If you have not been part of St Stephen’s morning services for the past few weeks, you might have missed our series on the life of Joseph. Here was a young man, born into a well-off family already well-equipped with sons. Yet his father Jacob favours him over the others, possibly because his mum was Dad’s favourite wife, out of four women with whom he fathers children. Joseph makes sure that his brothers are fully aware that he is more favoured than they – an approach to brotherly love that pretty much ensures that they sell him as a slave to some passing Egyptians, after coming that close to killing him. Their story to the heartbroken father is that a wild animal tore his beloved son apart.
In case you think that surely such an unholy story should have got edited out of the Holy Book, be assured that this book is a true accounting of the lives of God’s people, as seen by God. If the Bible were written by men for men, they would certainly have left out some of the more embarrassing details, on the grounds that it does little to enhance the public image of some of the heroes of the faith. Instead, we get stuff that you could not make up because it happened for real.
Last week we left Joseph languishing in prison, unjustly victimised. He is in chains because he was framed by his Egyptian slave owner’s wife, who had failed in every attempt at seducing the smart young Hebrew slave who had joined the household.
That was last week in the life of Joseph. This week in our own era marks the start of the Ashes cricket test series between England and Australia. The Ashes have often been marked by some of telling insults and put-downs. In 2001, when the Australians were upping the ante in all departments, England sent out new boy Jimmy Ormond to play his first test. He was welcomed to the batting crease by Mark Waugh, the stylish Australian batsman who also happened to be the twin brother of Australia’s captain, Steve Waugh. Mark Waugh says to Jimmy Ormond, “Mate, what are you doing out here? There’s no way you are good enough to play for England.” Ormond replies, “Maybe not, but at least I am the best player in my own family.”
Joseph probably needed very little external affirmation in telling his brothers he was the best among them. In case there were any doubts, he had two dreams he could and did refer them to. The dreams showed, first the brothers and then, the entire members of the family bowing to the young upstart.
Tied in chains in an Egyptian prison, Joseph must have wondered what his dreams really meant. Were they for real? What did they really mean? Did he misinterpret them? Were they just fanciful creations of his own fertile, hopeful imagination? In this environment, Joseph is exposed to four dreams that were dreamed by others. It is these dreams and their interpretation that we are considering today.
If you want to follow the dreams in the passage today, you will need to read them for yourselves in Genesis 40 and 41 when you get home. I intend to focus on a big idea that gives us a key to understanding the passage. The key is simply this: God is the main character in the Joseph story – He is carrying out his plans and achieving his objectives. Look at Joseph’s story to get a sense of this:
• By being sold into slavery, Joseph ended up in the land of Egypt, the leading super-power of the age
• As a slave, he works for Potiphar, a leading figure in Pharaoh’s court
• When imprisoned, he ends up in a prison where there are some important political prisoners
• He is accurate in interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh’s imprisoned staff – one of them is released in three days to his old job, and the other is hanged
• When Pharaoh has his own cryptic dream which his dream team cannot deal with, the cup-bearer remembers the one person who did seem to be able to understand dreams – Joseph.
• Joseph helps Pharaoh understand his dream as one that is God-given in order to allow Pharaoh to come up with a plan to deal with the impending famine.
• Pharaoh is impressed by Joseph’s discernment and strategic thinking and gives his the top job in Egypt.
• The door is now open for Joseph to help save his family from death due to famine – the very family that God has chosen to be His special instrument for God’s salvation plan for the whole world.
It is a fantastic big picture. But why did God have to make it so complicated? And was it fair on Joseph to spend 13 years in a foreign jail so that God could accomplish his greater purposes?
In Isaiah 55v8, we read: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
The God of the Joseph story is still accomplishing his purposes among men and women. We know the end-game: one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. But our thoughts are not his thoughts, and we don’t always understand why He follows the path he does.
But we can accept that God has his own plans for humankind. But what about me, we ask? Why does God have to make my own life so complicated? Why is life unfair to me? Isn’t there a better way? I am sure that Joseph had the same questions of God at every step of the journey he took away from his family till he met with Pharaoh. After all, an easier way for all concerned would have been for Joseph to become a leading sheep and goat trader who impresses Pharaoh with his business acumen and so gets the job of the Egyptian Chancellor of the Exchequer by sheer dint of hard work and personal skills.
But that was not God’s way. While God had these larger purposes to fulfil regarding humankind, he also had larger purposes to fulfil in the life of Joseph. For one thing, the Joseph that was prepared to lord it over his older brothers was not the right man to be sensitive to the needs of others in prison. Yet we find that, in the midst of his strife, Joseph is still attentive to the hurts that others are experiencing in their lives.
When Pharaoh’s butler and baker are put in jail, they each have dreams that trouble them. In 40v6, we read that “When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected.” Joseph had every reason to be a bitter young man, rejected by his own brothers, and now in jail through a set-up. I was once in a situation when I first arrived in Twickenham where I could not get a job. All I thought about was getting the one thing that would not come my way. Joseph could have been obsessing about the injustice of it all. Instead, he was attentive to the needs of others around him. What a challenge to each of us, caught up in our personal situations, even strife, to still extend the hand of help to somebody around us who is also in need.
It is also true that the young Joseph would not have been humble enough to ask God to interpret the dreams of others. It is Joseph who gives God a role in the dreams of Pharaoh and his staff. In 40v8, he asks, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” Again, in 41v16, when Pharaoh is asking for Joseph’s help in interpreting dreams, the latter points out that he cannot do it but “God will give Pharaoh the answer that he desires.”
Amazingly, God strings together the strands of Joseph’s own shattered life, the dreams of some Egyptian men, the feeding of a dysfunctional family in the midst of a famine, and the working together of salvation for the whole world into a single story that is still continuing today, in our lives. That is the big picture of God’s role in the dreams of the Joseph story.
Dreams in our time
So how should we think about dreams in our own time? I would like to ask three questions: who has dreams, what kind of dreams are they, and how do we dream God’s dreams?
1) Who has dreams? Of course, we all have dreams. In the Bible, the earliest recorded dreams are ones where God speaks directly to a human. The dreams in the Joseph account (his own dreams, and the dreams of the Egyptians) are the first dreams described in the Bible which are not the direct utterances of God to the person who was dreaming. In fact, God is absent in these dreams. He is neither speaking in them, or a character in the dreams that others are talking about. Yet, Joseph helps us see God as the one who has given those dreams, and the one who interprets the dreams.
In our world today, society has turned away from the standards set by the Bible. When there is no knowledge of God, great importance is attached to portents of all kinds. Eastern mysticism and New Age faiths are popular in the West for precisely this reason. But we also need to be wary of an opposite tendency: to ignore the wisdom we can get from the Scriptures, particularly in a world where science and reason can be used to explain just about anything.
In the reason-oriented, rational world we live in today, we discount dreams. Especially in the West. Yet that is not true in other parts of the world. Studies tell us that 25% of all Muslim-background Christian believers came to the Christian faith via some kind of dream or vision. So the God of dreams has not gone out of business. It is us who have lost a connection with him today.
2) What kind of dreams can we have today? We can have classic-asleep-in-the-night kind of dreams even today. Around 20 years ago, two of us went on a trip in the Himalayan mountains, or Himalayas as you call them in England. My companion was a friend of mine from Delhi called Sanjay, and amazingly his wife is in the congregation here today. Sanjay and I borrowed a tent from a friend but we did not have a chance to ask him about how to use it. We arrived at our camp site for the night. The winds were blowing and a terrific storm was spilling monsoon rain across the hills we were in. In the darkness and heavy rain, we struggled to put up our unfamiliar tent. We failed. We were totally soaked when we sent to sleep that night, with rain managing to get into this tent that we had failed to erect properly. The next morning Sanjay told me he had had a dream in which he figured out how to put the tent up. Sure enough the next night the tent went up without any difficulty just as in Sanjay’s dream.
But a more typical dream for us today would be the dreams and desires we have of the things we want to do, the homes we want to be in, the jobs we want, the people we want to be with, or the lifestyle we want to lead. What are your dreams today?
3) And what are God’s dreams and desires? For us? For those around us? In Psalm 37v4 we read: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This verse has a curious two-way play that Joseph would have appreciated. If we delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us the desires of our heart. That is the message of Jesus in the sermon on the mount when he says: Don’t worry about things like food and home and clothing. Seek first God’s kingdom and these things that you worry about will be give to you.
But in another sense, if we delight in the Lord, he refreshes our thoughts and desires so that our dreams and desires are aligned with God’s dreams and desires. The things we want are the same things that God wants. Our dreams are his dreams. Joseph had his dreams. But those dreams would never have fit in with God’s greater purposes if Joseph had not been willing to learn the lessons that God wanted to teach him, while still remaining faithful to the dream that God had given him.
During the American Civil War, an unknown soldier fighting for the confederate armies of the South wrote this poem:
I asked God for strength that I might achieve
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey
I asked for health that I might do greater things
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy
I was given poverty that I might be wise
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life
I was given life that I might enjoy all things
I got nothing I asked for – but almost everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
What are the dreams and desires of your heart? Are they the same ones that God is dreaming and desiring for you? Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
