#8 Joseph Series - Lessons from the Dungeon

Dr. Ron Sumners

November 8, 2009

Genesis 40:1-8

      Two of Joseph’s fellow prisoners were servants of Pharaoh and were in jail because they had displeased their master. Each of them, the baker and the cupbearer, had a dream, and Joseph noticed that they were disturbed.

        In the process of interpreting the men’s dreams and seeing the fulfillment worked out in their lives, Joseph teaches us valuable lessons from the dungeon.

        Here is the first lesson, illustrated by Joseph’s response to the men. The message comes to us forcibly in Genesis 40:8. “We both had dreams,” the two men said to Joseph, “but there is no one to interpret them.”

        Joseph responded, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” Clearly Joseph had a unique gift from God in the ability to correctly interpret dreams. But his perspective was clear. He did not boast of his skill to seek to draw attention to himself. He pointed to God as the source of the gift and the glory.

        There is an obvious lesson in this for us. All of us believers have been given gifts by the Holy Spirit. Some people’s gifts are more evident and more abundant than the gifts of others, but since all of us are gifted by God’s hand, we had better not call too much attention to ourselves. For in so doing we may obscure the grace of God.

        Joseph was an early example of this principle, which runs throughout the whole scripture. Jesus’ classic statement of it is found in the Gospel of John:

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5)

        Jesus means exactly what He says. Colossians 1:17 says of Christ, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” None of us can even breathe without His enabling. When we begin to live in the light of His truth, we will be moving from a self-centered focus to a God-centered focus.

        The way we react to circumstances also reveals our focus. An amateur photographer doesn’t always capture the image on which he thought he trained his camera. So, when he gets the pictures back, he might see a drainpipe coming out of someone’s head or a building that’s only half in the frame.

        He might look at the pictures and say, “That isn’t what I was photographing.” But the fact is what shows up in the photos is exactly what was in the lens. The photos reveal the focus in an undeniable way.

        In the same way, Joseph’s reaction to all that happened to him revealed an incredibly God-centered life. There was no self-pity or complaining recorded of this godly young man.

        Look at Genesis 41:15-16 and you will see the focus of Joseph’s life making itself known again. This time Pharaoh had a dream, and the cupbearer finally remembered that there was a Hebrew prisoner in the dungeon who could interpret dreams.

        Pharaoh sent for Joseph and said, “I have heard it said of you that you can interpret dreams” (v.15). Underline Joseph’s response because it is important, “I cannot do it… but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires” (v.16).

        We cannot do it! These are the four most important words for anybody who wants to be used by God. We cannot do it and if we think we can, life will soon teach us differently. But God can do anything. I can’t, but God can! Our need of Him is total. That is what it means to have a God-centered focus.

        Joseph was learning to live a God-focused life in the dungeon. Even in the darkness, he was able to see life from a perspective bigger than his immediate surroundings.

        Are you living with a self-centered focus? Be prepared for major disappointment. Are you living with a circumstance-centered focus? Be prepared for endless frustration. The only way to live joyfully is with a God-centered focus.

        Many people are just hanging on from weekend to weekend. Life is one meaningless, empty task after another. The only answer to this emptiness and hopelessness is the one from the dungeon.

        John Calvin figured this out more than four hundred years ago, “Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself. He can never know who he is unless he has first looked upon God’s face and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinizing himself.” 

        In contemporary meaning, that would suggest that instead of the catch phrase of the day being “God Bless America,” it should be “America, Bless God!” The focus should not be on us; the focus should be on God!

        Without a God-centered focus to life, everything is turned on its head. You will never know who you are, why you are here, or what you are supposed to be doing until you first gaze into the face of God as revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you acknowledge Christ for who He is, then you will discover who you are.

        A second lesson from the dungeon is the importance of telling the truth without ambiguity, whether it is good news or bad news.

        He told the cupbearer that he would be restored to his position in three days. The baker assumed that he would receive good news also. But Joseph did not have good news for the baker. In three days, he would be executed.

        Maybe the baker thought that since he and the other man were in the same circumstances, he could expect the same outcome.

George Lawson points out, “Let us remember that divine providence is under no obligation to be equally kind to all of us. And that prosperity and adversity, life and death, are distributed to men by One, who has a right to do what He will with His own.” In other words, God is God, and He can do what He likes!  

        It would have been easy for Joseph to soothe this man and tell him some sweet, little lies. After all, in three days he would be dead, so there would be nothing to answer for, if he lied to him.

There are plenty of people in the pulpits of our churches who are willing to soothe the feelings of spiritually dying men and women, assuring them that they are all right. But when you are dealing with matters of eternity, do you really want someone to tell you lies to make you feel comfortable? Wouldn’t you rather hear someone who loves you enough to confront you with the truth in order to save you?

The lesson from the dungeon is that if you are going to be a servant of God, you are going to have to speak the truth. And if you are going to speak the truth, be ready for the blast furnace of criticism and opposition that will surely come.

Just before his death, Paul told his spiritual son and disciple, Timothy, “Preach the Word. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Timothy 4:2-3). John Calvin said, “All love to be flattered. Hence the majority of teachers, in desiring to yield to the corrupt wishes of the world, adulterate the Word of God." 

