Your Past Doesn't Define You

TRANSCRIPT

 Dream a little dream of me, say nighty night and kiss me. Oh, that was so good. Yeah, nice. What a way to start a message, eh? Well, there's a little bit of this song that we could finish at the end. It says, sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you. But in your dreams, whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.

And it's not talking about me, actually. I imagined what God would say to us. Dream a little dream of me. Leave your worries far behind you. See how different that is? It changed the lyric to become a personal invitation to a relationship with a God who dreams. A God who has such imagination that we can't keep up with Him.

He's already far ahead of us in our life dream. Isn't that reassuring? At the moment, it's just a nightmare, but God, you know, you know, what comes next. I hope I know. And so it is today. I'm Pastor Len, a father of Megan. That's husband to Dot. That's my great claim to fame, you know, and father of Aaron too.

Just in case you're listening. Our theme today is from Wonka's movie. All right, we're in the At The Movies series. And we're gonna take the short title, A Fresh Start With Grace. Okay, let's unpack that one today. And to get us started on Wonka today, this is Wonka the prequel. The movie that tells us why Wonka was Wonka.

Alright, so are you ready? We're gonna strap in from the very beginning and see his first little journey to following his dream. Thank you.

After seven years of life upon the ocean It is time to bid the seven seas farewell And the city I've pinned seven years of hopes on Lies just over the horizon I can hear the harbor bell Land! A tattered overcoat and battered suitcase One more, chef! Got a pair of leaky boots upon my feet Sorry, cook!

Gotta drug myself up by my one good boot lace Gotta work my rotten socks off if I want to make ends meet I've poured everything I've gotten to my chocolate. Now it's time to show the world my recipes. I've got twelve silver sovereigns in my pocket. And a hat full of dreams.

There's a famous restaurant on every street here. There's Brandino's and the Bar Parisien. Restaurant map, sir? Thank you. Got a little map to tell me where to eat here. Had a dozen silver sovereigns, now I'm somehow down to ten. Want the finest produce, this is where they stock it. That's three sovereigns, mate.

Though the prices are suspiciously extreme. Wait, how much can you pay for it? I've got five, six, seven. Six silver sovereigns in my pocket And a hat full of dreams Brush your coat, sir. No, thank you. Cologne? No, leave me alone. At last, the gallery gourmet I knew that we'd see it one day. It's everything you said, Mama, and oh, so much more.

Each way that you turn, another famous chocolate store. Here's my destiny, I just need to unlock it. Will I crash and burn or go up like a rocket? I got nothing to offer but

Where did all the ceilings go? , he starts off with the big dream and ends up following the dream, ends up in a place where everything's against him. It seems like nothing will ever come of this great dream that he has. And I was thinking about this movie and actually I thought of the word grace. Now theologically grace is a very busy word and I won't get into it.

But we will discover what grace really means as we unpack it this way. Grace works the same way as the dreams do in Willy's life. Hmm. How's that so? Grace is all about, get this, Reimagining, almost in a dreamlike way, what God sees in the situation, in my life, in my failures, my sinfulness, my brokenness.

What do you see, God? Well, that's like a dream sometimes. It's like, you know, I'll never be at that point where I'll achieve what God wants. I'll never see myself the way He does. And grace comes along and says, here we are. Open up that little chocolate. It's so different. Such a revelation to me. To think of grace as opening our eyes, almost dreamlike, to the possibilities that are not in the front of our mind.

What does God imagine for me? What does God see in me? Oh, don't get too excited. But you should. Maybe you could. Maybe. Have you ever noticed how often dreams play a pivotal part in the scriptures? You may be new to the Bible, that's okay. We'll introduce a few names, names you may be familiar with. How about a little guy named Adam?

Ah, starts there. What happens to Adam? Beautiful creation. All around him, there's so much to enjoy. He gets the pleasure of naming all the animals and God says, you know what? There's something missing. God is sleeping. And out of his dream, he wakes up and there she is. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Eve!

God is fulfilling a dreamlike thing that's grace to him. A whole new person that's like him but very different will never be the same. But that is God's grace. Abram! Some know him as Abraham, but Abram, the short name wakes up from a dream. I like him because he was 75 when he got his dream. I'm not even that old yet.

So there's hope for me yet. So Abram wakes up out of a dream and God says, go where? Just go. I'll show you. And so he sets off. He follows the dream, literally. Did you notice how many dreams come in the scripture? And Abram has a plan of walking in faith after God. That was his plan. I don't know where it's going to lead.

