God raises up His ruler to save the world from death

This is in the Bible in Genesis 40-41

Joseph is still in prison and has been for some time. But 2 of the prisoners who are in prison with Joseph are the king of Egypt’s chief baker and wine taster. One day Joseph saw that they were looking worried because they’d both had dreams didn’t know what they meant.

Jospeh said to them “God is the only one who knows what dreams mean and can explain them. Tell me what your dreams are.”

The cupbearer saw a vine with 3 branches with grapes, he squeezed the grapes into the king’s cup and gave the cup to the king. In the baker’s dream he saw 3 bread baskets on his head, but birds were eating the bread out of the basket.

Joseph said these dreams mean that in 3 days the king would set free the cupbearer but would chop of the baker’s head!! Woah! And that is exactly what happened.

Before the cupbearer left Joseph said “When you are free please remember me & tell the king about me. I was taken by force from my land and have done nothing wrong to be put in prison.” But the wine taster forgot about Joseph!!

2 years later the king had a double dream. He asked all his officials what his dreams meant but no-one could tell him. Then the wine taster remembered Joseph & spoke to the King.

The King demanded that Joseph was brought to him and said, “I have had a dream and I am told you can explain dreams.” But Joseph spoke to the king and said, “I cannot tell you what your dreams mean your highness, but God can.”

The king said in his dream he had been standing by the river and saw 7 fat and beautiful cows come out of the river and eat the grass. Then 7 more cows came out of the river. They were thin and ugly, the worst looking cows he had ever seen.

The thin and ugly cows ate the fat cows but after they had eaten them they looked just as thin and ugly as they did at the beginning.

In his second dream he saw 7 full and good heads of grain growing on one stalk. Then 7 more heads of grain sprang up after them. These heads were thin and ugly, and they were burned by the hot wind. Then the thin heads ate the good heads.

Joseph then said to the king “Both your dreams mean the same thing. God is telling you what he is about to do. He is telling you twice, to make sure you know that he will do this.

The 7 good cows and grain mean there is going to be 7 years of loads & loads of food in the land of Egypt. But the 7 thin cows and grain mean there will then be 7 years when there is no food at all. There will be a really bad famine.”

God was telling the king to save people from starving to death. He gave him 2 dreams to show that this really was going to happen and that it would happen soon. Joseph told the king that to rescue people, they would need to store grain during the 7 years when there was loads of food, so that when there was no food they could give grain to the people & rescue them.

So the king chose Joseph for this job and made him Prime Minister. He put him charge of the whole land of Egypt, so that people could be saved from death. No one was more important than Joseph apart from the king! All the people bowed down to Joseph. God is still in charge of everything that happened to Joseph and now Joseph is out of prison and has been raised up to be Prime Minister of Egypt.

And this points us to Jesus. Jesus is even better than Joseph. And God raised Jesus so that we can be rescued. He has told us so we can know what to do. If you want to remember more about that listen to the talk again.