Marcus Mecum - Look the Dreamers Coming
- Watch
- Donate
- Prayer Request
Genesis 37:3. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age. Also, he made him a tunic, or a coat of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more. I think that’s a good reason for somebody to hate you: your dream. And so he said to them, «Please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were in the field, and there were basically wheat sheaves, and one was bowing down, and the other was bowing down. Anyway, he has a harvest dream. His brothers said to him, „Shall you indeed reign over us, or shall you indeed have dominion over us?“ So they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. And then he dreamed still another dream. Got to love Joseph. He told his brothers and said, „Look, I have dreamed another dream. This time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to him.“
Drop down to verse 18. Now when they saw Joseph far off, before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, „Look, the dreamer is coming.“ I’m going to preach to you on that line, that verse: „Look, the dreamer is coming.“ So they set out to kill him. They threw him in the pit and said they would say some wild beast has devoured him, and we shall see what becomes of his dreams.
The world we live in, for the most part, has been shaped by people with dreams. You could look back at Edison, who had a dream to harness electricity, and the Wright brothers, who had a dream of flying. Alexander Graham Bell had a dream to communicate. Social dreamers in our world include Rosa Parks, who dreamed of equality, who sat down so her people could stand up; this would lead to a young preacher in Atlanta, Martin Luther King, who would lead the civil rights movement. We could even talk about current people in our world who have dreams all around us. You see it. The bottom line is dreams have changed the world we live in. I believe that all dreams that bless people and lift people, whether the person knows it or not, come from God. Because God is the giver of dreams.
If you were to go throughout history and look at it, you could see that God has been faithful through every generation to give his people a dream. Jacob, the Bible says, saw a ladder that reached to heaven, and on that ladder, he saw angels ascending and descending. Mary and Joseph were warned in a dream to hide Jesus from Herod. Simon Peter, the Bible says, had a dream to take the gospel to the Gentiles. We’re here in large part because of that dream. You see, there are disturbing and troubling dreams in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that so troubled him he couldn’t sleep. Herod had his dreams. Pharaoh was troubled by a dream. This is what I’m trying to keep coming back to: God is a dream giver.
So if God’s going to change your life, if he’s going to change a family, a church, a community, or a nation, anything that God is going to do in the earth, he starts by giving a dream. He places that dream in a person’s heart, and if that person dares to have the courage, dares not to fear, and dares not to be afraid in the face of danger and threats and risk, then that person is someone God will use to fulfill his dreams. In fact, I believe you’re never more like God than when you’re dreaming. It is his nature to dream, to look at nothing and believe that it can be something, to look at it and say, „Even though it is not, it shall be.“ That is the nature of God and the nature of faith, by the way.
So we look at Joseph here, and the Bible says that his father loved him more than his other sons, illustrating that by giving Joseph the coat of many colors. Many of us have heard this over and over again, but it’s an outward sign of favor and blessing. This coat of many colors caused him to stand out. It was bright and vibrant; it wasn’t something that made Joseph fit into the crowd. It wasn’t beige or gray; it was the opposite of that. It was so bright that every time he showed up, anywhere Joseph went, it was obvious he was wrapped up in the favor and the blessing of his father.
I believe that God is still wrapping his people in his favor and his blessing. God wants to give that to his people. So when people see you and they see that favor, they know the hand of God is on your life, and they know that not only is it there, but it’s there for a greater purpose. So, Joseph’s walking around. He’s got this loud, bright coat—purple, orange, green, blue, and red. I mean, you name it. It was like a psychedelic coat, and everywhere he went, he stood out. He couldn’t hide it. He couldn’t conceal it. It’s not like he was flaunting it or bragging about it. It was just evident that the favor and the blessing of God was on his life. But it was for a reason. The Bible says that the favor and the blessing were put on Joseph’s life. Then after that, he received a dream.
The reason for the favor, the reason for the blessing, would lead to his dream. So his dream was not the favor and the blessing. A lot of people are saying, „God, I just have a dream to have favor and be blessed,“ but what’s the purpose of it? It’s the opposite of that. The favor and the blessing of God prepare you for the dream. The reason we ask God for favor is not for our sake; it’s because we know we need favor to fulfill the dream that he places on our life. But notice the dream was not a selfish dream. The Bible says he dreamed of the harvest. He dreamed of this harvest bowing down; to me, it speaks of a lost world where every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess. He had a dream that the harvest could be reached. He had a dream that the harvest could be reached.
