dream. I dreamed that Roni and Hannah and I were walking through this abandoned little town with the storefronts boarded up and trash strewn throughout the streets. We turned down a little alleyway and as we were walking through the alley I realized to my absolute horror that the alley was filled with rattlesnakes. We panicked and I said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

When we emerged through the alley I realized with absolute dismay that Roni had been bitten. Her face was starting to swell up. I said, “You’ve been bitten!” She said, in her sweet voice, “No, I’m fine, I think.” I said, “You’re swelling up!” I picked her up and started running looking for help. We found a makeshift medical clinic in an abandoned Winn Dixie (!) and I ran into the building holding Roni in my arms. There was a long line and I started shouting, “Somebody help! Somebody help! She’s been bitten by a snake!” But nobody moved and nobody helped.

Then I woke up.

It was horrific.

I then did what any courageous man does in the middle of the night when he has had a bad dream: I woke Roni up! I wanted to make sure she was ok and tell her about my dream. She patted my shoulder then went back to sleep.

I lay there thinking about the dream. It was so real and so jarring. What on earth could it have meant? Why did I dream it?

Then it hit me: last Sunday I began my sermon by recounting Wendy Bagwell’s famous story about finding himself in a snake handling church and how he was determined to either find an exit or make one once the two ladies brought the rattlesnakes out. I had interpreted, at least somewhat, my dream.

Dreams can be tricky things to understand. Sometimes they are easy things to understand. Robert Alter writes that, “[i]n Egypt, the interpretation of dreams was regarded as a science, and formal instruction in techniques of dream interpretation was given in schools called ‘houses of life.’”[1] This was the context in which Joseph found himself when he was cast into prison after being wrongly accused by Potiphar’s wife. He found himself with an opportunity to interpret the dreams of his cellmates and, in so doing, promote a right understanding of God.

In this chapter we see the man of God refusing to waste his unique opportunity. We see him bearing witness and we see him pointing to a greater Savior to come.

Joseph refused to waste an opportunity to bear witness to God.

Many of us would be very frustrated if what happened to Joseph happened to us. He was first sold into slavery. He then rose to a place of prominence in the house of the Egyptian official Potiphar. He was then falsely accused of making advances towards Potiphar’s wife and imprisoned. Joseph’s life seemed to be a series of exhilarating peaks and devastating valleys. Genesis 40 is the account of one of his valleys: his time in prison. But notice what Joseph does there:

¹ Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord the king of Egypt. ² And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, ³ and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. ⁴ The captain of the guard appointed Joseph to be with them, and he attended them. They continued for some time in custody. ⁵ And one night they both dreamed—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison—each his own dream, and each dream with its own interpretation. ⁶ When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. ⁷ So he asked Pharaoh’s officers who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” ⁸ They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.”

Joseph, confronted with these two officers and their dreams, decides to speak. Notice what he does:

• Joseph engages these men.
• Joseph asserts the truth of God in the face of their faulty understanding.

Joseph, to use our terminology, was a missionary to these men. He refused to waste his opportunity, unpleasant though his personal circumstances were. Joseph’s words are brief, but they are actually theologically rich. In saying “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me,” Joseph:

• Corrected their misguided faith in professional dream interpreters by asserting that such things “belong to God.”
• Asserted monotheism (i.e., “God”) over and against their native polytheism (i.e., gods).
• Stressed the omniscience of the one true God by saying that God could interpret their dreams.
• Bore witness that this one God who was omniscient could enter into relationship with human beings by saying, “Please tell them to me.” In other words, Joseph was saying that he was in relationship with God and could speak the truth of God to these men.

All in all, what we have here is a quite robust evangelistic appeal! Joseph not only refused to waste his opportunity, he took full advantage of it.

Now let us ask ourselves: how many of us would have missed this amazing opportunity to bear witness to God because we were too busy complaining about our circumstances? How many of us would have allowed our personal misery to eclipse the divine opportunity.

It is not that Joseph was indifferent to his suffering. After all, he will ask the cupbearer to remember him and get him out of there. Rather, it is that Joseph did not allow his desire for escape to blind him to the opportunity God was presenting him right where he was.

