A Dream Come True

We are deep into the heart of the Joseph narrative. Joseph has gone from mountain high to valley low to mountain high to valley low. Last week we spent some time with Joseph in that valley. Joseph had been unjustly thrown into a dungeon for a crime he did not commit. He was accused of attempted rape and was punished without trial. Last week we talked a lot about how Joseph dealt with his dungeon trouble. We are all in the dungeon at times in our life, but very few will suffer as much as Joseph and hardly any will suffer as well as Joseph.Here’s the guy who has suffered deeply and in the words of James, allowed that deep suffering to have its full effect. Joseph came out of the furnace refined. One of the greatest lessons a man or woman can learn from suffering is that getting rid of suffering is not the main goal. The young and less mature are always just trying to make the suffering go away. The goal is not to remove suffering. It’s to be refined by it.This helps us to rewrite the question. When trials come upon us, let’s agree to stop being surprised. What? Why am I suffering as if something strange is happening? Let’s stop asking, “Why is this happening to me?” and let’s start asking, “God what do you want to teach me? How do you want to perfect me? What good thing have you started in me that you want to complete in me?”As we become complete, our life goals change from escaping trouble to giving God glory from whatever unique platform that he has given us. If you are suffering in the dungeon, then glorify him from the dungeon. If you are rejoicing on the throne, then glorify God from the throne. Joseph is going to have the opportunity to glorify God from all these platforms. The goal is always to glorify God.Well today, we find Joseph between those two worlds. He’s been pulled from the pit but he hasn’t yet been elevated to the throne. He’s not in the dungeon but neither is he on the throne.He’s standing in the swirling waters of a changing tide. There’s a lot of instability in the ocean when the tides begin to change. When the tide is coming in, the water all flows in this direction and when the tide goes out, it’s all flowing in this direction. Even though the directions are completely opposite, at least it’s predictable. You can dip your oar and know what to expect. But what about when you are at that exact point when everything is switching directions? The currents swirl, you get bubbling, confused, foaming, disturbed, and honestly dangerous waters. And this is where we find Joseph today. Joseph is standing in the bubbling, gurgling currents of a changing tide. There’s no certainty about where the current is heading? There are strong undertow currents threatening to pull him under. In uncertain conditions like this, every decision feels risky. Every decision made has incredible consequences. Everything that used to be a point of reference is no longer dependable to rely on. You may know with crystal clarity where you want to go, but you have no idea how your environment will react to your choices.So last week we talked about dungeon effectiveness. How can we be used by God in the low points of our life? In another week we will talk about palace effectiveness. How can we be used by God in the high points of our life? But today we will talk about effectiveness in volatility. How can you be effective in those moments of tremendous change, when everything is volatile and delicate and fragile and there is no certainty or security? When all decisions, even the simplest ones feel risky and have the potential to paralyze you? When a tremendous amount rides on a single decision? Joseph knew this kind of circumstantial volatility and there is a lot we can learn from Joseph.Tidal EffectivenessLet’s set up the scene. Joseph interprets the dream of the cupbearer and baker on, let’s say, a Thursday night. They all kind of go to sleep that night wondering at the strangeness of the day’s events. Could these dreams actually be divine? And is Joseph’s interpretation of these dreams accurate? I bet even Joseph is wondering this. Human doubt creeps in. Was I just overly confident? What if I misrepresented God in some way?But then Sunday rolls around and early in the morning you hear the clanking of keys as the warden makes his way down the underground dungeon hallways. He wakes Joseph from his sleep and tells him to prepare the baker and cupbearer. Pharaoh needs them. Oh, this is exciting. This is precisely what God told us would happen!Joseph excitedly grabs the baker and says, “Hey friend, I’m sorry for what is about to happen. It’s not just. But the good news is, you can be right with God when you meet him. Remember what I told you.”Then he goes to the cupbearer and says, “Bro, remember me. He grabs his hand and writes his name and phone number on the back with a sharpie. There’s my number. Call me. I know it’s going to be a whirlwind of activity, but please, don’t forget me when you get out of prison!”Everything is going exactly according to plan except for this pesky next sentence.Oh, the disappointment! The letdown. The crestfallen, head-hanging, soul-crushing hopelessness. This would be like a man stranded at sea in his dingy seeing a boat turn right towards him and he thinks he’s been seen! I’ve been saved! The boat nearly runs you over, never slows, and it just disappears over the horizon. I mean, that’s the kind of hopelessness that Joseph ingested. The next four words make