Genesis 41:1-36 “Appointments”

Last month we had a lady come visit us here in the church during worship time. She was just like any visitor who would have walked in off the street. We welcomed her accordingly with a lei and history folder. She mentioned that she was from Los Angeles. I told her I had grown up in LA. As it turned out she had just written a book about her experiences in East LA. So, we shot a little Mexican chat back and forth. It was nice to click with a visitor in that way.

She stayed for the fellowship time and spoke with some of you regulars. Then, she asked if she could have some counseling time with me. She told me her situation and that she was living scared at the moment. We talked over the situation and I made a few suggestions to her in order to move out of her fear. She took my advice: I am not gonna to share anything too personal here now, but she texted me after she had made up her mind about some things: “I want to thank you for your divine guidance because I think our talk actually made me stronger through faith to run and escape. . . .Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for the message. Thank you for being from East LA (lol). Free at last, free at last. . . .The thing that helped me the most when you were speaking with me was that this guy was escalating. He’s never gonna change. It doesn’t matter what I was doing. He was unhappy and the abuse was escalating to such a severe degree that I felt that he was gonna kill me.”

Soooo, most of us just come to church on Sunday without having life-changing moments or “divine guidance,” as she put it. In such moments however, I just feel like God was using this church, this ministry, for a real acute purpose in somebody’s life. I think that her coming that day to be with us in worship was a divine appointment.

I want to contrast that with the more usual response to Sunday morning worship: “Pastor, I did not understand one thing about your sermon today.” It is not just about worship on Sunday morning, a lot of times in our youth ministries I hear kids say, “I only come to bible club for Jared’s spam musubis.” And yet, I know for a fact that that ministry has changed kids lives, and I can say that it has stopped at least seven kids that I am aware of from committing suicide. There may be others.

In our scripture for today we see divine appointment taking place with Joseph in prison. In this case it saves Egypt and the land of Israel. All the way through the story we hear Joseph attributing everything to God. He says, “It is not I who can interpret Pharaoh’s dreams but God in heaven.” And, did you notice at the end that Pharaoh, this is Ramses the Great, also comes to believe in God. We are left wondering if everything that has happened and will happen to Joseph part of God’s appointments to get Ramses to begin to believe in the one true God?!

The story of Joseph seems so random in some ways. However, we have the lines that tell us that God was sending the drought of seven years. Okay, how else could you get the most powerful person on the planet at that time, one who was revered as a god himself, to come to accept the one true God of Israel? So, the cupbearer to Pharaoh remembers this Hebrew guy in prison that could help to interpret dreams. Joseph is brought out of prison unshaven and poorly dressed so that he must be spruced up before he could even be in the presence of Pharaoh. Then, it happens: the divine appointment, the divine guidance through Joseph.

I want us to focus on one particular verse that seems to affirm the idea of divine appointment. This is verse 32. We read that the two dreams that Pharaoh has are actually portending the same fate and future. We read the line The dream is doubled because this is the sign that God has already fixed the thing in heaven. It is set and ready to be implemented. There is no going back now. It is going to happen.

Here is what might be gleaned from this: Spiritual appointment comes with an affirmation. You will not hear something only once. You will not just dream the one dream. You will not just but hear God’s voice once. Something will affirm that it is God’s plan for your life that has already been fixed up in heaven.

When I was called to ministry, I felt the Holy Spirit calling me on Christmas Eve 1979. But, I really did not know what to do about it. I was just a kid. I was living in Germany, but I wrote a letter to my pastor back in Los Angeles. He was close to our family. Some weeks later I got his response in a letter that basically said “I always knew you were destined to become a minister!” There was for me that second affirmation that came from a pastor, but as far as I am concerned it came from heaven, saying that this course for my life was affixed in heaven already. By the way, I am going to see Pastor Ted Robisnon tomorrow on Oahu for lunch!

כּוּן (koon) in Hebrew is being used here to say “fixed in heaven,” and it literally means to set up a tent pole or to erect something. You are now in the tent of God, the tabernacle, the holy place! Isaiah 40:21-22 talks about God setting up his tent over the entire planet, over us. All the tent poles are being set up in heaven for us! “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers: who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.”

I want to point out that in this particular reading we have Joseph being referred to as a “Hebrew” for the first time. Did you catch that? Why does the cupbearer use that term here? What should it matter? Verse 12 is clear. He is called a Hebrew, despite the fact that the word is not really used yet as it refers to the slaves “crossing over” the Red Sea. That history has not happened yet. So, what “crossing over” has happened? Joseph has come to Egypt, yes, but I think the reference here and what it means to be called Hebrew is more to the idea of crossing over in faith to being in God’s tent. Yes, Abraham in Genesis 14 is first called “Hebrew,” but he never really crossed anything. He left Ur and came to Canaan. Consequently in doing this he crossed over to faith in God. I like to think that he crossed over to “higher ground.”

This raises the question, perhaps you have had a divine appointment with the Almighty already. Maybe that has been affirmed in a second way already. But, have you crossed over to that higher ground yet to be with God on God’s appointment to your life? Are you in the tent that God has erected for you? Or, after the godly appointment you are now dis-appointed?! That is exactly what disappointment means! You have walked away from your godly appointment!

Now, I know we read only to verse 36 today, but something happens in verse 38 that truly affirms the sense of appointment for Joseph in his ministry. Remember how Joseph says to Pharaoh that He cannot interpret the dreams but God can surely do it. Here is Joseph telling Pharaoh that there is someone greater than him. Pharaoh could have had Joseph killed on the spot for saying such a thing actually. Pharaoh is supposed be the top guy in all of Egypt–not this Hebrew God guy! Yet in the Hebrew of this verse we can read אִ֕ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֛ר ר֥וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֖ים (Ish asher ruach Elohim), that is that the Spirit of Elohim is on Joseph. Pharaoh names God in heaven and acknowledges God’s power!

Historically speaking, we actually have Egyptian records of what happens after this moment! This is when things get really exciting. Ramses recognizes that there is one true God. His successor, a fellow by the name of Akhenanten actually gets rid of all the lesser Egyptian gods, Isis and Ra for instance. The entire nation believes in the one Creator God now. The Egyptian name of the one God was “Aten.” Pharoah Ramses II, also known as Amenhotep or Akhenaten, had the old statues of the pantheon of Egyptian idols destroyed. Monotheism comes to Egypt. Unfortunately it did not last! Yet, this is what Joseph is able to create because of his appointment through God to be the leader of Egypt through the years of plenty and through the famine that followed.

Obviously the Pharaoh did not bow down to Joseph, but he did cross over to a higher faith and belief in a transcendent God.

This is what Jesus also asked of his disciples and all of us still today. We are called to help people see the power of the one true God and to accept that power over their lives. Ephesians 3:9 “and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things. . . .”

Amen