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Joseph Sold to Slavery | Dream or Nightmare | Livin' The Dream | Rob Hurkmans

Trinity Streetsville

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  1. Hello everyone and welcome to Trinity Sermons. Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want

  2. to share with you sermons that inspire and encourage you in your faith journey, as together

  3. we are learning to love Jesus, live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus. Now this is episode

  4. two of our sermon series, Live in the Dream, and today Rob Perkmans will be with us where

  5. we are continuing our journey through the story of Joseph and learning about how to

  6. manage life when life is less of a dream, but more of a nightmare. And before we begin,

  7. we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on social media, and please visit

  8. our website at trinitystreetsville.org. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you enjoy.

  9. God bless.

  10. Good morning everyone.

  11. I am reading today from Genesis chapter 37 verses 12 through 36.

    Genesis 37:12–36

  12. Now his brothers had gone to graze their father's flocks near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph,

  13. As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send

  14. you to them. Very well, he replied. So he said to him, Go and see if all is well with

  15. your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me. Then he sent him off from

  16. the valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around

  17. in the fields and asked him, What are you looking for? He replied, I'm looking for my

  18. brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks? They have moved on from here,

  19. the man answered. I heard them say, Let's go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers

  20. and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance and before he reached them,

  21. they plotted to kill him. Here comes that dreamer, they said to each other. Come now,

  22. let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured

  23. him. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams. When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue

  24. him from their hands. Let's not take his life, he said. Don't shed any blood. Throw him into

  25. this cistern here in the wilderness, but don't lay a hand on him. Reuben said this to rescue

  26. him from them and take him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they

  27. stripped him of his robe, the ornate robe he was wearing, and they took him and threw

  28. him into the cistern. The cistern was empty, there was no water in it. As they sat down

  29. to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.

  30. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh, and they were on their way to take

  31. them down to Egypt. Judah said to his brothers, what will we gain if we kill our brother and

  32. cover up his blood? Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him.

  33. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood. His brothers agreed. So when the

  34. Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold

  35. him for 20 shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. When Reuben returned

  36. to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to

  37. his brothers and said, the boy isn't there. Where can I turn now? Then they got Joseph's

  38. robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood. They took the ornate robe back

  39. to their father and said, we found this, examine it and whether to see whether it is your son's

  40. robe. He recognized it and said, it is my son's robe. Some ferocious animal has devoured

  41. him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces. Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth

  42. and mourn for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he

  43. refused to be comforted. No, he said, I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the

  44. grave. So his father wept for him. Meanwhile, the Mennonites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar,

  45. one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard. This is the word of the Lord.

  46. You know, when I was holding little Ainsley there this morning, I couldn't help but think

  47. back to the days when we used to tuck our own children into bed and how sweet it was

  48. just to kind of cozy them up and, and, and tuck them in and, and maybe read them a little

  49. story and say a prayer with them. And then, then as you walk out of the room, you turn

  50. off the light and you, you turn around and you say sweet dreams, sweet dreams, little

  51. one. You know, why do we, why do we say sweet dreams? Why do we do that? I think the reason

  52. is, is because we know that not all dreams are sweet and that sometimes the dreams we

  53. dream are actually bad dreams. Sometimes we in fact dream nightmares. And I should say

  54. it's not just children who struggle with dreaming nightmares. Adults as well have some really

  55. bad dreams with regularity. So here is a quick question to just kind of get us started. How

  56. many adults do you think report having a nightmare at least once a year? How many adults have

  57. a nightmare once a year? Take a moment, just turn to one or two people around you, try

  58. to think what your answer is to this question. How many adults have a nightmare once a year?

  59. All right, let's do a little show of hands here. How many would say A 15%? Nobody, nobody.

  60. How many would say B 25%? I see that hand. Thank you. Two, two of you. How many would

  61. say 55% just over half of us? Yep. Yep. How many would say 85%? Oh, D everybody thinks

  62. it's D and you know what? You're correct. It's very interesting. In fact, I'll just

  63. tell you some other fun facts about nightmares. And that is the women have more nightmares

  64. than men. And, and those over the age of 70 have more nightmares than those under the

  65. age of 70. And actually during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was this thing going around

  66. it was just called the COVID nightmare. I'm not sure what that was or what it was about.

  67. But if you think about it, that means if you're a woman and you're over the age of 70, then

  68. during the pandemic, you are probably having like nightmares every single night, you're

  69. probably like a nightmare machine. Right? I, when I think about nightmares, for me, I

  70. think there's, there's four main categories of nightmares, four kinds of nightmares. The

  71. first nightmare, you find yourself in a scary place, right? You're walking down a dark alley.

