We are talking today about dreams again and I think Martin
Luther King Junior weekend is a good time to talk about dreams
and we will be talking about that specific dream in a few
minutes as well. But the topic today is the power
of a God-given dream. Not all dreams come from God.
Sometimes we, you know, our, our dreams are our own.
And, and by dreams, I mean both kinds.
I mean those, those things that happen to us when we're
sleeping. And it's like, you know,
watching a free movie while you sleep.
And sometimes it's a horror movie and sometimes it's a
comedy, but it's at least free. And those other kinds of dreams,
the dreams that we have as visions of a preferred future of
something that we would like to see happen for ourselves, for
those we love, for the world that's around us, both kinds of
dreams. There's there's an important
difference, a meaningful difference between dreams that
are God-given and dreams that are aren't, that aren't.
And we're going to talk today about the God-given kind of
dreams, starting with Jacob's God-given dream.
Jacob had that dream. John already read that this
morning. There he was in the wilderness,
lying on the ground, head on a stone, had this dream, a
stairway to heaven. I, it didn't occur to me until
much too late. We could have had someone
singing that today, but it's a really long song anyway, so we
wouldn't have, wouldn't have had time.
But there was, there was that dream and, and this dream.
We're not told what Jacob's state of mind was, but I think I
think we can make a reasonable interpretation recognizing that
we don't know for sure, but but I think it's reasonable to say
that there's a good chance Jacob was at a low point.
May be the low point in his life so far.
He was the second of two twins. The elder was Esau.
He was the younger. Culture, tradition, and local
law dictated that the elder inherit everything and then
provide space for the younger in his household.
But God had told Rebecca even before Jacob and Esau were born
that the older would serve the younger, that that God's
covenant will be passed on to the younger, not to the older.
And that was Jacob. Jacob quickly became Rebeccas
favorite child, whether for that reason or other reasons.
Maybe they just understood each other better.
But at a young age, at a fairly young age, Jacob swindled his
older brother out of his birthright.
And then years after that, when their father was old and blind,
Rebecca helped Jacob lie to their to Isaac, his father, and
steal Jacob's that the blessing that Isaac had intended for
Esau. Esau was miffed at this,
understandably so. He was very angry.
He decided that the best course of action was to kill his
brother. And then there's no one to
divide anything with. He gets it all.
Jacob flees for his life. He's fleeing his home.
He's fleeing, as far as we know, the only region he had ever
known to go to a foreign country, a foreign land to meet
people again. As far as we know, he had never
met. They were relatives of his
mother, and he apparently had to leave so quickly.
He didn't couldn't take much with him because here he is in
the wilderness alone, which is dangerous all by itself.
No one to watch his back, no one to keep watch at night while he
sleeps or to share a watch with, and not even a pillow to put his
head on, Lying on the ground with his head on a rock.
And God gives him this dream and it's amazing dream, a ladder
connecting earth and heaven, angels going up and down on the
ladder, a connection between heaven and earth.
And in that dream, God speaks to him and renews the covenant,
makes the same covenant with him that he made with his
grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac before him.
Descendants as numerous as grains of dust on the ground.
Own all the land in every direction as far as your eye can
see, and your descendants will be a blessing to all peoples of
the earth. It's a tremendous covenant, a
tremendous promise, a God-given dream.
I want to give a quick disclaimer before we go further
and talk about the power of a God-given dream.
God communicates like this infrequently.
This is not a normal thing for God.
We see it repeatedly in the Bible.
And so sometimes we see things repeatedly in the Bible,
miracles being done, God communicating with dreams and
visions, these kinds of things. And, and, and tend to think that
that was the norm at least back then, if not now, but it wasn't
even the norm back then. What are the things we have to
realize is the events of the Bible took place over the span
of hundreds, even thousands of years, depending on how you mark
the date of things in the Bible. And and dreams then, as dreams
are now, are not God's standard way of communicating.
So if you've never had a God-given dream, whether the
kind when you're asleep or the kind when you're awake, that
doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.
It doesn't mean something wrong with your faith, doesn't mean
there's something wrong with your faith in God or your
relationship with God. It's just not the way God
normally communicates. God more likely communicates
through the words of scripture, through Bible study, through
hopefully occasionally from a sermon, from a bald headed guy
standing up in front of you. God communicates through people
around us. God communicates through
thoughts that pop into our heads and they're sometimes from God,
feelings in our heart that are sometimes from God.
But but this, this, these big dramatic things, this is not the
norm. And and I like to say that
because I've encountered some folks over the years that feel
like I never get anything special like that or they're
looking for it or longing for it and it's they come or they don't
come. But it's not a mark of being
closer to God or further from God.
