• 2024-10-04 | Chris McCann
  • Audio: Length: 25:53
  • Passages covered: Genesis 40:11-15,1,2-3,5, Psalm 11:5-6, Matthew 26:36-44, Revelation 14:10, Psalm 16:5, Psalm 23:5, Psalm 116:13, Romans 5:16.

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Genesis 40 Series, Part 30, Verses 11-15

Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. This is study #30 in Genesis 40. we will read Genesis 40:11-15:

And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it: The three branches are three days: Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler.But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house: For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.

We were discussing the role of the butler, and how the butlership relates to “giving drink,” as we saw when Abraham’s servant was seeking a wife for his master’s son Isaac. He prayed to the Lord that the damsel who would give drink to him and his camels might be the bride for Issac, and Rebeka did give drink. So this lets us know that a butler has to do with giving drink. And with the Pharaoh that could have been wine, water, or some other kind of drink. That makes us think of the Gospel. 

And with the giving of the Gospel, it is true that there can be a positive aspect or a negative aspect with sharing the Word of God with people. When we are messengers of the Gospel, we are a savour of “life unto life” for those God intended to save in the day of salvation, and we are a savour of “death unto death” for those that God never intended to save. So the chief butler, spiritually, is the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are butlers, or cupbearers, that give a cup of “drink” as we share the Gospel with others.

We want to look at the word “cup,” and we will also see both a positive and a negative aspect to it. If we go to Psalm 11, we will see a clear negative connotation in Psalm 11:5-6:

JEHOVAH trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.

For instance, we know that in the New Testament when Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He began to suffer, and we read in Matthew 26:36-44:

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

So He asked three times that the cup might pass from Him. Notice that in verse 38 Christ said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” And in the Gospel of Luke, we are told that He was in an agony. Why was His soul exceeding sorrowful unto death? It is because the “cup” was the cup of the wrath of God. We read in Revelation 14 of the final judgment of this world, our present time, and it says in Revelation 14:10:

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

It is the cup of His indignation, and it is pouring out the wrath of God. This is the cup that Jesus was drinking in the Garden as He was demonstrating the fact that He had already drunk of the cup of the wrath of God at the foundation of the world in eternity past. The Bible says He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and that means He was killed by God. Christ took upon Himself the sins of His people, and He became sin for us, and God smote Him because He was bearing the sins of the great multitude of elect. That is what Psalm 11 is telling us.

Psalm 11 is telling us the truth, but churches lie. Unfortunately, that is a fact. They tell people, “God loves you, and He has a wonderful plan for your life!” But we read the truth in Psalm 11:5:

JEHOVAH trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

The wicked are real people, and God hates the wicked. He hates the sinner. The Lord declared, “For Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” It is the true teaching of the Bible that God hates the sinner, and that is why the sinner is under His wrath, and the sinner will finally perish and die the second death of eternal annihilation, and he will be removed out of existence forever. That is according to the wrath of God upon him. It certainly is not loving to kill someone because they have transgressed the law but the wages of sin is death, and God must uphold His law as the righteous Judge, and He will kill the sinner, and they will be no more. They will be forever nonexistent. That is the penalty or judgment of God, and it is according to His hatred that He will separate unsaved man from His presence. God is the essence of life, and man will be separated from life itself, and he will never live again.

So the butler will be released from prison in three days, and he will give the cup once again to Pharaoh. Genesis 40 is very complicated regarding Pharaoh. When the butler serves the cup to Pharaoh again, Pharaoh continues to be a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember Pharaoh was offended, and we spoke about this in an earlier study in Genesis 40:1:

And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord the king of Egypt.

The word translated as “offended” is also translated as “sinned” in Exodus 9:27: “I have sinned this time…” We also see this in Psalm 51:4: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight…” So the butler and baker had sinned against the king of Egypt, Pharaoh, and that is because Pharaoh is a picture of God.

And what was the reaction of Pharaoh in the next verse? It says in Genesis 40:2-3:

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…

We also discussed how the prison can be a picture of the condition of the unsaved in the world. In the days of Noah before the flood, we read in 1Peter 3:19 that the Spirit of Christ preached to them that were in prison. That is, the unsaved are children of wrath. They are under the wrath God. This is the normative condition of man, and the only difference is that now is the official Day of Judgment, but God has always been angry with the wicked because of their sins. 

