The New Testament opens with a supposedly shocking moral failure and a planned cover-up. Had this juicy story been leaked to the media of the day, it would have exploded like breaking news.
A young couple was engaged to be joined in holy matrimony. The bride would wear white as a symbol of her purity because she was a virgin. Celebratory plans for the ceremony had no doubt been made when it was suddenly discovered that the bride-to-be was pregnant. To make matters worse, the husband-to-be—Joseph, son of David—was not the father!
That in itself was scandalous, but he had secretly planned to bury the story. Cover-ups are always follow-up headliners.
Joseph believed Mary was a godly soul. She was a young version of the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31. But now it was evident that she had betrayed his trust. She had been intimate with another man and had gotten herself pregnant. He didn’t want to believe it, but there was no other explanation. Life had slapped him in the face and made sour the sweetest of relationships. There would be no wedding. He would quietly put her away and face the music. Music of a different sort. He would tell his relatives and friends there were irreconcilable differences.
“Serve God, and your dream will never fade, because it is (in a sense) His dream for you. You run for His applause, and His praise is a crown that never fades.”
Then one amazing dream came to the rescue. It changed everything:
“But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.’” Matthew 1:20-21
This dream showed Joseph that God knew his dilemma and that He not only cared, but that it was all part of His divine plan. Mary wasn’t a secretly promiscuous young woman who had betrayed his trust. The wedding was on. That one dream turned his mourning into joy.
Borderline Insanity
We accept dreams as being part of ordinary life. Everyone has them, but they certainly are extraordinary. Some of them border on insanity, so much so that we dare not tell them to a soul. They come from nowhere and invade our sleeping minds, without our permission.
But there’s another mysterious dream that some of us have had at some time. Martin Luther King had one. He dreamed of a better world. These are dreams that don’t require sleep. They can come like a flash of lightning or slowly, like the dawn.
Some dream of becoming a famous actor, singer, or songwriter. Others dream of winning gold at the Olympics. This one often begins as a seed in the heart of a child who has seen someone win gold, and it grows into a deep-rooted resolve that sends him on long, lonely runs day after day. No accolades come from crowds in the stands to cheer him on. But they’re there, silently cheering in the distant future in the vivid stadium of his imagination. But as life unfolds, the odds are that he will never hear that sound—let alone see the glitter of a gold medal.
He still runs with that dream, but as time passes, it pulls him in other directions, and the vivid dream fades. He meets the girl of his dreams and, in time, marries her. His new life begins with the joy of a honeymoon and moves on to the hard reality of a mortgage. Bills, babies, and thirsty gas tanks stop his run for gold, forcing him to chase other priorities.
But this stark reality doesn’t overtake the Christian. He holds onto his quest for gold. The dream he follows will never fade. He breaks away from mediocrity the moment he turns his dream towards God. That change of direction means closing our eyes to what is seen and opening our eyes to the invisible:
“While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18
We see the invisible when God opens the eyes of our understanding. Look at our sorry state before we come to Him:
“Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Ephesians 4:18
Our understanding is darkened. We are not fully aware of God or the spiritual world around us.
We are alienated from God’s life. He is the source of life, and our sin separates us from that life.
This happens “because of the ignorance that is in them.” We are willingly ignorant, loving sin, and having our backs to God.
And sinners do this “because of the blindness of their heart.” In other words, they have no idea of the consequences of their actions. They’re like a blind man ignorantly tapping towards a 1,000-foot cliff, thinking that all is well.
However, seeing the invisible changes everything, beginning with our priorities. The world does have its rewards. It says to chase money, and if you catch it, it will give you a sense of security. But if you die in your sins, no matter what you achieve in life, even if you do achieve your dream, you die poor. Utterly destitute.
Instead, if you seek God first—love Him and love what He loves—the pleasures of this world will fade very quickly. They won’t matter. You will be rich toward God, with what the Bible calls true riches:
“Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” Luke 16:11
A Valuable Lesson
Here is a very real lesson about the Olympic gold coin. It’s a lesson that will teach us something important about this world. The Olympic gold medal isn’t gold at all. Modern Olympic “gold” medals are primarily made of silver, with a thin outer layer of gold.
The “gold” medal is made of 92.5% silver. Less than one-tenth of the medal a gold medalist holds is gold. Historically, only the 1904, 1908, and 1912 Games awarded solid-gold medals. In other words, the world competes for medals that look like gold — but they’re not. Believers run for an imperishable crown (see 1 Corinthians 9:25) that is solid through and through, and it’s eternal.
Serve God, and your dream will never fade, because it is (in a sense) His dream for you. You run for His applause, and His praise is a crown that never fades.