Joseph told the truth in the dungeon even when it was hard. What a shame that so many contemporary politicians wait to see what the popular sentiment is at the moment and make their decisions based on that statistic. 

One politician was asked what he believed about abortion. He replied, “The poll isn’t back yet from my district.”

Joseph’s words to this baker must have really stung him. Imagine knowing that you have three days to live. If the baker had known what his dream was going to mean, he probably would not have asked for the interpretation. He would rather have lived those three days in ignorance.     

Pharaoh’s baker died three days before his time. The thoughts of the fatal moment and the birds feeding on his carcass must have taken possession of his mind every waking moment.

Joseph told the baker the hard truth. You say, “Well, fortunately we don’t have to say that to anyone today.” That’s right; we aren’t given specific prophecies of people’s death to deliver to them (at least I never have).

But we do have an important message to deliver about death and what follows it. “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). We need to tell people that Jesus taught more about hell than He ever taught about Heaven.

We need to help people understand that they cannot have a heaven without a hell, that it is intellectually implausible to have the one without the other, and that they must prepare for the day when they will stand before God and face the final judgment.

Do you suppose Pharaoh’s baker used his final three days of his life to make preparations for his death? Perhaps he seized the chance to go back to Joseph and say, “Joseph, I’m scared to death. I don’t know what it is about you, but you seem to know the one, true, God.”

Did he say, “Joseph, can you help me deal with this?” Or did he mope away the final three days and do nothing about his soul? We don’t know, but we can say this: if the baker failed to make use of that time that was given to him, it was his own fault.

Are you prepared to die? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you need to settle the issue with God. Don’t miss this lesson from the dungeon. Pharaoh’s baker and people on death row are not the only people living with a death sentence. Death is an appointment that we all must keep.

The baker got a great deal. He had seventy-two hours to prepare. We have no such guarantee. That is why the Bible says; “Now is the time of God’s favor, and now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

        One of the great challenges we face at the turn of the new millennium is to learn how to cope with the fact that we are living longer and that the process of death has become for many, far more protracted than it was in earlier times. Protracted yes, but still a certainty!

Do you have a theology that prepares you for death? Let me suggest one. Any view of death that does not come to grips with John 11:25 is deficient. Jesus told His friend Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”

We cannot really begin to live until we have faced the reality of death and have prepared for it by faith in Jesus Christ. Are you prepared to die? If so, you are prepared to live! We don’t know what happened to Pharaoh’s baker. Don’t let the same question mark hang over your life.

        A fourth lesson from the dungeon concerns dealing with disappointment and unfulfilled hopes.

        Have you ever been disappointed by events or people? Have you ever had desires and dreams and hopes that went unfulfilled? We’ve all had them. They are a part of the package called life.

        From a human standpoint, Joseph’s life up to this point could be viewed as a series of crushing disappointments and shattered dreams. And in the dungeon, he was about to suffer another setback. The chief cupbearer forgot him!

I imagine that on the day of his release, the man grabbed Joseph’s hand and said, “Joey boy, thanks for what you did for me. You can expect to hear from me. I’ll speak to Pharaoh the first opportunity I get. I’m your man, Joe.”

Have you ever been promised something like that? You wait, and the phone never rings! Perhaps someone said to you, “I love you, I will never leave you or forsake you!” Where are they now?

How do we deal with the disappointment of unfulfilled dreams? How do we deal with the fact that people just flat out let us down sometimes? We can learn something from Joseph.  

We can only expect that there was a great deal of expectation in Joseph’s heart as the cupbearer was restored to his job. In the first few days after his release, Joseph probably stirred every time there was a rattle at the door of the dungeon. “They are coming to release me.” 

The days lengthened to weeks and the weeks to months and the months to years. The cupbearer had forgotten him. 

We know from Genesis 41:1 that two full years passed before anyone came for Joseph. What a disappointment! But disappointments happen all the time. People will let us down. People will fail us. Things that we hoped for do not pan out. Even the best of people will disappoint us and let us down. I assure you that if I have not failed you in some way already, I may very well do so in the future. 

    Why should we be surprised? We are all human and we all fall short of what we should be. I will disappoint you and you will disappoint me. Jeremiah 17:5 tells us, “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”

If you are relying on other people for your hopes and plans, your trust is in the wrong place, even more so if your confidence in yourself or others causes you to cease trusting in the Lord! 

Joseph kept his confidence in God through the disappointment of being forgotten by man!

 A final lesson we discover in the dungeon is that we are not forgotten. It appeared that Joseph had been forgotten. He was forgotten by man, but not by God.

What do you do when people forget you? What do you do when you have taken a few too many blows to the shins, too many elbows to the ribs as you have run the race of life? Where do you go when you feel so weary that you cannot run another step?

You look away from people and look up! When I am weary and disappointed, I look into God’s Word where I read in Isaiah 40:28-31:

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those whose hope is in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.

What a tremendous promise to the weak and weary. That is all of us, at one time or another. If you can learn to rest in God’s faithfulness, you can sleep secure in any storm.

Joseph was a forgotten young man, far away from family and friends. He was lied about. He was confined unjustly, in a dark prison and yet he rested secure in the arms of a God who would not let him go. What about You?