  72. You're in a haunted house or you're in a creepy basement. It was just a couple of weeks ago.

  73. I had a dream. I won't call it a nightmare, but I had a dream that I was in an abandoned

  74. asylum. Right? That's a scary place to be. I don't know what that dream meant either.

  75. But, but the second kind of nightmare you can have is not just that you're in a scary

  76. place, but you find yourself in a frightening predicament, right? Your, your car breaks

  77. down and you, you don't know what to do. Your, your house is on fire. Or one of the most

  78. common frightening predicaments is that you show up to school and you realize that you

  79. forgot to put on any clothes. Right? That have you, you've probably had that one, right?

  80. The third kind of nightmare that you can have is what might call deadly peril. You're being

  81. chased. You're being attacked. You're falling or you're drowning. You're drowning. And then

  82. the fourth kind that you can have is where you're going through some kind of agonizing

  83. pain. You, you're suffering an injury, illness, or even death. Some people dream dreams of

  84. their own death. It has been shown that the pain center of our brain can actually be activated

  85. during an especially vivid nightmare, which means that your nightmares can actually cause

  86. you to feel pain. Why does this happen? I mean, we don't have to go into all the details.

  87. There's a bunch of different reasons why we have nightmares, everything from stress. Some

  88. people say some of the diet, what we eat, medications, traumatic events. Many people

  89. with PTSD actually, their nightmares are just are replaying some especially traumatic events

  90. that they suffered earlier on in their life. Wow, Rob, you're probably saying what the

  91. heck? This is a kind of a creepy way to start a sermon. Why are we talking about nightmares?

  92. Well, the reason we're talking about nightmares is we're doing this teaching series for a

  93. few weeks called live in the dream, live in the dream. And of course, when you hear someone

  94. say I'm living the dream, what does that mean? You know, if someone said, Rob, how are you?

  95. And I said, I'm living the dream. What it means is I'm doing great. Life is going along

  96. in a great direction. Everything's happening as it should. I'm living the dream. And that's

  97. why we kind of had these t shirts printed and you guys got little notepads last weekend

  98. and all that stuff. But here's what we got to talk about today. Let's be honest. Often

  99. life is not a dream. And often when we think about our life is certainly not a sweet dream.

  100. It's more like a bad dream. And what do you do? What do you do when life actually becomes

  101. not a dream, but a nightmare? When you find yourself in a scary place, you're like, how

  102. did I end up here? I don't want to be here. Well, how did I get in this situation? Or

  103. you find yourself in a frightening predicament. You know, you're trapped. There's a crisis.

  104. You don't know which way to turn. You don't know what's coming. Or you find yourself facing

  105. some kind of deadly peril in your life. Maybe it's a sickness. Maybe it's the loss of a

  106. loved one or something like that. Or you find yourself suffering agonizing pain. When those

  107. things happen in our life, we are not living the dream. Instead, it's a living hell. We

  108. are living a nightmare. And when that happens in our life, one of the hard questions that

  109. comes to our mind, and I think you probably know this, is you would say, well, why is

  110. this happening to me? Why am I suffering this way? Whose fault is it? Is it my fault? Is

  111. it somebody else's fault? Is that why these things are happening to me? Or is it God's

  112. fault? Because listen, isn't God in control of everything? And if I'm going through this

  113. problem, this pain, this predicament, this peril in my life, then surely God could have

  114. prevented that so it doesn't the blame ultimately end up on God? Have you ever been in that

  115. moment in your life where you're like, God, what are you doing? What is going on? If you've

  116. ever been there, and I dare say most of us have, then you probably can connect really

  117. well with the story of Joseph. Joseph, as we learned last week, was a dreamer. He was

  118. a big time dreamer. But today we see how Joseph's dream descends into a nightmare. Last week

  119. we learned how Joseph dreamt that he was going to be a leader. He was going to be a ruler.

  120. Everybody was going to bow down to him. He had great dreams of grandeur. But now we see

  121. it's all turned into a gigantic nightmare. And it's the worst kind of nightmare because

  122. if you look at Joseph's story, all four types of nightmares are blended together in his

  123. story. In Joseph's story, you'll see he finds himself in a scary place, in a frightening

  124. predicament, facing deadly peril and agonizing pain. All of it coming together. It's the

  125. perfect storm. So we're going to look through Joseph's nightmare and see what we can learn.