even the stoniest heart bleed with compassion.Joseph had been in the dungeon for two full years! Joseph is saying to himself, I think the ink from the phone number I wrote on the back of his hand has probably worn off by now. And this is the first thing to do as you wait for the tide to change in times of volatility.Sometimes, we want our bad circumstances to change so badly and it seems like nothing is happening. In Joseph’s case, just because it looked like nothing was changing doesn’t mean it’s not changing. What we can feel and see with our bodies is oftentimes very, very, very different than what is happening to our bodies. In Joseph’s case, he had two conflicting realities. He was trapped in a current that was pulling him in the direction of a meaningless existence, with no power, no influence, no purpose. Every current of his life was pulling him deeper and deeper into that pit. That’s what he could see. That was his reality from the perspective of his senses.But there was the other reality, another current that was flowing in the exact opposite direction. It was the current of the dream. If there’s anything he knew (or at least thought he knew), it was that this dream was from God. He was certain of both it’s source and it’s meaning. One day he would rule over his brothers and even his father and mother.Two currents flowing in opposite directions. But there’s only one channel. And I’m headed due west yet the dream takes me due east. There’s only one way that I’m ever going to go East. The tide has to change. If the dream is ever to come true, it must change. The current must switch directions. Which reality do you focus on? Do you focus on the current you can see or the one you can’t see?The thing about changing tides is that the undercurrents and forces at work can’t be seen but they are oh so real. There are forces patiently and powerfully working beneath and above you that are totally invisible to your eyes but are having a tremendous effect on your environment. Tides, of course, are caused by the moon which is not exactly a force you can modify. Here’s this giant unstoppable body silently and powerfully at work 800,000 miles beyond your reach, a body so incredibly large, so gravitationally massive, it’s pulling with an effect that cannot be countered. But it’s all invisible.I can imagine times that Joseph was in prison looking at the swift current of his unfortunate circumstances and saying to himself, “Man, that dream of mine was a pipe dream. There’s no way that is ever happening. Ever. The current is just too strong. I’ll be swept out to sea.”At first, I’m sure he was hopeful. Maybe the first day after he interpreted the dream he heard the clanking of keys from the prison warden and he thought, he’s coming for me. I know it. But he passes him by. He patiently waits another day with a smile on his face. He’ll come. But the warden never shows up. He waits on the third day and he hears the keys jingle by. “Warden, hey, just curious. Whatever happened to the cupbearer?” “Oh, he was restored to his office but that poor baker, he was strung up a tree. Poor guy. I liked him.”One week goes by and that spark drains away. One month goes by and the shoulders tilt in. One year goes by and the head bows. You can imagine the disappointment. But the lesson from Joseph here is simply this. Be patient. Remember that even though you cannot see God working, he is always working deep below in undercurrents far below your tiny life raft in dark invisible places. The gravity of his sovereignty is - with soft unstoppable power - pulling on you hundreds of thousands of miles away even though you can’t feel a thing.What was Joseph consciously aware of on day 730? If Joseph was marking on the wall of his prison cell, tally marks for days of captivity, his entire wall would be white. He marks the 730th mark and notes that it’s been two full years since the cupbearer forgot him. And he bows his head, prays the same prayer he’s prayed every night for two years, and goes to bed like every other night. This night looks no different, feels no different. But it was very different. God caused Pharaoh to dream. You see, the tide was turning. Joseph couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, had no idea of the powers present all around him. The gentle, strong, unstoppable force of the sovereign hand of God was working beneath his gaze.That dream was a product of the hand of God. That dream was about to change everything and yet Joseph went to sleep, like he fell asleep every other night, unaware of what God was doing in the mind of a pagan rule who didn’t even know Joseph existed and if he happened to know he existed, he certainly didn’t care.Here’s the thing about tides. They take time to change. It doesn’t happen quickly. So just be patient. It so often seems that nothing is happening. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want our life to matter in some way. And we want it now. In an age that is obsessed with maximizing every nanosecond, dungeon life can be so incredibly boring. Your life is one hour stacked upon another hour and you accomplish absolutely nothing. What a waste. Think of all the things I could be doing.I was in a car accident last week and I had some neck pain that just debilitated me this week. I had to phone into the elder meeting and one of the elders prayed for me over the phone that God would teach me some things through rest. And I just had a sense that I needed to be taught that lesson. By disposition I’m a 3 on the enneagram, I’m an achiever, I’m a beaver. I want to be doing things. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even hold my laptop. And I’ve never had a week where I slept so much. I slept and I slept and I slept. I could barely move. On the surface, how ineffective! God, I’m going to serve you this week by being unconscious. What a waste. But it wasn’t a waste. I really did learn a lot. God reminded me of what mattered. He reminded me of the pointlessness of activity for activities sake. He reminded me of my need.It never seems like much is happening in the dungeon, does it? We look at others and we think, “Man, he has a life. She has a purpose. I have monotony. I just wake up and do the same thing over and over again with no apparent purpose and certainly no hope of change.”When we talk to ourselves in this way our Spirit falls. “God, what are you doing with me? I don’t have a girlfriend or wife? I’m going to be 38 and I’d like to have children. God get me out of the dungeon!” Be patient with telling God when you are sufficiently refined. Well, what am I supposed to do in the while I patiently wait? This is exactly what Joseph was undoubtedly feeling. But God was working. Joseph went to bed and added another tally mark on the wall of his dungeon prison while God was causing Pharaoh to dream. Let’s look at the dream.Now you know it’s God because the spirit of Pharaoh is troubled. God is working. God won’t let Pharaoh go about his daily affairs. That dream was different. That dream meant something. That dream was not from Ra or Horus or Isis. That dream was from God.You can imagine this incredible buzz of palace activity when magicians and sorcerers are being brought up. They are bringing up their bat wings and potions and fermented liquids. Now it says that none of them could interpret the dream. I think the whole story opens up if you just put a little thought into that phrase. But there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.Now some people say, “Wow, I love the integrity of the magicians. They could have guessed at an interpretation but instead, they confessed their ignorance.” Come on. There’s no way that these magicians are being motivated by integrity. We can do better than that!I’m reading between the lines here a bit, but be king for a day in your mind. You had a dream and you are sick and tired of the lame interpretations that the magicians always give you. They are always giving you fortune cookie interpretations, generic things that could apply to anyone or anything. “Pharaoh, it means your unfruitful labor will be swallowed up by fruitful activity.” You don’t want a lame interpretation. You know it’s possible to make up any bogus interpretation of anything. How do you ensure that the interpretation is from God? You raise the stakes. How did Nebuchadnezzar do it? He said, “I’m not going to tell you what the dream is. You tell me what I dreamed and also you tell me what it means. If you don’t you all die.” No loss to Nebuchadnezzar. He’s sick of those turkeys.I’m guessing Pharaoh used a similar trick: “Now before you interpret my dream, just make sure you’ve consulted well with the gods appropriately because if give me some lame generic interpretation or if you’re wrong, you see that baker up there swinging in the tree? That branch next to him is reserved for you.”I mean, almost with certainty the magicians said they didn’t know because, well, they didn’t know and Pharaoh’s threats called their bluff. But God knows. God sent the dream. And God will give the king an interpretation through one of his faithful servants.Do you want to be used by God in moments of great opportunity? The only way that is going to happen is to have been practiced in righteousness in moments of boring, mundane obedience. Now let’s imagine how Joseph’s previous faithfulness prepared him to be used by God in this moment of opportunity!You see, you never know when God is going to use you in a big way. Suddenly, tragedy strikes and God calls upon you to minister to a family in a desperate situation. Someone asks you to help intervene in a family crisis, lead a Bible study or small group, or you suddenly have an opportunity to share your faith. How effective will you be? It’s the faithfulness all along the way, that makes you useful in that pivotal situation.Joseph had been faithful and was ready to be used. And the lesson we learn from Joseph is that no amount of faithfulness is ever wasted. If you are moving the right direction, just believe that your actions have an effect, even if you can’t see it. For example, imagine I have in front of me an ice cube and the temperature of the room is 28 degrees Fahrenheit. And let’s say that I’m trying to melt the cube. So we raise the temperature of the room to 29 degrees. What happened? Nothing. Absolutely no change. Okay raise it another degree. Nothing happened. Zero visible change. And we keep raising. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two degrees. No change. What in the world? All this effort is wasted and we give up.Do you see the point? If you want to melt the cube, you have to pass 29, 30, 31, and 32 on your way to 33 degrees and then the magic happens. All that energy pumped into the room was not wasted work. Its effect was unseen. But it is absolutely essential. Faithfulness to God is much like this. When you are honest and nobody sees, it doesn’t feel like that is very amazing kingdom work. When you do the dishes with a good attitude, it doesn’t feel significant. When you volunteer first, when you clean up the trash and nobody recognized it, when you take the parking spot further away to free up other spots, when you answer cheerfully when you feel grumpy, when you make the hard phone call, or when you return good for evil. It just doesn’t feel all that significant. No angels rejoice. No souls are getting added to the mansion in glory that I can see. It was so normal. That faithful obedience was so uninspiring. When you decide to make God a priority and read your Bible or try to initiate with your family in some way, it just feels so normal. So bland. But all that faithfulness is necessary work. It’s raising the temperature of the room so that when that last bit of faithfulness is added, the great spiritual miracle takes place.All those days in prison faithfulness prepared Joseph to say what he needed to say before the Pharaoh without fear of man. He was able to be used as the messenger of God in front of the king because he had practiced being a messenger of God in front of an inmate.Consider how Joseph’s faithfulness had an unintended result that nobody could have imagined. How does Joseph get out of the pit? How does he get an audience with the king? Well, the cupbearer finally remembers him! But think about that. Read between the lines a bit. This recommendation to Pharaoh represented a calculated risk. The cupbearer had to determine if it was worth it to open his mouth, didn’t he? After all, what if Pharaoh gets his hopes up, Joseph is drug out of the dungeon at great expense to the king in terms of mental energy and time, gets up, and isn’t able to interpret the dream? The cupbearer could very well be held responsible for the bad recommendation. Pharaoh has many more branches from which he can hang servants who annoy him. So I’m certain the cupbearer is carefully weighing his options. He’s calculating the risk. To open my mouth or not open my mouth, that is the question. And he’s likely teetering on the ragged, hairy edge of that decision. And he finally commits. He goes for it. He says to the Pharaoh, “Oh, I have an idea. Remember when you flipped a lid and threw me into the pit for giving you red wine instead of white wine. Well, while I was down there, a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream.”Now suppose that Joseph had not been faithful to God clear back in those dark dungeon days. Because he wanted to please man instead of God he told the cupbearer the interpretation of his dream but when it came to the baker he said, “You know, things are a bit foggy. I’m not sure what your dream is all about.” We could conceive that the cupbearer would not be nearly as impressed. The cupbearer may have chalked it up to mere luck or superstition. And that would have cast just enough doubt that the cupbearer would have chosen to hold his tongue. Joseph might be able to help here, but it’s not worth the risk.The point is, Joseph had no idea how telling to the truth at that moment, years ago in the dungeon, would have produced enough of an effect to jolt the mind of the cupbearer two years later in such a way that he dared open his mouth before the king of Egypt. We have no idea how faithfulness over time will be used by God. How has God used you? Ask my kids how I have positively impacted their lives. I’m quite sure you will be surprised at what is on their list. It has nothing to do with the things I tried to do. It was always instead just unintentional byproducts of simple faithfulness to God. I didn’t even know they were looking. I thought they were checked out and weren’t paying attention.Nobody looks at a single act of obedience and is impressed by it. Anybody can obey once. Anybody can stand up in front of a bunch of people and look morally bulletproof. Not many can be morally impressive in their own home. Not many can shock their own spouses or children. Why? Because faithfulness over time is much more difficult than a single burst of impressive behavior when everyone is looking. Faithfulness is like rowing a boat. Rowing is effective not when we succeed in pulling off a single stroke of exceptional power. Effective rowing is simply the cumulative effect of thousands of average strokes. Just keep doing the right thing long enough and it will have an impact.Now, all that training in faithfulness allowed Joseph to be faithful one more time, in a time where it would have been very frightening, scary, and insecure. Here he is in front of the king. He is asked, “You are a Hebrew slave? I hear you have in your spirit the power to interpret dreams. Well, I’ll give you the opportunity to interpret my dream. And if I like it, I might free you. But if you are wrong, you hang.” Now, had Joseph not been faithful to God up to this point, imagine the temptation. Fear of death. Fear of man. Wanting to take credit for God’s gift in him. I mean, so many temptations. But he is a man of practiced integrity. “No, I’m terribly sorry Pharaoh. I can’t help you. But God can.”I want you to realize how much integrity is represented at this moment. He’s been burned so many times by being faithful to God. It would be so tempting for him to think, “Every time I’ve stuck with my convictions and served God, I got punished for it. Forget it.”He is faithful. It’s just another stroke, another dipping of the oar, another paddle in the right direction. When