Episode 1. A Missed Opportunity
There are times in life where opportunities seem to have passed us by. You’ve done the right things while travelling the hard road and yet still things just don’t seem to go your way. …
There are times in life where opportunities seem to have passed us by. You’ve done the right things while travelling the hard road and yet still things just don’t seem to go your way. What’s going on?
We all have hopes and dreams and you know how it goes, they bubble away in our hearts, we do a lot of day dreaming about our dreams, we paint the picture, we imagine what it would be like when our dream is realised. And little by little things seem to be heading in the right direction but then things take a turn for the worse. It’s in that moment that I would like to spend some time with you today because those moments are as difficult as they come.
I was in one of those places recently, it was a ministry thing, a relationship we were working on with another ministry organisation. It was something we’d put a lot of work in to and we hoped that it would go really, really well and then on the morning I was preparing today’s message in fact, things took a turn for the worse.
The details don’t matter but you should know that we all go through this stuff from time to time, I certainly do and I know you’ve been through it as well. And we’re going to find ourselves in that moment again one day.
Over the last week on the program we’ve been taking a look at how to make sure that we don’t miss Gods opportunities and we’ve been doing that by travelling a way along the path with young Joseph, the son of Jacob or Israel as he became known, in the Old Testament because Joseph had more than enough reasons to give up on Gods opportunities.
Loved by his father his brothers turned against him and plotted to kill him because he was dad’s favourite. Eventually they sold him into slavery where he was shipped to Egypt, sold to one of Pharaoh’s officials Potiphar and made a slave. He did well at that and Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his whole household until Potiphar’s wife, who fancied young Joseph, wrongly accused him of making improper advances so Joseph was thrown into prison.
He did well there too, so much so that the jailer put him in charge of the prison just as Potiphar had put him in charge of his whole household and it’s here in prison that we pick up the story because it’s here, languishing in an Egyptian jail that Joseph has one of these moments, a very long moment actually where it appears his opportunity of getting out of jail passes him by.
Let’s have a listen to what happens, it comes from Genesis 40 in the Old Testament:
Some time after this the cup bearer of the King of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the King of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cup bearer and the chief baker and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined.
The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them and he waited on them and they continued for some time in custody. One night they both dreamed, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt who were confined in the prison, each his own dream and each dream with its own meaning.
When Joseph came to them in the morning he saw that they were troubled so he asked Pharaoh’s officers who are with him in custody in his master’s house, ‘Why are your faces downcast today?’ They said to him, ‘We have had dreams and there’s no one to interpret them’ and Joseph said to them, ‘Do not interpretations belong to God, please tell them to me.
So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph and said to him, ‘My dream there was a vine before me and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded its blossoms came out and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup into Pharaohs hand.
Joseph said to him, ‘Here is the interpretation, the three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office and you shall place Pharaohs cup into his hand just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. But remember me when it is well with you, please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into a dungeon.’
When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favourable he said to Joseph, ‘I also had a dream, there were three cake baskets on my head and in the upper most basket there were all sorts of food for Pharaoh but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.’
And Joseph answered, ‘This is its interpretation, the three baskets are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you from a pole and there the birds will eat your flesh from you’. On the third day which was Pharaohs birthday he made a feast for all his servants and he lifted up the cup bearer and the head of the chief baker among the servants.
He restored the chief cup bearer to his cup bearing and he placed the cup in Pharaohs hand but the chief baker he hanged just as Joseph had interpreted them yet the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph but forgot him.
See not only did the chief cup bearer forget Joseph it was actually another two years before he remembered Joseph and things started to happen. Two years is a long time even when you’re having fun. Two years in a dungeon is unimaginable. I can’t imagine spending one night in a prison but two more years in prison.
When you’re there because you’ve been wrongly accused and because before that your brothers turned against you and sold you into slavery and shipped you to a foreign land, I mean come on, put yourself in Joseph’s shoes, how do you feel? Everything is piling up against you, your family has turned against you, your master has turned against you because his wife lied about you, she was the one with evil things in her heart, Joseph was the one who did the right thing yet here he was in prison.
And now you do this wretched cupbearer a favour, I mean Gods given you this amazing spiritual insight, a gift of interpreting this dream, Gods here right? So let me ask you, would you be tempted to give up on God in those two years? To be honest I think I would.
Tomorrow on the program we’re going to see that God came back into Joseph’s life in a mighty way, in fact truth be known God never left him, He was there all the time. We know that because without God Joseph could never have interpreted those two dreams and seen them come true in such a short period of time.
What strikes me about this story, the story of God and Joseph together, is that at each turn Joseph just keeps on doing the right thing. I mean if anyone deserved to react badly to the situation Joseph did, that’s what I think. I know I can say trite things like, ‘Do the right thing no matter what’, it’s easy to say, you know how hard it is to keep on doing the right thing though, you just know how hard it is.
You know how much you want to act up badly when over and over again things don’t go your way, opportunities seem to slip by, when you’re doing the right thing and things just go from bad to worse, when it feels as though God’s given up on you, you know how hard it is, you just know.
So let me leave you with this Word from God today, it was written a long, long time later by Paul the Apostle, Galatians 6:9-10:
So let us not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap at harvest time if we don’t give up. So then whenever we have an opportunity let us work for the good of all especially for those in the family of faith.
And that’s exactly what Joseph did and as we’re going to see tomorrow that’s why eventually God started to show His hand, His hand of blessing.
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