God is Faithful - Dreamer for sale
Aim: To realise that God remains faithful to us even when we ignore him
Reading: Genesis 37:1-36
Introduction
Days of our lives illustration
• Well you might be mistaken if thinking that you have just heard an excerpt of a Soapie when you listen to the story of Joseph.
• I mean look at the story, here you have an important family (usually the case in most soapies), there is the family business (sheep), jealous and vengeful siblings, remorseful siblings (Rueben), a couple of wives the favourite younger son…you name it and the Joseph story has it…we could easily use any of the titles of the soapies for this story…”The Bold and the Beautiful” (later we find out that Joseph was quite a looker), “Days of our lives”, “The Young and the restless”, even “Generations”.
• Never the less, unlike the soapies on TV, we can learn quite a lot from this soapie.
Joseph - the young dreamer
• We meet a young man, a teenager really, perhaps a little like this young guy on the screen (show the slide with the teenage boy)
• Imagine what this boy is like, what sort of attributes might he have. Well this very boy is in fact a spoilt brat and nearly every body in his family hate him…and he’s certainly not close to God at all.
• Can you imagine this boy at the age of 40, what might he be doing? Well God intends using this boy in another country where there will be many refugees. He will be a wise politician and a good manager…this young man on our screen could easily be Joseph.
• Now as we read, Joseph is a bit of a dreamer. He has big dreams, dreams that even get him into trouble. But he is not the first in his family to have these big dreams…in fact his father was the one who dreamed about the stairway to heaven in which he was told the same promise that his forefathers had been told.
• But we have a difference between Joseph and his father. Notice that in the entire story that was read this morning, God does not even feature…not because God is not there but perhaps because God is ignored.
Our dreams
• Now we all have dreams, I’m quite certain they don’t involve sheaves of grain and celestial bodies, but we have hopes and plans for our lives and for our families. So I want us to perhaps look at those dreams that we have today, perhaps compare them to our newly found friend Joseph.
1. Our dreams are often built on what God has gifted us with or blessed us with (God’s plan for us)
God’s faithfulness in His plans
• We can be certain that this story was recorded for us so that we can witness the faithfulness of God to his covenant people. Of which we are now also a part of through the new covenant in Jesus Christ.
• As was with Joseph’s father Jacob (who is also called Israel), the dreams involve the future plans that God has for them as well as for the future of their descendants. But God had chosen them especially to fulfil these plans and gave them the necessary “equipment” (gifts and talents).
• Joseph certainly wasn’t what we would call the perfect candidate for what God had planned. He was conceited, arrogant, spoilt and a boy only his mother (and father) could love…but God eventually used him. And it was for the Glory of God and not for the glory of the person. Sure God did bless them and Joseph certainly became a bit of a celebrity, but everything was for God’s purposes.
• We read in Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Now I don’t want to take this piece of the Psalms out of context but the desires here have nothing to do with our pleasure but they are desire that are deep seated in the will of God. They are desires that, when one is truly doing God’s will, endeavouring to please God, we given things that fall within God’s will.
God’s plan for us
• We spent a bit of time learning about God’s plan for our lives a couple of weeks ago; we can all be in agreement that God has a plan. Now God sparks off these plans by giving us vision, inspiration…dreams (perhaps not actual dreams but maybe even actual dreams).
• These things may seem out of reach but God begins to equip us and open doors for us. Things might seem difficult at times (Remember Joseph was chucked in a pit and sold off to a bunch of foreigners) and we may not even recognise that God is with us, but in all things God is working out his plan.
2. Sometimes we ignore God - particularly when things are going well
Cocky Joseph
• Remember when I said that our dreams are to fulfil God’s purposes, well Joseph got a little cocky (winty) with his dreams, it was all about him and nothing about God.
• God does not even feature in this story; in fact you would be hard pressed to think that we could even learn anything Spiritual out of this story. There is no doubt that the dreams were from God. If we look at the bigger picture, we have hindsight; we know that the dreams were fulfilled (except for his father and mother bowing to him - arguably he might have embellished his dreams somewhat because he was getting cocky).
• Perhaps it was easy to be cocky, I mean he had it all going for him, he was his father’s favourite, he got this nice coat, and he had the upper hand. Things were going well…what would make him think that God had anything to do with it? After all he was the better looking of the lot, he did have great talents.
Ignoring God when things go well
• How often do we recognise God when things are doing well? If we have to be honest, God is often the first one out of our minds we succeed or have good fortune. Often we begin to think about all the things we did to achieve what we did. I’ve seen it in people when it comes to church, when things are going well… they stay away, God takes a back seat and they get on with other things.
• But of course when things don’t work out so well, we blame God, we say things like “why did God allow that to happen?” And God begins to come into the picture again (although not in a positive light).
• So when things go well we ignore God, a little like our young friend Joseph.
Conclusion
Hindsight - God does not leave Joseph
• Now as I’ve said before we have the gift of hindsight because we have the rest of the story available to us. And we will explore the story of Joseph a little more over the next while so I won’t spoil it, but the truth is that God is faithful in his plans for Joseph and his family.
• The promise and plans come from Abraham’s days and the plan is slowly unfolding over each generation. Remember that Jacob is also known as Israel and his sons are the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. We often see how they ignore God over time as well, but God is faithful.
• The plans and dreams are in place for Joseph, one could say that his future is so bright, he’s gotta wear shades. But his cockiness gets a little in the way and he lands himself in the dwang. What’s the trouble? He forgets God in the whole thing, but God does not forget him. God does not leave him.
God never leaves us
• We have the same wonderful gift, God never leaves our side, and we learnt that in the story of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is always with us. We may feel far from God but then that has everything to do with us and nothing to do with God.
• Even when we ignore God, he is faithful in his promise to us, he never left Joseph, he never said…”well this guy is not interested in me; I’ll fulfil someone else’s dreams”. No, he continued to work in Joseph’s life to fulfil the dreams that he had for him.
But we should not ignore God
• That is the good news, but a word of caution perhaps. This might sound like an invitation to say well, “Juan said that God is faithful even when we ignore him, so let’s just ignore God - that seems easier.”
• No, God yearns for us to have a relationship with him, God wants to share in our dreams which he has given us…we are designed to have God be a part of that process. If we are able to involve God in our dreams, it is likely we will be able to recognise even more of what God has planned for us because we are in contact with God.
• (Display dream slide) - Look at these two dream bubbles, and let me ask you “what do you hope might happen in your life in the future?” Now, does God figure in it all? What do you think he might say about it?
• Take some time to think about it now and then when we have communion, bring your dreams to God. Amen
