Matthew 27:19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his
wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I
have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
2.How many of you have dreams? Can you distinguish when a
dream really means something and when it is just your mind floating out there
trying to make a collage of strange purposeless things?
Have you ever dreamed you are flying? Many people have!
According to the scientific study of dreams your mind keeps working on problems
you could not solve in the daytime. People who dream flying could be learning
what they will need to know after they leave this body behind! Jesus will raise
us up!
We passed Easter and you can find tens of thousands of
sermons on Jesus’ resurrection and that important day. But there is one verse I
want to explore, and that is how Jesus appears to and appeared to different
people communicating to them in dreams, even though these people did not choose
to meet him, nor had they ever met him personally.
3.For example, the wife of Pilate had a dream and in her
dream Jesus appeared to her and she took seriously the injustice that was
happening to him. In a dream she was touched by the purity and holiness of
Jesus because she described him as a “just man”. That is divine communication. The rumors were
he was a devil!
Then, like good wives do, she tells her husband what she
feels and thinks about a decision he will make concerning Jesus. The men have
the power, but women usually do have a strong invisible influence. Women often
change things behind the scenes with their words, do they not? She told him she
had suffered in a dream because of him. When the wife suffers and is disturbed
it affects the man as well.
That dream that she had that we do not know the details of,
then troubled Pilate as she got through to him about the true holy nature of
Jesus. This started troubling him that a just man would die, and he was
accustomed to sending men to die daily.
So much was he disturbed by his wife’s dream, and God’s conviction, that
he washed his hands in public to symbolize he didn’t want anything to do with
what was happening with Jesus condemnation, do you recall that?
4.Matt27: 23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he
done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. 24 When Pilate
saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took
water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the
blood of this just person: see ye to it. 25 Then answered all the people, and
said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
What we can conclude is that Jesus visited Pilate’s wife and
this visit influenced how he handles the case of having Jesus in front of him.
He tried to change the mind of the the people by releasing Barabbas instead of
Jesus, a known murderer, but it did not work. In reality, he tried to protect
an innocent man, but the people chose the death of Jesus despite that. So even
evil rulers fear God’s justice!
I am sure Pilate, and his wife was very disturbed after that
day. What sort of terrible people would
choose the death of Jesus, a just man over a man who was a dangerous murderous threat
to society?
5.Dreams are a major component in all our lives. A long time
before Jesus birth, God sent dreams to Joseph in Egypt and there are many accounts
of dreams in the Bible. Recall the dreams of Joseph of Mary to marry her and
then to flee Egypt and that of the Wise Men who took action on their dream and
traveled away from Herod to avoid his wrath. They did not even know of his plot
to kill Jesus. How do we explain such detailed communication in dreams?
There are day time dreams that happen as well, but those we
usually referred to as visions. Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus
and that changed Paul’s entire life!
Here is a strange reality, Jesus, God, or angels have been
appearing to millions of people in visions, premonitions or dreams ever since
he came to earth and these experiences are so real that millions of people have
taken radical decisions to start living very different lives from what they
were.
6.Referring to how dreams change others, let’s look at Muslims
and those of faiths who are isolated in lands where the gospel is not heard. I
have read many testimonies of people being converted just because of a dream
they had of Jesus appearing to them.
These unexplained dreams of Jesus or God have been so real
that people have been willing to change their lives and their religion, often
leaving their country, or even going to jail to be persecuted for their new found
faith in Jesus!
How can science explain that? It can’t! Some things are just
supernatural and it is not that some people in the world are just superstitious
or ignorant, to the contrary, many people know how to be sensitive to spiritual
communications and act upon them!
Your spiritual sensitivity is everything! Have you been shown
things from God in dreams, or in prayer and then acted upon them appropriately?
7.When I was 21 and deciding which direction my life would
go, I was stuck between staying in the university or leaving it to serve Jesus
as a missionary in South America. A major factor in my decision was a dream
that came to me.
Dream of Bob Dylan concert. I dreamed I was in a rock concert
and the main artist that I thought was the most amazing person alive, was being
arrogant and stupid and was keeping the people waiting for hours. During that
time the auditorium was filling up with thick smoke form the marijuana everyone
was smoking. Suddenly I felt glued to my chair and I got very scared as if I
felt I would die immovable right there if I did not get up.
