Dreams Don’t JUST Come True
Gen 37:1-11 Jan 13, 2008
I’ve heard it said that we dream every night – we just don’t always remember dreaming. Dreams can be a powerful thing. Lots of people have made great discoveries in their dreams: The modern sewing machine was first envisioned in a dream – so was the structure of the atom. Studies measuring brain waves have shown that brains are actually more active when dreaming than when they are awake. That’s not permission to doze off though. I’m sure that 100% of you have been affected by your dreams in some way – at some time; but many people have had their lives completely changed by the dreams they have had.
Joseph was such a person. He was a shepherd turned slave turned convict turned ruler. He was Abraham’s great grandson - a 4th generation Israelite; a brand new chosen race of people created by God through Abraham’s faithfulness. Abraham, the 1st father of Israel, had Isaac who had a son Jacob, who was the father of Joseph.
Gen 37:1-11 And Jacob dwelt in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan.
Joseph’s story can be divided up into 3 parts: His 17 years at home, his years of captivity in Egypt, and his years of ruling in Egypt. It is a fascinating and intricate story that goes from Gen 37 to Gen 46
Joseph is one of several sons born to Jacob - according to Genesis 37:3,
(3) Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
Jacob ‘loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.’ The passage goes on to say,
(4) And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren; and they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.
His brothers hated Joseph because of their father’s partiality. They couldn’t say a kind word to him. Then Joseph has two dreams which appear to his family as setting Joseph (the youngest) above the rest of them.
(5) And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. (6) And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: (7) for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.
Joseph gives them more reason to hate him. The brothers have had enough and they sought to rid themselves of this brother they had become extremely jealous of. They were going to kill him but, instead they sold him as a slave. Joseph is taken to Egypt while the brothers, went home to lie about Joseph’s ‘disappearance.’
Joseph now begins a life in Egypt first as a household servant and he does it so well that he rises to the top of the servant hierarchy, but he is sexually harassed and then wrongly accused of rape by his master’s wife which causes him to be unjustly thrown into prison.
Then in prison God is with him and he also flourishes amazingly until he practically runs it – then he meets two of Pharaoh’s, servants, the cupbearer and the chief baker. Both have dreams and share their dreams with Joseph. He correctly interprets both dreams and asks to be remembered by the men when they are released back to the King but he is forgotten, for two years, until Pharaoh has a couple of dreams that no one could interpret.
Then the cupbearer remembers Joseph and Joseph is brought before Pharaoh and correctly interprets his dreams as a forewarning about a coming famine and the need to stockpile food before the famine hits. Joseph becomes Pharaoh’s number two man in the entire nation and the head of the national Egyptian food bank.
Then when the famine hits, 7 years later, Joseph finds himself face to face with his brothers over whom he has the power to provide food and therefore life or death. He and his brothers are reconciled and his family is spared starvation.
This is where Joseph’s dreams come true and where God’s purpose for his life come to fruition. It is many years later and many trials and tribulations later. Joseph’s dreams don’t JUST come true – they come true through much persistence. Suffering, faith and tremendous determination and great righteousness and through the supernatural intervention of God.
I think that is the way 99.9% of God given dreams come true – not instantaneously – not like the winning of the lottery – there is refining and preparation and submitting and transformation that precedes it. In Joseph’s case we can identify a couple of reasons that his dreams came true and I think most of them are transferable to your own life.
So before we do that I would like to pray: Heavenly Father we know that You have a purpose for each one of us – that You have dreams that You want to come true through us. Thank you that you involve us in Your work. I pray that you would give each one of us here a remembrance of a time You have spoken to us- quietly or loudly; gently or unmistakably - A feeling of outrage at an injustice - An inner urging to minister to a hurting neighbour - A word that nags to be said. – OR – a literal dream or vision that hasn’t yet come to pass. Focus our attention on the guidance You have given but we have not taken so we can allow You to strengthen us for the process of having it come true - AMEN
Before I go on I would like to ask you a couple of questions:
1. Do you believe that God gives people dreams today?
2. Has he given you a dream?
3. Has that dream changed your life?
No matter how you answered these questions and whether you think we are talking about literal dreams that happen at night while you sleep or they are day dreams or desires of your heart – if they come from God – if you believe they were given to you by God - all that we will say about Joseph is true for you too; dreams CAN BE true for you; they can be God’s promise to you and they can change your life and they can become an ultimate blessing as God works in your sphere of influence.
What would Joseph say about his dreams?