And so his goal was attached to souls. His dream represented souls. Every dream that God gives us, if we want to know what will pass the sniff test with God, is whether that dream is attached to the harvest. „I want to be blessed“ or „I want God to give me favor, ” or „I want God to do this in my life, ” or „I want God to do that.“ Okay, that’s fine, but it should be attached to more than just what you want. It should be attached to the harvest and to the winning of a lost and dying world that needs to be reached. When it comes to your family, your future family, your friends, your work, your career, and your friends at school, there should be a harvest dream.
When I think about this church, I think the only reason we should exist is because we have a dream. And the dream is not crowds; it’s not coming to get a fix every Sunday. The dream is not us coming and feeling better about ourselves. The dream is attached to the harvest. There should be some way, shape, or form that everything we do simply leads to reaping the end-time harvest. You look up; get your eyes off yourself, and look to the south, the north, the east, and the west. Look at the brokenness. Look at how the enemy is wreaking havoc. Look at how the enemy is tearing lives apart. Look at all the brokenness in our world. And someone has to look around them and simply say, „God, will you give me a dream? Will you give me your favor so I can be a part of going out into a broken world and spoiling the strong man’s house?“
Like Joseph, saying, „God, use my life to reap a mighty harvest.“ So, Joseph, the Bible says, has a harvest dream, and he tells his brothers, and they get mad or angry. The Bible says they hated him because of the dream. What I like about Joseph is his brothers got mad at him for the first dream, and the Bible says he dreamed yet another dream. They were already mad because he thought he was a big deal for talking about this harvest. He doesn’t back down; he doesn’t apologize; he doesn’t care what their opinion is. He simply says, „Oh, if you think the first dream’s special, let me take a second and let you know that the second dream is bigger than the first dream.“
He saw the sun, the moon, and the stars bowing down. This is the point: God’s dreams are progressive. That’s why you don’t despise the days of small beginnings. You have to recognize God’s dreams are progressive. If you’ve given up on the first dream, more than likely you don’t progress to the second dream. But a lot of people have a problem with thinking, „Yeah, I had a dream for this phase of my life, and that dream’s fulfilled. Now I guess God’s done with me.“ But that’s not how God works. God is progressive. He’s not just the giver of a dream. He is the giver of dreams. So if you believe your best days are behind you, you’re missing the point. The dream is not back there; the dream is still ahead of you, not just personally, but as a church.
The dream is not back there; it is in front of us. The future is greater than our past, so keep dreaming big dreams. When people don’t like you, when they don’t agree with it, when people have a problem with your dreaming, keep dreaming big dreams. That’s who God is, and that’s how he uses you. That’s how he blesses you. He wants to give you a big dream. Our problem is we have what I would call a skinny goat mentality. Remember the story of the prodigal son? He comes home, and what does the father do? The father kills the fatted calf, and the elder brother looks at the father and says, „I don’t understand why you killed that fatted calf. Did it really take all that? I mean, this big celebration. I mean, did it really take all this? Couldn’t you have killed a skinny goat for me?“ That’s what he said.
In other words, he feels like all this fatted calf talk, all this more, more blessing, favor, all that—that’s just over the top. His critical spirit began to say, „I don’t think God wants you to dream for more. I think we should be talking about less.“ But I don’t believe we serve a skinny goat God, so we should not be skinny goat people. We should say, „God, trust us with more.“ Our father thinks about fatted calves. He thinks about more, more favor, more faith, more courage, more stamina, for the Bible says he dreamed yet another dream.
So he, the Bible says, is on his way to see his brothers, and they’re conspiring how they’re going to deal with him. They’re going to kill him; they’re going to throw him in this pit. This is what they said: „Look, here comes the dreamer.“ Not „here comes Joseph,“ not „here comes our younger brother.“ They didn’t call him by his name because you’ll be known by your dream more than your name. „Here comes the dreamer.“ When Joseph got there, again, they want to kill him. I just want to take a moment, and if you feel like you have a God-given dream, and maybe you don’t feel like the people who should support it are supporting it, it actually speaks of the dream’s realness.
Right? Because people don’t work against someone they don’t think can accomplish the dream. Have you ever noticed that people attack the people the most who actually have the potential to do the things they’re saying? They don’t attack the person who isn’t going anywhere. So they’re attacking him because they’re smart enough to know that dream will likely come to pass. But they’re attacking him but also proving that they’re dumb enough to think they can stop the dream. If you look back over the course of any dream, if you had the courage to dream, at every single stage, there were some people along the way who tried to work against you and against the dream.
