Joseph No.5 Numbered with the transgressors

Joseph is in prison, and now he's joined by the cupbearer and the baker. They have dreams and Joseph interprets. So let's listen together as we are reminded of this wonderful story.

Genesis chapter 40. Sometime later, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt offended their master, the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the same prison where Joseph was confined.

The captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph, and he attended them. And they had been in custody for some time, each of the two men, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison, had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own. When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected.

So he asked Pharaoh's officials who were in custody with him in his master's house, why are your faces so sad today? We both had dreams, they answered, but there is no one to interpret them. Then Joseph said to them, do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams. So the chief cupbearer told Joseph his dream.

He said to him, in my dream I saw a vine in front of me, and on the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh's cup, and put the cup in his hand.

This is what it means, Joseph said to him, the three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position, and you will put Pharaoh's cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. But when all goes well, will you remember me, and show me kindness, mention me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison? For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.

When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph, I too had a dream, and on my head were three baskets of bread. In the top basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head. This is what it means, Joseph said, the three baskets are three days, and within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat away your flesh.

Now the third day was Pharaoh's birthday, and he gave a feast for all his officials. He lifted up the heads of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker in the presence of his officials. He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again put the cup into Pharaoh's hand, but he hanged the chief baker just as Joseph had said to them in his interpretation.

The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph, he forgot him. It took the evangelical world a long time to recognize this devastating thought, that however blessed the authorized version was and is, Paul the apostle didn't have it. There were others who came in on the whole hallowed profession of Bible translation before the people in King James' day, and indeed in our day.

One of the illustrious translators before A.V. Times was a man called Miles Coverdale. When he was going through the original manuscripts, trying to put the Bible into English colloquial language at that time, he ran into a difficulty that many other preachers have known. There just didn't seem to be a word to fit in the English dictionary, what he believed the Bible wanted to say.

Actually, he was looking for an opposite to the word short-tempered, so he contrived his own, a practice, as I say, followed by many a preacher, often unwittingly. What he opted for was this, and it embedded itself in the English language for quite some time. He introduced the term long-suffering.

That's nice, isn't it? Opposite to short-tempered, long-suffering. The NIV translators in their wisdom have got a rather anemic equivalent. They drop long-suffering and they put in patience.

I prefer long-suffering, because it seems to me that that is a virtue that is extolled in the New Testament as one of the characteristics of a man who is taken over by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus was long-suffering, not so. You read about him incredibly in the letter of Peter, the first letter that he wrote.

I said incredibly, because Peter was sort of close in on him. If you want to know what I'm like, don't ask Ian Land, ask my wife. After all, Ian only has company with me a few hours a day.

My wife gets me most of the time when I'm home. She knows what I'm like in my private moments, and not when acting as a pastor, though I hope that the two are not completely irreconcilable. Here is Peter, and he's referring to the Lord Jesus.

In the 23rd verse of the second chapter of this first epistle, he says, When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. If you were to put that into one word, you would say of our Lord Jesus that he was long-suffering.

When the apostle is trying to encourage other Christians to develop characteristics that are equivalent to that of our Lord Jesus, he says in the second letter that bears his name in the first chapter, in the fifth verse and onwards, Add so-and-so to your faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, and so on and so forth. And again, if you were to take the sum of all the qualities, what he's really suggesting is that you and I as Christian people ought to be, as our Lord was, long-suffering. That's not easy to be long-suffering.

Not if you're born in the north of England. Even less easy in West Sussex. Long-suffering to the degree that you can react to circumstances without wanting to vindicate yourself, but prepared to let God ultimately, in every situation in your life, where necessary, vindicate you and justify what you've done, assuming that what you've done is always right.

You see, this was the seed thought that I left you with annoyingly last week because we got to 1250 and I had to quit. Or 1150, not quite as bad. I said that when Jesus was raised from the dead, he appeared, not to those who put him on the cross, but to his disciples.

Now, if it was you and me who had the option of what to do in that sort of situation, we would have perhaps given a jolt, put the fear of death into Caiaphas and Annas. I mean, they would have been terribly embarrassed, wouldn't they? But our Lord Jesus never in his life, nor after his death and resurrection, justifies himself. He allows time and ultimately the judgment seat of God to be the final justifying factor in terms of how he lived.

