Hello and welcome to Trinity Sermons.
We are Trinity Church Streetsville and each week we bring you a message, a message rooted
in biblical truth and a message intended for you to take with you into your life.
We at Trinity are a church located in Mississauga, Ontario and in our own time we are learning
to love Jesus, live like Jesus and lead others to Jesus.
Today we are starting episode 1 of a new sermon series, a series all about the Bible's most
famous dreamer, Joseph from the Old Testament.
We are calling this series, Live in the Dream and you won't want to miss any of these sermons
as we journey through the life of Joseph.
And before we begin, we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on
social media and please visit our website at trinitiestreetsville.org.
Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
God bless.
A reading from Genesis chapter 37 verses 2 to 11.
This is the account of Jacob's family line.
Joseph, a young man of 17, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilha
and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives.
And he brought their father a bad report about them.
Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons because he had been born to
him in his old age and he made an ornate robe for him.
When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him
and could not speak a kind word to him.
Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.
He said to them, listen to this dream I had.
We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood
upright while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to him.
His brothers said to him, do you intend to reign over us?
Will you actually rule us?
And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
Then he had another dream and he told it to his brothers.
Listen he said, I had another dream and this time the sun and moon and 11 stars were bowing
down to me.
When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, what is this
dream you had?
Will your mother and I and all your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before
you?
His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
The word of the Lord.
Well, good morning everyone.
I don't know if you have ever had one of those weird, weird dreams that you can't quite figure
out what the dream means.
And maybe you even had this dream more than once.
Maybe it's a recurring dream.
I have had, there's one dream particularly in my life that I have had on a number of
occasions and I want to share it with you now.
And I want to tell you though, it's a little spooky.
It's a little creepy, but you know, I think it'd be okay.
But the dream always starts the same way.
I'm sitting down in the front seat of a roller coaster and the arm things come down and go
and they lock into place, which is fine.
But you know, it can also be kind of, you can feel weird when you can't move.
And then in the dream, the roller coaster starts to go up the first main hill.
And you know that sound that roller coasters make when they're like going up the hill?
They're like, chickadee, chickadee, chickadee, chickadee, chickadee, chickadee.
So I hear that noise.
They're going up, up, up.
And as we're getting higher, I'm feeling like a little more nervous, a little more scared.
And I can see the precipice of the hill coming up and because I'm in the front, when we
get to the top, just when I'm starting to get that feeling like I'm falling and getting
that feeling like I'm kind of really, really nervous, that's when I just take the moment
and I turn around to look and see who are the other people in the roller coaster who
is sitting behind me.
And when I turn around, that's when I, that's the moment when I see them.
I see them.
I'm looking and there they are.
Sorry, I got to turn my clicker on here.
You know, just prepare yourself for when you see who is sitting behind me in my dream.
Yes, it is none other than Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar, Grimace, Bertie, Mayor McCheese.
They're all there, all the characters from McDonald's sitting behind me in the roller
coaster and they're staring right at me.
I might make this up.
This has happened like a number of times and it is terrifying.
I don't know why they're looking at me.
And then I wake up and I don't know what the dream means, but I mean, it can't be good.
I wonder, and I just thought I'd ask, has anyone else had a dream like this?
I was really hoping I wasn't the only one.
But anyways, you know, there actually are some dreams that everybody has had from time
to time and actually we did a poll online this week on our YouTube channel and we asked
people, hey, which of these dreams have you dreamt the most?
I want to do the same poll right here and see what you think.
There's some common dreams.
Many people dream about flying and they dream about falling.
They dream about losing teeth.
They dream about being back in school or they dream about moving in slow motion.
I want to know, could you just take a few moments, turn to the person beside you and
tell them which of these dreams you have dreamt the most?
Okay, let's do a little vote here.
Let's just tell me if you've had this dream.
Just tell me if you've had this dream.
How many of you have had the dream of flying?
Falling.
Losing teeth.
It happens.
Yeah.
Being back in school or moving in slow motion or just being stuck.
Yeah.
So it looks like the most popular one here is the one of falling.
That feeling of falling.
I think I know what you mean.
You slip almost and you feel like you're going to fall off your bed or something like that.
Now listen, while most dreams like this are dreams that we remember and many of us remember
the same dreams, you probably know this, that most of our dreams we don't remember at all.
