This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions and to our last day, Day 5
of Week 8, that means Chapter 40, and in Chapter 40 Joseph begins to receive the
dream of God in his life. He's gone through the testing of the dream, he's gone
through the sharing of the dream, he's gone through waiting for the dream, he
begins to receive the dream in Chapter 40. Now that may sound great, but it's
going to be surprising.

The way that he begins to receive the dream, that things begin to turn, are not
so Hollywood as you would like. In Hollywood it goes from bad and ugly and down
and then all of a sudden in one scene everything is all okay. It doesn't happen
that way in real life.

No, it begins to turn slowly sometimes. God begins to work and you see
indications. You have a sense that he's doing something new and that's what
happens in these verses.

Let me read for you what happens. Genesis Chapter 40, beginning in verse 1,
"Sometime later the cup bearer and the baker of the king of Egypt offended their
master, the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officials, 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 same prison where Joseph was confined.

The captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph and he attended them. After
they'd been in custody for some time, each of the two men, the cup bearer and
the baker of the king of Egypt who were being held in prison, had a dream the
same night and each dream had a meaning of its own. When Joseph came to them the
next morning he saw that they were dejected.

So he asked Pharaoh's officials who were in custody with him in the master's
house, why are your faces so sad today? We both had dreams, they answered, but
there is no one to interpret them. Then Joseph said to them, do not
interpretations belong to God?

Tell me your dreams. So the chief cup bearer told Joseph his dream. He said to
him, in my dream I saw a vine in front of me and on the vine there were three
branches and soon it budded and it blossomed and its clusters ripened into
grapes.

Pharaoh's cup was in my hand and I took the grapes, squeezed them into the cup
of Pharaoh and put the cup in his hand. This is what it means, Joseph said to
him, the three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up
your head and restore you to your position and you will put Pharaoh's cup in his
hand just as you used to when you were his cup bearer.

But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness. Mention me to
Pharaoh and get me out of this prison, for I was forcibly carried off from the
land of the Hebrews and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put into
a dungeon. In verse 16, when the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a
favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph, I too had a dream.

On my head there were three baskets of bread. In the top basket were all kinds
of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on
my head. This is what it means, Joseph said, the three baskets are three days.

Within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and hang you on a tree and the
birds will eat away your flesh. Now the third day was Pharaoh's birthday and he
gave a feast for all of his officials. He lifted up the heads of the chief cup
bearer and the chief baker in the presence of his officials and he restored the
chief cup bearer to his position so that he once again put the cup into
Pharaoh's hand and he hanged the chief baker just as Joseph had said to them in
his interpretation.

That's verse 22. Now in Hollywood in verse 23, the chief cup bearer would have
said, Joseph did this for me and he would have been given this high position
immediately, but that is not what happens, not in real life. Here's what happens
in real life, verse 23.

The chief cup bearer, however, did not remember Joseph, he forgot him. How do
dreams come true? We often falter right on the edge of a dream, so how do dreams
come true?

We often stumble right as they're ready to happen. How do dreams come true?
God's dreams, faith dreams.

How did Joseph's faith play a part in this dream becoming a reality? Because if
it's God's dream, faith is what's going to make it come into reality. Not your
energy, not your effort.

God's got some energy and effort that he has for you to do, but in essence, it
is your faith that's at the core of this dream. What are the faith steps that
you see in Joseph's life? Well, I see wisdom, I see humility, I see tenacity, I
see gratitude, I see those four faith steps.

I see wisdom. He knew the right time to act. Wisdom enabled him to act at the
right time.

Why are your faces sad, he said. He continued to care about people even as a
prisoner. The dream isn't happening in our lives, we get dejected, we get down
on ourselves, we don't care about anybody else, but not him.

He looked at these people and he said, "Why are your faces sad? " And he acted
at the right time. After he told the chief cup bearer that he would have a good
result from his dream, he said, "When all goes well, remember me.

" The fact that God is working out the dream does not mean you can't say to
someone, "When all goes well, remember me. " Faith does not mean you say
nothing. Faith just means that you don't become so discouraged, you don't
believe God is still at work.