The only way you get to the fulfillment of a dream is if you learn that man’s „no“ does not compete with God’s „yes.“ You learn that hell cannot abort a God-given dream that heaven has given you. You make the decision to say, „You know what? I love people, but so what if they don’t believe? So what if they walk away? So what if they exit your life? So what if they say God’s not in this or that?“ You have to pass the people test before the dream comes to pass. You make the decision: „Am I going to live for people, or am I going to live for that dream? If the dream is from God, am I going to live for that dream?“ Because in the end, living for that dream is how I honor the one who gave me the dream.
The dream is not for me; it is for him and for his glory. So quickly they throw him in a pit; his coat’s gone. He’s bought as a slave; he goes to Egypt, is accused of rape, and now he’s thrown in prison. Waking up every day in a jail cell, „This doesn’t look like that harvest bowing down. This doesn’t look like the sun, the moon. I can’t even see the sun, the moon, the stars. I can’t see the sky. All I see is a concrete ceiling and some bars every single day. God didn’t show me this when he talked to me about the dream. God didn’t talk to me about this when he said he wanted to do something great in my life. So where’s the dream? This is the opposite of the dream. Everything that the dream was, this is not. So, is the dream from God? Not from God? Did God give me that dream? Did he not? Why is it that when I look at my life, God didn’t tell me about this place? He didn’t tell me about this environment. He didn’t tell me about this season of my life. He didn’t tell me that I would go through this.“
Because part of the process of any dream is there are times when you look around, and everything looks the opposite of what God spoke to you that set you out on the path of fulfilling that dream in the first place. In prison, everything looks the opposite of the dream. The butler and the baker come to Joseph, and they start talking to him about their dream, but they don’t know how to interpret their dream. They don’t know how to make sense of what God is putting on the inside of them. So, Joseph goes and prays and helps them interpret their dream.
If you are trying to figure out how to interpret the dream, understand the dream, and how to take this passion and make it come out in real life and actually work, an important thing is to acquaint yourself with other dreamers. Acquaint yourself with people that have fulfilled their dreams, that are walking out their dreams. The worst thing you can do if God’s given you a dream is keep hanging out with dreamless people. So Joseph prayed about it; he interpreted the dream. I love this. He’s in a place in his life that his dream’s not happening. It actually looks like his dream will never happen. It looks like whatever that dream was was some naive, childish dream that’s gone forever. He’s in prison, but watch it. He helps other people with their dream in that place.
Sometimes you may look around and say, „God, I don’t think the dream you gave me is happening,“ but that doesn’t give me the right to give up on helping other people with their dream. Sometimes God is looking at how you act when your dream is not looking the way it should, wondering, „Can I trust you to help somebody else in their dream even though it looks like yours may never happen?“ And so he interprets the dream. He says, „I have good news. I have bad news.“ To the butler, the good news is in three days you’ll be restored to the kingdom. You’re going to be at the right hand of Pharaoh. To the baker, I’ve got bad news: in three days, you’re going to end up facing a guillotine, and it’s over for you. He spends no more time talking to the baker. He has no future; he’s wasting no time with him.
When there’s no future, you don’t have to be mean or rude about it, but why waste time when there’s no future in that relationship? There are people who are a part of your future, but you’re giving so much time to people who have already decided they’re not going to be part of your tomorrow. You’re missing out on the one right in front of you. So Joseph says, „Okay, I’m understanding this. No future there, future here.“ So he looks at the butler and says, „Will you remember me? Someday God’s going to elevate you. He’s going to put you at the right hand of Pharaoh. And when you’re there, will you not forget about me? Will you remember that we had this time where I helped you with this dream?“
The Bible says God took the butler out of prison and put him at the right hand of Pharaoh, and that the butler remembered Joseph no more. The butler forgot him. The reason he’s where he’s at is that Joseph helped him interpret the dream. Now he’s out there living the life; he’s enjoying it. He’s in the palace; everything’s working out for him, and he’s forgotten what it was like to be in prison. I think one of my favorite things about the process of a dream, because I hate it so much, is that feeling of being forgotten. The feeling of like, „But I thought you promised. I thought you said, I thought you made that commitment. I thought you said you’d be there for me. I thought you said that if I helped you go, you’d help me go.“ And suddenly, isn’t it amazing how quickly people forget?
So Joseph is probably telling all the other prisoners, „I’m getting out. Things are changing for me. Me and the butler are like this. I’m in with him.“ Now he’s hanging out with Pharaoh; he’s going to make sure that I’m not here anymore. A month went by, two months—who knows how much time went by? They forgot about Joseph. They remembered him no more. The butler is hanging out with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh has a dream, and he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t know how to interpret it. He doesn’t know about seven fat cows and seven skinny cows, and the seven fat cows swallow the seven skinny cows, and the butler, the Bible says, remembers Joseph.
So he goes down to the prison and says, „Hey, Joseph, remember how you helped me with my dream? Do you remember?“ And Joseph’s like, „Yeah, I remember. I remember that the reason you’re where you are is because I helped you with your dream. And I remember that you said you would remember me, but you forgot about me.“ He’s like, „I know, I know, I know, but hey, Pharaoh, he’s got a dream, and I need your help to interpret it.“ Notice Joseph’s not offended. He’s like, „Sure. What’s the dream?“ He tells him the dream; he prays about it; he interprets it. He says, „The seven fat cows are seven years of plenty; the seven skinny cows are seven years of famine, and the seven fat cows are going to swallow the seven skinny cows.“
In other words, you better get ready over the next seven years for a famine that’s coming. If you don’t get ready in a time of plenty, you won’t make it through the time of famine. They’re worried; they’re afraid. Joseph realizes that the dream he had way back here of the harvest, that harvest dream, was not for a world that was at peace. It was not for a world in which everything was going well. The dream was only going to happen when the world was in some type of crisis. Because Joseph understands that really the last-day harvest doesn’t come because everybody’s doing good. It’s when the world and all the things that people put their trust in begin to break down. They begin to lose that pride, that arrogance, and that ego, and all of a sudden, they look around and think, „Man, I’m just a human being. I’m just a little speck of dust. I’m nobody special.“
That’s right; that’s exactly who you are. And it’s in those times of chaos and crisis that people become open to God. Joseph realizes his dream is for a world in crisis. Whatever dream God gives you, don’t let it go because the world is fluctuating. A lot of people think the dream was good because the world was good. I could believe God for great things because it looked great out in the world, and then if it looks like the world’s shaky, they freeze. But if the dream is from God, you move forward. It does not matter how shaky the world is because in that process, God will use the dreamers to reap a harvest in a world that’s going crazy.
I’m almost done, I promise. So, he’s in this season; the world is falling apart, but he’s actually fulfilling the dream. He’s saying, „I was born for this.“ There should always be something in you, no matter what’s happening in the world out there, that God has equipped us for this time, for this day, for this hour. Something’s got to rise up and say, „God knew all of this before I got here, and he put me here for this. I was born for this. I’m not afraid of it. I’m not running from it. I’m not shrinking back. I was born for this.“
So he’s looking at the dream. Joseph has now been raised up to be the second most powerful person in the nation of Egypt. He’s literally, because of that dream, saved millions and millions of lives that would have starved to death. But he realizes that in his dream he saw his family there. But his family’s not there, and he doesn’t know how the dream is ultimately going to be fulfilled because his brothers, of course, we know what happened. We know how they treated him. He doesn’t know if his dad is still alive; he hasn’t seen him in so long. So, Joseph has his own family. The first son he has, he names Manasseh, which means „the Lord has made me forget the pain of my father’s house.“
So part of the dream being fulfilled in your life is you have to give birth to a Manasseh. You have to give birth to a forgiving and forgetful spirit. You have to realize my life is not to be lived in yesterday. One translation actually said, Manasseh means „past shut up.“ Think about every morning, Manasseh— that crazy teenager won’t get out of bed, yells, „Manasseh!“ He’s literally yelling at all the brothers for what they’ve done to him—his past shutting up. When they’re acting crazy, throwing temper tantrums, he says, „Manasseh; past, shut up.“ Over and over, he’s reminding himself that he cannot see the dream fulfilled as long as his past is speaking.
He’s got to create a way—not one time when I heard a church sermon in a service, but every single day there are things in my life that try to speak up for my past, and they try to overwhelm anything that God wants to do in my future. You just have to learn to name that situation and shut it up. Just shut it up. „I can’t listen. I can’t spend my life letting that be the loudest thing in my heart, in my soul. It happened. It existed.“
But notice, I love this next son; he names Ephraim, which means „to be fruitful in the land of affliction.“ Before his dream happened, he had to understand God does not take you out of harsh, adverse circumstances. He says, „I want you to learn to be fruitful in the midst of affliction. I want you to learn that everything doesn’t have to get better before you’re going to be fruitful. Everything can be as bad as it is, and God can make you fruitful in the middle of it.“
Eventually, his brothers show up. They’re standing before Joseph; they realize who he is. They’re angry with themselves; they’re dealing with the regret of how they treated him. Notice what Joseph says: „Do not be angry with yourselves; it was God.“ This is an amazing statement because you and I know it wasn’t God. God had nothing to do with his brother’s jealousy over his coat. God had nothing to do with his brother’s insecurity over his dream. God had nothing to do with his brothers taking this innocent kid and throwing him in a pit, leaving him there to die, ultimately selling him into slavery to make a profit. God had nothing to do with it.