So Pharaoh was offended because they had sinned against him, and he was wrathful, just as is God. All sin is against God, as the Lord moved David to write: “Against thee only have I sinned…” And the penalty is to be put into prison, and life in this world can be likened to sinners being in prison.

Then we spoke about how Joseph came with the Gospel, as it were, and he interpreted the dreams of the butler and the baker, each man according to the interpretation of it, pointing to God’s predestination program before the world was created when He determined the future condition and situation for all mankind as to whether He would save certain ones, and not save others. The butler, who can be a type of the elect of God, had his dream interpreted favorably while the baker’s dream was interpreted negatively, and the baker came forth out of prison to his death.

Again, it was according to the interpretation of their dreams, which was already established prior to their dreams. We read in Genesis 40:5:

And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream…

Ultimately, God has established what would happen to each human being before He even created the world.

So within three days, it would all be worked out, and the thing that had been determined by God would come to pass. You know, it is not a matter of determining people to be destroyed, or under wrath, but it is man’s own sins that sets him on the course of destruction. And it is God’s salvation that delivers certain ones from that destruction. God saw that all would sin: “There is none righteous, no, not one.” Therefore God could not save anyone on the basis of good works or of keeping His law, or based on any good thing within that person. So God determined to choose certain ones. He determined to save Jacob and to bypass Esau. In God’s selection of Jacob, it was a demonstration of God’s eternal love because it was an eternal decree from eternity past, and God’s everlasting love is evident upon Jacob as it all related to Jacob’s sins being placed upon Christ in eternity past, and the payment for those sins having been made at the foundation of the world before creation.

Likewise, by not electing Esau, it was God leaving the sinner in his sins and the consequences of those sins result in God’s hatred. The payment for sin can only be the death of that individual in giving his own life for his sins. So God was active to save some, leaving the rest such as the baker who came forth from prison to be hanged. It is according to the righteous law of God that he was hanged. There is nothing at all unrighteous on God’s part.

If we go to Psalm 16, we find the word “cup” in Psalm 16:5:

JEHOVAH is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.

We saw that the “cup” referred to in Psalm 11 was a cup of wrath, just as we saw the “cup” spoken of in regard to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane was the wrath of God. But here we see that God is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup. That is curious.

Also, we see this word used in Psalm 23, a very famous Psalm. We read in Psalm 23:5:

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

This too sounds very positive. We also read in Psalm 116:13:

I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of JEHOVAH.

It is the same word for “cup,” and yet it is the cup of salvation. How are we to understand this? You see, the cup here is the portion of our inheritance, and according to our lot. And our “lot” is predetermined The Bible says, “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of JEHOVAH.” Our lot relates to our inheritance because our inheritance is in Christ. We are counted for the seed in Him. He is the “seed,” singular. He is the inheritor of all the promises of God in the eternal kingdom of heaven, but we that are in Him are counted for the seed, so we will inherit the land as typified by the land of Canaan. That was the promise to Abraham, which cannot be a portion of this world, as Canaan is used to represent the new heaven and new earth.

The cup of the wrath of God toward our sin was directed at Christ who was laden with our sins at the foundation of the world, and He suffered and died, making full payment for our sins, and He rose from the dead to be declared the Son of God. He was justified in His resurrection, and in Him we have our “cup.” That is our cup that the Lord has poured out for us as His elect, and it overflows with rich and abundant life for evermore. The Bible says in Romans 5:16:

And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.

The Bible says that by the obedience of one many became righteous. We became righteous in Him, and we have this wonderful free gift of God in salvation, and the child of God is able to drink of the cup of eternal life, the cup of God’s blessings. We do not deserve it, and we have not earned it. What we deserved is the cup of wrath but Jesus took that cup in our place. He drank of that cup of indignation of the wrath of God, and we no longer have to drink of that cup. We are free from that.

So cupbearers bring the Gospel and “give drink.” So there is the “cup,” and as we share the Gospel with others the Lord determines the nature of the “cup” that we share with them. From our perspective, we are praying, “O, Lord, could it be that you had mercy on that individual, and that this is a cup of blessings and a cup of life? May this person be part of that great multitude that you have saved.” But we also know that for the overwhelming majority of those that hear us, it will be a “cup” of the wrath of God, especially in this Day of Judgment., But that is not our desire, and we take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. That is our mindset because that is the mindset of the One who sent us. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. We would want it to be all blessing when one hears the Gospel.