Genesis 39:19-21
Joseph Put in Prison
19 Potiphar was furious when he heard his wife’s story about how Joseph had treated her. 20 So he took Joseph and threw him into the prison where the king’s prisoners were held, and there he remained. 21 But the Lord was with Joseph in the prison and showed him his faithful love. And the Lord made Joseph a favorite with the prison warden.
Genesis 40:14-15
14 And please remember me and do me a favor when things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh, so he might let me out of this place. 15 For I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of the Hebrews, and now I’m here in prison, but I did nothing to deserve it.”
Genesis 40:23
23 Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer, however, forgot all about Joseph, never giving him another thought.
Genesis 41:1
Pharaoh’s Dreams
41 Two full years later, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing on the bank of the Nile River.
Genesis 41:9-16
9 Finally, the king’s chief cup-bearer spoke up. “Today I have been reminded of my failure,” he told Pharaoh. 10 “Some time ago, you were angry with the chief baker and me, and you imprisoned us in the palace of the captain of the guard. 11 One night the chief baker and I each had a dream, and each dream had its own meaning. 12 There was a young Hebrew man with us in the prison who was a slave of the captain of the guard. We told him our dreams, and he told us what each of our dreams meant. 13 And everything happened just as he had predicted. I was restored to my position as cup-bearer, and the chief baker was executed and impaled on a pole.”
14 Pharaoh sent for Joseph at once, and he was quickly brought from the prison. After he shaved and changed his clothes, he went in and stood before Pharaoh. 15 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream last night, and no one here can tell me what it means. But I have heard that when you hear about a dream you can interpret it.”
16 “It is beyond my power to do this,” Joseph replied. “But God can tell you what it means and set you at ease.”
Psalm 37:7
7 Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Isaiah 40:31
31 But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe)
This is one of my favourite worship songs. I just sang it last night. Again, I often do that.
Just before I go to bed, I'll listen to a few of these, and this was the one last night I just put on, and I was just taking some time with the Lord. I trust in God. Do we do that? Sometimes we forget that, right? When life gets a little tough, we kind of grab to all kinds of straws, and they don't last that long, but the Lord is always there.
He starts the song with blessed assurance. Remember how the words went in the old song? For Jesus is mine. Lord, thank you for the series on Joseph.
Thank you for the lessons we learned. Help us, Lord, to take those and make them part of our lives, especially this morning. It's a big one.
Thank you for that. May we ask, as we always do, that we can see Jesus and only Jesus. So I'm sitting in the doctor's office in the waiting room.
Jay nearly choked on his coffee now. Let me go back. I'm sitting in the doctor's office in the waiting room.
The receptionist checked me in, and she said, take a seat and wait. The nurse will call you when the doctor is ready to see you. I'm not alone in this room.
There's other people with me, and we all know our task. It's in the name of the room. Wait.
We don't tweet each other. We don't take blood pressure. We don't write prescriptions.
Our job is to wait. Now, we don't like that because we're this kind of giddy-up generation, right? We weave through the traffic to get to the fastest lane just to stop at the traffic light at the same time as everyone else. We get really upset when someone brings 11 items into the 10-item express checkout, and we drum our fingers when we watch Netflix, and it takes a little while for that video to download.
We don't like waiting, not for the traffic, not for the doctor, not for God. Can we take a moment and just think about this for a moment? Where are we sitting? Not today in the church. Every day as we live in this world, where are we sitting? We're sitting in God's waiting room.
See the young couple sitting there? They've been waiting for a long time, trying to get pregnant. See the gentleman there with a briefcase on his lap? He's been sending out resume after resume, waiting, waiting to find a job. See the elderly lady, just widowed? She's been waiting for one day without waking up crying.
Here's the thing. We live in a land between prayer offered and prayer answered, in the land of waiting, in God's waiting room. Now, if there's someone that knows every piece of furniture, who's read every notice on that bulletin board in God's waiting room, it was Joseph.
He spent hours down in a cistern, waiting that someone might just take him out. Months walking about 750 kilometres to get to Egypt. Days, if not weeks, on that auction block.
