A Dungeon of Despair and Discouragement. [Part 2 of 3]

Genesis 40 5-19

Let’s pick it up at verse 5, 

“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 do you look 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.’

(Genesis 40: 5-8)

Phase two of this story is the Baker and the cup bearer both have dreams. Now, what causes dreams? From a biblical point of view, I have heard it taught that dreams come from the devil and others I have listened to have suggested that dreams come from the Lord. Well, maybe they can on occasion be demonic and maybe on they other hand they could be divine, as another Bible teacher I respect humorously said, or maybe they could just be from indigestion. So, be careful not to read too much into dreams or assume they always have to mean something. At any rate, these two have a dream and they wake up the next morning and they remembered their dreams and were talk about them to each other. But notice, they each had a dream independent of each other and they didn’t understand the dream.  They didn’t understand how to interpret the dream, so they were discouraged, and they were troubled by them, and they wondered how they could get an interpretation of their dreams?  So, when Joseph met them the next morning, he saw they were feeling a bit disheartened, and he simply asks what is going on? Why are you so sad? That seems to me to say something about Joseph’s personality in the sense that he was empathetic he was sensitive to other people’s moods.

He sensed their sadness and said something about it. And they tell him it’s really quite straightforward we are troubled because we had dreams last night and we don’t have a clue as to what they mean, and we don’t know how to interpret these dreams. So initially Joseph tells them that interpretations belong to God?  Then he says, tell them to me, he says, but again notice, Joseph says, God is the one who gave you this dream and I am just the one that God has told the meaning too. 

Do you remember how Joseph got into this mess? He had a dream. Remember that the very beginning of the story of Joseph, he had a dream where his brothers bowed down to him, and his father bowed down. That’s why they got so angry; it was the dream that made them jealous of him. So, dreams had been a big thing for him in the past. Dreams and their interpretations have had enormous repercussions for him in the past. This was a big issue for Joseph, it was because of a dream his brothers threw him in the pit and then got him out of it and sold him into slavery in Egypt. This was how he ended up in the mess he’s in. But at the same time, he knows is that these things can come from God, and one of the gifts God has given him is the ability to interpret dreams, so he simply says, tell me the dream. 

Now, before I go on, I need to say something about dreams today. Because if I don’t it will come up. So, how do you interpret dreams today? Does God give people dreams? And the answer is, it depends. They talk about this sort of thing a lot in psychiatry, in fact about 100 years ago there was a guy named Sigmund Freud who really put a lot of emphasis on dreams. There was a time if you went to see Sigmund Freud or one of his disciples, even down to fairly recent times they would put you on a couch so to speak and sit behind you and they would get you to start talking and one of the things they would almost always say would be, “tell me about your dreams”. I know I’m simplifying it but it was one of Freud’s main theories that dreams were the desires and frustrations of your subconscious mind and that by talking about your dreams, you could figure out what your problems were. Freud believed it was likely your problem was deep buried in your subconscious mind. Now it’s hard to prove something like that and by the way and a lot of modern-day psychiatrists and psychologists reject that idea from a scientific point of view. One of his contemporaries, a man named Carl Jung also talked a lot about dreams and what I think is interesting is if a patient speaks to someone who follows a Freudian way of interpretating dreams and another who uses a Jungian theory, they will reach two very different interpretations.

Taking the widest possible view across all the disciplines the truth of the matter is you can’t reach a consensus as to what dreams mean. Which is to say we just don’t know for sure what causes dreams or what they mean. Which tells me as Christians, we have got to be very careful when you start to try and interpret dreams. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament in helping about how we should approach these issues today. Chapter one says.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past for the fathers by the prophets. [And that’s a clear reference to the fact that in the past, and in the Old Testament, God gave dreams, and he gave visions. The Difference between a dream and a vision is he gives dreams at night and visions by the day.] But in these last days has spoken to us by his son.

(Hebrews 1: 1-2)

Hebrews chapter one, verse one seems to suggest God communicates to us today mainly through his son and that revelation was given to us in the scriptures. Primarily today I believe God communicates to us through the Bible, not in dreams. I get very skittish when people want to say, “I had a dream last night and the Lord told me”. Be careful! I’m not saying the Lord couldn’t do it, but when he does, I personally only want to look at that dream from the point of view of what it is telling or helping that individual believer. And this it the type of dream that has been experienced here by these two individuals. I am very cautious about assuming any dream has a wider meaning to a local church community. I’m just saying be careful. If you want to know what God is saying you first port of call should always be the bible. Alright, so Joseph says I can interpret dreams so let’s pick up the story at verse 9.

“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. 11 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.’”

(Genesis 40: 9-10)

Remember, the man having the dream is a cup bearer. 

“ ‘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 with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. 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.’”

(Genesis 40: 12-15)

Now this passage or this portion of the passage is self-explanatory. The cup bearer, saw a vine with three branches. The branches had grapes growing on them he squeezes the grapes into the cup and Joseph says the significant part of that is the three branches are three days.  So, within three days, that very specific. This is a very specific interpretation, in three days, you’re going to be restored to your old position of being a cup bearer.

Then Joseph adds this, I just asked one thing, I didn’t do anything wrong to get here, so when you’re back at your job and your next with Pharaoh, would you put in a good word for me? I think what he’s really asking is just a kindness, a consideration in return for this. I think the idea is that he wants the cup bearer to bring it to his Pharaoh’s attention his plight so that Pharoah might understands that Joseph didn’t do anything wrong.  Maybe then he might get let me out of prison.  I just done a favor for you; I’ve just interpreted this dream for you. please do that small thing for me. Tell him, I didn’t do anything wrong, rather, something wrong was done to me. Let’s pick up the story at verse 16.

“When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favourable interpretation, he said to Joseph, ‘I too had a dream: 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. Within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and impale your body on a pole. And the birds will eat away your flesh.’

(Genesis 40: 16-19)

Again, this portion of the passage is self-explanatory, but I think that what is interesting is when the Baker heard that the cup bearers dream had a positive interpretation, he said, here’s my dream. Give it a whirl and interpret is, but he got bad news. The three baskets are again three days he says. The baker was the one in charge of feeding the Pharaoh only instead in this case, he didn’t get a chance to give the baked goods to pharaoh anymore because Joseph says the dream indicates that you’re going to get hung and the birds are going to eat your flesh, within three days.

So, what we have going on in this message is simply that the cup bearer and the baker get thrown into jail, they have dreams and Joseph interprets the dreams. I think it’s interesting that one is good, and one is bad, but they both had  very specific dreams and that within three days their dreams would be fulfilled, and in the verses that follow, we find out if Joseph’s interpretations are correct.