Sermon: Genesis 40 - Joseph Series, September 20, 2026
Scripture: Genesis 40
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: Genesis 40 - Joseph Series,
God, Holy Spirit, come to us, come among us;
come as the wind, and cleanse;
come as the fire, and burn;
come as the dew, and refresh:
convict, convert, and consecrate many hearts and lives
to our great good and your greater glory. Amen.
Here we are again, in the book of Genesis. Continuing our sermon series “God meant it for good,” on the story of Joseph. The first week Joseph was sold into Egyptian slavery by his eleven older brothers. The second week we saw Joseph thriving in captivity, first rising to head of the captain of the guard’s household. Then, even after being framed for adultery by the captain’s wife, he rises the ranks again. Impressing the chief jailer so much that he was put in charge of all the prisoners. “The Lord was with Joseph,” said the scripture. “Whatever he did, the Lord made prosper.”
This week starts in much the same prosperous way. Two officials serving Pharaoh, the Egyptian King, are stuffed into the same prison as Joseph–Pharaoh’s cup-bearer, and his baker. We’re not sure what they did exactly. Just that they did something to offend the King. And seeing as how they’re royal officials, they are assigned to the best of the best in prison–the ever-stellar Joseph.
Not only does Joseph serve their every need, doing whatever he can to ease their suffering, Joseph’s help is also supernatural. Remember how in the first chapter he himself was having dreams about his brother and mother and father bowing down to him? This time he’s the one with the pad and paper playing Freud. Rather than doing the dreaming, he’s the one hearing the dreams. The two royal prisoners–the cupbearer and baker–Joseph decodes their dreams for them. God has given him the gift for interpretation.
The first dream’s pretty good. The cupbearer dreams about a vine with three branches that bud, and blossom, bearing bunches of grapes. He squeezes these grapes in the winepress, right into Pharoah’s favourite cup, then hands the cup to Pharoah. Joseph deciphers that the three branches are three days, and it means that within three days, the Cupbearer’ll be back in his old job. Pharaoh’s gonna lift your head, and you’ll be right back holding his cup again. The first dream’s pretty good.
Not so much the second dream, though. The baker dreams about having a hat made of three cake baskets, the top basket piled with all sorts of delicacies. Problem is, the birds keep dive-bombing him and stealing the treats. Same deal as the first one, Joseph says. The three baskets stand for three days, and it also means that the Pharaoh’s gonna lift your head, too. But this time he’s gonna lift that head right off your body by chopping it right off. He’s gonna find you guilty, and stick your whole body on a pole.
Not exactly the news the baker wants to hear. But it plays out exactly the way Joseph says. Three days later Pharoah throws himself a birthday feast and announces the sentences–as one does on one’s birthday of course. The cupbearer goes back to cup-bearing, and the baker meets his doom.
Yet again, Joseph proves his skill, and his heart for servanthood. Not only that, but he proves his gift for dream interpretation—decisively. He proves that the Lord is with him. Surely another promotion awaits.
Not so, however. There’s a little detail that we skipped over.
After Joseph revealed the content of the cupbearer’s dream of restorative triumph, he asked him a little favour. “Look,” Joseph said. “I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, this whole prison thing is a mistake. Please, just please, when you’re back in with Pharaoh–do me a favour and bring it up with Pharaoh. Remember me when it is well with you.” Basically, in return for this interpretation, Joseph asks him to bring his case to Pharaoh. In the hopes that he’ll somehow be vindicated. Or released.
But that doesn’t happen. We’re told that “the cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.” After everything Joseph did for him, the round-the-clock care and kindness, the service, and the interpretation, it all just slips the cupbearer’s mind. “In terms of the actual advancement of Joseph,” says one commentator, “there is none. At the beginning he is in prison, even ‘in charge.’ At the end he is still there, but forgotten” (Brueggemann, 320). In spite of all his service, in spite of all his supernatural good works, Joseph ends up not only where he started. But forgotten altogether.
Now, few–if any of us–have wallowed away in prison like Joseph. But here Joseph experiences one of our own worst fears: being forgotten. We’re afraid of being forgotten.
When we’re children this is especially acute. I remember being 8 years old, and we were moving to a whole new house in a neigbourhood far away. I was unpacking my room, and I saw my dad’s truck pull out of the driveway. Then two minutes later my mom’s car did the same. Apparently, my mom thought I was with my dad, and my dad thought I was with her. Deep down I knew it was going to be OK, but it was kind of terrifying, because I’d never had it happen before–up until that point I’d never had the feeling that no one was looking out for me.
For me this was only temporary, and a mistake. But some of us–some of you–have experienced times where your parents forgot you, and their obligations to you. And you’ve played out that same worry of abandonment with everybody ever since.
In adulthood, we tend to be less afraid of this kind of thing, of course. But as we get older, old really, it flares up again. Feeling forgotten by our children is especially hard–after everything we’ve done for them, giving them life in the beginning. Then they don’t visit. Or they don’t call.