You've had that experience of waking up in the middle of the night and you've just had
this amazing, vivid, exciting, exciting dream.
But then actually when you get to breakfast in the morning, you can't remember any of
it.
So the question is, why does that happen?
Why do we forget our dreams?
There are a few different theories.
One theory, you might call this the scientific theory, is that there's a neurochemical process
that happens in your brain where intentionally your brain snips off those dreams because
your brain perceives it as entirely useless information and so might as well just get
rid of it and not bother trying to remember it.
That's one scientific explanation.
There's also a psychological explanation.
Sigmund Freud believed that one of the reasons we don't remember our dreams is that our dreams
represent repressed thoughts and secret feelings that we have that we don't actually want to
remember subconsciously.
We don't want to remember.
So we intentionally or unintentionally forget them to protect ourselves.
And then there's a third theory and that's kind of more of a practical theory that says
the reason we forget our dreams is actually just because we wake up all of a sudden.
Our alarms go off and interrupts the dreaming process and that makes the retention of the
dream much harder to do later on.
So there's a lot of reasons why we might forget our dreams, but all the experts would agree
that one of the best ways to remember your dreams is to write it down as soon as you
can to have a pen or paper by your bedside and write down what your dream was about.
And actually for that reason, we want to give each and every one of you today, we have a
small gift.
You'll get this on your way out the door at the end of the service, but it's a live in
the dream notepad.
And we want you to use this notepad and maybe start writing down some of the dreams that
you are having in your life because, and here's where we're going today, your dreams are actually
quite important.
And our dreams are things that we don't want to be forgetting.
Now when I say that, I'm not talking about the types of dreams like, you know, roller
coasters and Ronald McDonald.
Those dreams, yes, we want to get rid of those dreams.
If I could get rid of those dreams, I would, I would try to forget them.
But there are other dreams.
There are other dreams.
The big dreams, the big visions, the big dreams that God gives you.
We don't want to forget those dreams, right?
And I'm talking about dreams.
These aren't even dreams that you dream when you're asleep necessarily.
These are the dreams you carry with you each and every day.
Dreams about the way you want to live your life.
Dreams about where you think your life is going.
Dreams about where you think God is calling you to go.
Dreams about how to make the world a better place.
You've got to dream about an idea.
You've got to dream about an opportunity.
You've got a vision for the future.
Those are really, really important dreams.
How do we make the world a better place?
That's a dream we have to remember.
How do we become the kind of people that God wants us to be?
Those are God-given, God-sized dreams.
Those are not silly dreams.
Those are serious dreams.
Those are not dreams you should forget.
Those are dreams you need to remember.
And the reason God would give you that dream is because he wants you to live that dream.
Dreaming is essential to figuring out who God wants us to be.
You might say that without a dream in your life, you're always going to feel a little
bit stuck.
You know, even the Bible says that without vision, the people perish.
Without a dream, we perish.
But when we have a dream, when we have a vision of the future, when we have an idea of, oh,
this would be exciting, then all of a sudden we're not stuck in our lives.
We're not perishing.
We're moving forward into something exciting and new, right?
I would even go so far to say that if you maybe don't have some kind of dream for your
life, then are you really living your life?
Dreaming is something that's so essential to being a human being.
I would, I don't think animals dream this way.
I mean, we've all seen our dogs lying on the floor having a dream, but I don't think our
dogs are dreaming about space travel, or I don't think that fish are dreaming about flying,
or cats are dreaming about finding a cure for cancer, right?
But humans, humans have dreamed all of these things and so much more.
Napoleon said that those with imagination will rule the world.
Put another way, those who dream can change the world.
Now the Bible has a lot to say about dreams.
In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.
Your sons and your daughters will prophesy.
Your young men will see visions.
Your old men will dream dreams.
In those days, I will pour out my spirit even on my servants, men and women alike.
If you're here today and you're young or if you're old, God has a dream for your life.
If you're eight or if you're 98, God has a dream for your life.
If you're a man or a woman, if you are a son or a daughter, when the Holy Spirit comes
into your life, that spirit will stir up dreams and visions and ideas for the future, right?
It could be a dream for your life.
It could be a dream for this world.
And so I'm just going to ask you the question.
Do you have a dream?