A. His dreams were important and momentous to him because they were given by God:
The first thing we have to agree about is that your dreams are important. God given dreams have a divine purpose that far exceeds our own human dreams. They eclipse all of our desires; our human dreams that creep into our sub consciousness. God has good reason to everything He does – even if that reason is for His good pleasure. Dreams are no exception. Joseph knew his dreams were important. He knew that they were momentous.
It may seem foolish for Joseph to goad his brothers with the first dream about the sheaves – but then he has a second dream:
(9) And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed yet a dream; and, behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars made obeisance to me. (10) And he told it to his father, and to his brethren; and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?
Joseph may seem foolish to make a big deal out of this dream when he knew that his brothers were already filled with rage toward him ; but I don’t think Joseph was a foolish young man like some of the commentaries seem to suggest. It wasn’t a mistake to share the dreams. He was probably naive and indelicate – but I’m sure of one thing - he wasn’t unintelligent. He told about the second dream because God was speaking in very dramatic ways to him. He was busting – he had to share with his family – the people who should have been close to him and supportive of him – what God was doing. Many years later it is very revealing what Joseph says to Pharaoh after Pharaoh received 2 dreams from God.
Gen 41:32 The fact that Pharaoh dreamed the same dream twice emphasizes God’s determination to do this and do it soon.
Joseph says – dreams are important - you can’t ignore 1 dream and you can’t change 2 dreams – God means business. When Joseph was 17 he may not have had the same wisdom about God’s ways – but he was deeply affected and he was definitely smart enough to recognize the dream importance – so much so that he risked relating it to his family. It wasn’t foolishness it was out of respect for God.
B: His dreams were the cause of the turmoil that got him out of his safe comfortable life
Another thing that you need to know is that your God given dreams are very different from your natural dreams. While your natural dreams may be dreams of a life of ease; Caribbean cruises, motorcycle trip through the Rockies, quitting the rat race owning a Audi R8, God given dreams will stretch you. They will make you uncomfortable. They will test you – you will argue with God and say “no way – not me; I can’t do that – I didn’t ask for that!” God gives dreams as a catalyst that propels you into the flow of the will of God – often against your will. They push you into the river of God. We need a push to leave the safe and comfortable – to live the radical Christian life.
If it wasn’t for his dreams Joseph wouldn’t have been at the right place at the right time to be God’s man of the hour. How else could God have gotten Joseph to Egypt and gotten him into a position of such authority? Millions of people were blessed by this plan of God’s. They were saved from starvation and death; how? Because Joseph suffered at the hand of his brothers. He suffered as a slave and suffered as a prisoner.
Does this story have a ring of familiarity to it? Who else do you know who suffered and even died so we could live? Yes Joseph is a “type” of Christ. His story is a prophetic drama of what Jesus would do and how we would be saved. Think of just a few of the parallels between Joseph and Jesus:
1. Both were loved extravagantly by their fathers
2. Both were sent to their brothers by their father
3. Both were shepherds (Jesus=good shepherd)
4. Both had expensive robes that were taken from them.
5. Both were sent by dreams to Egypt to escape death
6. Both suffered to save the lives of many
Jesus incarnation began with dreams given to a different Joseph and His life was protected in the same way when His father was told in a dream to flee to Egypt to escape the brutal ethnic cleansing of babies that Herod ordered. Dreams were very prominent in accomplishing both stories by making people do what they otherwise would not.
C: Joseph’s dreams sustained him.
When God gives you a dream it is because the task He asks of you is going to be difficult. The purpose of the dream is to be a marker to look back to when things get rough so you remember that God called you and God is with you. One of the purposes of the dreams that God gave Joseph was to sustain him through the difficult times ahead.
Joseph would not have been skeptical about dreams. His father would have told him the family stories of God’s promise to his great grandfather Abraham and how that promise was renewed for his grandfather Isaac and how it was renewed again to his father, Jacob. Where his brother’s may have memorized the stories of their fathers—Joseph must have been mesmerized by the stories. Joseph grew up with a certainty of God’s call and God’s presence. That assurance, identification and relationship with God was greatly reinforced by the dreams God gave him – God had something special in store for him – his dreams were a constant reminder of that and by his actions we can guess that Joseph was excited and expectant to see that plan in action. His dreams set him apart and they instigated righteousness in him.
Joseph would not have been skeptical about dreams because his father would have told him about the dream he had had about speckled goats and the dream that his father-in-law had had. Joseph’s father was not ignorant of the fact of God-given dreams at all. It was dreams that brought him back to the “Canaan - land of his father’s sojourning.”
Joseph’s dreams shaped him and propelled him. Dreams have a way of adding a special dimension to our lives. We eat, we drink, we work, we play, we sleep – The answer to that fundamental question “is this all there is?” is NO! God often uses dreams to give you a picture of something you are unable to see. A picture of how God sees you and where God sees you. A son or daughter totally fulfilled by being about their Father’s business. That picture can be so vivid and strong and real that it gives you single minded purpose and passion to MAKE it come true.
And so dreams can be like a beautiful prophetic picture that speaks to you from the future in the past and from the past about the future. They say some of the most encouraging things you can ever hear …. “it’s going to be alright.” Not a flippant patronizing phrase from well meaning acquaintances but an assurance from God that THIS is HIS will. This is what will be – hang on. A glimpse of the finishing line that keeps you running when you’ve got nothing left.
D: His dreams came true because of his godliness and God’s faithfulness
The scripture suggests that though Joseph’s father Jacob was at first a little ticked at Joseph for his dreams – he may have had an inkling that God was doing something great through him.
(11) And his brethren envied him; but his father kept the saying in mind.
shaw-mar’
A primitive root; properly to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to, etc.: - beware, be circumspect, take heed (to self), keep (-er, self), mark, look narrowly, observe, preserve, regard, reserve, save (self), sure, (that lay) wait (for), watch (-man).
Did Jacob eventually view Joseph’s dream as a promise? Did he think about how God had blessed him so much with the dream about the goats? What would he have felt when the brothers brought the blood soaked robe and the lie that Joseph was dead? How could that promise come true now? How could God make a promise and not fulfill it? Was it a test like grandpa Abraham went through when he was asked to sacrifice his dad - Isaac? God’s promises are made to people and they come to pass through people. For some mysterious reason God uses people. Dreams don’t JUST come true – People are necessary. It takes a partnership to make them come true. Joseph can’t be dead!
Dreams don’t JUST come true - God doesn’t make them come true and people don’t MAKE them come true – it is a partnership. Joseph was a righteous man – but no one is righteous enough – or smart enough – powerful enough to do the kinds of things that God dreams of. God sees what can be and presents it to us as an opportunity – but God sized dreams are impossible dreams. Imagine an Israelite shepherd boy becoming the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt. Impossible right? Well maybe then – those were very different times right?
Imagine a modern day Joseph I heard about on Huntley St Mon pm. Serge Leclerc was born to a 14 year old mother in a shack somewhere in New Brunswick or Quebec, the product of a rape. He doesn’t know what year he was born or where.
LeClerc had a troubled childhood and quickly graduated up the gang hierarchy. He ran two stills and bootlegged booze across a network of Toronto bars. At 15 he was already a very dangerous young man, he carried a gun and paid $62,000 cash for his first house.
As the ’60s ended LeClerc swapped liquor for drugs. Most of his profits went to support his own drug habit. When his habit caused him to lose everything he had, he recalls, "I ended up breaking into a house to get to the refrigerator to get some food."
He was finally busted in the Eastern townships of Quebec with a $40 million drug lab. He was making crystal meth. LeClerc was back in prison. By his late thirties LeClerc had spent most of his life in detention centres across Ontario and Quebec. He notes, "I’ve been in every prison in Ontario; I’ve been in every penitentiary in Quebec." - a 250 lb terrifyingly brutal body building gang leader with a grade 5 education.
That was before. - On December 25, 1985, LeClerc asked Jesus to forgive his sins and invited Him into his heart. " Jesus gave him a dream. An impossible dream. Where did it lead?
In 1991 LeClerc graduated on the Dean’s list with a Bachelor’s degree in sociology. Four years later he added an Honours degree with a minor in social work. A motivational speaker. He received a full pardon from the Government of Canada for his dramatic turnaround and tireless work with troubled youth. For someone with his criminal record, such clemency is unprecedented.
Once called the most dangerous man in the prison system in all of Canada he now is a Sask MPP and is the Legislative secretary to the Minister of corrections and an outspoken advocate for Christian morality. He runs the prisons – sound familiar?
Do you think this kind of dream JUST came true? God doesn’t wave a magic wand – it takes partnership. It takes work and perseverance and vision. God given dreams are a gift that we don’t ask for and wouldn’t accept otherwise because His dreams are unimaginable.
God wants to dream thorough you and it will take you through water and fire – you will be drowning and burning out but God will be there. He will be in it with you and you will not be hurt. Dreams don’t JUST come true but God plus you can MAKE them come true.
