Genesis 42:9 – And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said unto them, Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land ye are come.

Hello readers, thanks for reading today. Its been a wet cold week here in Adelaide, but spring is almost here! Today I am going to talk about when your dreams die. Back in Genesis 37, God gave a young man called Joseph a couple of dreams. In those dreams they were binding sheaves in a field, and his sheaf arose a stood upright while their sheaves stood round about and made obeisance to him. Obeisance is bowing folks. His brothers, older than him, jealous of him, envious of him… hated him for his dreams. Pride is what stops a lot of us from coming to Jesus Christ, we’re not willing to humble ourselves. Furthermore, Joseph dreamed a second time and the eleven stars and the sun and the moon bowed to him. Of course that referred to his mum and dad… and even Jacob his father got angry at him.

These dreams cost Joseph. He told his brethren and they hated him for it. You know, God gives us dreams in our lives. We can read the Bible, we can grow up in a Christian home, even unsaved, we can have dreams for our lives. Things we want to do, who we want to be and so on and so forth. It’s good to have a destination and purpose and goal for your life that God has given you. These weren’t any old dreams, these were God’s plan for Joseph’s life. There are things we can want for our life. Abraham and Sarah wanted a son. There was a long time between their dream of having a son that God promised them, and it actually happening.

Dreams can really test our faith in God. They can break us. Because those dreams can die. I’ve had dreams for my life, and they seem further from happening than ever before. You grow up with things you’d like to be or do, and they can be good. God isn’t going to bless “filthy dreamers” like those in Jude. Many people want bad things for their lives, and God in his mercy prevents us from having those things. And we should want him to. When we are in sin, God’s invisible wall, the hedge he’s built about us, that can stop us from doing a whole range of things that would permanently destroy the realization of any dream for our life. The Bible says in Hosea 13:9… O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. What a wonderful verse. Israel sure did destroy themselves, and we are just like that. It seems everything do further pushes our dreams away, it takes us even further from God’s plan and purpose and will for our lives.

I wonder what Joseph thought of his dreams when his brothers grabbed him, stripped him of his coat and threw him in a pit with no water. I wonder what Joseph thought when he heard them negotiating a sale price with the Midianite slave trades. Dream looked pretty impossible then. So impossible probably that he forgot them, he disregarded them. God can take us so far from our dreams, we forget them. It’s like they never happened. I wonder what Joseph thought when as a slave, he did the right thing by his master in not sleeping with his wife who badly wanted him… and then got chucked into the dungeon of a prison for it. I wonder what Joseph thought of his dreams when the chief butler forgot him after he was set free.

Joseph had a raw deal. You’ve got a raw deal when your own flesh and blood has sold you into slavery, when they’ve thought the only thing better than murdering you is making money off you. There was a lot of treatment and time for Joseph to develop bitterness, resentment, revenge and anger. Christianity isn’t all flowers, in fact we tend to spend more time in the pit, in Potiphar’s house and in prison than we do in the palace. I share the same name as Joseph, but surely I wouldn’t do as well as he did. The key to his life is a little statement… but the Lord was with him. We need God’s grace for this long journey of life. It reminds me of Elijah waking up to a meal prepared for him before his long journey of despair to Mount Horeb…. the journey is too great for thee the angel said. The journey is too great for us without the Lord Jesus Christ. We need his grace and faithfulness every day.

Joseph’s life is a miracle. It started with a promise, but his dream died. God had killed it.  Where were his dreams now? That’s what the brothers said… Genesis 37:20 – Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams. Well for yours, it appeared they had won. It appeared death had triumphed over life. It appeared the flesh had triumphed over the Spirit of God. Psalm 23:5 – Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Despite all of Joseph’s enemies, God was preparing him a table. But he walked the valley of the shadow of death first, a valley we come through because the Lord is with us. We want to get through life without enemies, without any resistance, without any adversity… but the table God’s got for us is in spite of all that is against us. In the presence of mine enemies.

Boy, Joseph’s dream died many times over. It died the day they sold him, but it was like the impossibility just kept getting greater. Have your dreams died? You had hopes, desires, you pictured things being so different… and you couldn’t be further from them. They may not even be wrong, they may be good, holy, and right. Things may have been on track for you, your dream may have been on track, but now someone’s taken it and stabbed it through your heart. Remember the example of Christ. Those disciples walked with Jesus for years, but how do you think they felt as he was arrested, tried, the deck stacked, the injustice done… Jesus being beaten, whipped, and nailed to a cross. Jesus dying! Talk about the death of their dreams for all they hoped for him to be and for what to happen. God is going to allow many things to die in our lives. We can blame him, or we can get resentful, angry and bitter. We can be filled with unbelief. But then you’ll never see the resurrection. You see the resurrection of your dream will be better than the dream you had to begin with. God does things better than we can ever dream of, the way we would do it is so far inferior to how God works things out.

