Lessons from the Dungeon (Part 2 of 4)

We've often heard and believed that honesty is the big deal. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains how Joseph handled the difficult task of fairly clear living life with a God-centered focus.

The second one is learning to tell the truth, whether it's good news or bad news, without ambiguity. Tremendous authority in Joseph's tone when the first dream is told him. He responds in verse 12—we're back in Genesis 40 now—he responds in verse 12, and he says, This is what it means. The three branches are three days.

Now, that is the absolute zenith of foolishness unless he was able to speak with conviction and certainty on the authority of God himself—and how obviously he was. For Joseph to say, The three branches means three days was to put himself on the line, in the same way that another whom he prefigured was to put himself on the line when he said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it again. So we have a three-day window in which to find out whether Joseph tells the truth and whether Jesus, explaining the reality of his resurrection, tells the truth also. And, of course, in both cases, God is vindicated in all that follows. Now, having given this good news to the one, the baker, he comes hoping for a similar explanation.

And we're in verse 16. When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph, I also had a dream, I too had a dream. Now, it's interesting, is it not, that the verb there is the verb to see and not the verb to hear? You would have thought that it would have read when the chief baker heard that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation.

How would you see a favorable interpretation? Well, we can only assume that since the two of them were in the same predicament and they were both despondent and their faces were cast down, that by their very tenor of life they revealed their dejection. The first one, I imagine, perhaps disengaged himself from his sorry companion, said, I'm gonna go to Joseph, and I'm gonna tell him what happened to me and see what he says. So he goes to Joseph, and Joseph says, In three days you're gonna be back on the job.

Comes out, closes the door, comes back in. And the baker saw, from the very change in the countenance of the cupbearer, hey, you got some good news in there, didn't you? And so, on the basis of that, he must have said, Hey, good work! He said, I'm gonna go now and see how it goes for me. And you can imagine him going in.

At least I can. Hey, Joseph, that was a nice thing you said there to the cupbearer. I liked that.

That was really nice, Joseph, for the three days and then back on the job. Well, I had a dream as well, and I was wondering, you know, if you got any more interpretations along that kind of line, you know, I would be just super. Now, I don't know about you, but I think this baker certainly was an optimist, because this dream, even when I read it, doesn't strike me as real positive. And maybe it's because I know the conclusion, but this idea of the birds picking on your head and everything, it doesn't just have the same ring to it, you know? But he's hoping for the best.

Now, there's a wee lesson within a lesson. Here are two men whose circumstances are very similar. One gets really good news and a kind of surge up in the world. And so the other guy, who is in the same spot, assumes that the same will happen for him. Because we naturally wish to be as happy as our neighbors. We assume that when one of our neighbors prospers, and they were in the similar circumstances to ourselves, that we presumably will prosper just as they have done. There's no reason, after all, why if they were blessed, we shouldn't be blessed. There's actually another lesson within a lesson, insofar as godliness with contentment is great gain, and constantly comparing ourselves to our neighbors and our friends is a dreadful snare. And we have to learn to rejoice in the way in which our neighbors are prospered without only being able to rejoice in how they're prospered if it carries with it the anticipation that we will enjoy the same prosperity.

For this individual was to receive a very different explanation. The Scottish commentator Lawson says, But let us remember that divine providence is under no obligation to be equally kind to us all, and that prosperity and adversity, life and death, are distributed to men by one who has a right to do what he will with his own. In other words, God is God, and he can do what he likes.

He's God. And because he blessed your brother and he lives in a nicer spot, you don't have to live there. And we may not live there. Because something happened to this individual and they were lifted up and encouraged and they received well-being and health, we assume that the same will be true for us.

The fact of the matter is that there is no guarantee whatsoever in relationship to that. And this baker made a flawed approach to things when he assumed that it would be so. He went in the hope that the Word, when it came to him, would be the same kind of Word. And people come to church on the same basis. They don't all come to listen to the Word of God because they want to receive instruction from it and receive the truth. They come because they want to receive the enjoyment that it might bring them. And then when they find out that the message is painful rather than enjoyable, they say, Well, I've got to get away out of here.

I don't want to stand this stuff. And therefore, it falls to the person who has the responsibility of opening the Scriptures, if they're going to display integrity in their lives, not to simply tell people what meets their expectations, not what is simply palatable to people, but to actually to be the servant of what the book says. And that, you see, what Joseph had to do. The first guy said, What's my dream? He said, You're gonna be okay. The second guy, what's the…?

You're in deep trouble. There are big, big, big churches all across America that are built on the guy being Mr. Nice Guy up in this spot. Everybody who comes is wonderful. I want to tell you this morning how wonderful you all are. I want you to know that no matter what, all will be well.

I want you to know that God has a personal interest in you becoming tremendously successful. And so on. And people are sitting up going, Oh man, this is nice!