But I forced myself to get up and when I did in the isle it
seemed like a drama skit of something, but a guy said, hey you, come here and
help us. There was Jesus carrying a cross and some others nearby and one gave
me a hammer and long nail in my hands and said here, help us to crucify this
man? I dropped the hammer and ran outside as fast as I could! I did not want to
help them kill Jesus!
Outside I thought it was night, but instead it was day and
there were hundreds of police cars and police that were getting ready to invade
the auditorium and take everyone to jail.
The Lord showed me I needed to escape my old life radically,
if not I would be paralyzed from drugs and crucifying Jesus in the process. The
police were representative of the angels of God that will return with Jesus to
judge the world.
8.Jesus changed my life by appearing in a dream. ? My sister
in law also told me one time that she had a dream in which Jesus told her to
stop following the church of her past and follow the evangelicals. Now, let me
ask you, how many of you have ever had a dream, or a vision, or an experience
with Jesus communicating to you? Look around, that is quite a few of you! My
point is Jesus ever since his death, and in all the book of Acts, has appeared
to others in dreams and visions in supernatural ways.
Communication through dreams and visions is not history; it
is a phenomenon that keeps happening today! There is a science study of the
mind called noetics to try to discover how we experience precognitions and the
unexplainable.
It is also a fulfillment of the verses of Acts 2:17 And it
shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit
upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young
men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: (Note: The last
days began with Jesus birth) Also please contextualize that these verses are
not a license to get disorderly and randomly interrupt the service to proclaim
some personal revelation as if you are the most spiritual one in all the church
as is done in some churches today.
9.But here is an undeniable reality, there are people that
Jesus has communicated to in his pure and holy way, and they have either resisted
or accepted the mission! What did Jesus tell Paul on his way to persecute
Christians in Damascus? Acts 9:5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord
said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks?
Jesus was troubling him and rebuking Paul. How? By a vision
shining through his darkness! Jesus love, His nature of purity, of
righteousness, his just way of fairness of bringing healing to broken hearts
and bodies contrasted greatly against Paul’s intentions of destruction. Jesus getting
close to anyone of us would expose our ugly selfish proud human nature which is
the opposite of His! So the people that seem to still have many sins and
faults, I assume have not really met Him!
10.Jesus in dreams is usually not the superman that takes you
by the hand and lifts you flying in the sky over the mountains and moon, He is
the one who sends a message to you about something important that is happening
in your life at that moment and he often is warning you to change immediately,
change your attitude, move away to another place, or to take action on an
important decision. Jesus wakes you and I up to a new truth and this reality requires
a reaction!
Jesus appearing in a dream, or in a vision, is an unexplained
internal awareness and it is as God’s Holy Spirit at work. Those who ignore that tugging of the heart, or
reject the revelation of the truth of God, miss the out on the blessings of
God, and depending on what message God is convicting them of, that person might
even be rejecting salvation!
11.We see an instance of this is Acts where Stephen, filled
with the Holy Ghost, reveals the truth of Jesus to the crowd but despite his vision
& powerful glowing presence, despite the heart piercing conviction his
anointed words brought to the crowd’s ears, they still resisted! They murdered
him as they did Jesus, out of the hatred in their hearts rejecting the fact
that Jesus actually is the Son of God.
We all must bow down and reverence Him as Lord of Lords when
the Holy Spirit convicts us, if not the only alternative is rejection by choice
and an eternal separation from the God which is hell. Stephen’s final warning
while having a vision (a daytime dream) was, Acts 7:51 Ye stiffnecked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your
fathers did, so do ye.
12.Today I want you to decide, has Jesus or the Holy Spirit ever
appeared to you, in a prayer, in a vision, in a dream in the night, or in a
still small voice in your heart and mind? If so did you act on it? Or do you
know someone to whom God communicated? God communicates today but few are
talking about it!
John 15: 26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send
unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the
Father, he shall testify of me:27 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye
have been with me from the beginning.
God may comfort in his message or trouble you, but you must
wake up.
Have you responded to some troubling dream or message gotten
in a prayer? If not, it is never too late to obey God! God is merciful, but
that second bus (after you missing the first) is on a different time clock of
God. Many people miss God’s will and really mess things up in their lives!
Start asking your friends today, have you ever dreamed with God or Jesus? Use
that as a way to share the gospel of His love!
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