How many of us spend so much time bemoaning our state in life that we miss what God is calling us to do in our less-than-desirable situation? Has it ever occurred to you that God may want you in that cubicle instead of in that corner office that the promotion you just missed carried with it? Has it occurred to you that God, seeing and knowing all, may be leaving you where you are for a purpose?

Do not resent where God has put you or where God has allowed you to be put.

The record of the church in the New Testament is a chronicle of a body of believers seizing various less-than-pleasant opportunities to proclaim the gospel. When the church was scattered, it spread the gospel. When the church was imprisoned, it preached to the guards and prisoners. When the church was martyred it spoke truth even as the killing stones rained.

What would your life look like if you could come to see each and every situation and circumstance as a missionary opportunity? This is what Joseph did.

Joseph spoke the truth of God: both the joyful word and the word of doom.

Notice too that Joseph did not allow his desire to be out of his unpleasant situation to skew or tamper with his message. In fact, in interpreting these dreams, he speaks two messages, one of joy and one of doom.

⁸ They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.” ⁹ So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, “In my dream there was a vine before me, ¹⁰ and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. ¹¹ Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” ¹² Then Joseph said to him, “This is its interpretation: the three branches are three days. ¹³ In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office, and you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand as formerly, when you were his cupbearer. ¹⁴ Only 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. ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream: there were three cake baskets on my head, ¹⁷ and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.” ¹⁸ And Joseph answered and said, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days. ¹⁹ In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from you!—and hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you.” ²⁰ On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. ²¹ He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. ²² But he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted to them. ²³ Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

My my what an amazing story! To the cupbearer Joseph spoke good news: his dream meant release and restoration and joy. To the baker Joseph spoke bad news: his dream meant execution.

Such is the nature of gospel truth: it must tell both the bad news and the good news. The bad news is that we are sinners and stand under the judgement of God. The good news is that God loves us and His sent His Son to die for us and, regardless of what we have done, we can be forgiven and saved by calling on His name in faith and repentance.

The message of the church must be both.

It occurs to me that there are some entire ministries built only on the cupbearer’s message, the message of good news. These are churches who only and ever have a word of prosperity and joy. They never speak a word of warning or of judgment. These ministries and churches fall into the health-wealth-name-it-claim-it gospel that proclaims you can have whatever you want on this side of heaven if you just believe enough…and if you will call in with your credit card number. The cupbearer gospel without the baker gospel morphs congregants into consumers and pastors into magicians and God into a heavenly ATM machine.

On the other hand, some churches proclaim only a baker’s gospel, only bad news, only a word of doom. These churches create despair. The only God they proclaim is one of wrath and one of fury. They have no good news to offer. They have no hope. These churches foster legalism because, after all, their angry God must be appeased by checking the behavioral boxes. This is the God of judgment, the God of wrath, the God who has no love for sinners.

But the true gospel of Jesus Christ contains a note of both doom and hope: doom if we reject Jesus and stay in our sins and hope if we will turn from our sins and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel breaks us but then heals us, proclaims us dead in our trespasses before it proclaims us alive in Christ. We need the message of the baker and the cupbearer, the law and grace, the gravity of our situation outside of Christ and then sweet sweet good news! Joseph proclaimed a well-rounded message and resisted the temptation to take the edges off so as to avoid awkwardness. So should we!

Joseph typified a greater Savior to come.

In this chapter, Joseph also points us to the greater Savior to. Let me explain.

It is good and right to be cautious against the over-allegorizing of scripture. Allegorical interpretations are those interpretations that find deeper spiritual meanings in passages of scripture. There have been times when allegorical interpretations seemed to have an inordinate hold on the church and the interpretations that arise in such a context are oftentimes fanciful indeed.

On the other hand, the church has always recognized that there are types and figures in the Old Testament that point to and find their fulfillment in Christ. This is because of our conviction that all of scripture is either preparing us for or proclaiming Christ. If Christ is the great apex of God’s redemptive plan, it is not surprising that we find the fingerprints of Jesus in each chapter of the redemptive story in the form of types and figures and foreshadowing. So while we must resist the temptation to read things into scripture that are not there or to force images of Jesus that are not germane to a particular text or story, we nonetheless operate out of a conviction that every verse does indeed carry the aroma of Christ on it. All of scripture is indeed about Jesus, properly understood.

Consider our chapter, Genesis 40. Here we find:

• a savior (lowercase, temporal) of Israel: Joseph;
• wrongly accused;
• wrongly imprisoned;
• between two who have been condemned by the dominant earthly power;
• a recurring reference to the number three (vv.10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19);
• Joseph’s appeal that the one criminal “remember” him after he ascends out of prison vv.14, 23);
• and Joseph’s reference to the “house” (vv.3, 7, 14) as a “pit” (v.15) out of which he wishes to rise.

Joseph is therefore presented as a suffering savior. He will be the savior of Israel when his brothers flee to Egypt in search of food in the face of withering famine. His suffering will bring him to that point. In this he foreshadows the greater sufferings of Jesus. Jesus suffers for us and, as a result, reaches us in our suffering.

I am a big fan of Stephen Lawhead’s novel Byzantium. In this scene, the Irish monk Aidan, who had recently lost his faith, converses with the Viking Gunnar, who had recently come to faith. Aidan and Gunnar had both gone through great trial and tribulation throughout the novel. At the end, though, Gunnar, the converted Viking, wishes to build a church. The lapsed Aidan cannot understand why.

            Despair cast its dark cloak over me, and I said, “You see how unreliable this God is, and yet you still want to build a church?  Truly, Gunnar, you are better off without it.”

            Gunnar regarded me in disbelief.  “How can you speak so, Aeddan-especially after all we have seen?”

            “It is because of all we have seen that I speak as I do,” I retorted.  “God cares nothing for us.  Pray if it makes you feel better; do good if it pleases you, but God remains unmoved and unconcerned either way.”

            Gunnar was quiet for a moment, gazing at the little stone chapel.  “The people of Skania pray to many gods who neither hear not care,” Gunnar said.  “But I remember the day you told me about Jesu who came to live among the fisherfolk, and was nailed to a tree by the skalds and Romans and hung up to die.  And I remember thinking, this Hanging God is unlike any of the others; this god suffers, too, just like his people.

            I remember also that you told me he was a god of love and not revenge, so that anyone who calls on his name can join him in his great feasting hall.  I ask you now, does Odin do this for those who worship him?  Does Thor suffer with us?…Do you remember when the mine overseer was going to kill us?  There we were, our bodies were broken, our skin blackened by the sun – how hot it was!  Remember?”

            “Sure, it is not a thing a man easily forgets.”

            “Well, I was thinking this very thing.  I was thinking:  I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me.  And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him?  Yes!  Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother.  Why will he do this?  Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.”  Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news.”[2]

Yes, He does know. It is a powerful scene. Suffering presents us with two options, does it not? We either despair and so move away from God or we see God present in the suffering and move toward him. In this scene, Aidan chooses the former, Gunnar the latter.

Joseph, the son of Jacob, also chose the latter. Joseph, sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers, imprisoned because of a false accusation leveled by the wife of his master, finds himself with a choice in Genesis 40. He will either despair and sulk, or he will see God present even there in the prison. He chooses the latter. He sees God present in his sufferings and proclaims His goodness.

But there is one more type or image of Jesus in our text and we dare not miss it. I am talking about the fact that Joseph is imprisoned between a baker and a cupbearer.

Think of it: a baker and a cupbearer.

Bread and wine.

Joseph stands between the makers of the elements that will constitute the church’s great ordinance of remembrance and anticipation: the Lord’s Supper. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

The bread and the wine. The body and the blood. The greater Savior to come whose salvation will be eternal, not temporary, and whose name is above every other name.

We see glimmers of the gospel here in this prison, foreshadowing of the Savior and the cross.

Joseph suffered and became a savior.

Jesus suffered in ways no one else has and is the Savior above all other saviors.

Joseph will be raised out of the pit.

Jesus will rise from the dead.

Joseph will offer food to his family giving them longer days on the earth.

Jesus, the greater Joseph, the greater Savior, will offer us eternal life through His own broken body and shed blood, through His empty tomb, and all who come to Him shall live forever.

 

[1] Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses. The Hebrew Bible. vol. 1 (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), p.153-154, f.8.

[2] Stephen Lawhead, Byzantium. (New York, NY: Harper Prism, 1996), p.638-639.