A decade in the household of Potiphar, the captain of the guard. Time moves slowly in a foreign land, and time stops in prison. And that's where we pick up his story today.
Can I just give you a little backstory before we read, and we're going to start reading chapter 39 verse 19. So Joseph works for Potiphar, and things are wonderful. People love him, everyone loves him, and Potiphar's wife wants to love him even more.
She invites him into her bedroom, and he says, no thank you. She did not take that kindly. So she decided that she was going to get him back for that.
So she goes to her husband, and she lies, and she tells him that Joseph tried to sexually assault her. And that's where we pick up our story. Potiphar was so furious when he heard his wife's story about Joseph, how Joseph had treated her.
So he took Joseph, and he threw him into the prison where the king's prisoners were held, and there he remained. Do I need to say this? But the Lord, this is about God even better. But the Lord was with Joseph in the prison, and he showed him his faithful love.
But the Lord was with Joseph even there where time stood still. And then, and I'm going to use strange words which I will explain in a second. I'm using them specifically.
It just so happened that the baker and the butler, not the candlestick maker, only the baker and the butler, they messed up, and Pharaoh got really angry at them, and he dumped them in jail with Joseph. They became friends. And it just so happened that they both had a dream.
And it just so happened that God allowed Joseph to understand the dreams and tell them what the dreams meant. If I was the baker, I wish I never had that dream for him. It didn't end that well.
He lost his head. The butler or the cupbearer, as the translation calls him, the butler, he got really good news. You're not going to stay in here for long, buddy.
You go right back, and they're going to put you back in your job, and you're going to live happily ever after working for the king. But as Joseph tells him that, he asks him a favour. Chapter 40, verse 14.
He said to him, please remember me. Do me a favour when things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh so he might let me out of this place, for I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of the Hebrews, and now I'm here in prison.
But I did nothing to deserve it. And then verse 23. Pharaoh's cupbearer, butler, however, forgot all about Joseph, never giving him another thought.
For two years, not a single word. Enough time for Joseph to forget about God, to kind of push his beliefs to one side and say, it's all done. There's nothing more.
I'm just stuck in this prison. But he never did, because Joseph knows all about last week's sermon. About the one who weaves.
Sometimes the world weaves, but God is the amazing re-weaver. And he knew all about that. Never gave up.
And then it happened. Pharaoh had this dream. Actually, two dreams.
One about cows and one about grain. It upset him really, because he didn't understand what this was all about. So he got all of his wise people and all of his counsellors together.
And he said, explain this to me, because I'm really concerned about what this might mean. They had no clue. And then that moment, chapter 41, verse 9. Finally, the king's cupbearer spoke up, the butler.
Today, I have been reminded of my failure, he told Pharaoh. Some time ago, you were angry with the chief baker and me, and you imprisoned us in the palace of the captain of the guard. That is Potiphar.
One night, the chief baker and I each had a dream, and each dream had its own meaning. And there was a young Hebrew man with us in the prison who was a slave of the captain of the guard. And we told him our dreams.
And he told us what each of our dreams meant. And everything happened just as he had predicted. I was restored to my position as cupbearer, and the chief baker was executed and impaled on a pole.
Sandy Barry, I just told you about that this week. Pharaoh sent for Joseph at once, and he was quickly brought from the prison. And after he shaved and changed his clothes, he went in and stood before Pharaoh.
This would be the first time that Pharaoh and Joseph would come face to face, and they would look at each other. Wouldn't be the last. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, I had a dream last night, and no one here can tell me what it means.
But I've heard that when you hear about a dream, you can interpret it. Now, listen carefully to Joseph's answer. It is beyond my power to do this, Joseph replied.
And do I have to say it? But God. But God can tell you what it means and said to you, I can't do it, but God can do it. Joseph comes out of jail after all this time, going through all of the stuff, and he comes out there bragging about God.
The jail time, the wait time did not diminish his faith, did not take away his faith, did quite the opposite. It strengthened his faith in this God who is weaving his life together, even if he's sitting in the waiting room. Because Joseph understood his God.
God who makes promises and keeps them. A God who is sovereign and nothing in this world can change what God is doing and is going to do and will do in your life and in my life, because that's just who he is. And I didn't write this in the sermon, but boy was that right.
