The Dream of God
07/09/2006 - The Dream Begins
It is widely recognized as the most powerful American speech ever delivered and was ranked number one by rhetoric scholars as the greatest speech of the 20th century. It was given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., on a hot, summer day, August 28, 1963. The occasion was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the speaker was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the title of the speech was "I Have a Dream."
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
I have a dream today!
That was the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. He dreamed of an America where whites and blacks and people of all colors could live together in freedom and harmony as equals. That was the dream that fueled the civil rights movement. And he closed his famous speech by saying …
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
"I Have a Dream" is a powerful speech, one of the most inspiring talks ever given. And those who study communication like to analyze what made that speech so powerful. So they talk a lot about rhetorical devices like allusions and parallelisms and the repetition of key phrases like "I have a dream" or "let freedom ring." They discuss how the speech appeals to iconic and well respected sources like the Bible and the U. S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. And I'm sure all of that's true, those things do contribute to making it a great speech.
But in my opinion the speech is not powerful simply because of its style and the unique delivery of Martin Luther King, Jr. His speech is more than just a masterpiece of rhetoric. It is powerful because it reflects the passion of the heart of God. And all of us who are created in God's image resonate with that passion for freedom and equality, for justice and righteousness, for peace and harmony, because those values are all part of God's dream too. And he has placed them deep within the heart of every man and every woman he created.
Just like Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream for America, God has a dream for his world. And his dream involves you and it involves me, both individually and collectively as a church community. He wants us to live out his dream. Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, says, "Everybody needs a dream for life. It is a psychological necessity. If you're not dreaming, if you don't have a goal for life, if you don't have a dream, if you don't have a vision, you're dying."
This morning we begin a brand new series called The Dream of God: Bringing Heaven to Earth. It's a series that I believe is foundational for where God is taking us as a church. It's going to be a ten-part series that will take us through the entire summer and also take us through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation as we attempt to get our arms around the kingdom work that God is doing in this world. Jesus told us to pray, "Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
This is a series that I believe provides the scaffolding for all that we're about as a church. The dream of God fuels our mission which is to be a biblical community that helps people become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ who make a difference in this world. It provides the motivation for those we've been praying for week after week who have been getting on planes and boarding buses going to places like New Orleans to muck out houses, or Nicaragua to take care of livestock, or Ecuador to work in orphanages, or Coatesville to give love and hope to inner city children.
It's a series that explains why we provided a meal last week for a group of mentally challenged people who call themselves the Forteneiters. This is a series that hopefully will help us all do what Jesus commanded when he said, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." The kingdom of God is his dream. It's a dream that we can take to work with us every single day or to school or on vacation or wherever we go. And, of course, like every series it's designed to help us all be better lovers of God and lovers of each other. That, Jesus says, is the bottom line for his followers.
Our primary source for this series will be the Bible, of course. But there have been other books and other authors who have contributed significantly to this series and I recommend them to you for your own reading and study. Last week, Matt mentioned Rob Bell and his bookVelvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Brian McLaren's new bookThe Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything has been a great help as has N. T. Wright's book Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. If you're looking for a summer read, anyone of these books would be a good one.
So this morning we want to start at the beginning with a teaching I've called "The Dream Begins." If you have a Bible turn with me to Genesis 1:1. It's on page one.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light "day", and the darkness he called "night". And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day.
Genesis 1 is the story of creation and the central character right from the start is God. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This is his world. It's his idea. It's his creation. And as we move through Genesis 1 we get God's commentary on what he created and he calls it good. The light is good. The sky is good. The land is good. The seas are good. The plants are good. The trees are good. The stars are good. The sun is good. The moon is good. The fish are good. The birds are good. The animals are good. The people are good.
And like a crescendo it builds until we get to the last verse of chapter one where we read that, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day. From the beginning God calls his creation good, very good. It's a beautiful, breathtaking, wonderful world and he loads it up with the power to make more.
Look at Genesis 1:11-12, Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation. Notice it doesn't say God produced vegetation. No, God empowers the land to produce vegetation, more trees, more shrubs, more plants, more bushes.
God does the same for the fish and the birds, the animals and people. Look at Genesis 1:28, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it.