"When all goes well, remember me. " Joseph continued to hope, he continued to
believe. Now at the end of chapter 40, beginning of chapter 41, we're going to
look at next week, we're going to find out that the chief cup bearer forgot, and
then he forgot for two full years.

He had to wait two more years. You see, Joseph took a risk, he had the wisdom to
take a risk, and he interpreted this dream, but then he had to wait. And in that
time of waiting, I'm sure he thought nothing had happened, but he still had the
wisdom.

He acted at the right time. I wonder what it is that you've done in your life,
where you had the wisdom to act at the right time. And you think God's not at
work, but he is.

You're in this two-year waiting period where the seed has been planted, and
someday it's going to sprout, but you're just waiting right now. Do we have to
make our own opportunities? No.

God makes the opportunities. But we often miss the opportunities that God makes
by not acting in faith, by becoming so discouraged that we stop noticing the
people around us. Keep serving, keep acting in faith.

Wisdom is knowing the right time to act. But not only did Joseph have wisdom, I
see his faith here in the fact that he had humility. He had the humility to
recognize the source of everything that was happening.

When they said we had a dream, in verse 16, instead of Joseph saying, "Oh, I
know how to interpret dreams. Look at me and what a great man I am," he said,
"God is the one that interprets dreams. " He said, "I can't do it, but God will.

God is the source. " That's humility. I've always liked what Samuel Morse said
about the invention of the telegraph.

He said, "I have made a valuable application of electricity, not because I was
superior to other men, but solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must
reveal it to someone, and he's been pleased to reveal it to me. " That's
humility. That's somebody recognizing that God is the source, and I'm glad I get
to be in on what God is doing.

Phillips Brooks, the pastor who wrote Little Town of Bethlehem, once said that
humility is not stooping until you're smaller than yourself. It's standing at
your full height beside the awesome greatness of God. It's recognizing the gifts
that God has put into your life, but it's recognizing that he is the source.

That's humility. Joseph didn't shy away from sharing, "I have gifts," but he
didn't shy away from saying God is the source. That's faith.

That's receiving the dream. He also had tenacity. Joseph had the strength to
last the night.

He lasted all the way to the end. Some people would look at Joseph. He's going
to become a ruler in Egypt.

Some of you might know the end of this story already. I hate to spoil it for
you, but he is going to become a ruler in Egypt, and I'm sure there were many
who looked at him and said that he was an overnight success. Well, if he was an
overnight success, it was a 13-year-long night.

That's how long he waited. He had tenacity. And Joseph, he seemed to have this
ability to always land flat on his faith.

He always had this ability to see what God was doing and how God was working
because he trusted God no matter the circumstance. God is at work in your life
no matter the circumstance. He had wisdom.

He had humility. He had tenacity. He also had gratitude.

He had the wisdom to remember God as he talks with this cup bearer and this
baker, as he's later going to talk to Pharaoh, as he's later even going to name
his sons and meet with his brothers. All the way through, God's name keeps
coming up in Joseph's life. I wonder, how often does God's name come up in your
conversations?

How often are you thinking about him with gratitude for what he has done?
Gratitude is one of the keys to receiving the dream. People who do not have
thankful hearts do not live out the dream of God in their lives because you're
stuck in yourself.

You're stuck on what isn't happening rather than looking with faith towards what
God wants to do. As we pray today, as we talk to God for a few moments, let's
talk to him about these four things. Our Father, we want to live this way with
wisdom and humility and tenacity and gratitude.

And we need you. We need your wisdom to live with wisdom. Jesus, we need your
example and power of humility to live with humility.

We need your strength to live with tenacity. God, we need your spirit of grace
to live with gratitude. I pray, we pray together today, Lord, these qualities of
life would be in our life because you're in our life.

Help me to do the wise thing today in living out the dream. Help me to be humble
as I live it out, realizing you're the one that's doing it. Give me tenacity,
the strength to keep on keeping on.

And God, all the way through, I pray for a spirit of gratitude, of trust in you.
And I ask for this in Jesus' name, amen. Next week, as we continue the story of
Joseph, Joseph begins to see that the dream is not all about Joseph.

It's really all about God.