I trust in God. That's what Joseph would have said, and that was maybe the last song he sang before he got out of jail. And you, you might not be in jail, but you might be sitting in that waiting room.
Well, while you're waiting, God is working. God never sits around and twiddling his thumbs. I wonder what's going on in the universe.
Doesn't take vacation. Psalm 121, he never slumbers and he never sleeps. John 5, he never stops working.
We have a song for that. Waymaker, he never stops. He never stops working.
He's the waymaker, miracle worker, light in the darkness. That is who you are. You never stop.
You never stop working, even when I'm sitting in the waiting room. Think of Joseph. In a sense, chapter 40, his life came to a standstill.
There he was, dumped, and that was the end. And now I'm coming back to those words that I used when I said, it just so happened. Nah, it didn't just so happen.
It was no coincidence. This was God working. God putting the pieces together.
Those two guys who fell out of favour with Pharaoh, God knew that there was a plan with that. And he put them right there where Joseph would meet them. And God had them have these dreams.
And God gave it to Joseph so Joseph could explain it. God was at work, even when Joseph was sitting in the waiting room. And when all the pieces were in place, Pharaoh had a dream, and no one understood.
And at the right time, at the right time, the old cupbearer who forgot for more than two years said, there's a Joseph. See, that's God at the right time. Not my time.
Not your time. We live in the land of waiting between a prayer offered and a prayer answered. We kind of, God help me now.
Now! Stand in line. There's someone with 12 in front of you. The land between a prayer offered and a prayer answered.
It is the land of waiting. But God is working, and God is weaving. So it's okay sometimes to wait.
Giddy up, generation. And as you wait, it would behove you to just look up to the wall, because God has a beautiful plaque on the wall in his waiting room. Psalm 46 verse 10.
Someone know where that is? There's a coffee for that. No, don't look it up. Be still and know that I, that's right there in his waiting room.
Be still and know that I, I can be glad, even in my waiting, because God is good. I can be silent, because God is, I can rest, because God is busy. I know that's hard, because we want those answers right now.
We don't like to wait. I want to go straight into it. But in the waiting is where we learn more and more about this master weaver in our lives.
There's this beautiful word, Psalm 31, and Alexander knows that's one of those that's going to be read at my funeral. I trust in you. I say you are my God.
Just before that, he says, God, I'm scared. There's lots of stuff going on, and I'm not sure about all these things, but I trust in you. I say you are my God, and then those words, my times are in your hands.
Can we say that in our own lives? I trust in you. Between a prayer offered and a prayer answered, my times are in your hands. And then do what Paul says, right? Through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, you give it to God.
And let me end. It would be good for us to remember, and Grace, you have this on there, to remember Isaiah chapter 40, verse 31. Those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
Can I just stop that for a second? The word trust is sometimes translated with hope, and the King James got it right for once, translated it correctly. Again, a Hebrew word, Amirah, kavah. Kavah means to wait.
Those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. Those who wait on the Lord will soar high on wings like eagles. Those who wait on the Lord will run and not grow weary.
Those who wait on the Lord will walk and they will not faint. You'll get through that waiting room period. Ask Joseph.
He'll tell you. One more thing. As you sit there, you might notice that the door opens and you'll see the doctor come out and come sit right next to you.
And he'll say, I'm just going to sit here while we wait. Not all doctors will do that, but yours will, because he's the great physician. So, welcome to the waiting room.
Amen. Take a few moments of quiet prayer. Think of me, O Lord.
Think of me in your greatness. Be the rock where I can come and hide. Be that faithful one that I can come and sit and I can just pour my heart out, for I trust in you, Lord.
I say, you are my God. And as I wait, my times are in your hand. In Jesus' name.
Amen. We're going to sing. Praise team.
Thank you. When we do the postlude, it seems that we've been a little mischievous and we've done some stuff that God doesn't like. So, the last song, if you see on your bulletin, says, Lord, reign me in.
So, God must be thinking about us to reign us in for something. It was a little mistype, but we'll sing Lord, reign me in. That's our postlude.