It's just whether God chooses to communicate that way or not.
One, one of the writers, I think it was Saint Teresa of Avila.
I think it was her that I read this, that, that God and she had
these kinds of dreams and had these kinds of visions and, and
lots of people go, I wish I could have that too.
And she, one of the things she said was is God doesn't
communicate with most people this way.
And usually when he does, it's because it's a remedial thing,
because the person he's communicating with isn't capable
of understanding any other way. And and so so just want to put
that out there as we go along and move on to talk about the
power of a God-given dream. We're going to talk about two
aspects of the power of a God-given dream.
The 1st is that a God-given dream brings purpose with it.
It gives a sense of purpose. It it helps us answer the
question why, Why our life is what it is, or the OR or why
our, our, our, the why of our very existence, the purpose, our
reason for being here. And to to look at that point
more clearly, I do want to read a portion of, of Reverend Martin
Luther King Junior's I Have a Dream Speech and not the whole
thing. It's too long to read the whole
thing here during the sermon, but I want to read, and it's an
extended quotation, Doctor King delivering this speech in
Washington, DC publicly to a huge gathering of people on the
cusp of voting on the 1963 Civil Rights Act.
And and so he's a, he's addressing real people at a real
significant moment in history. And again, starting toward the
end of the speech here, I say to you today, my friends.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and
tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in
the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal. I have a dream that one day, on
the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even
the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering in the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be
transformed into an Oasis of Freedom and Justice.
I have a dream that my 4 little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their
skin, but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down
in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor
having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and
nullification, one day, right there in Alabama, little black
boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little
white boys and white girls and as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day
every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be
made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked
places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back
to the South with. With this faith, we will be able
to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling cords
of our nation into a beautiful Symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray
together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand
up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to
sing a new with a new meaning. My country tis of thee, sweet
land of liberty of thee. I sing land where my father's
died, land of the pilgrims, pride from every mountainside.
Let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great
nation, this must become true. And when this happens, we allow
freedom to ring. We let it ring from every
village and every hamlet, from every state and every city.
We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual. Free at last, free at last.
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
A powerful dream and a big part of the power of that dream was
this power of purpose. There's a reason why those folks
were gathered. There was a reason why they
were, they were there in Washington, DC.
There was a reason why they've been sitting down on buses and,
and, and, and reason why they've been going into whites only
spaces. There've been reason why people
were beaten, why people were attacked, why people were
willing to do the things that they knew would lead them to be
beaten intact. They had a purpose in mind and
that purpose was this dream that king articulated, this dream of,
of what in other places he called the beloved community, a
dream that's really, that's really a vision of God's Kingdom
come and God's will being done here on earth as it is in
heaven, where discord and divisions and strife are set
aside and people are able to come together as sisters and
brothers, regardless of race, regardless of creed, regardless
of ethnicity, regardless of all of the other things that we're
separating. This was that dream and, and it
helped. It helped those folks gathered
there and everyone who has heard it since and really listened to
it to, to see a part of their purpose in this world that we
exist, that we're here not by accident.
We're not here to just take care of ourselves and our own and
those we love. We are here to provide and
secure Freedom and Justice and hope and peace and life and the
blessings of life to all folks regardless, regardless purpose.
In that Jacob's dream, the dream that God gave Jacob there in the
middle of the wilderness when he had his head on, that stone also
carried with it purpose. Jacob's purpose was not to be a
a liar, not to be a thief, not to be a cheat.
His purpose wasn't just to survive his brother Esau's
wrath. His purpose wasn't even just to
get his brother's birthright and his blessing and his
inheritance. His purpose was to be part of
God's story for the whole world, for the whole world.
It was a covenant, a covenant that God had made with his
grandfather Abraham, with his father Jacob, and now I'm sorry,
with his father Isaac, and now with Jacob himself.
Look around Jacob, you got nothing with, you didn't even
have time to bring a pillow. You got nothing.
But every, all the land you can see in any direction as far as
your eye can see, will one day belong to your descendants.
You've got no children, you've got no wife, you've got no
prospects. You're on the run for your life.
But one day your descendants will outnumber the grains of
dust on the ground. One day all nations of the world
will be blessed through you. Jacob had a purpose in life.
He had a place in God's story and what God was doing and God's
purpose then with Jacob, with us, was to bless all people of
all nations on the earth. And that's that's another
variation. King's Speech was another
variation, a harmony on the the the the same refrain of justice
and peace and blessing for all the peoples of the earth.
