Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, Sunday, November 14, 2021

From prison to palace: in one day!

Today Pastor Michael is continuing to follow the story of Joseph and how Joseph has experienced long delays in his life and certainly, life not being what he originally thought it might be.  He’s gone from being sold into slavery to being in prison and today’s story picks up with the prisoners Joseph has been assisting by interpreting their dreams.

In these dream interpretations, one prisoner has a good outcome and one did not.  The one that did, was supposed to help him by trying to obtain his freedom but he didn’t.  Joseph languished in prison for another two years!  As it turns out, Pharaoh has a dream about himself standing by the Nile and he sees seven cows come up out of the river.  These cows were fat and nice.  Then seven more cows, not nearly as good looking, come out of the river and eat the other seven cows!  Zombie cows?

Needless to say, this dream disturbed Pharaoh.  He then has another dream and sees a wheat plant sprout up, with seven stalks.  Then, as with the cow dream, here comes seven more stalks off the same plant and they’re ugly, unhealthy, diseased, blighted, scorched wheat.  The bad wheat then eats up the good wheat.  Give the man credit, he has some seriously weird dreams!

He wakes up and consults his trusted staff and no one can tell him.  But wait!  His butler overhears this and then suddenly remembers his time in prison where Joseph interpreted the dreams.  He tells him the story of Joseph’s dream interpretations and how accurate they were.  Pharaoh sends for Joseph and Joseph stands before him.

Joseph proceeds to tell the Pharaoh that he doesn’t interpret dreams.  But he did clarify his statement, stating the he couldn’t interpret dreams but God can.  

Pharaoh tells him the cow and the wheat dreams and the Lord gave Joseph the interpretation.  Which was: the two dreams represent the same message.  The seven good cows and wheat represent seven years of prosperous and good.  The seven bad cows and seven bad grains of wheat represent seven years of famine and those seven years will make the seven good years seem long ago and forgotten.

Pharaoh needs to appoint someone to plan for the seven bad years, by storing away grain and preparing for it.  Needless to say, Pharaoh is impressed with Joseph. Pharaoh appoints Joseph to oversee this effort and gives him royal clothing and jewelry.  To commemorate the promotion, Pharaoh gives Joseph a new name, Zaphenath-paneah (“Revealer of Mysteries”, how cool is that!), and a wife, Asenath.

Things went just as Joseph predicted.  They had seven great years and collected the grain and saved it up.  Then when the famine hit, if they had not laid aside that stock, everyone would have starved.  People came from all around to buy grain in Egypt.  Egypt was saved and provided grain for others and Joseph became a great hero.

From the prison to the palace, in one day!  

God has dreams for you and for me; but we have to grow into those dreams.  It took Joseph thirteen years to see God’s purpose for him realized.  Every day God grows us in our faith and our character.  

Today’s verses are found in Genesis 41: 1-57.