Do you have some sense of a vision for the future, a passion?
What is God calling you to do?
Who is God calling you to be?
Where is God calling you to go?
What are your dreams?
Now you might say, Rob, you know what?
I've never even thought of it that way before.
And that's fine.
That's totally fine.
It could be that others of you say, you know, Rob, I think there actually was a time in
my life when I had some dreams and real visions and plans for the future.
But I don't know.
Time went by and I just kind of forgot them and left them behind.
And that's okay, too.
Maybe some of you would say, you know, Rob, I actually am living a dream.
I'm pursuing a dream right now.
But if I'm honest with you, Rob, it's not like a God given dream.
It's a very self serving, very human dream.
The things I'm pursuing, I don't even sure that God wants me to be focused on.
And, you know, thanks for sharing that.
But the point of this teaching series is to help us to remember how to dream again, because
God gives us dreams for a reason, the world needs dreamers.
And I'll even tell you, this church needs dreamers, too.
So if we're going to talk about God given dreams and big dreams and important dreams,
then we have got to talk about Joseph, because Joseph was the biggest dreamer of us all.
You know, if you read the very beginning of Joseph's stories, when Joseph's brothers see
him coming, they say, look, here comes that dreamer.
Joseph was a dreamer.
I don't know if you guys have read the whole story of Joseph.
I really encourage you to do so.
It's found in the book of Genesis.
Genesis gives an incredible amount of space and time to the story of Joseph from Genesis
37 to 50.
It's like its own little novel.
It's a beautiful work of storytelling.
You really need to read it.
Go home and read it before we meet again next week.
And today we're only going to be able to just kind of crack in to the very beginning of
that story, the story of Joseph.
And right away, though, I think something emerges from his story that applies to all
of our story.
And that is this.
When God gives us a dream for our life, that dream always comes with two pieces.
It comes with disruption and it requires decision.
So when God gave Joseph a dream, it caused a disruption and forced a decision.
And when God gives you a dream, a vision, a sense of where you're going in your life,
it's going to be a disruption, but it's also going to force you to make a decision.
So let's just look at those two things and let's start first of all with this idea of
a disruption.
Dreams always cause disruption.
If your dream is not disruptive, it doesn't, you know, shake you up somehow.
Chances are it's probably not a very good dream.
Now we modern people, we like to minimize disruption, right?
We want to manage our lives and micromanage our lives and make sure we have everything
under control and we'd like to predict the future and forecast where things are going
and control the world.
We don't want surprises.
We don't want surprises or changes.
We don't want to be in control 24 seven.
But then dreams come in and they make their sneak attack on our mind and our heart and
we slow down and we start to listen and we realize that the spirit is actually moving
in us and giving us a new vision.
We don't ask for these dreams to come.
Well, we don't necessarily want them, but we can't keep them out of our of our little
picture here.
This controlled space, they come in and they disrupt.
They they disrupt our equilibrium.
They disrupt our thinking.
They totally rock the boat.
Dreams always cause disruptions.
If you read the Bible and look at some of the times when God sent dreams into people's
life, it's always leading to disruption.
It's always interrupting their world.
God gives Abraham a vision that says Abraham go to a brand new land.
Boom, complete disruption.
He has to leave everything behind.
In this story, we're going to hear God gives Pharaoh a dream about a famine coming and
Pharaoh can't do anything about it.
Boom, huge disruption.
Pharaoh has to change his thinking and his plans for the future.
But Knesser ends up having a dream, a crazy dream.
Boom, it scares him.
His life is coming to an end.
A great big disruption.
Jesus actually goes around and starts telling people about God's great big dream for the
world and boom, it's a huge disruption.
People start leaving everything to follow him.
Other people want to kill him for what he is saying.
Even when Jesus is on trial and Pontius Pilate is, you know, standing there at the court,
God's wife sneaks in in the middle of the trial and says, don't have anything to do
with this guy, Jesus, because I just had a dream about him and I'm totally disturbed
and I'm totally disrupted by it.
The Bible is full of dreams and every dream seems to lead to one disruption to another
disruption.
So let's take a look at Joseph's dream.
What were Joseph's dreams and how did it disrupt things?
Well, actually, Joseph had not one but two dreams in our reading today, both of which
meant the same thing.
