Genesis 40 Series, Part 13, Verses 8-13
Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #13 in Genesis 40, and we will read Genesis 40:8-13:
And they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to God? tell me them, I pray you. And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine was before me; And in the vine were three branches: and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes: 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.
We see in verse 8 that Joseph said, “Do not interpretations belong to God? tell me them, I pray you.” Then he proceeded to interpret the dreams of the butler and the baker. But if interpretations belong to God, how could Joseph have known? We can understand that Joseph had knowledge of interpretations that belong to God, even though, “No man knows…” They belong to God. A verse that goes along with this is found in Deuteronomy 29:29:
The secret things belong unto JEHOVAH our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
The secret things belong to God, and certainly the interpretation of dreams can be classified as secret things belonging to God. So how did Joseph know? You know, when EBible Fellowship speaks of things like the biblical evidence for 2033 being the end of the world, people tell us, “No man knows! Only God knows.” Yes, we fully understand that no man can know these things, just as no man can know dreams, but God gave Joseph understanding to interpret the dreams of the butler and the baker, and to later interpret Pharaoh’s dream. And God gave Daniel understanding to interpret King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, and so forth. These men were doing something that is impossible for men to do of themselves. No man knows the dream of another, but God does. And God reveals the secret things, and that is a biblical principle. Daniel 12 states that principle in Daniel 12:9-10:
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
Why will the wise understand as did Joseph and Daniel? It is because God simply reveals it to them. The wicked can hear God revealing secret things, but they will still not understand it because they do not have the Spirit of God, and they are still dead in their trespasses and sins.
Another way of understanding this is that Joseph is a type of Christ. God gave the butler and the baker their dreams, and God gave Joseph to the butler and the baker to interpret their dreams. So it is the Lord Jesus Christ interpreting His own Word. Remember we looked at several verses that tie “dreams” to the Gospel. We also learned that that there were false prophets that prophesied false dreams, or false gospels.
As far as true dreams, we can look at Acts 2:16-18:
But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:
Again, we see the connection of prophesying to dreams and to visions. We did not get into “visions” too much, but we saw it said in Isaiah 1:1: “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw…” It was a way that God used to deliver divine revelation to His prophets of old, and they would write it down. “To see,” means to understand. A proof of that is found in Ephesians 1:18:
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened…
Does understanding have eyes? We use the same kind of language today when we say, “Do you understand what I am saying?” And the person responds, “Yes, I see what you mean. I get it.” Likewise, when it says in Acts 2 that your young men shall see visions, it means they will understand Isaiah 53, for example, and they will understand that Christ is that Messiah. They would understand a number of things written in the book of Isaiah as well as in other scriptures.
It also says in Acts 2 that your old men shall dream dreams, and “dreaming” is synonymous with prophesying. It is pointing to understanding the Word of God. In times of old when someone had a dream, they would tell their dream, or prophesy it. That is the point.
Once the Bible was completed by the end of the first century A. D., there would be no more dreams, no more visions, no more tongues, nor any supernatural activities like that. We have the Bible, and that is God’s complete divine communication to mankind, especially to His chosen people, the elect. We do not need anything else. It is complete and full.
If someone thinks, “Oh, God is going to give me His latest Word,” he is completely deceived. He is in violation of Revelation 22:18-19 where we are warned not to add or subtract from the words of this book, the Bible. And these people try to add to the Bible, but God said that we are not to do that.
Again, interpretations belong to God, and yet Joseph would interpret, just as Christ interpreted parables, as we see in Mark 4:33-34:
And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.
Jesus spoke the parable, and keep in mind that the parable is a “mystery,” and it has hidden spiritual truth. You have to discover the mystery. For example, when there is a “who-done-it,” we have to pour over the evidence to discover the answer. And the Bible is a mystery in verse after verse. Christ is the Word, and He was asked by His disciples why He spoke to them in parables in Matthew 13:10, and then it says in Matthew 13:11:
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
Do not think that His disciples were only the Apostles, but it applies to all of God’s true people. Jesus came to save His people from their sins, as it says in Matthew 21. They are specific chosen people. They are Jew and Gentile alike that were chosen to salvation, and to them it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
That is why the first solution I offered for Joseph interpreting the dreams was that Joseph was a true child of God, representing the body of Christ, all the true people of God. We were the messengers of the Gospel over the New Testament era that delivered the mysteries to the people. They heard the dreams, as it were, and most did not understand it. But God gives wisdom and understanding to His people that is appropriate for their particular time and season. During the church age, we saw through a glass darkly, meaning we had partial understanding, and we therefore prophesied partially. But at the time of the end, God brought forth the full understanding of what He intended to mete out to His people while we are on this earth. The Spirit came and guided us into all truth with the second coming of the Holy Spirit in 1994.
Again, it said in Mark 4:34:
But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.
But what about the masses? What about the crowds He addressed? He did not expound things to them. There were just the few that had exposition from Christ. By the way, the Greek word translated as “expounded” is Strong’s #1956, and there is a related word #1955 which is the word for “interpretation.” So we could read it this way: “…He interpreted all things to his disciples.” And biblical exposition is interpretation of a “foreign language,” and that foreign language is the language of the kingdom of God. It is a spiritual language. The law (the Bible) is spiritual, and we are to compare spiritual with spiritual. So the native speaker of the spiritual language of the kingdom of God interprets to us. Again, when we compare spiritual with spiritual, the Holy Ghost teaches. It is the way to understand this most difficult of languages.
I tend to think Chinese is the most difficult earthly language because when I hear it I cannot even begin to understand it. However the most difficult of languages is the spiritual language of the Bible from the tongue of God who is Spirit. It is a difficult language because we are born “dead in spirit,” and the world is completely ignorant of spiritual things. Natural mindedness prevails across the face of the earth. Even when God saves us, we are still in our fleshly bodies which is the natural part of us, so it is a very slow tedious process for us to learn this spiritual language.
The Lord gives understanding of the spiritual truths of the Bible, and it is Jesus who “interprets,” or expounds, all things to His disciples. And that is what we are doing in these Bible studies. Normally when you are listening to a pastor or teacher, he is telling you the history of things that happened in Genesis, for example, or he is talking about the moral teachings, like trusting and leaning on God even when things get worse and worse, like it did for Joseph, but in the end you will prevail and God will bless you. And that is all they talk about. It is just the plain, literal, historical, grammatical method of Bible interpretation with some moral admonitions. Then they think they have covered it all, but they have only walked on the surface.
True Bible study involves interpreting the meaning. You see, the baker and the butler were troubled in Genesis 40:5-8:
And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, which were bound in the prison. And Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them, and, behold, they were sad. And he asked Pharaoh's officers that were with him in the ward of his lord's house, saying, Wherefore look ye so sadly to day? And they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to God? tell me them, I pray you.
So they heard the Word. This is “common as grass.” The world has heard the Word of God, and it troubles them because there is the light of the Bible. There is reproof that scripture brings to convict the consciences of men to trouble them. Even without “interpretation, “ all are troubled. The word “sadly” used here is Strong’s #7451, which is a word for “evil.” It is like saying, “Wherefore look ye so evil today?” They dreamed a dream, and then they looked “evil.” The Bible declares man’s sin, and it pronounces him as an evildoer. It says in Romans 3:19-20:
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
So when we read of these men dreaming a dream, we think of the Gospel. They heard the Gospel. The Gospel convicts them and pronounces them guilty. They have no righteousness, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Therefore it says, “Why look ye so evil today?” That is what the Bible shows man. Yet there is more to it than just convicting them and finding them guilty. There was God’s salvation program in the day of salvation. Therefore entered Joseph, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
By the way, when we read in Mark 4:34 that He expounded all things to His disciples concerning the parable, it means that He revealed the mysteries. Again, the Bible says, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” But for many masses that heard Jesus and went away, it was not given. That is the figure. And who is Jesus? He is the Word made flesh, so it was The Word that interpreted (expounded) the Word. He is interpreting His own parable. When we compare spiritual with spiritual from the Word, the Holy Spirit teaches. He interprets for us, and we learn truth.
So Joseph was the interpreter, a picture of Christ. But this is also true of the body of Christ as Christ gives us His exposition through the spirit, and then we declare it. We open our mouths and we share it with others. God sends us to those who have had a dream, as it were. Remember we talked about verse 5 where it said, “And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream…” Now we know from verse 8 that interpretations belong to God. We discussed how the interpretation is the thing that has the real substance. The “dream” was according to the interpretation. In other words, the interpretation is first, and then the dream was given. Interpretations belong to God, and God is eternal. His Gospel is eternal. Before the foundation of the world He predestinated certain souls to obtain salvation through the Gospel. Before the foundation of the world Jesus was slain as He bore the sins of those certain souls. It is an eternal Gospel. That is the “interpretation.” That is the true Word. The true language of God is the interpretation, and He gave the Bible, the “dream,” according to it.
We will think about that a little bit more when we get together in our next Bible study.