  126. Maybe there's something we can learn here that will help us as we struggle through our

  127. own bad dreams, the bad dreams of our life. Let's start with the very first piece of his

  128. nightmare. Joseph finds himself in a very scary place. What do I mean by that? Well,

  129. let's read the text again here. It says, now his brothers have gone to graze their flocks

  130. near Shechem. And Jacob, Joseph's father, said, Joseph, as you know, the boys are down there.

  131. They're grazing the flocks near Shechem. So I want you to go down. I want to send you

  132. down there. Now, let's just get a little context here. Actually, Jacob was world famous rancher.

  133. He was a world famous shepherd. His flocks grew and grew and grew so much so that he

  134. couldn't even keep all the sheep and goats in that valley in Hebron anymore. So we had

  135. to start sending the flocks to different places to graze. And one of the places he ends up

  136. sending them is 50 miles down the road to a place called Shechem. And ladies and gentlemen,

  137. I want to tell you Shechem was a very, very scary place. Let me tell you why. Years earlier,

  138. when Joseph's family had been traveling by Shechem, the men of Shechem raped Joseph's

  139. sister Dinah. You can read about that earlier on in Genesis. It was a horrible, horrible

  140. thing. It caused great anguish everywhere. But two of Joseph's brothers say, we're going

  141. to take matters into our own hands. And so one night, you know what they did? They drew

  142. their swords and they slipped into the village of all the Shechemites and they slipped the

  143. throats of all of the men. At least the Bible tells us all of the men of Shechem. They killed

  144. them all. It was an absolute bloodbath. And when, and when the father realized what these

  145. two sons had done, they were like, do you realize what you've done? This is very, very

  146. dangerous for us now because there's so many Shechemites and they have friends and they

  147. have neighbors and they all team up against us. We're done for. We're totally outnumbered.

  148. So Joseph and his brothers and his father, they all had to gather up and they had to

  149. scoot out of Shechem and go find another place to live. And, and you got to believe, you

  150. got to believe the Shechemites had never forgotten that moment. Surely they're still furious

  151. with Jacob and his boys for what they did. Surely they're looking for revenge. And so

  152. when dad says, Hey Joseph, I'd like you to go on a long journey, 50 miles from here alone

  153. as a 17 year old boy, I want you to go alone to Shechem. I imagine Joseph kind of went

  154. gulp, right? Because this is the stuff nightmares are made of. If it were me, I would have said,

  155. dad, no way. Sorry. Too scary. I wouldn't even go into the basement as a kid. I was so scared

  156. of that. I'm not going to go 50 miles to our arch enemies, you know, village. So he says,

  157. but that's not Joseph. Joseph is way more courageous. I'm way more brave than me. He

  158. went, he went and it gets even scarier. I'll tell you why it gets even scary because when

  159. Joseph actually gets to Shechem, he looks around and his brothers aren't there. He's

  160. like, Oh my gosh, where are they? They're not where they're supposed to be. They're

  161. supposed to be in Shechem. And I bet his mind said, Oh my gosh, the Shechemites, the Shechemites

  162. have got them. They're probably all dead or they're being tortured. They're all captured

  163. and tied up somewhere. And I'm next. He probably thought, and then this creepy guy starts coming

  164. through the field and he's like, Hey little boy, what are you looking for? And, and he's

  165. like, Oh, I'm just looking for my brothers. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me.

  166. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. And, and actually the guy turns out to not

  167. be that creepy. And I took a huge amount of license. He's probably a really great guy,

  168. probably a great Dothanite or a great Shechemite fellow. I don't know. But anyways, he says,

  169. actually, no, they, they went on a little further. I saw them. They went out to this

  170. other town called Dothan. Dothan. Okay. So if I were Joseph again, I would say, okay,

  171. all right, I did what my dad said. Dad said, go to Shechem, check up on your boys, check

  172. up on the boys, see what they're up to. I did that. So I'm going to go home and I'm

  173. going to tell them what I did. But no, Joseph's better than me, probably better than you too.