Now, here is Joseph, and in some ways, as we've seen, he anticipates the character of our Lord Jesus. Not absolutely, no one ever could. But one of the things that it seems to me God is trying to build into the personality of this man is the ingredient of lung suffering, which is going to be so necessary if, as God knows, but Joseph at this point doesn't, he is to become one of the most influential, if not the most influential person in the world.

You see, when you look at the stories of Joseph's life, you tend to forget that there are great spiritual issues involved, the whole future of the Jews will swing on how this man ultimately behaves in a position of great authority and power. And one of the things that is basic to leadership, whether it's the leadership of a country, the leadership of a church, the leadership of a home, the leadership of a community of retired people, it is that ability to be lung suffering. Joseph has had a raw deal, hasn't he? Can you imagine when he set off with a packed lunch for his brothers as a result of his elderly father's request to go and see how it was going with the lads? Can you imagine his reaction if you had told him that within 24 hours he'd be a slave and within a week he'd be in the marketplaces of Alexandria or some other place like that in Egypt? Now, let's imagine that you were around at the time and you've got the New Testament, you see, and you're going to send a telegram to Joseph.

What scripture did you send him? Romans 8, 28? All things work together for good to them that love God? The man who's in heaven once told me, when he was on earth, when his first wife died, rather surprising and tragic circumstances. Some Christian was inept enough to send to him that text. It's not an easy text to take, is it? And maybe it would have been better if they'd have just left that on one side for a moment, but let's narrow it down and be a little bit harsh on ourselves, shall we? Imagine that we're in a Joseph sort of situation, how do we cope with that text, all things work together for good to them that love God? You see, to be able to bite the bullet of that text, you've got really to be fairly well up in the whole characteristic of long-suffering, not so.

Believing that in your circumstances, God is still working through his plan and his purpose. It's a real trial that Joseph went through, wasn't it? He was bunged into a pit, then released from the pit, and he had a sort of interim period when things were a little bit better in part of his household, I spelt out some of the blessings that there were in this interval, and then he's in prison again, within such a short space of time. I wonder if some of you heard about the conditions in the prisons in Bangkok on the radio this last week.

There were some Britishers who were there, rightly, in prison, they were drug smugglers. But something of the degrading conditions of prisons in the third world was illustrated in their sorry experience. Now, I can't really believe, though I'd like to, that this particular prison was sort of upmarket on the prison in Bangkok.

Now, where does Joseph come from? Well, he's not a town's boy, he's not a city boy. He's a boy born in the wide open spaces. One of the things my dear wife had to cope with when she came to England and to London was the claustrophobia.

You know, out there in South Africa, so much room, the houses have such larger plots, and so forth. It's very hard for us as townspeople to appreciate the problems of the country person, who at times, perhaps because of circumstances, is restricted in his movement. What a hell hole for Joseph, a real trial in this prison.

You remember how encapsulated in Psalm 105, is it not, Ian read it to us the other week, you've got a little summation of Joseph's difficulty, Psalm 105, yes, that's right, and verse 17 refers to God sending a man as the leader, the ultimate leader, though incognito, unknown at the time of Israel. He sent a man before them, Joseph sold as a slave, they bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons. I don't believe that's poetic.

No more poetic than when Paul, writing to Timothy, refers to his chain, do you remember? And how he congratulates the Colossians, because they also remembered his chain. The Apostle Paul, who was a sensitive man, despite what some liberal commentators might say, he really did feel the embarrassment of being a prisoner, of walking around with the chains thumping on the floor. Now Joseph was something like that, I perceive.

It was a real difficulty that he's in, and his problems working through that difficulty, as you perhaps have problems working through yours, because there are prisons and prisons. Though heaven knows, very few, if any here, have had the experience that Joseph had, of the claustrophobia, and the degradation. You see, there were things in Joseph's character that maybe, I'm not too sure, I don't go along with all the biblical illustrators in the way they perceive Joseph, but maybe he was a little flabby.

You know, he was the favourite son of his father, and if the fawning attitude of Jacob didn't perhaps give to Joseph a sense of being better than his brothers, well, it would have been unusual. Let's allow it just for a moment. Maybe there's something that's got to be built into Joseph, something that's got to be stripped from him first.

He's left his father, didn't have a chance to say goodbye, left his favourite younger brother, didn't have a chance to say God bless you, been stripped of that ornamental robe, in Partipa's house, freedom for a while, now back in the clink. Can't have been that easy, can it? No more than it's easy for a mum looking forward to the birth of her little mite, and that little child is born deformed. Not easy.

