Let God Speak 6: Dreams And Visions page 1

It is two years since I last had my eyes tested, and so ten days ago I went for my examination. The results of that test were another sign of my advancing middle age. The level of my shortsightedness had not altered, but the muscles in my eyes were not reacting as fast as they used to do in adjusting from looking at something close by (such as a book I might be reading) to looking at something in the distance. As a result, I now have to have a separate prescription for reading glasses. The specs I have been wearing these last two years are now my driving glasses.

So when the apostle Peter quotes the prophet Joel in saying, 

'Your old men will dream dreams
    and your young men will see visions'

I now realise that I have moved more decisively in the direction of the elderly dreamer and away from the young visionary!

And so the topic for the final sermon in this series exploring some of the ways in which God speaks to us is that of dreams and visions. I leave you to decide whether your age makes you a dreamer or a visionary!

I ought to explain at the outset that in talking about dreams and visions in this sermon I am restricting myself to actual dreams and visions. That is, I am taking the words literally, rather than referring to dreams and visions in a metaphorical sense. You can talk about having a dream or a vision for something and mean that you have a future hope or goal: that is not what I am tackling today - that is an important subject that deserves separate treatment.

No, I want to consider today what it means for God to speak to us through a dream in our sleep, or through a vision, that is, a picture or image given to us by the Holy Spirit that becomes a symbolic way in which God speaks to us.

Indeed, both dreams and visions are symbolic, pictorial, and even sometimes mystical ways in which God speaks to people. They are not logical or linear ways in which God speaks, but that does not mean they are either inferior or superior means of divine speech: they are simply different.

Perhaps because they are different from the logical we have not given them much attention in a culture that has prided itself on being scientific and rational. But now that people are more open to the mystical and the spiritual we may recognise them as the biblical writers did: in Scripture there are more than one hundred and thirty dreams, and close to a hundred visions. They are as regular and conventional a means of communication to God as the telephone and email are to us.

Not only that, they are used for significant purposes in the Bible: people are warned to prepare to face impending disaster, as the Pharaoh whom Joseph served was; people can be warned of the need to repent, as Nebuchadnezzar was; people can be saved from attack and led to safety, as the Magi and the infant Jesus were; the expansion of the Gospel happened in part due to God speaking in visions, both to Peter and to Paul; there can be teaching that brings hope in the face of suffering, as in the whole book of Revelation. And that is just to scratch the surface.

They are clearly tools of the prophetic voice: indeed prophets are in Scripture sometimes called 'dreamers' (those who dream) or 'seers' (those who see visions). Thus we should take dreams and visions seriously if we are serious about hearing the voice of God.

Let us now consider them separately.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.