And that that's the purpose in these God-given dreams to give
us a sense of place. That's the power to give us a
sense of place and a purpose in this world that we're not random
accidents. We're not we're not here due to
the random assembling of atoms and molecules and whatever and
all happened by chance and it's all going to go away in the end.
So nothing matters. So eat, drink and be merry for
tomorrow we die. We have a purpose, we have a
why, we have a reason. And that's part of the power of
a God-given dream. Now, there's also danger in
God-given dreams. And one of the big dangers in a
God-given dream is that we can receive it as an assignment.
And when we receive God-given dreams as an assignment, we can
quickly become overwhelmed with one of two things, overactivity.
I've got to make this happen. I've got to make this happen.
I've got to get it done. If God gave me the dream, he was
must make me want, must want me to make the dream come true.
But that's not why God gives dreams.
Not to make us make it come true, but to know that God will
one day make it come true. To give us purpose.
We're part of this story, but not to give us the assignment of
fulfilling the dream itself. If it's a dream that we can
fulfill, it's probably not a God-given dream.
God's dreams, God-given dreams are much bigger and and human
beings can rarely if ever fulfill them on our own.
But the church has made the, I think this is what frankly, I
think this is what led to Jacob's problems, present
problems that he was experiencing.
Anyway. His mother had received a word
from God when she was pregnant and the babies were fighting
within her. And God says, you know, the
older will serve the younger. And it seems like that Rebecca
and Jacob had spent Jacob's life so far trying to make that
vision, make that dream come true.
And they were manipulating people.
They were manipulating circumstances.
They were grasping, they were grabbing and now Jacob's running
for his life and the church has done this over and over again.
If, if, if maybe the the broadest expression of this
dream, this God-given dream that we have is, is thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And the church throughout the ages has made the horrific
decision of it's our job to make that happen.
And doggone it, if, if we can't get these heretics to, to repent
on their own, then if we want God's Kingdom to come and God's
will to be done, we're going to have to get him out.
We might even have to kill him and, and, and if we can't get
these, these savages to repent and do our things our way, we're
going to have to get them out or we're going to have to kill
them. And, and we're going to go into
that town. We're going to conquer this land
because, because we're doing things God's way and we want
God's Kingdom to become and they're not doing it God's way.
So we need to go over there and make sure that God's Kingdom
comes over there too. It's the whole earth.
And if we have to kill a few people or a lot of people, then
we'll do it. And the church has done this
over and over again throughout the ages of of using the excuse
of we have to make God's dream a reality in order to do awful
things in God's name. That's one of the dangers of a
God-given dream when we take it as an assignment and decide we
have to make it happen. The other danger when we take it
as an assignment and that we have to make it happen is that
we get immobilized by the size of the project.
It's too big. How can we do it?
We can't do it. And so we do nothing.
There's an old story, I think it comes from the early monastic
tradition, but I can't remember for sure.
But it's a story about a, a, a father who owned a lot of land,
wealthy man who owned a lot of land and, and he purchased new
land on the edge of his current land.
But the new land was covered thick with with briars and thorn
bushes, and his son was coming to his age.
He gave his son the assignment. Son, it's your job to clear the
land. I want you to clear that land so
we can use it. Whether we're going to graze on
it, whether we're going to plant crops on it, it needs to be
clear to the brier's son says I can do it.
And he goes out to do it. And the first day he gets there,
he walks through his father's current land.
He gets to the edge. It's looking down from a hill on
his father's land, on the new land of the purchase, sees this
vast stretch covered with thorns and briars and brambles, acres
and acres and acres and acres and acres.
It's all right. It's a big job.
I better get started. He rolls up his sleeves and he
spends the whole day working, and he's digging and he's
cutting out roots with a hatchet.
He's digging and he's cutting and he's digging.
He's cutting. He's carrying the roots away.
He's getting his hands cut, he's getting scratched, he's getting
scraped, he's getting tired, he's getting sweaty.
He works all day and we gets done and he looks around and
he's cleared a patch about 6 feet by 6 feet.
You're like, that was a lot of work.
He goes home, sleeps very well that night, comes back the next
day and he sees again just how much work he has to do and just
how little he accomplished in an entire day's work.
And he's completely overwhelmed by the size of the project.
It's too much, he says. It's too much.
And he's immobilized and he lies down and it is despair.
He just goes to sleep. He sleeps all day and he goes
home and he doesn't sleep as well that night.
Because he didn't do his work when he goes back the next day
and he does the same thing, and he sleeps.
And that goes on day after day after day until the days become
week after week after week until it becomes months.