And this is what Joseph's dreams meant.
Joseph, one of the youngest kids in his family, was going to become the head of the family.
And he was even going to become king of the family.
Now you can see how that might be just a little bit disruptive, right?
He tells his brothers, listen, listen to this dream I had.
We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose up and stood
upright and your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.
And Joseph, he's just, he can't leave it at that.
He's pushing and he says, oh, and listen, I had another dream.
I had another dream.
And this time the sun and the moon and 11 stars were bowing down to me.
The 11 stars stand for the 11 brothers and this time the sun and the moon stand for Joseph's
own father and mother, all bowing down to him.
There's actually no complicated interpretation that gets offered here.
But he hears his dream seems to understand what he's talking about.
They know what he means.
His brothers are like, so what you intend to rule and reign over us?
Are you actually going to rule us?
His parents then say, well, your mother and I and your brothers, are we all going to come
and bow down to the ground before you, Joseph?
Man, this is not the dream of some goofy spoiled kid.
This is not a Ronald McDonald on the roller coaster dream.
This isn't weird and meaningless.
No, this is a disruptive God dream, right?
He is dreaming a very big dream.
He is dreaming of being in charge of being the ruler of being king.
And he's disrupting everything because of it, because of course, in those days, families
had their hierarchy.
Some do today, but there was a, there was a hierarchy.
There was an order, a birth order.
And that birth order told you who was in charge and who was going to be in charge in the end.
And Joseph being second to the youngest was definitely not the one who was going to be
in charge.
But he has the dream and he tells them the dream and it of course disrupts everything
and nobody can brush it off.
Nobody can forget it.
They hate him all the more.
The family is boom blowing up because of this dream, because his brothers were jealous of
him.
We read.
And it's been told also that his father kept the matter in mind.
And that's interesting, but it also makes sense because Joseph's family of all families
should know that God sometimes uses dreams to speak to people in times of big change.
Jacob himself, Joseph's father, right?
He wants had a dream, a huge dream that he was lying down and there was a stairway, a
ladder going up into heaven and angels were going up and down on that ladder.
And God had given Jacob that dream to remind him, Jacob, I am always with you.
My presence will always be with you.
You could read about that dream in Genesis 28.
But he, Joseph's father had been given this dream.
The family knew the power of dreams.
And yet when Joseph shares his dream with the family, no, they'll have none of it, none
of it.
And so Joseph's dream appears that it's destined to die.
I wonder, have you ever had a dream and it just died on you?
I think there's one or two ways that our dreams can die.
I want to share them with you now.
The first is that other people kill it.
Maybe you once had a dream or an idea or a passion and you were so, so excited about it,
but oh man, other people just couldn't tolerate it.
They couldn't have that.
And so they killed it.
They were suspicious.
They were jealous.
They were jaded at what you thought was a dream.
They thought was an incredible disruption.
And this is how it was with Joseph's brothers.
They couldn't let that dream live.
And you'll see next week that they could barely let Joseph himself live in the end.
It was so disruptive, they wanted to kill it.
Now let's just pause for a moment and be honest.
Has there ever been a time when you have played the part of Joseph's brothers and you have
killed somebody else's dream?
When you heard someone else, maybe it was your husband, maybe it was your wife, maybe
it was your kids, maybe it was a family member or a coworker or someone, they shared a dream,
an idea, an opportunity, and that dream threatened you and that dream threatened to disrupt your
world.
So we laughed at their dreams and we rejected their dreams and we made sure their dream
died.
Why?
Why do we do that?
We do that because what's a dream for them is a disruption for us and we can't let them
succeed.
So that's one of the reasons that our dreams die, right?
Someone couldn't believe it.
Someone couldn't handle it.
And so someone had to kill it.
There's another reason why our dreams die and that's because we let it die.
We let the dream die.
When that dream seems too disruptive even for us, right, then we'll just let it die.
Sometimes God calls us to do things that are really, really hard and scary and we have
this vision, an amazing vision of the life before us, but that would mean blowing up
my whole life as it exists right now.
It would mean breaking away from my past.
I'd have to leave the past behind.
I'd have to go do this new.
No, no, that is way too scary.
I cannot do that.
And so we just play it safe, right?
We just say, I'll forget about it.
I'll just carry on.
And we let that dream die.
I mentioned the past because one of the things that I think causes us to let our own dreams
die is the pull of the past in our lives.
The past can pull so hard on us and prevent us from moving forward with our dreams.
You know, in Joseph's story, it was actually the past that kind of screwed everything up.
You see, in the past, Joseph's grandfather, Isaac, he picked Jacob, Joseph's father, as
his favorite.
And if you read that story, it screwed everything up.
That's what happened then.
And now the past is kind of repeating itself.
Jacob now picks Joseph as his favorite son, and that screws everything up in the present,
right?
He gives Joseph this ornate coat, probably a very expensive coat.
It's really a royal coat, right?
And so in front of his brothers, there's this kid running around the family farm dressed
like a king.
And it's Jacob's way of saying, oh, he's the one.
He's the future.
He's my guy.
Just like my father chose me and made me his favorite, I'm choosing him and making him
my favorite.
The history is repeating itself.
And there are the other brothers, and they're watching it all.
And they're saying, it's just happening over again.
It's happening over again.
The past is always there reminding them.
The past is always there haunting them, and it's driving them crazy.
The past will always get in the way of your future.
Is there something about your past that is holding you back from your future?
You know, maybe you got married and you said, oh, I'm going to do things so differently
in my marriage now than my parents did in theirs.
And maybe it started that way, but pretty soon the past catches up and you're doing
the exact same thing.
Or you had kids and you say, oh, I'm going to raise my kids differently.
I'm going to be a different parent than my parents were to me.
And maybe it starts that way.
And then eventually you find yourself doing the exact same thing.
The pull of the past, it keeps pulling you back, right?
You have a dream about a future.
Maybe there's a job that's coming down, an opportunity, and all these things that could
be in the future.
But the past pulls you back and the dream dies.
Pete Scazzero says this.
He says, Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones.
The past lives in each of our lives.
One of the Bible's biggest lessons it teaches over and over again is that unless you deal
with your past, your past will deal with you.
Unless you deal with what is behind you, you will never embrace what is in front of you.
And that is where the next thing comes in.
And that is time to make a decision.
Right?
Dreams are all about disruptions.
Yes, but we still have a decision to make.
Others may see your dream and try to kill it, but it's still your decision.
The past may hurt your dream and try to hold you back, but you still have a decision.
Right?
You may be afraid of your dream and you might try to forget it, but you still have a say
in the matter.
You still have a decision.
Your dream may disrupt others.
It may disrupt your life.
It may disrupt everything, but it's still a decision that you can make.
When you say, yes, I see all these distractions and yes, I see all these disruptions and I
see the past and I see my fears and I see all of that, but God, I, God, I am going to
trust you anyway.
It's at that moment you really started living the dream.
Jesus once said that everyone who leaves, everyone who's given up houses or brothers
or sisters or father or mother or children or property for my sake will receive a hundred
times as much and inherit eternal life.
Deciding, deciding to live the dream God has given you.
Yes, it may disrupt everything, but it is worth everything.
Jesus says it may mess with your life, but actually this is how you finally start to
live your life.
As we read on, we're going to see, yeah, Joseph, it cost him just about everything.
His dream, because of his dream, he lost his family.
He lost his freedom.
He even lost that cool coat that he had.
And before the story's over, he is going to be sold into slavery.
He's going to be carted off to Egypt and he's going to be imprisoned in a dungeon.
But one thing he did have and one thing nobody could take from him was the love of his heavenly
father.
That's the thing.
We may forget our dreams, but God never forgets us.
We may feel disrupted, but God is never detached.
We may cling to the past, but God always holds the future open to us.
We may never have a multicolored coat, but we are still daughters and sons of a king.
So I want to encourage you, whatever the dream is that God has given you, get on that roller
coaster.
Get into the front seat.
Will there be bumps?
Yes, there'll be bumps.
Will it be scary?
Yes, there'll be scary moments.
Don't be afraid and don't keep looking behind you.
Trust me on that one.
Don't look behind you.
Just strap yourself in and head up that hill and see where it takes you.
Start living that dream because God is there sitting right beside you and he always will
be.
So thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us today and we hope you come back again next week for
the next part of Joseph's story as we continue the series, Live in the Dream.
Today's sermon was taken from the October 29th, 2023 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.