A lot of times we hear sermons like this and we’re like, „There’s no way you could say what they did to me; there’s no way that God had anything to do with that.“ But we’re talking about the perspective of it. The power of perspective that Joseph gives us is really clear, and that is as long as I say God wasn’t there, God had nothing to do with it, we leave him out of it. But Joseph switched it up. He removed his brothers from the picture, took them out of it, and literally looked at them and said, „God used you to put me through it.“
Because that’s how you forgive. You realize had I not gone through what I went through, I would not be who I am, and I wouldn’t trade who I am for anything. I’m not giving that glory to you. I’m going to give that glory to God. God saw me through that situation. God was there. God saw me through it, and I give him the glory.
Look, the dreamer is coming. The dreamer is coming. You can be seated. I’m going to end by doing this, and we’ll be out of here. All our locations, every eye closed, every head bowed. I want to do something in our last few minutes. I want to give you two minutes as we end our time together. These are your two minutes. You do with them what you would like. You use them however you would like to use them. I want nothing to do with these two minutes. They’re yours.
If you want to sit, sit. If you want to kneel, kneel. If you want to come to an altar, come to an altar. If you want to sneak out, sneak out. They’re your two minutes. They belong to you. You do with them what you want. But we’re going to worship and maybe you’re here and you can relate to a part of Joseph’s story. But I want you to know that really the story is not about Joseph. Everything you read about in the Bible is pointing to Jesus Christ. It’s impossible to read the story of Joseph and not see Jesus at every turn of it.
It is a picture of Jesus; it’s almost impossible to miss it. Beloved by his father, turned on by his brothers, sold out for 30 pieces of silver, sold out for nothing, falsely accused. But in all of it, God was working. In all of it, in the end, God got the victory. But over these next two minutes, maybe you relate to the sense of, „My life looks the opposite of what I thought it would.“ Maybe it spoke to you when you began to say, „I need favor for the dream.“ Maybe you’re here and you can say, „I’m the dreamless one.“
Maybe you’re guilty of mocking somebody’s dream. Or maybe you’re here and you say, „Marcus, I just am at a place in my life. This is where I’ve been recently. I’m just going to be honest with you. When I hit 50, I didn’t know that I had been building my life to the fulfillment of a dream without the expectation that once that dream started to kind of be really solid and secure, God would say, 'Now it’s time to dream yet another dream.' And I’m like, 'It cost me everything to dream the first dream. I’m ready to relax.' God’s like, 'Nah, you can relax when you get to heaven. I didn’t give you that dream; I gave you that dream to be progressive; to show you I could do it; to show you I could be faithful to it.' Now it’s time to dream yet another one.“
So, I can relate to that part of the dream. But two minutes is what I’m going to give you. I took too long to say all this, but two minutes. You take them how you want to. Again, you can stay in your seat; you can come to an altar. We’re going to worship, but over these next two minutes, ask God to speak to your situation, to your circumstance, and specifically to your dream. Ask God to anoint you today.
I’m going to end by praying that over our lives-that God will anoint each and every one of us in a fresh way with a dream. I believe there’s an anointing on this church for dreamers. I don’t know why that is other than the fact that I don’t have much going for me, but somehow, I’ve always been able to be a dreamer. Somehow I’ve always had the ability to say, „I don’t know how or why, but I’m going to stick with it. Do or die. I’m going after that dream.“
I don’t say that in a braggadocious way; I say that really humbly because I don’t have a whole lot. But I do believe God has given me a dream, and it’s not a dream for me. It’s a dream for you. It’s a dream that when I show up, I’m here to help you interpret your dream and help you have the courage for your dream, the faith for your dream, in Jesus' name, and that ultimately we would reap a mighty harvest together.
Two minutes. Do as you would like over these next two minutes, and I believe God’s going to speak to every one of you if you let him go. Your ways are higher; your thoughts are wild. Love came like poured-out blood, and it makes no sense. But this is grace, and I know you’re with me in this place here now. All I know is I know that you are here now. Still my heart; let your voice be all I hear now. Fix my eyes on the things that I can’t see now. Spirit, breathe like the wind; come have your way.