But that's the rough and tumble of our world, and the preacher must go to where the world is and where people is in the world, and he's helped in so doing because the word of God addresses the real world with all its inexact circumstances. Have you ever had to rethink your theology? Some people say to me, well, look, when you came to the tab eighteen years ago, perhaps you didn't quite perceive that as you did then, a slight shift, a slight change, a modification, as though that in itself is dishonourable. You mean to say that you're not constantly learning in life's experience? Do you anticipate a man in his twenties is going to be the same as a man in his forties? In your twenties you can only read your books, in your forties you're reading life, and in your sixties you're even more experienced, not so? So Joseph has to do a rethink.

You see, in those days, there was a semblance of evidence that the prosperity gospel people had got it right. You come across them? They're having a ball in the United States of America. God wants you healthy, wealthy, and happy.

I don't know what the order is. But wealth seems to have quite a prominent part of the creedal statement. Now, I do believe that God can make people wealthy.

I think he makes very few people, Christians, outstandingly wealthy because very few Christians can carry that particular burden and lay it at the feet of Jesus. But you see, in the Old Testament there is this inbuilt idea that blessings of God mean material prosperity. Blessings for a woman mean the fruit of the womb.

If you don't have your material prosperity, if you don't have the fruit of the womb, then God is against you. That's basically the problem with Job, wasn't it? Not his problem, but that of his comforters. They came at Job and they were goading him because, well, you know, you couldn't be as you are, stripped of all your assets, if you had been living righteously.

And Job says, a plague on all your theologies, you've got it wrong, I may not understand what God has done. But in that respect, I'm innocent. You say that you've never had Joseph's problem.

Or rather, you've never submitted like Joseph did, not submit, to sexual temptation. Well, great, if you didn't, thank God for the way that he preserved some of his people, at least from the physical act of sexual indiscretion. But maybe you've never met Potiphar's wife.

Maybe you've never really gone through that white heat that Joseph went through and came through valiantly. Now really, if this God is in his heaven, and if he blesses a young fellow with red corpuscles pulsing through his body, who's got the same sort of genetic chemistry as you and I have got, if this God blesses that sort of morality, then why is he in jail? I was good as a teenager. I love my husband now, but why am I in these circumstances? Or it was always my anticipation in God's providence that I'd be married, and I'm not.

Doesn't this seem to suggest that this God somehow has got it all wrong? You see, Joseph's got the problem, he's got the challenge of re-theologizing what he's been brought up to believe. As there comes a time in every person's life, usually if they've been brought up in a Christian home, it hits them in their mid-teens, when what they have been brought up to believe has to become part and parcel of their own commitment. Because you can't go along with your parents' convictions, can you? You have to think it through yourself.

And indeed, during the whole of our lives, we're engaged in this whole process of thinking through. That's why it's absurd. If you come to a preacher and say, well, your theological perceptions in your twenties are not the same in your forties, what do you expect him to do, go on a holiday with his intellect for twenty years? Of course not.

And Joseph's got another problem, hasn't he? He's got a struggle with his initial profession of faith. You remember how with evangelical enthusiasm that befits a spirit-filled teenager, he gets up in front of his brothers and says, hey, you know, fellas, one day all you lot will bow down to me because it's God's purpose for me to be super influential in my career. Do you remember how he sort of checked that out in terms of illustration, the sheaves of corn bowing down and the stars and the sun and the moon and so forth? Well, you know, if a prophet is judged on his own word, then it's very difficult to understand why Joseph's in the condition in which he's in, isn't it? Did he get it all wrong? Has he blown it? Martin Lloyd-Jones preached for years on revival.

I love that man as much as I love my father, but he never lived to see it. Did he get it wrong, or does he believe that somehow, somewhere, yet in the purposes of God there will be the justification of what he preached for years in London? As Joseph perhaps clings on to faith that though he cannot understand what's happening yet somehow in the purposes of God ultimately he will vindicate what he said to his brothers and to his father in the flush of teenage enthusiasm. There were certain things that Joseph has to relearn, certain things that he has to hang on to.

As he finds himself in the most uncongenial company, I mean he's in jail, and in the jail are placed two other criminals, almost in anticipation not so of our Lord Jesus. You remember how his last hours before Calvary were spent in the company of two criminals and indeed they accompanied him to the cross, both who had broken the law, both who at the human level deserved to die. Here is Joseph, and he seems to me to retain an outstanding characteristic, at least perhaps not 100 percent, but 90 percent.