This is nice! The lesson from the dungeon is this. If you are going to be the servant of God, if you are going to be the explainer of the human predicament, if you are going to speak to the questions of humanity—Who am I? Why do I exist? And is there a purpose in my life?—you're gonna have to be able to tell the truth, the good, the bad, and the ugly, no matter what.

And you're gonna have to be able to live with a furnace that comes right up your tail. And if you can't, you'll never do it. And Joseph did it. Says Calvin, All love to be flattered. Hence the majority of teachers, in desiring to yield to the corrupt wishes of the world, adulterate the Word of God.

Adulterate the Word of God. They are like contemporary politicians. They do not walk out in front and lead the people.

They just check the way the wind's going, and then they go in that direction. Joseph, no wonder he became the prime minister. Some people looked at him and must have said, Oh, he became the prime minister overnight.

No, he didn't. God was fashioning Joseph in his tiny years and in his teenage years and in all of the journeys. And he was teaching him one thing amongst others. Joseph, tell the truth. Do right, because it's always right to do right, because it's right. And he stood out in the midst of the malaise all around him.

It's the same thing. Paul to Timothy as a young man, in his swan song, 2 Timothy 4, he says, Timothy, when you get at it, you will be surrounded by a group of people who want to gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. He says, Don't allow your head to be spun by it. You continue to preach the Word, to correct rebuke with careful instruction in the awareness of the fact that one day you will stand and answer for it. Do you have a God-centered focus in your life? Do you do your studies every week in the awareness of God? Did you close business deals this week in the awareness of God? Do you respond to temptation this week?

Did I, in the awareness of who God is? And are we prepared to tell the truth no matter what, even if it's bad news for one and good news for another? Would we play with the minds of men and women in the prospect of their death? That's actually the third lesson. And let me just introduce it, and we'll return to it. We don't have time to do justice to it.

But the third lesson is what I've referred to, learning how to prepare for our death. Now, not immediately striking in terms of people's interest. We say, Maybe we could leave that one to next week or maybe next year. Maybe we could end on a little higher note.

No, no, we can't. Because the words of Joseph to this baker must have really stung him. I mean, I'm not trying to play with your mind in describing this situation, but I had to take place somehow. The two guys are in the same predicament. The two fellows have dreams. In the morning, the guy says, What's up with you, Fred? He says, Man, I had a dream. And the guy said, You did. So did I.

What was yours like? Well, the one goes, and he comes back. It's terrific. The other guy goes, and now he's totally bombed. Why? Because he was told, You have three days to live. Three days to live. In fact, if the baker had known what the interpretation of his dream was going to be, he presumably wouldn't have gone for the interpretation. He would rather have lived in his ignorance. And there's great wisdom in that, is there not? Jesus says at the end of Matthew 6, Every day's got enough trouble of its own. Why would you start and haul tomorrow's trouble and next week's trouble and the week after that into today? Today's enough.

You don't have to deal with today. And Lawson says of the baker, He died three days before his time. The thoughts of the fatal moment and of the birds feeding on his carcass took possession of his soul.

Sleeping or waking, his heart was dead within him. And in it all, again, the integrity of Joseph. He had promised to give them meaning. He had acknowledged that God could reveal it. And as painful as it was in this case, he displays in his response a genuine interest in the life of the baker and a genuine concern for God's glory.

He was later to be given a new name, which was the Revealer of Secrets. But even then, he wanted everyone to know that God is the foundation of all knowledge. And so he says to the baker, Baker, you asked for the truth. Here's the truth.

Within three days, Pharaoh will lift off your head and hang you on a tree, and the birds will eat away your flesh. You say, Well, fortunately, we don't have to say that to anybody nowadays. No, specifically, we have no reason to say that.

But what have we to say? We have to say that it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this comes judgment. We have to say that Jesus spoke more about the issue of hell than he ever spoke about the presence of heaven. We have to encourage people to understand that when they say to us, Well, you know, I like what the Bible has to say about heaven, but I don't like what it has to say about hell. I believe the heaven stuff, but I don't believe the hell stuff. We have to say, loved ones, it is intellectually implausible to have a heaven and no hell on the strength of what Jesus has said. And in the saying of that, we bring clarity to the minds of people in relationship to the ultimate event at the end of their days.

Here's the question. Did the baker use the opportunity to make preparation for the final event of his life? Did he seize the chance to go back to Joseph and say, Hey, Joseph, I've been awake all night again. I didn't dream this time, but all I can think of is this thing about the carcass and the birds, and I'm scared to death. Joseph, I don't know what it is about you, but you seem to know God. I mean, you interpreted the dream. Joseph, can you help me?

Can you help me deal with this? Or did he just simply steel himself against the thought of his death? Did he go gently into the darkness of that night? Did he rage and scream against it? We know this, that if he failed to make use of the opportunity that fell to him with the dense sentence that was given him, it was his own fault. See, this guy got a deal. He got told, You got three days. You and I don't know, we have three minutes. Now, I'm not saying that to scare anybody.

