Genesis 40 Series, Part 8, Verses 2-4
Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #8 in Genesis 40, and I will read Genesis 40:2-4:
And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers. And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.
We have been discussing this. We know it was two full years that Joseph was in prison, and then he was freed. We were discussing the timeline of Joseph’s life. He was age 17 when he was sold by his brothers, and God makes a point to tell us that. God does not tell us about when Joseph was 16, or 15, or 14, and so forth. He also tells us the age that Joseph came out of prison. So it was 13 years that he was a slave and a prisoner. Why the number “13?” Why does it appear so many times in the life of Joseph, as well as in the life of his father Jacob? And the clencher is when we read Acts 7, and we will go there so you will see that we are not making these things up, but we are following the direction of the Bible. It says of Joseph in Acts 7:10-11:
And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house. Now there came a dearth over all the land of Egypt and Chanaan, and great affliction: and our fathers found no sustenance.
The dearth is the seven years of famine that was in Egypt. Joseph would interpret Pharaoh’s dream, and one of the dreams had to do with seven years of plenty, and then another dream was about seven years of famine. Here that seven-year period of famine is said to be “great affliction." In the Greek, those two words are “megas” and “thlipsis.” You can hear the English word “mega,” like in megaphone, which magnifies sound. But here it is a magnified affliction, or great tribulation, and it is translated as “great tribulation” in Matthew 24:21:
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
The Great Tribulation is a period of time that the Lord Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24 as He answered the question of His disciples: “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” It does not have to do with the first century A. D. as some foolishly claim. It only has to do with the sign of His coming at the end of the world. That is when there would be “great tribulation” such as the world has never seen – it was unprecedented.
We see two other references to the Great Tribulation in Revelation 2 in the Lord’s warning to Thyatira because they had suffered that woman Jezebel to teach and seduce His servants to commit fornication, and He said in Revelation 2:21-22:
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation…
That was God’s warning, one of many He gave to the churches and congregations. The “space to repent” was the entire church age which lasted 1,955 years. They failed to repent, and in 1988, which was the 13,000th year of earth’s history, He brought the church age to an end. Again, we see the significance of the 13-year period in Joseph’s life from age 17 to age 30, or of Jacob entering into Egypt during that famine. Remember it was the seven-year famine that resulted in Jacob moving his whole family out of the Promised Land of Canaan that represented the churches and congregations. God was prefiguring through historical parables that the elect would leave the churches when the actual Great Tribulation would come, and His elect would go out into the world, as the world is typified by Egypt. This was the “great affliction” or “megas-thlipsis” that Acts 7:11 refers to, and as Jacob left Canaan, the outward representation of God’s kingdom on earth, and he came before Pharaoh and Pharaoh asked him his age. Jacob responded, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage arean hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been…”
Is that not strange? You know, we commonly ask people their ages, but we do not find that recorded very often in scripture. But God did so to highlight the number “130,” which is “10 x 13.” In the Bible the number “10” represents the completeness of whatever is in view, and here it is the complete fulness of time at the end of the world. And it was during “great tribulation,” or “megas-thlipsis.” And the only place you will find those two words used together is in Matthew 24, Revelation 2, and in Revelation 7 where it refers to the great multitude that came out of “great tribulation.”
Why does God link the events we are reading about in Genesis to this? It is because we are dealing with an infinite God that knows the end from the beginning, and He tells us that He declares the end from the beginning, in Isaiah 46:10-11:
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
He declares the end from the beginning, and in the first chapter of Genesis it says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And here we are in this book of beginnings where God is also declaring the end. He is writing about the end, and we have already seen this in the flood account and in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God has given us information about the end from the very beginning of time. We could go back to the time of Adam where it says in Genesis 5:1:
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
Remember there were born earlier sons, Cain and Abel. In Genesis 4:3, we read something that does not appear in the translation, but does appear in the original Hebrew. It says in Genesis 4:3:
And in process of time it came to pass…
Literally, it says in the original Hebrew, “in the end of days,” and Cain rose up and killed Abel. Spiritually, that pictures the wheat and tares that grew together in the churches, but at the time of the end the ungodly rose up to slay their brethren, just as Esau thought to kill Jacob after the blessing was pronounced that revealed to both Jacob and Esau that one had the blessing, and the other did not. And of course Esau was very angry to the point of hatred. And at time of the end God revealed who were wheat and tares through the mechanism of the information in the Bible that indicated the church age was over, and we were to come out of the congregations. Of course some of the “tares” came out with the wheat for whatever reason, but it did accomplish the purpose of removing all the “wheat” from the midst of the churches during the Great Tribulation. That was God’s end time separation tool as He opened the scriptures to reveal these things.
Again, as we see with the timeline the Lord is giving us concerning Joseph’s early days from age 17 until he was age 30. It is all prophecy, foretelling the time of the end. And the two full years he was in prison identifies with the Lord Jesus Christ’s activity during the New Testament era in bringing the Gospel to fellow prisoners. How can that be? Am I saying that Christ did not go back to heaven in 33 A. D.? No. He did go back to heaven, and the Bible is very clear about that. We can read of His ascent in Acts 1. Then how can it be that Joseph remained in the prison for two full years, but I am saying it has to do with the about 2,000-year period of the New Testament era and beyond, and then He would come out of prison? If we turn to Matthew 25, it tells us of Christ coming to separate the sheep from the goats, the separation that would take place in the final judgment rather than the separation that took place during the time of judgment on the house of God, the churches. It says in Matthew 25:32-40:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
The Lord Jesus as He sits upon His judgment throne is going to bring His sheep into His kingdom. These have endured to the end, and they are “true men” in which is no guile. They are truly born again. They are the elect. And Jesus said that we visited Him in prison. How did that happen? When we came with the Gospel to others who were His elect, it was as if though we were visiting Him. So He likens Himself to being in prison. The body of Christ were also ministering in prison, just as Joseph was charged to serve these two men, the butler and the baker. When we look at that word “serve,” it is a bit surprising. I thought it would be a word that identified with servitude, like a servant waiting upon his master. But it is actually a word that identifies with “ministry.” Joseph “ministered” to these men in prison.
And notice regarding the goats, if we continue to read in Matthew 25 where He says that He was hungred and they did not feed Him, and so forth. Then it says in Matthew 25:43-46:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
When did they not minister? And Joseph was “ministering” to the two men in prison. When we go back to Genesis 40 and look at this Hebrew word, it says in Genesis 40:4:
And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.
He “ministered” to them. This word takes us to the ministering of the priests and Levites, the ministry in service to God. It is the same word used in 1Samuel 3:1:
And the child Samuel ministered unto JEHOVAH before Eli…
He ministered in the tabernacle in Shiloh.
We have to stop here, but when we get together in our next Bible study, we will look at the dreams of the butler and the baker. It is very interesting, and we will see what we can learn, by God’s grace. It is always about God’s grace because no man can know of himself anything about the things of God. We do not know anything of ourselves, but the Spirit of God can reveal it, and He has given us the methodology for that revelation. If we are truly saved, and we are diligent in following that biblical methodology, we can expect to come to spiritual truth.