He's doing very well, far better than the majority of us. He doesn't reach the excellence that our Savior did, but nonetheless it seems as though he's able to cope incredibly with these circumstances and not draw on the bottom line a conclusion about God that he might be regretful of later in his life or when he stands before the judgment throne. Now when you can start to cope with your difficulties with the same sort of maturity as Joseph, it seems to me that you can depict, analyze, realize in your situation that God actually has not left you, even though you're in the pit, or in the prison.

Look at verse 21 of the previous chapter, will you? While Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness, again I prefer the A.V., he showed him mercy and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. The Lord showed him mercy.

Do you remember when Moses was on the Mount of Sinai, how he put up a request to the Lord and he said, Lord, will you show me your glory? And there's that lovely scene, Moses in the cleft of the rock, you remember that promoted the great hymn, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, and how the glory of God passed by, marvelous. But do you know something? The glory of God can fill a prison. The Lord showed him his mercy, his favor, his grace, while he's there in the prison.

God has a remarkable way of releasing the fragrance of his presence, wherever his children are, in a rat hole or in the racing air, the bracing air of some mountainous summer. The Lord was with Joseph in the prison. It's amazing what God can do with people in prisons, isn't it? Do you remember old John Bunyan? His wife had a prayer meeting to stop him going into Bedford jail.

Isn't it frustrating when you pray and the Lord doesn't answer? Or maybe the Lord overrules. I mean this is the case, wasn't it, because John Bunyan was able to say, speaking of Bedford jail, as I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep, and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. Well, for understatement, that takes a price.

He dreamed a dream, pilgrim's progress, that fascinating tale of a Christian believer making his way through this world. One of the most remarkable books to be placed alongside the Bible, not in terms of inspiration, but in terms of illustration. Where did he have his vision? In a prison.

Paul writes to the Ephesians, and he uses a very interesting Greek word. He says, I bow before the Father. I bow before the Father of the universe, and the very verb indicates that when he is bowing before the Father, the Father calms down in his power, in his graciousness, and Paul has a felt experience of God.

Sometimes God puts you on your back so that you can look up. You'll never see a star with weather like this. You've got to darken things, haven't you, to see the stars.

And here's Joseph, and maybe we've got some sisters of Joseph here this morning, and some brothers of Joseph, spiritually speaking, and you know what the preacher is on about. God has brought in the darkness, but you perceive the stars as a result. And you know that in it all, God is working through his purposes in your life.

Now, there are further indications of God blessing Joseph, are there not, even in this rather difficult situation in which he finds himself. Verse 22 of the previous chapter, so the warder put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison. He was made responsible for all that was done there, promotion in a prison.

A similar sort of thing as he discovered in Potiphar's household in the opening verses of that chapter. God did it again. It wasn't a fluke.

It wasn't just that Potiphar, who was a nice Roman, rather a nice Egyptian with a kindly heart, found Joseph and sort of buttered him up. It wasn't just a fluke. God shows it's not a fluke by taking him away from Potiphar, putting him in jail, and the same sort of thing occurs.

Because God's got his hand on this man as he's got his hand upon your life, and upon my life. And isn't it interesting that you begin, at least by a little bit of clever logical deduction, to come to an appreciation that Potiphar has changed his mind about Joseph. Potiphar, who had him thrown into prison.

How do I know that? Well, look at verse 3, will you, of the 40th chapter. Two men are thrown into the jail, and they are put in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the same prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph, and he attended them.

Who was the captain of the guard? Well, if you read through the opening verses of the 39th chapter, you'll discover that the captain of the guard was none other than Potiphar. You see, I think that Potiphar was, in one sense, very much like Pilate. Pilate wasn't very happy about handing Jesus over, was he? I mean, he seemed as though he got a very shrewd idea that his wife had got it right and that Jesus was completely innocent of those trumped up charges.

And Potiphar, too, well, I reckon he'd had a ball of a marriage in the negative sense. I mean, if you can handle Potiphar's wife, then you're doing well, and it didn't look as though Potiphar could. Maybe he got sneaking suspicions as to what was the matter with that marriage that his wife was quite likely to have played fast and loose with Joseph.

But here is Potiphar using now his influence, and when the butler and the baker are thrown into jail, Joseph is designated by the captain of the guard to attend them, to look after them. Amazing how, as I say, God will grant his evidences of his presence and his involvement. In your situation, however dreadful it might appear to be at the human level, when I was in Washington last year, I came under the instruction of, though alas, I didn't meet him personally, Chuck Carlson.