  174. He said, no, I'm going to keep on going. I'm not just going to go to this, to this dark,

  175. dangerous place, but I'm going to go to this distant place, 25 miles further to Dothan

  176. to look for my brother. So listen, it's a scary place. It's a scary place. He finds

  177. himself in, right? And I just wonder if part of the, if you're, if your life is like a

  178. bad dream in any way, is it partly because you find yourself in a place that you just

  179. don't want to be, right? I don't want to be in this relationship. I don't want to be in

  180. this job. I don't want to be in this school. I don't want to be in this program. How did

  181. I end up with friends like this? How did I end up alone? I don't fit in. I want to go

  182. home. I think we, that, that, those are scary thoughts. Those are scary places to be. But

  183. somehow Joseph, I don't know how he pushed through and he kept on going. But that was

  184. only the first part of the nightmare. It wasn't just that he faced a scary place. Now he faces

  185. a frightening, frightening predicament. What do I mean by that? Well, listen, you remember

  186. last week, last week we learned that from time to time, what Joseph would do is he would

  187. see his brothers doing something they shouldn't be doing, misbehaving, and he would bring

  188. back word or bring back a bad report to his father to say, dad, this is what my brothers

  189. are all doing and go punish them or something like that. So what this tells us though is

  190. that two things, one, Joseph's brothers were often up to no good. And secondly, Joseph

  191. would often rat them out. So this puts Joseph in a very frightening predicament because

  192. these guys were bad news. You don't mess with these guys. A quick read through Genesis 30

  193. to 40 and you will see time and again, these guys are guilty of multiple crimes. I wrote

  194. a few down wholesale slaughter, incest, murder, jealousy, kidnapping, lying, adultery, prostitution,

  195. really bad judgment. In fact, in Genesis 39, you can read about one of Joseph's brothers,

  196. Judah, and he decided he was going to have his daughter-in-law killed, executed because

  197. he found out that she was pregnant outside of marriage. And so they're getting ready

  198. to burn her to death when he finally realizes, oh, wait a second, I'm the father of that

  199. child. I had sex with her. That's my child. Oh, that's right. That's right. Put the fires

  200. out. We're not going to burn her after all. I mean, these were horrible, horrible guys.

  201. Like what kind of, you can't make this stuff up, right? This was a frightening, frightening

  202. predicament. These are frightening people that Joseph finds himself around. But what

  203. added to that predicament was that they obviously hated Joseph. So that, you know, Joseph, there

  204. was tension between them and his brothers. He was a snitch. He was Jacob's favorite.

  205. And so here's the predicament. Here's the predicament. Joseph has a bunch of brothers

  206. who already hate him with a passion. And he's being sent to go visit them far, far away

  207. from home where dad can't see. And they've been quiet for a long time. In fact, that's

  208. why dad sent him. They've been quiet a long time. And when you know, you know, when kids

  209. are quiet for a long time, they're usually up to no good. And so, and so they're, they're

  210. doing something they're not supposed to be doing. And he puts himself into this predicament,

  211. right? Why, why did he throw himself into this predicament? He's courageous. He's courageous,

  212. more courageous than me. And maybe the reason why your life right now feels like it's this

  213. bad, bad dream is that you like Joseph, you find yourself in this frightening predicament.

  214. You don't know what to do. You know, right, wrong. Yes, no. Maybe, maybe your career right

  215. now is in a frightening moment. Maybe your marriage right now is, is hanging on a thread

  216. and then you feel trapped or vulnerable or helpless or hopeless and, and you don't know

  217. what to do next and you don't know what's coming next. And, and I think that's exactly

  218. how Joseph felt as he proceeded through this dream that became a nightmare. But more than

  219. that, it keeps on going, right? It wasn't just that he was going to a scary place or

  220. a frightening predicament, but he experienced this deadly, deadly peril. Even before Joseph

  221. gets there, his brothers have decided to kill him. But when they saw him in the distance,

  222. they said, here comes that dreamer. They said to one another, come now, let's kill him and

  223. let's throw him into one of these cisterns. Hey, it says that they saw Joseph from a distance

  224. and they recognized him. How could they know it was Joseph from such a far away away? The

  225. coat, right? He had that multicolored coat on. Oh my gosh, that thing, you can see it

  226. a mile away. It must be Joseph. And so this is not like involuntary manslaughter. This

  227. is premeditated murder. They are going to kill this guy when he shows up. And so they

  228. decide to kill him and they decide to throw him into one of the cisterns that were kicking

  229. around there. Now, this is what cisterns look like in the ancient world where we're talking

  230. about. You can see it had a very narrow neck on the top and then it kind of went out like

  231. this at the bottom, which means that if you were thrown into one of these things, there

  232. was no way you were climbing out of it, right? It was a death trap. In fact, I was doing

  233. some research and I found out that in the area where they think Dothan was, archeologists

  234. have unearthed cisterns like this. And get this, some of the cisterns have had skeletons

  235. in them, right? So I'm telling you, these things are a death trap. There was no question.