God loads his creation with power and potential, possibility and promise. It's given the freedom to grow and to change. It's not meant to stay the same. It's interesting that God doesn't use the word "perfect" to describe his creation. Perhaps because when we say something is "perfect" we usually mean that it's arrived at a point at which it can't change anymore. But that's not the case with creation. God sets it up in such a way that it can change and morph and produce an abundance of new things. It has freedom!
Then in Genesis 2, we zoom in and get a more detailed description of the creation of the first two human characters in the story, Adam and Eve.
Look at Genesis 2:7, The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground - trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, from there it separated into four headwaters. And they are described in verses 11-14.
Now look at verse 15, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." 18The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." 24For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
God's dream begins in a garden, a fabulous, lush garden called Eden. Flowing right through the garden is a sparkling river surrounded by all kinds of flowering trees. Some of the trees have names like the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in the midst of the garden God creates a man named Adam, which is a Hebrew word that comes from adamah, the word in Hebrew for "ground." In other words, there is an intended, intimate connection between Adam and the earth, between Adam and his environment. He comes out of creation.
But soon after Adam is created it becomes apparent that it's not good for the man to be alone. So God creates a helper for Adam and in chapter three we discover that her name is Eve which means "living."
And together God's dream is for them, Adam and Eve, to rule over his creation. We read that in Genesis 1:27-28, So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them. 28God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
Adam and Eve are made in God's image, the two become one, just like the Trinity is three in one, and together they reflect his goodness and his creativity and his freedom, together they reflect his authority as rulers, king and queen, over God's creation. They are responsible to take care of it, to manage it, to lovingly use it, and to enjoy it. And like the plants and animals they are given the potential to make more.
In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell puts it this way, "From day one the man and the woman are in intimate relationship and interaction with their environment. They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence. That is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues. And until that last sentence makes perfect sense, we haven't fully grasped what it means to be human and live in God's world. Everyone is an environmentalist. We cannot live independently of the world God has placed us in. We are intimately connected by God."
God's dream begins in a garden. In a garden where there is peace and harmony, where Adam and Eve enjoy a natural, intimate friendship with God. In Genesis 3, we read that God walks in the garden in the cool of the day. It's the place where God enjoys sweet communion with his creation. The garden is where heaven and earth intersect, where God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. It's a good place, a very good place loaded with the potential to become even better.
There is no sin in the garden. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. But there is freedom in the garden, because God is free and those who are made in his image share that freedom. And so the first two people have a choice to make. Because they are free creatures they can choose to either live in harmony with God and care for his creation as he intends or they can choose to exploit his creation and use it for their own selfish gain.
And we have that decision to make too. We can live in harmony with God and his creation or we can oppose God and the things he has made. We can take care of this world that God has given us and value the people and the things that God has created or we can abuse them and misuse them for our own selfish ends.
In his book The Secret Message of Jesus, Brian McLaren writes, "In creating our world, God wasn't dreaming about prisons and kidnapping, child abuse and racism, greed and poverty, pollution and exploitation, conformity and chaos. God's dream was for freedom and creativity, kindness and justice, generosity and peace, diversity and harmony … If we dream of using or controlling others, raping the environment, ignoring the poor, perpetrating racism and other forms of injustice, or simply being lazy or selfish, we are ruining God's dream: our dreams are opposing God's dream."
"The call to faith is the call to trust God and God's dreams enough to realign our dreams with God's, to dream our little dreams within God's big dream. The call to receptivity is the call to continually receive God's dreams - a process that, in my experience at least, seems to be a lifelong one. The call to baptism is the call to publicly identify with God's dream and to disassociate with all competing -isms or ideologies that claim to provide the ultimate dream (including nationalism, consumerism, hedonism, conservatism, liberalism, and on and on). And the call to practice is the call to learn to live the way God dreams us to live."
Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. And his little dream was part of God's big dream and that's why it had such amazing power. And God's dream is that we would live in harmony with him and his creation and each other. And for awhile his dream became a reality. But it didn't stay that way very long. Something happened that shattered the dream and turned it into a nightmare. And next week we'll see how that happened and what that has to do with you and with me.