Episode 167: January 14, 2024 - Illuminating Dreams

Eternity Church PodCast

A Sunday message from Pastor Brett Deal. Have you ever noticed all the dreams and visions in the Bible? Dreams in the Bible are like a new car. Before you bought it, the make and model were novel; perhaps there was a rare sighting here or there, but it was infrequently found in the wilds of America’s highways and byways. But the minute you drove that car off the lot, everybody and their mother is driving the same one! Some of this could be chalked up to distraction. We are so busy shuffling all kinds of other information in our minds that observing the vehicle zooming past us is less of a priority than what we need to get at the store or what remains to be done before we can call it a day. Our age of distraction isn’t really that different from that in the Bible. All the deep concerns of our time were present in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just without newer technological advances. In the Bible, when people were overwhelmed with apprehensions and perturbations, too distracted to hear the still small voice of the Spirit, God would send dreams. And not just for the individual—like Abraham wrestling with the weight of the prophesy that his descendants would suffer at the cruel hands of Egypt—but for whole populations! When God’s people were plagued by disquietude, unable to be still and hear the whisper of God’s voice, He would send dreams and visions to the prophets. In the book of Matthew, six times we see God speaking to people through dreams. Once was to the Magi to keep them from falling into King Herod’s trap and another was Pontius Pilate’s wife when the Roman governor was deciding whether to send Jesus to the cross. The other four times can all be found in the life of Joseph. Friend, that is too many dreams for us to ignore. What we discover in Matthew, particularly in the life of Joseph, is that dreams require discernment, and they demand a response. There are times we are seeking for a reply in prayer that God is already answering; we just aren’t listening. This week, as we reflect on God’s word in Matthew 2.13-18, may we still our hearts, quiet our distractions, and seek to hear the voice of God, through dreams and visions that we measure against His Word.