  236. The plan was to kill him. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his

  237. robe, that ornate robe that he was wearing, and they took him and they threw him into

  238. the cistern. We're told the cistern was empty. There was no water in the bed. It didn't matter.

  239. This was the end, right? What a nightmare. And here's the most callous bit of all. We're

  240. told that after they had done this, the brothers sat down to have a meal. They sat down to

  241. eat, right? So here, here, can you imagine? Here comes Joseph, grab him, strip him of

  242. his clothes, beat him up a bit, throw him in the cistern, put the rock over the top.

  243. And now, hey guys, what do you want to have for lunch? What do you sit down? Right? He's

  244. screaming. He's screaming, guys, let me out, please don't kill me. They're like having

  245. a sandwich. These, I don't understand how these guys are so cold and callous and heartless.

  246. Right? In fact, we know if you go on and read, let's just skip ahead for a moment. You go

  247. on further in the story. Later on, when Joseph actually confronts his brothers, we find out

  248. that, yeah, they heard him screaming and they say, we are truly guilty concerning our brother,

  249. for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us and we would not hear. How

  250. nice guys, not nice guys. Eventually, they say, oh, I got an even better idea. Let's

  251. sell them. Let's sell them and make some money from his life. And these merchants come by

  252. and they pull Joseph out of the cistern and they sell them for 20 shekels of silver, which

  253. you might be like, how much is that? It's not a lot. I think I want to say it's something

  254. like 50 or 250 dollars. It's not a lot of money. They sold him. And friends, this is

  255. the stuff that nightmares are absolutely made of attacked, threatened with death, thrown

  256. into a well, sold as a slave. I hope you never face deadly peril like this in your life.

  257. But I know some of you have actually. There are some of you, many have come to Canada

  258. from other countries and you have fled violence. You've had to run for your life and maybe

  259. some of your family members are still back there and they're hiding for their life. Or

  260. maybe some of those family members have even perished in the deadly peril that they faced.

  261. Others of you, you're facing a different kind of deadly peril. You got a diagnosis. The

  262. doctor told you something and it doesn't look good. Or you've been through an accident.

  263. You survived an accident, but just barely. Yeah, you say, Rob, I've never been thrown

  264. into a sister. I've never been thrown into a pit, but I know what it feels like to be

  265. almost dead and buried, to have your dream turn into a nightmare. And that means you

  266. probably also know this fourth aspect of a nightmare. You know what it's like to have

  267. agonizing pain. Joseph's nightmare. I mean, Joseph suffered agonizing pain. Good grief.

  268. He was sold, taken to Egypt. He was a slave, separated and isolated from his family for

  269. 30 years. That is a lot of suffering and pain, but he wasn't the only one. Everybody suffered

  270. as a result of this horrible nightmare. His own father, we read, suffered greatly. Then

  271. when he found out that his boy was dead, when the brothers came back and said, look, a wild

  272. animal must have eaten him. We read that Jacob tore his clothes and he put on sackcloth and

  273. he mourned for his son. He refused to be comforted. He said, I'm going to mourn until the day

  274. I die, until the day I join my son in the grave. This boy, my boy, my boy, my favorite

  275. little boy, he's no longer with me. He's been taken from me. And, and you know what? 30

  276. years later, he is still mourning every day for the loss of his son. And I know there

  277. are even some of you here and you know what that kind of pain feels like. It is the bad

  278. dream that you can never, ever forget. But I wonder if those who suffered the most pain

  279. in the story weren't the brothers themselves. Because if you read between the lines, it

  280. means that day after day they watched their father and they saw their father's pained

  281. face and they knew what they had done to hurt him. And that memory would never go away.

  282. Joseph's tortured face, they could never forget that. The sound of his blood curdling screams

  283. from the well or as the merchants took him off to Egypt. You see, they could not forget

  284. that. It haunted them for the rest of their life, I am sure. And, and that's the thing

  285. about pain. Yeah, sure. Some of us suffer pain because of things others have done to

  286. us. But sometimes our pain is a result of things we have done to hurt others. And it

  287. haunts us. Those skeletons in the closet, they just never go away every day. It's a

  288. different kind of bad dream, but it's still a bad dream. Still full of pain. So there

  289. you go. The perfect storm of a nightmare. And I just wonder, if you look at this, where

  290. do you see yourself in this at all today? Maybe you'd be like, Rob, total sweet dreams

  291. over here. I'm living the dream. And we're all like, amen, God bless you. Go for it.