I don't know what this chocolate factory is going to look like, but it'll be great. And that is grace. The dream was to start a whole new nation. That was God's dream. And Abram was the way it was going to happen. A whole new people showing people how to love God, how to fail. How to come back to God. And so it was.

Did you notice, uh, in Hebrews chapter 11, that's a book in the New Testament, we have this chapter 11 and it's called the Hall of Fame of Faith, right? I'd like to call it the List of Dreamers. What are you talking about? Well, it says, it starts off with these words, Faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Hopes and dreams. Yeah, put it together. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Man, if God's not inviting you to a dream like existence with him, what is going on? Grace is about stepping into the new reality. Are you there yet? Keep following. The Beatles songwriter, yeah, bring in the best.

John Lennon, you know. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Perhaps someday? You'll join me. Excellent. Jacob. Jacob's, uh, the grandson of Abram. His dream time starts in a wrestle with God. What a great analogy of what it's like to walk with God. Are you at war with God sometimes? Why, God?

Come on, give me a break, God. Are you sure, God? Didn't we go through this before, God? Where are we up to, God? Show me! Wrestle, wrestle, wrestle. And all the time, God is waiting for us to get to dream with Him. And to wrestle with Him enough to wake up to His, see His stairway to Heaven. His beautiful existence.

His idea for

the way forward, the way out. And then the son of Jacob, Joseph. Some say he had a very colourful, Some versions say it was a long sleeve jacket, not as sexy, but you know, whatever it was, he had a jacket and his brothers were pretty peeved about that. First of all, because he was the favorite son and then the brothers got to hear his dreams.

Oh no, dreams. His dreams was, Hey, I'm going to be on top. I'm going to rise up and even Mum and Dad are going to kneel down to me and you'll watch, it'll happen. Oh yeah, pocket full of dreams. His brothers saw him coming one day and what did they say? Here comes the expert in dreams. We read about it this week in our soap.

It's kind of a fascinating story. They didn't mean it as a compliment to call him an expert in dreams. They were so angry at what he was doing. But he was just channeling and locking into and uncovering what grace was for him. The dream that God had for him was bigger than him. He was going to take a whole people and us on a journey that hadn't yet started, but it was on the way.

Then there's the other Joseph, Mary's husband to be. Poor Joseph, just found out some news about my wife to be. Okay, I think I know what to do. But God said go to sleep. In his sleep, he gets a visit from God. He wakes up from the dream knowing exactly what to do with his wife to be and the baby that she's bearing.

His whole demeanor, whole purpose, whole life changed. His future was different. You see what grace does? It re imagines, it shows us what we don't see. And God is doing that. Well, all through the old Testament, the covenant, the prophets are dreaming away important dreams. and roles that we need to know about.

And they get repeated in the New Testament. Remember, there was a day of Pentecost once where there was some rumbling of the Spirit of God, people seeing strange things and hearing strange voices. Well, that's it. It was God, up to his tricks, but he said, Peter, the great Peter, who was a scared ass, got up and said, this is what it says in the scripture, Joel said it, Joel chapter 2 verse 28, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy and what else? Your young men will see visions. Not talking about the girlfriends here. They will see what God sees and your old men will dream dreams. There's hope for us old guys yet. You see God has a plan and he even told us about it in advance. I want a nation of dreamers.

The best people to talk about God are those who have dreamed with him and woken up to his reality. Are you excited yet? Now, my mate Banjo, I don't think he's made it today. Hi Banjo and home. He often sees me with this microphone on and says, oh good, you're preaching today. I can get some sleep. Yeah, he knows, he knows I was gonna can him today.

But do you know what? It's not that sort of dream Dave. We're not talking about that. Not saying too that all dreams are from God. Some are real nightmares. But, what if we opened up our minds to imagine that the next thing that God wants to tell me is on its way, and maybe it'll be my dream, right now.

Don't even have to be asleep for it. Did you know that the fastest growing church in the world today is in the country of Iran? Did you know that? Iran! That's Muslim! What's going on? Well, people are waking up to a dream of seeing Jesus and speaking to them. And all of a sudden, I never knew like that Jewish people who aren't already Christian believers are waking up to the dream that this Yeshua, this Messiah is their Messiah.

God has a way of just interrupting what we expect. Multiple occasions, people are having dreams of what God is really saying to them, who He really is. Dreams are so prevalent in God's words that we ought to aspire to dream often and to trust more often the directions He may be giving us. So, we're just going to a deep sleep now.