I'm saying that to myself. My mother died in a chair in the middle of a very normal evening on a very normal kind of house with a very normal family as a very normal forty-six-year-old woman. And one moment she said, Would you please put the kettle on? And then she died.

And so may you, and so may I. So I have a responsibility in light of those striking statistics that one out of one dies to prepare you for that event. I come behind the doctor, and I come behind the undertaker. When they have done their business and signed the death warrant and prepared the open grave, they stand back, and they say, Ladies and gentlemen, Reverend Begg will now do the service. So Reverend Begg steps forward to do the service.

What am I doing there? I'm there as the servant of this book, which says, You don't know who you are until you know God, and you don't know how to live until you've settled the question of how to die. And it is a strange thing that people can be in the proximity of death. As Shakespeare says in the Hamlet play, as he comes upon the gravediggers and he says, What is it with these men that they can make such sport of gravedigging?

And I can't quote it exactly enough for memory, but it says, Custom hath made of it a matter of unimportance to them. Are you prepared to die? If you die before this day is over, will you go to heaven? And if you don't know the answer to that question, are you telling me that you're prepared just to walk out the door, turn your car stereo on, and say, Hey, a flea in his ear. He was trying to scare me.

I'm not. I'm telling you, the baker got a deal. Seventy-two hours to prepare.

We have no guarantee of seventy-two hours. That is why the Bible says, Now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. And in the circumstance of Calvary, with the two thieves on the cross around Jesus… Remember that they were both in immediate proximity to Christ. They were both aware of the injustice that was being done to Jesus. They were both aware of the justice of what was being meted out on them. They were both knowing that they were never going to come back. They were nailed on that cross. They couldn't even look back over their shoulders.

There was only one way they were going, and that was to the grave. And one guy curses Jesus and says, Hey, you saved others. Why don't you get down from there and save yourself and save us while you're at it?

Can you imagine how hard a person can be so close to death? And the other fellow shouts over to him, Hey, why don't you cut that out? We're up here because we deserve to be. He's up here, and he did nothing wrong. And then he says, Jesus, will you remember me when you come into your kingdom?

And Jesus says, Today you will be with me in paradise. I'd love to have been at the gates of heaven when that guy showed up. What a thief. What a wretch. What an uncivilized, irreligious bum. You mean God takes people like that to heaven?

Absolutely. And he leaves Pharisees behind. These are just some lessons from the dungeon. Let us pay attention. Spending eternity with Jesus in paradise, an assuring promise for repentant sinners, from today's message on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Alistair is back in just a minute to close with prayer, so please keep listening. The Bible is filled with absolute promises, promises on which we can rely. And today we're excited to introduce a collection of devotions that reflect on God's promises, all written by the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon. The title is Checkbook of the Bank of Faith. You might find that title a bit unusual, but it comes from the comparison Spurgeon makes between God's promises and a bank check.

Spurgeon explains that even though God's word is given in advance of its fulfillment, it's 100% guaranteed because God will ultimately make good on all that he has pledged. This concise book contains 365 promises God has made to us in Scripture. Each is accompanied by an encouraging insight from Spurgeon, and you'll love the design of the book. It's checkbook-sized, leather-bound.

It fits right in your pocket. We'd love to send you a copy today, and today is a very special day for us here at Truth for Life. It's Giving Tuesday, a day to reach out to the nonprofit organizations that benefit you through the year by lending your financial support.

This year, like none we can remember, we've heard from so many people around the world who greatly relied on this program and all of Alistair's free online teaching during the worldwide pandemic. Like Joseph in the dungeon, it's the difficult times when we really need God's truth to carry us through every hour. And all of us here at Truth for Life have considered it an immense privilege to open the Scriptures with you each day over these long, challenging months. So please don't let this day go by without making a generous Giving Tuesday donation to Truth for Life. We are 100% funded by your support. Your giving goes directly to making this daily program possible.

It keeps all of the online teaching available for free. You can give a one-time Giving Tuesday donation and request The Checkbook of the Bank of Faith through Truth for Life's mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And when you're online, look for other Giving Tuesday special offers available from Truth for Life today. Now here's Alistair to close in prayer. O Lord our God, we pray that as we consider these lessons, you will bring us to an awareness of the brevity of our lives, of the reality of death, and the certainty of judgment, and the opportunity of faith. We pray for any who are wrestling with these issues even as I speak. We pray that you will make us truth-tellers, good news and bad news alike, that we may be sensitive and gracious, but that we might be men and women of integrity. I pray too that you would help us to live with a God-centered focus, as individuals and as families and as a church family. May it be that not simply with our lives but with our lives we will live to praise the name of the Lord. For we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Hope you can join us tomorrow as we continue our study titled Lessons from the Dungeon. We'll find out why a biblical view of death and dying is essential. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.