Or it could be the death of a spouse–the only person who we feel like truly knows us. Or maybe it’s beyond simply getting old, and it has to do with our own death. Will I die surrounded by friends? Or forgotten and alone? Does anybody care? Will anyone pay me any mind past the moment my life in this life comes to an end?
And then there are the people we love. About ten years ago, a mother whose son was on the street in the Downtown Eastside, told me that she didn’t want her son to end up alone, forgotten alone in an alley like so many others who’ve been overpowered by addiction. There are many people in our own community living forgotten lives.
We may not know that it’s like to wallow in an Egyptian prison. But, like Joseph, we know what it’s like to be forgotten. Or to live in fear of it, at least.
Now, the thing about Joseph is that, while the cupbearer forgets him. And while he ends up in prison for three more years, he’s never actually alone.
Remember how the story of Joseph is ultimately a story of providence–that in and behind what we see and experience God is at work. God is with Joseph, and is working things for good. The point of this chapter is that even in prison. Even when Joseph is loving and serving his fellow prisoners without any seeming reward or change. Even behind bars, even when his only chance appears to be blown for years. Even then, when everyone else forgets him, God remembers.
Now by “remember” I don’t mean that to the Lord Joseph was like a lost set of keys. Like Joseph slipped his mind for a while, but then “oh yeah… oops.” But to remember in ancient Hebrew is more than that.
After God sends a worldwide flood, it says God remembered Noah. After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, it says that God remembered Abraham, rescuing his nephew Lot from the destruction. God even remembered Jacob’s wife, Rachel, it says, opening her womb so one day out would come our boy, Joseph.
Then God heard Israel’s groaning in Egyptian slavery and remembers the promise he made to Abraham and his descendants. Hannah, another one who couldn’t conceive becomes pregnant with Samuel, as soon as the Lord remembers her. When Israel is in exile, the Lord tells Jeremiah that Israel is his own child, one whom he remembers, and would never forget, bringing God’s people home. Then in the New Testament, Zechariah prophesies the birth of John the Baptist, declaring that God had remembered his promise to his ancestors to show mercy, and finally, Mary–mother of Jesus himself declares in her Magnificat that in bringing about her pregnancy, God had remembered his promises to his people.
When God remembers in scripture, it isn’t just that God’s people finally pop into God’s mind like some absent-minded administrator. But that God never forgets God’s people and God always acts to keep God’s promises. God acts with power to save.[i] Even at times where nobody can even seem to see it.
Meaning that even in prison, Joseph was never forgotten or alone. He was never given up to circumstance, or left to his own devices. That’s because God is nothing like us. We forget our friends, we abandon our obligations–sometimes on purpose and sometimes by mistake–but not so with the Lord of heaven and earth. This is a covenantal God, one who never breaks his promises. When everyone else abandoned him, it’s God who got him through. When the cupbearer completely forgot, God remembered.
And this, dear friends, is the same promise to us. That when we’re forgotten by everyone else, God remembers.
In fact, the promise for us goes deeper even the one he made to Joseph and his forbearers. Because for Joseph, the promise was only to remember him in this life. That this promise appeared to have a fixed boundary, one that set this side of the grave. No further.
While hanging on the cross, Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus hung between two thieves or bandits. One mocked him, but the other reached out to him in the darkness of his last day. He didn’t ask Jesus to take him off the cross. He didn’t even ask him to end his suffering or his pain. No!
But what did the thief ask Jesus?
“Remember me,” he said. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
To which our Lord responded, “truly today you will be with me in paradise.
The thief invokes the God of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob–and Joseph. He has faith that there is another Cup-bearer, one who’d never forget. One who he could trust that, in spite of all his sins and failures, even on the cross, even at that moment of abandonment, forgotten by friends and family, when his memory would cease to exist on this earth, that there was one whose memory would never fade, or flag or fail, but one whose would prevail into eternity. Jesus.
This is the same promise to us, dear friends. That in Christ, God remembers you, me. All the forgotten ones.
That at our darkest moments of loneliness, even in the deepest pit of despair. That even when we’re forgotten by everyone else, God remembers.
Even that day when we’re laid in our grave, or our ashes are scattered to the wind. Even when the sea dries up, the sky fades, the sun burns out, and even at the moment of the heat death of the universe. Even then, we will find ourselves in the infinite memory of the eternal God. And be raised.
Which means, dear friends, that you and I–we need never feel totally lonely or truly abandoned again, now, or forever. We need not fear for the future of ourselves, or those who we love.
Though we may be forgotten by the world, we’ll never be forgotten by God. Jesus will remember us when he comes into his kingdom.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] “In the Old Testament, when God ‘remembers,’ it has a distinct meaning. It does not mean to ‘think about’ or ‘to recall to mind.’ That would not mean very much. When God ‘remembers,’ he does not just think about us. He acts for us, with power to save.” Fleming Rutledge, The Seven Last Words from the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 20.