Chuck Carlson's a most interesting man. You remember him from the career that he had with Richard Nixon, Nixon's hatchet man, eventually spent time in jail himself as a result of the Watergate scandal. Because of the conditions in prison and his concern for prisoners, Carlson launched a ministry amongst prisoners around the world, a most remarkable story the way that that has grown.

But that prison ministry of Chuck Carlson, it seems to me, was anticipated by Joseph. You say, what do you mean? Will you find that when Joseph is in jail, with everything bleak in his life, he starts to minister to the luckless baker and butler that are there as a result of having fallen foul of Pharaoh? Don't you understand this, my friend, that God can use your ministry, whatever your circumstances may be. Everything doesn't have to be rosy for you to be used by God to the advantages of others.

You see, Joseph might be waiting for one of the best pulpits. He wants a call back to a pulpit in Palestine, you know? And when he's got the publicity machine all working for him, the crowds are coming along and all the Bedouins and what have you, they're all there listening to him, that's the time to work. But no, here in his prison, in his circumstances, Joseph has a ministry to others.

He who has been comforted by God can comfort those who in turn require that sort of help. I'm paraphrasing Paul in 1 Corinthians in chapter 1, as many of you will have appreciated. Let me try and close down.

Do you ever get upset about the slowness of God? Do you ever get mad at God? I think God is big enough to take you getting mad at him. I think sometimes God looks down upon you like my father would look down upon my brother and myself when we were kids back in the north of England, with a sort of chuckle. You know, we wanted to do what he said was wrong and we'd go and do it and get ourselves into trouble and there was that chuckle.

Don't you think that God sometimes chuckles at you? You get so mad. Why have you allowed this to happen? And there you are blowing your fuse and the Lord's got a smile on his face. He doesn't react in the way that you react to him because he's God, you see, he's the epitome of all that is characterized by long suffering.

And ultimately you will see that your reaction was wrong. Joseph is prepared to accept his condition in jail and therefore he's an illustration to the likes of you and me. God knows what's at the end of it, you see.

Do you remember when Bev Shea first came into this country with Billy Graham? He made not only famous that hymn, How Great Thou Art, but there was another one and I can only get a couple of lines. God holds the key of all unknown and I am glad. He didn't really want to know.

This is what he sung in his songs in Haringey Stadium. He didn't really want to know all that God had got in store because he couldn't handle it. You couldn't handle all that God has got in store for you but remember this, as God allows you day by day to perceive what his purposes are, next day and next week and next month, that's not the end of the chapter.

There's a long way to go. And God will often justify what happens in the present and in the immediate past with the future. Have you ever thought how when Joseph was ministering to the butter and the baker it seemed a little tame? What Artie Kendall calls a light luster event.

You know, just these men being ministered to by Joseph. But that light luster event eventually was to lead, in the purposes of God, to Joseph becoming the Prime Minister of Egypt. It wasn't just an ordinary prison.

It was a prison which contained those who had fallen foul of Pharaoh's own wishes. And as a result of that prison experience, Joseph ultimately is ushered into the very presence of Pharaoh and he's given a job to do that makes him the second most powerful man in the whole other world. Did Joseph ever think his gift was wasted? I mean, he was into the prophecy business, wasn't he? Got it right.

Two men come along and they have these rather strange dreams and Joseph has had this spiritual intuition, this gift of discernment for years bottled up. It's such a tragic waste. I should be at the forefront of evangelism.

I should be doing this. I should be doing this. Where are you, God? You've given me this.

Where's the opportunity to do what you've then gifted me to do? God will bring about the opportunity, not necessarily in Haringey Stadium or Wembley Stadium, but in a prison. Light luster event. Helping one person out of his difficulty and sealing the doom of another.

As our Lord on the cross said to one of the criminals, today you will be with me in paradise and he sealed the doom of the other one who never sought for his mercy. You see how marvelous are the ways of God? He's got Joseph where he wants him, in prison, working for him and he's building into him the characteristic that you and I need so much because you weren't born with it naturally. The characteristic of long-suffering.

Joseph discovered it when mingling with the transgressors. May God so control and condition your personality that you too might have this characteristic more because it's partaking of the nature of Jesus and that's what you need to do more than anything else. That's all.

Thank you.