  292. You live your best life. But there's others of us who are like, you know what? Yeah, I

  293. had a sweet dream. It became a bad dream. I'm going through a dark place right now. Are

  294. you in a scary place? Do you find yourself in a frightening predicament? Are you facing

  295. some peril? Are you coping? Are you coping with some pain? If so, probably asking those

  296. questions again, right? Whose fault is it? Whose fault? You could say some of this was

  297. Joseph's fault. I mean, he was a bit of a braggart. He was a showboat and he was a snitch,

  298. a tattletale. So we can probably blame him to a point. And maybe there are things in

  299. your life that you actually have done that have led to some of the pain that you're experiencing

  300. now. So yeah, maybe, maybe some of it is our fault. But certainly a lot of the fault and

  301. the blame falls at the feet of Joseph's brothers in the story. They were horrible, horrible

  302. people. They were bad apples, bad to the core. They and you maybe blame other people in your

  303. life for the suffering that you're experiencing right now. And that's certainly happens. But

  304. then there's the God question, right? And come back to that one. Is it God's fault?

  305. Surely Joseph could have said, God, this is your fault. God, you could have delivered

  306. me from this. God, you could have saved me from this at any time. Couldn't God have intervened

  307. in Joseph's life? Couldn't God have intervened in your life? Saved you from that place, that

  308. predicament, that peril and that pain? Why didn't he? Right? This is the question of

  309. suffering. It would take a million sermons to even begin to scratch at why good things

  310. happen to bad people, why we suffer and where is God in the midst of it all. So we're not

  311. going to get there today, but I want to show one piece of this story that might shed just

  312. a glimmer, not always, but a glimmer that might explain some of the nightmare and that

  313. is this other P word, providence. Could it be that in our bad dreams or nightmare of

  314. a life that we're living that actually God is doing something behind the scenes, something

  315. that we do not know? That's providence. Providence. Think about it this way. Think about it. If

  316. Joseph had never dreamed the dream, he never would have been attacked by his brothers.

  317. He never would have been hated. He never would have been sold. If Joseph was never sold to

  318. Egypt, then he never would have risen to power in Egypt. And if he had never risen to power

  319. in Egypt, he never could have formulated the plan by which Egypt would survive the coming

  320. famine by storing up grain. And if Egypt didn't store up grain, then all the neighboring people

  321. around Egypt also would have perished in the famine. And among those who certainly could

  322. have perished would have been Joseph's own brothers and his father. And if Jacob and

  323. the brothers, if that family line had ended, then how would the Messiah Jesus of the line

  324. of Judah come to be? Right? Had he not been in that place, in that predicament, gone through

  325. that pain, then maybe the promise would never have arrived. You see, what everybody saw

  326. was evil and wrong. What everyone assumed was a huge mistake on God's part was just

  327. God's way of allowing this dream to be accomplished. The brothers said, let's destroy that dream.

  328. And they tried to destroy that dream, but actually in the very process of destroying

  329. that dream, they enabled the dream to actually come true. That is what we call the providence

  330. of God when God brings about his plan in ways that just seem totally backwards to us. In

  331. fact, it makes me think of Jesus. You know, Jesus on the night he was arrested, he said,

  332. God, take away this nightmare. God, get me out of this bad dream. But Jesus said, if

  333. this is the way it has to be, then your will be done and not my will. See, Jesus saw that

  334. nightmare, but he believed that God would turn the darkness of death into the dawn of

  335. new life. And he did. So you see, God has a plan. God has a dream for your life, for

  336. my life. Sometimes that dream feels more like a nightmare, like a very bad dream, and we

  337. would do anything to avoid that place, avoid that predicament, avoid the peril and the

  338. pain. Jesus knows what that's like. And if you're going through something like that in

  339. your life right now, I really hope as a church, we can surround you and love you and support

  340. you as you deal with your pain. We also need to remember God's providence. Sometimes you

  341. got to go through the scary place to get to the good place. Sometimes you got to go through

  342. the predicament to get to the peace. Sometimes you have to go through the peril to get to

  343. the pleasure. And sometimes, sometimes you have to go through the pain to get to the

  344. promise. Thanks be to God. Amen.

  345. Thanks so much for joining us today, and we hope that you found the sermon inspiring.

  346. And if you enjoyed the show today, please take a minute to rate and review our podcast

  347. so that we can continue to spread the good news with others. Please come back again next

  348. week, and thanks again for listening. Today's sermon was taken from the 1115 service on

  349. November 5, 2023 at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.