God's Timing Usually Isn't Ours

Joseph Interpreting the Dreams in Prison

 

I doubt this artist got it right. Joseph, the baker, nor the butler would be dressed in medieval clothing. What they did wear would be sparse, perhaps raggedy, and most likely filthy. Unless Egyptian prisons were much better than current ones.

We know how Joseph ended up in prison - sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused of attacking his boss' wife. A foreigner imprisoned with no one to speak for him. Chances of release were so slim as to be uncountable. Joseph could not know that his story would be included by the Psalmist:

He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him. (Psalms 105:17-19 KJV)

No doubt there would have been fetters for the prisoners. Maybe there were only the three prisoners together at that level of offense, with Joseph serving the newcomers: 

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. 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. (Genesis 40:1-4 KJV)

At least we know they slept, and they both dreamed - dreams they felt important, but bothered them. Joseph heard the butler's dream, told him what would happen, then asked:

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. (Genesis 40:14-15 KJV)

The baker did not fare as well. Three days after Joseph's interpretation of their dreams, it was Pharaoh's birthday. As the dreams foretold, the butler returned to Pharaoh's presence in service, and the baker was killed. The butler forgot:

Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him. (Genesis 40:23 KJV)

Not one bit of this story was a surprise to God. His plan included Joseph being in Egypt during the drought and famine, that's a given. God had the power to place Joseph in Pharaoh's household in any number of ways. God could have released him from the pit in Dothan, from the Pharaoh's prison - just as God released Peter in Acts 12, or Paul and Silas in Acts 15 - but He didn't.

We really do not need an explanation, though many have said was Joseph went through was necessary for him to be the man capable of standing in for Pharaoh. That explanation isn't necessary, because the timing was in God's hands. 

Just as God knows what is coming, in His own time:

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, (1 Peter 1:18-20 KJV)

We are confined by time. God is not. We cannot grasp what exists without time, but God is capable of showing to a man who does not even have the words to adequately describe what he sees:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. (Revelation 1:1-3 KJV)

Yes, the Bible does say the time is at hand for Revelation. Some will point to that last verse as a reason not to believe the Bible because it's been two thousand years and in so many ways, mankind holds the same values as when John wrote those words - war, rumors of war, poverty, drought, floods. What has changed?

It's all in the timing, God's timing. We need reminding through the biblical stories of people's lives that God does not think or act as we do:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV)

Eventually the butler remembered Joseph - and the rest of that story is for another time.When God puts the thought in my mind, as He put the dream in Pharaoh's, and the butler remembered:

Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day: . . .  And there was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.  (Genesis 41:9, 12 KJV)

God's timing is always best for us. 

(Please take time with the quoted scriptures to read them in context. Did I misquote, omit? Did you receive a different message? I'd love to hear back.)