How Should We Handle Discouragement [Part 1 of 3]

Genesis 40: 1-4

One of the common experiences of life is discouragement. During my time as a pastor, meeting with other Pastors, I see it all the time. Some people I think are more prone to discouragement than others, and but everybody experiences it. I don’t think you can get through life without being discouraged at some point or another to 1 degree or another. As a young man I spent a lot of my money on cars, because we all know if you want to get the girl you need to get righty car, right. As all young men know driving a car way to fast is how to attract women right? I spend more and more money get faster and faster, but older and more unreliable cars thinking that was going to solve the problem of me not being cool enough to get the girls. I bought cars that I had to re-sell for less than I paid for them. I once bought a car that had so many problems, I only ever drove it from where I picked it up to my front drive for it to have so many problems that in the end  I had to sell it for scrap, at that point I felt seriously discouraged at my lack of girl and my lack of car. But that was just the case of a teenager needed to grow up and earn a few things about life.

Some of the more serious cases I think I’ve encountered, and I know several of these even right now is people who thought they were going to get a promotion, only to discover that they didn’t, and then they not only didn’t get the promotion the company downsized, and they ended up getting what amounted to a demotion. Then the pandemic hit, and they got furloughed and then when the furlough ended, they got laid off.

A great deal of my daughter’s university s who graduated together and though they had landed their dram first job only found that the rug was pulled out from under their dreams when the pandemic hit the same year, and the job offers disappeared. 

I know several people who never got back into a job at their previous level and are still in that situation right now and that is a that that’s serious stuff for them. I mean, you get discouraged very quickly when something like that happens. So, here’s what I want to ask, how should we handle discouragement?

We’ve been going through the Book of Genesis for a while now and we have come to the story of Joseph and the text doesn’t specifically say he was discouraged, but I believe that from his circumstances we can reasonably assume that he was. If I were going to cover all kinds of passages of scripture on discouragement there are other places we could go, but, in this incident, I just can’t imagine him not being discouraged as I will explain in a minute. However, what I want us to do is see how he handled this episode in his life. That isn’t to say that this is all you can do, or it is the only thing you do, it’s not an exhaustive discussion of the subject, but in my personal experience in my own life and in trying to encourage other people, what I see in this passage is what needs to be done when we get discouraged. Interested? Well, the first thing I think we need to do is admit that sometimes we get discouraged. I don’t think you can begin to start helping other people who are disheartened unless you your self can admit that you also sometimes become discouraged.

The plan is over these next three episodes go over the complete story we find in Genesis chapter 40 and then I want to spell out two very specific things this story points out that we should do when we get discouraged. Those are the two things I want you to walk away from this chapter which I believe will help us when we get discouraged. If you think you don’t need them today there is a good chance you might need them in the future, and you will certainly, you’re going to need them if you want to talk to and help other people. So, we need to have a handle on this for ourselves as well as other people.  Now some of this you might think is just common sense but like in all things when you look at them from a biblical point of view you will find the Bible puts a unique perspective on something you thought you knew all along. So, with that in mind, let’s look at Genesis Chapter 40, Genesis Chapter 40, and I’m going to begin with verse one. 

“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. (Genesis 40: 1-4)

Let me pause there and lay out what’s happening in this story. You will recall Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, he was sold into slavery to travelling merchants who were going to Egypt when he got to Egypt, he was sold as a slave into the household of a man named Potiphar, a very important Egyptian official. Then Potiphar’s wife had designs on him, tried to seduce him, and he resisted her and then she cried rape, which wasn’t true at all. So, her husband had Joseph thrown in prison and that is where we left the story at the end of Chapter 39.

It’s important to know that as we begin this new story at a point where Joseph is in jail. Verse, one tells us after the passage of a period of time a cup bearer and the chief baker where thrown in prison with Joseph for offending the king. Now we need to pause for a moment and discuss a bit what it means to be the cup bearer and the baker. Sometimes this cup bearer position is translated as “butler” what when we think of Butler, we probably think of something like Downton Abbey but a butler in that situation was very different to a Butler or cup bearer in ancient Egypt. In the Old Testament the cup bearer was in charge of everything the king had to drink, and he had to make sure that it was not poisoned. As a matter of fact, Nehemiah was a cup bearer for the king of Persia but that’s much later in the history of Israel, but as I understand it in some of these cases and probably this one, the cup bearer would drink whatever the king was to drink first, so that if somebody tried to poison the king the butler would become ill or die. If the Butler didn’t die the king should then be OK to drink it. That’s what it means when it says, “cup bearer”. The Baker was just that, the baker, he was in charge of food preparation.

Verse, one says they offended the king. We don’t have a clue as to what they did, but apparently it was serious. It wasn’t just that the baker burnt the toast, they did something a little more serious. Maybe the king got sick even after the cup bearer having ate or drank something and the king felt he needed to be punished, and maybe it the baker who prepared it. That’s just a guess on my part by the way, at any rate, verse one tells us they offended the king.

Verse two, says that the king (Pharaoh) was angry, and he got so angry that he put them in jail under the command of the captain of the guard. In other words, he threw them in jail. What’s fascinating is that verse three says that he put them in the custody of the captain of the guard. Now you must be familiar with the previous chapter to know that was probably Potiphar, again. It seems this prison was attacked or close by to Potiphar’s house. So, it is the king that puts them in prison, and it was Potiphar that put Joseph in the same place, the place where Joseph was already confined. The Hebrew word translated confined means to bind up, so at this point Joseph was apparently in bonds of some kind. He wasn’t just in prison; he was in chains or restrained in some way. How he was tied up, I don’t know how, but that word means more than just being in prison.

The text tells us that these, the Cupbearer and the Baker get thrown in jail and it just happens to be the same jail that Joseph is in. Do you think that Joseph might have been discouraged at this point? I think it is safe to say that he would be discouraged. In the first place when he got sold as a slave by his brothers and taken from his homeland and he's transported to a foreign country. Imagine being taken from your country and flown to say “Mexico or The Middle east” and being in prison there, I’ve nothing against Mexico by the way I’m just using it a s a random example. But on top of that Joseph has become a slave and then he’s falsely accused of sexual misconduct, well attempted rape really, and he gets thrown in jail. Remember, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong to get sold into slavery, he didn’t do anything wrong, to get thrown in prison and on top of all of that, he doesn’t have the most comfortable position in prison apparently his in chains or some form of restraint. I just would like to humbly suggest that Joseph was discouraged. I hope I’m not reading too much into the text, but I think that’s a good, sanctified guess and I hope you would agree with my assessment. I think I would have been not just discouraged and maybe a very angry as well if the same thing had happened to me. 

The plot thickens. Then we see the captain of the guard assigned Joseph to them. Remember, that’s Potiphar and he puts him in charge of looking after them. The point of verse four is that for some reason Potiphar put Joseph over these two prisoners. I guess that implies he got released from being tied up and he’s now got some sort of position over other prisoners like the Butler and the Baker.

This word used in various translations is served or attended them, now this isn’t the word for serving in a menial task way, it’s a more elevated kind of service. So, he’s becoming a sort of administrator again and this goes on for a while, this didn’t apparently last for a day or two, or maybe even a week or two. We don’t exactly know for how long but that seems to imply this wasn’t a short period of time. Some commentators suggest this would have gone on for months or maybe even a year or more rather than just days or weeks. This situation goes on for a while and that’s the setting of the story. At this point the story really gets interesting and takes a fascinating turn. People will have dreams and visions but we will pick that up next time.