After all that happened, Joseph ended up in a position of power in Egypt, in fact he was governor over the land. Then one day he sees a bunch of men come into his room to buy corn off him. They are familiar faces to him. And they bowed to him. And the Bible says Joseph remembered his dreams. Despite his dream being savagely murdered all those years ago by a bunch of hateful brothers, God had raised it up from the dead. You know, salvation is a death and a resurrection. When we get saved, we die with Christ… but are risen with Christ. Service to God involves a death and a resurrection. We die to ourselves and are risen in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. Joseph remembered his dreams that day his brothers came before him, bowing and seeking corn for their father and families. All those years of how impossible it had been, how dead those dreams had been, but God had raised them up. God wins in the end. They were full of sadness and despair… but their tears were turned into tears of joy at the empty sepulcher of Christ.

Thing thing is God lets our hopes and dreams die, because he is going to raise them up. He raises us from our dead, sin cursed spiritual state to life in Christ. And what he has for us in life, he will take it to the place of impossibility, the place of where only he alone can do it. God wants to take us into impossible territory, so we will know it is what God has done. There are things in life we try producing and performing… but we fail. Abraham tried producing and performing… but he failed. God took him to his old age and his wife’s dead womb to give him the son of promise. It’s a hard thing for dreams to die. You may have had good dreams even, godly dreams, a godly vision for your life. And it’s gone pear shaped since then. Maybe it wasn’t even ruined by sin and disobedience… but the final chapter will be written by the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ. If you aren’t saved, you don’t have this hope and these promises. God’s promises to Joseph looked dead and buried for many years, but God raised them up.

We can trust God’s word. Joseph did despite all of what happened, but he surely got tested, his faith surely got tried. The Bible says so.

Psalm 105:17 – He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant:

Psalm 105:18 – Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron:

Psalm 105:19 – Until the time that his word came: the word of the Lord tried him.

God’s word tried Joseph. His faith went through a fiery trial. God’s word tries us all. Will we believe God’s word? Will we obey it? God’s word sorts out who wants light, who wants truth, who believes the Lord Jesus Christ… and who doesn’t. The trial of our faith is precious in the sight of God. It proves our faith, an unproven faith… you don’t know what that is worth do you. Your dreams may be as far from possible as ever… but that’s where God takes us. Joseph’s dreams looked dead and buried for many years, but God will perform what he has promised. He may let your dreams die, but that’s so he can raise them up. Everything we have is raised in the person of Christ. You can only have a fulfilled, complete, purposeful and meaningful life if your hopes and dreams are raised up through Christ. This applies to every sphere of life. If I want to make a difference, I can only make it through Christ. If I want to serve God and obey him… I can only do it through the resurrection of Christ. God kills our hopes and dreams so they can be risen with Christ… everything we have, everything we can do, everything we are is through Christ. We need his power in our lives.

We can’t achieve our dreams without Christ. Our dreams are only realized in Christ. We need God’s power, we can’t perform them! Often our hopes and dreams can be apart from God, because they’re about us. Our ideal life doesn’t include God. But we need to realize our dreams lie in the person of Christ. It’s through him that we can have a fulfilled, meaningful and purposeful life. It’s through him we can impact others, be a blessing to others, our life needs to be lived through his power, through his resurrection. Joseph’s dreams looked dead, they looked finished. But God raised them up. Just as Jesus Christ rose from the dead, all our hopes and dreams are risen with him, and they’re in him and through him. Where Satan, this world, our flesh have killed and destroyed everything, where there are ashes … God will give us beauty through his Son.

This world, your flesh, a life of sin and going your own way… it can’t deliver you your dreams. Only Jesus Christ can. The promises of God are IN him. We so often try getting our dreams without and around Christ, but fulfillment, purpose, blessing … it’s all found in the resurrected Saviour. God will let your dreams die, so he can raise them up in his Son Jesus Christ. Joseph remembered his dreams when he saw his brothers coming across the desert sand to see him, and bow before him, and ask for corn. It’s at the feet of Christ where we will find salvation, hope and fulfillment of God’s promises to us. And God used Joseph to save his own family. What if Joseph had fallen off the wheel, what if he’d been like stuff it, God’s forgotten me, God’s a liar and I’m going to live in bitterness and resentment. What a story Joseph’s is, his dead dreams God raised from the dead, and God will do that with yours. The resurrection of your dreams lie at the same cross that our salvation does. Your dreams may lie dead and buried in a far land many years back, but God can raise them up, and he will… we just need to trust Jesus Christ and believe his word. Because his word can be trusted, and he is the faithful Creator who alone has the power to raise those dead dreams.

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