And then the day that he'd been dreading for so long came, and
his father said to him, hey, I want to go check out the new
land, see your progress, see how things are going.
His son walks with him out there, and he's afraid the whole
way. And he's sweating, and he won't
make conversation. He won't look at his dad.
And they get up on that hill that he first looked over the
land that first morning, and all of that land still covered with
briars and thorn bushes. And they walked down to that
spot that he cleared. His father says, well, what
happened? Son tells his dad it was too
much. It was too much.
I worked really hard that first day and this is all I got
cleared. And I realized it's just too
much. And I just couldn't do anything
after that. And I came out and I'd sleep and
I'm sorry. And his father said, Son, don't
you understand that if you had just cleared enough every day to
sleep on, you would be finished by now?
And that's how these God-given dreams work.
If we see it as an assignment to get it all done ourselves, it
it, it's overwhelming and it will immobilize us and paralyze
us and we will end up being passive or we will end up being
frantically and abusively trying to make it happen.
And neither of those is right. All we really need to do is the
work that's in front of us today just enough so that we can lie
down at night and have a good night's sleep.
You see in all of this to remember that to avoid the
power, second power of a God-given dream is hope.
Part of the power of a God-given dream is purpose.
Another part of that power is hope and to avoid those dangers,
this is what we need to remember, that the dreams God
gives us are not assignments, they're promises.
This is what I am going to do through you.
God says to Jacob, this is what I'm going to do.
This is what I'm going to do in this world.
My Kingdom will come. My will will be done.
One day Jesus will return. He will establish his Kingdom on
earth. The Kingdom of heaven will come
to earth, and earth will become like the Kingdom of heaven.
One day that will happen. That's the hope that we have
that God will bring this about. And our role is not to make it
happen. And our role is not to stand by
and be passive. Our role, our purpose, our
assignment is just to do the little things on a day-to-day
basis. And those occasional big things
that come up and need to be done, we do those day in and day
out, doing that work of loving our neighbor as we love
ourselves, of loving God with all that we have.
The work of serving, the work of caring.
That's the daily take up your cross and follow me kind of
stuff, which is what Jesus taught us to do.
Because Jesus is our purpose and our hope.
He's our purpose to serve him, to follow him.
He's our hope because he's the one that's going to make all of
this happen one day anyway. And if we do the things he told
us to do, Love people, embrace them, care about them, welcome
them, receive them, regardless of the colour of their skin or
their gender or their background or their nationality or their
ethnicity or the language they speak or the politics they have
or the religion that they practice.
Welcome them, love them, receive them.
Be to them like I was to the people of this world when I was
here. Do that day in and day out and
one day I'll come and and I will make it all into what I promised
it would be. That's our part.
Because here Jesus said to this when he was first calling his
disciples and one of them he called, you know, Nathaniel was
brought by, by I can't think it was Peter.
I can't. I don't remember.
No, no. Which one was it?
I can't remember. My brain went blank.
Brought, brought Nathaniel and Nathaniel said, I was saying it
was being introduced to Jesus and Jesus like I saw you, you
were sitting under a fig tree earlier.
Jesus hadn't seen him with his eyes.
There was no one around and Nathaniel saw this is a miracle.
You knew who I was. You knew where I was, where I
was before I came here. You must be the Messiah, you
must be the Son of God. And Jesus said, look buddy, you
ain't seen nothing yet. One day you'll see heaven open
up and the angels of God ascending and descending on the
Son of man. And there's that same dream.
That's Jacob's dream. But now instead of the ladder
connecting heaven and earth, Jesus is connecting heaven and
earth. Jesus is the ladder, Jesus is
the bridge, Jesus is the gate between those two realms.
Jesus is the one that will bring the Kingdom of heaven to come on
the earth and the one that will bring the earth into the Kingdom
of heaven. And one day we'll get to see
that we're part of that same purpose.
We have that same hope, and our task along the way is just to do
those little things because even small acts of justice, mercy,
and love reveal the truth and goodness of Christ's Kingdom in
a broken world. And yes, there will be times
where big dramatic steps are necessary and happen like that
gathering in DC when Doctor King delivered that speech.
But most of the time and most of our lives are spent doing those
little things, those small things on a day-to-day basis
where we reach out and we embrace and we love and we care
and we receive just like Jesus did when he was here.
And that's the power of a God-given dream.
That's that's the power to live our lives daily with hope and
with purpose. Not because we had a big
dramatic vision of our own, not because we had a big exciting
dream of our own, not because we're going to make the dream
come true on our own, but because God has made us a
promise and he invites us to live like we really believe that
promise is going to come true in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen.