[Prayer]
Today’s message is from Genesis chapters 39 and 40, the entire chapters. Remember as always as we read the passage that we are reading the word of God. What’s recorded in this passage (and in the entire Bible) is what God chose to have recorded and what he wants us to know and to learn from. If God, who made the heavens and the earth and who made us also... If God who saved us from our sin by such a great sacrifice chose the words in today’s passage, you know that they are important!
Also, as always, I encourage you to read your Bibles every day. Just coming on Sunday or to Bible study on Wednesday is not enough. Read the word of God every day!
Two weeks ago I talked about Joseph’s being sold into slavery. (That was in chapter 37.) You remember that his brothers hated him because Jacob favored him. Also, you remember that, to make matters worse, he had the two dreams where his brothers were bowing down to him. They wanted to kill him! And you remember that it was Judah that suggested that they would be less guilty if they sold him as a slave to some Ishmaelites in a Midianite caravan that were going to Egypt. At the end of chapter 37, it says that the Midianites sold Joseph to a man named Potiphar who was an officer of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt and the captain of Pharaoh’s guard.
Judah was the one who wanted to sell Joseph as a slave. Last week I talked about Judah’s life. (Chapter 38) Judah had what you might call an ordinary, mundane life. It was ordinary and mundane and sinful because it was a life without God. However, God had chosen Judah, and was working on him to sanctify him (and that means to make him holy, by the way). Toward the end of the chapter, Judah was going to have his daughter-in-law Tamar burned to death when she was found to be pregnant because of prostitution. However, when Judah found out that it was he who was the father, he declared that she was more righteous than he was—that’s conviction of sin, by the way—and she wasn’t burned. Later Tamar gave birth to twins. One of them was an ancestor of Jesus. Tamar was one of the five ‘women of faith’ listed in the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Today, we’re going to go on to chapters 39 and 40. We will see what happened to Joseph in Egypt.
Now let’s read chapters 39 and 40. Instead of me reading while you follow along, let’s take turns reading until we’ve read through both chapters.
[Read Genesis 39 and 40.]
The first verse in chapter 39 again tells us that Joseph was sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guard. The Lord was with Joseph and made him successful in everything he did in serving Potiphar. Apparently he advanced very rapidly in responsibility. It says that eventually Potiphar put Joseph in charge of everything—not only his household and the other servants, but also his fields. Joseph managed all of Potiphar’s finances, people and property. And Potiphar trusted him completely. He didn’t have to think about anything except to eat the food that Joseph made sure was prepared for him. (It’s an amazing thing that Potiphar trusted Joseph so completely. He didn’t seem to think it was necessary to check up on what Joseph was doing at all. Normally, we would say that that would be a foolish thing to do and would be asking for trouble, but the Lord was with Joseph. I believe that he put it into Potiphar’s heart to trust Joseph. He let Potiphar know that Joseph was trustworthy.)
Now I want to ask you this: How would you have reacted if your brothers had sold you into slavery and then you were resold in a foreign country? It may sound as though Joseph just took it in stride. But later Joseph’s brothers noted how very distressed Joseph was when they sold him. But what would you do if you were kidnapped and made to serve some rich person in some country where there was no law and there were no courts to appeal to? Would you try to escape? Would you do the minimum possible? I imagine that Joseph started out at the bottom of the totem pole as far as the servants go, probably with some menial tasks to do. But he advanced to the point where Potiphar put him in charge of everything! The Lord was with Joseph. What would your response be to being forced into slavery? (You know, the Lord is with us, also, don’t you?!)
Well, the Lord was testing Joseph—allowing him to be tested by Satan, really. Joseph was very distressed when he was sold by his brothers, but he trusted the Lord. (You know, the Lord let’s us be tested, too. It’s not to see how much we can endure. He knows how much we can endure. It’s to refine our faith—to teach us to trust him even more.) Joseph stood up well in his distress and hardship, but now he was going to be tested in another way.
Potiphar’s wife noticed that Joseph was well-built and handsome. After a while she looked longingly at Joseph and said to him, “Sleep with me.” (Verse 7) Let’s look at verses 8 and 9:
8But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, my master does not concern himself with anything in his house, and he has put all that he owns under my authority. 9No one in this house is greater than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. So how could I do such a great evil and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:8, 9)
Joseph refused Potiphar’s wife (she doesn’t have a name in the Bible, just Potiphar’s wife). As his master’s wife, she would have had authority over him, so that would make even harder to refuse her. But the reason Joseph gave for refusing her was that Potiphar trusted him completely. He said to her, “How could I do such a great evil?” The evil was multiplied all the more because Potiphar trusted Joseph completely.
There was a song years ago, What Would My Mary Say. A man and woman are singing. The man sings, “I’ve got to go now,” and the woman sings, “Please stay.” The man sings, “I’ve got to go. What would my Mary say if she saw me kissing you? She’s always trusted me completely. Her poor heart would break in two.” It made me cry to hear it. Betraying someone’s trust is just terrible. Joseph said that it was a great evil and a sin against God.
Well, Potiphar’s wife just wouldn’t give up. She was after Joseph day after day! Satan the devil is behind these things. The Lord said to Job (in the book of Job), “Have you considered My servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.” Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t You placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions are spread out in the land. But stretch out Your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse You to Your face.” The Lord gave Satan permission to test Job severely. But Job trusted the Lord and stood up under Satan’s test. And it was more severe than most of us have gone through, too. He lost his children, his possessions and finally his health. And his wife told him, “Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job told her, “You speak as a foolish woman speaks. Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?” And it says that throughout all this Job did not sin in what he said.
In our present story, Satan would not only have been able to incite Potiphar’s wife to tempt Joseph, he would have been able to tempt Joseph directly—to make Potiphar’s wife seem irresistible to him. But the Lord was with Joseph and protected him.
Satan’s evil spirits have the ability to influence our emotions. I’ve heard stories from time to time where people have claimed that it was God’s will for them to commit adultery, divorce their wives or husbands and marry someone else (although they usually didn’t explicitly say it was God’s will for them to commit adultery). We have to hold on to the word of God (thou shalt not commit adultery, in this case). And by the way, the word of God has to be in your heart to hold onto it, so study your Bible day by day. Hold onto the word of God!
Well, one day, according to verses 11 and 12, Potiphar’s wife grabbed Joseph by his garment and said again, “Sleep with me.” But, Joseph left his garment behind and escaped outside. At that Potiphar’s wife’s lust turned to frustration and anger and hate. She decided to get even with Joseph. She called all the household servants and told them that Joseph had come to her to sleep with her, instead of the other way around, but that when she had screamed, he had run away and left his garment behind. She told Potiphar the same story—“These are the things your slave did to me.” (It was even Potiphar’s fault: “These are the things your slave did to me.”) Potiphar was furious and had Joseph put in prison. (Matthew Henry pointed out that it was probably God’s providence that Potiphar didn’t kill him.)
Now listen to this. This is from verses 21 through 23:
21But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. 22The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph’s authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there. 23The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph’s authority, because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made everything that he did successful. (Genesis 39:21-23)
Joseph went from the frying pan into the fire, but the Lord did the same thing for Joseph while he was in prison that he had done while he was slave in Potiphar’s house. The prison warden trusted Joseph completely and put all the prisoners under his authority. After that, the prison warden didn’t worry about anything that he had entrusted to Joseph!
Now let’s go on to chapter 40. I’ll read verses 1 through 4:
1After this, the king of Egypt’s cupbearer and his baker offended their master, the king of Egypt. 2Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, 3and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. 4The captain of the guard assigned Joseph to them, and he became their personal attendant. And they were in custody for some time. (Genesis 40:1-4)
The captain of the guard assigned the prisoners to Joseph. Unless a new captain of the guard had been appointed, the captain of the guard was Potiphar, so it appears that Potiphar’s anger had subsided and he was willing to work with Joseph again. (Matthew Henry suggested that one possibility was that Potiphar had realized that Joseph was innocent, but if he released Joseph from prison, he would have to deal with his wife.
Well, after a while, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker both had dreams. They apparently knew that the dreams were significant and were distressed that they weren’t sure what they meant. Joseph was sensitive enough to realize they were worried about something (or maybe the Lord had spoken to him about this and had already given him the interpretation of the dreams). In any case, he asked them why their faces were sad and they told him about the dreams—and that they had no one to interpret them. Joseph told them that the interpretations belonged to the Lord and asked them to tell him about the dreams. (Verses 5-8) (By the way, how often do we acknowledge the Lord in any situation? “The interpretation belonged to the Lord.” What if you help someone out? Do you acknowledge the Lord? We need to be in the habit of acknowledging the Lord in everything.)
The chief cupbearer told his dream first. In it, there was a vine. It had three branches. On the branches there appeared three clusters of grapes. The chief cupbearer took them and squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup. Joseph gave the interpretation: The three branches represented three days. The chief cupbearer would be freed and restored to his position in three days.
After Joseph gave the interpretation, he asked the chief cupbearer to put in a good word for him: “But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison.” (And notice that he said, “when all goes well,” not “if all goes well.”)
When the chief baker heard the positive interpretation of the chief cupbearer’s dream, he was encouraged to tell his dream, too. The interpretation was not positive. The baker had dreamed that he was carrying three baskets of all sorts of baked goods on his head for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the baskets. Joseph told him that the three baskets also represented three days and that in three days he would be out of the prison. But in three days Pharaoh would have him put to death. His head would be cut of and he would be hung on a tree. In three days the chief cupbearer was restored to his position, but the chief baker was hanged.
I always wondered why the chief cupbearer was restored but the chief baker hanged. It seemed to be arbitrary. Of course kings in those days could decide thing on a whim—even in matters of life and death. But as we read about Pharaoh later in Genesis, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would do things on a whim. Besides, God was clearly involved in this, so why did it work out this way. Well, you may have noticed that the chief baker had hesitated to find out the interpretation of his dream until he saw that the chief baker’s dream had a positive interpretation. Maybe he was guilty of something that was worthy of death and was expecting the worst. (And, you know, we are all guilty of something that is worthy of death. It’s sin. And, as Joseph had to tell the chief baker the truth about what was going to happen to him, we also have to tell the truth to those around us: “You are a sinner. Without Jesus, you are worthy of death.”)
Joseph had asked the chief cupbearer to ask Pharaoh to get him out of prison. But verse 23, the last verse of the chapter says, “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.” As it turned out, Joseph was in prison two more years before the chief cupbearer remembered him. How easy it is to just think of ourselves and forget about others!
Now here are a couple of observations: First, the Lord is training Joseph through these trials. He was kidnapped, to use his words in verse 15, and sold into slavery. But then his slavery turned out to be what we might consider a good management position (although he certainly wasn’t free to change jobs). The Lord was with him. After that, he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. Still the Lord was with him. He was put in charge of all the prisoners! (Do you think he was being trained to be a manager? If you have read the rest of Genesis, you know that he was!)
That was my first observation. My second is this: The apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12, “All those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That was what was happening to Joseph. It will happen to us, too, if we want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. Paul also said in verse 11, “What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from them all.” (Paul was in prison, too, when he wrote that!) That was happening to Paul, it was also happening to Joseph and it happens to us, too.
You know something else, too. God gave the chief cupbearer and the chief baker dreams and Joseph interpreted them, but God had also given Joseph dreams many years before that! I wonder if Joseph was remembering them.
Next week more about Joseph. But for now, praise the Lord that, though we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. Praise the Lord!
[Prayer]