you’ve trained your body to obey God then when the pressure situation comes, the habit is there to just respond. It’s just one more stroke. Now here’s the last step in this process. And this is by far my favorite. This is super cool.You see, God is working. God is doing things. Despite my action or non-action, my faithfulness or unfaithfulness is trumped, over-ruled, and overpowered by God’s decree. Now here’s how it comes out in the text. Pharaoh tells Joseph the dream and he explains how he tried to get help from his sorcerers without success. Pharaoh says,Here’s the big idea: God’s decrees are fixed and God will bring it about. The baker gets hung and the cupbearer gets restored whether Joseph is faithful or not. The years of plenty will come whether Joseph is faithful or not. The famine will come whether Joseph is faithful or not. Do you see the point? God is sovereignly moving, orchestrating, decreeing, and causing his plan to unfold in history. Like the moon pulling around the oceans of our world, there is a force working on history that is unseen, unfelt, and unstoppable. It means that God is working powerfully and unstoppably even though you can’t detect it or see it.Do you want to know what theological gravity is? The theological word for it is providence. In the Westminster Catechism, there is a whole section that defines the providence of God, and it’s worth our time to stop and just read this definition. It’s so good.Do you see what’s happening here? We can hope in the fact that God is orchestrating every detail of our life, from the greatest most significant thing to the least most trivial thing. There is nothing that is happening to you by accident. Nothing. It all has a purpose. Every day of prison has a purpose. Every failure of yours has a purpose. Every victory of yours has a purpose. There is no such thing as an accident in God’s design. Joseph had a dream. And that dream would be fulfilled.When I was a kid, my grandparents owned a piece of property right on the Puget Sound in Washington, a place with huge tidal swings. And the little bay would totally empty during low tide. One of my favorite things to do was to build a sandcastle barricade in anticipation of the changing tide. I’d be out there for hours with shovels and buckets trying to construct this levy to keep back the waters that I knew were coming. But of course, this is the very definition of futility. At first, my little dam was successful. The first wave would lap up against the edge of my fortress and it would be repelled. And the water would begin to rise which would give me new energy. I’d begin shoveling like a mad man. This is the very definition of futility. In a matter of hours, the entire bay would be six feet underwater. My little shovels of sand can’t stop the power of the moon.Listen, God is controlling this world, and all our actions, all our shovel fulls of sand may feel like they are having some effect, but God is pulling history toward his intended end. Whatever is changing around you, just know that God is working. God’s purposes cannot be stopped. Man is going to be shoveling sand trying to influence outcomes, but nothing can stop what God is doing. There is so much comfort in that. So much freedom to just release the cares of this world to God.ApplicationI believe many have described the times we are living in right now as times of uncertainty, unrest. The tides are changing. There is an application for us today. We too need to trust in the unseen hand of God working beneath the surface of turbulent political and social unrest. Although it may seem like chaos, the slow, powerful, unfelt, unstoppable sovereign hand of God is at work.The leadership team believes it would be appropriate to call the body together for a corporate-wide week of fasting and prayer to draw us together as a body and apply the message of today to the times before us right now. Right now in America, there are hundreds who are displaced from their homes and have lost millions of dollars in property value through fires raging on the west coast. There are many communities affected by racial tensions, injustice, broken relationships with law enforcement, and destructive rioting and violence. Businesses have been closed and jobs lost due to COVID. Two hundred thousand people have lost their lives. There is political chaos and a total lack of civil discourse in our nation.These are the times in which we live. None of us would choose them. Who would choose a world in which a virus reigns supreme, fires rage uncontrolled, rioting and vandalism, civil unrest, economic uncertainty? It’s quite ugly. We live in this current. But we have the promise of an undercurrent, a divine gravity that will ultimately turn these tides and win the day.So we want to pray:What is your will for us? What do you want to teach us Lord? How does my perspective need changing?How can FCBC effectively point the world to Jesus Chirst?Prayer for injustice, civility, and peace. Prayer for our national leaders.Please mark your calendars beginning one week from today September 27th - October 3rd to set some time during this week for prayer and fasting culminating in Sunday morning worship. Now I know this is something we are not accustomed to in our society but it has been practiced all through the New Testament and throughout church history for good reason. So look for some help in the form of a newsletter article this week, and further resources next Sunday.