No, no. While I'm still talking, dream on. Grace is opening our eyes. That's what we're going to say. Grace is opening our eyes to possibilities beyond your first thoughts. Hmm. Now at the beginning of every year, I think about second chances. You know, this is a new year. Probably every morning, really, a second chance.

God, if you didn't want me to breathe today, I wouldn't be here. So this year, this moment is a chance from God. What are we going to do with it? I've had seasons where I felt stuck, uh, I like, I've had past failures and mistakes, and I thought, I won't want to share any of those with you, but I will. I remember about after pastoring a little church for 20 years, and I was getting tired honestly, but I was pastoring away and I was also the national leader of our small denomination.

And this family who I've loved and known in my congregation for years and years come to me and say we need to talk to you about our brother. Now the brother was a man who had been a missionary for the same denomination. Appointed by the US group of, uh, church, not by Australians, but he'd gone away and applied for ordination.

You with me? He wanted to get recognition. But the brother wasn't coming to me, the family was. They were thinking he'd been dudded. And here I was the person in charge and I thought, okay, I'll give it fair due. You know, I'm going to go away and do my research. So I rang people in America who were there at the time, asked all about the questions of why it might've happened, why it didn't happen.

And finally it was agreed. It's not going to change. This is something in the past, it's been decided, it's okay, but it's not going to change. So my job is to come back to the family now and transfer that information. Well, straight away they were angry. Angry at me, angry at the church, at the nomination.

How could they do this to our brother, who wasn't even asking for recognition now. But they'd got themselves to a place. And now I am the one in charge, right? Well, I've got the chairman's job now. So, in my wisdom, I said, They asked me, who was it that was the chairman back then, in those days, and something in me just twisted, and I thought, I'm not going to tell you.

I'm not going to tell you because I, in my mind, I'm thinking, you're just going to pursue this rabbit hole until, it doesn't matter anyway. But I'd fast forwarded the end before they'd got there. So what a big mistake I'd made was, I broke faith and relationship with my friends over my pride of saying I know the answer.

You see where I'm going with the story? Sometimes you make a choice, a mistake, and you're too proud to admit it. You're too proud to back down and say, follow it through and see where it goes. Too proud to let them discover their own way out of the situation. And so you may feel a bit stuck sometimes. May not be that it may be health issues.

It may be jobs. It may be relationships that aren't really gelling. And you think there's no way I can see a way out of this. But I'm here to tell you that there is a way. We're going to look at the fine print now. Have a look at this scene from Wonka, and it's all about when he didn't read the fine print, what happens next.

Thank you. You come with me, you are in here on Suns.

First you pick up the apparel and you stick it in the barrel. Scrub, scrub.

Then you take it to the. Turn the giant handle, scrub, scrub. Then it's hung up really high, Until it's nearly dry, scrub, scrub. But when we sing this song, The day don't seem so long, scrub, scrub. It's still long though.

Gotta press out all the creases from the dresses and tenises, rub, rub. Gotta fold them like they told us, or they'll scold us and withhold our grub, grub.

We all say, The signer doesn't lie, so we've got to do our time. Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub. And if you don't agree, See Clause 5, Section 7a, Paragraph 22, Part D. Wishes. Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub. Scrub, scrub.

And it seems no way to change it. You've missed the fine print on that decision and you've ended up in a sort of a trap. A place where it's just all scrub, scrub. A place where you don't see a way out of it. If that's you today, I'm sorry. I really am. But it's not the end. God has a dream that includes getting out of that situation.

Starting fresh. Your past does not define your future. That's what we want to say about this little moment here in our thoughts. Now just finding my notes again. Thank you. Your past doesn't define your future. God's grace does. Now this is the starting point, a new beginning for you. The starting fresh can be challenging.

We all set goals. We might make resolutions. We even dream about what this year could be. But sometimes we're held back by the weight of our past, the mistakes we've made, the words that we wish we could take back, the dreams that feel just out of reach. And it's easy to feel trapped by what was instead of looking forward to what could be.

And so what we're looking at today is this idea of grace. Grace can open our eyes, almost dreamlike. to the new possibilities beyond our first thoughts. We begin seeing the possibilities that God may have for us. He says, dream a little dream with me. Dream of what it might be and see what happens. Finally, we come back to the story of Wonka.

Interestingly, Willie's experience with Scrub Scrub was only an inspiration to dream about a way of getting the full mast of dog to work a, uh, what they call a treadmill and automate the whole laundry. So he turned the Scrub Scrub into something different, just with his imagination. So what they say about lemons, you know, make lemonade if you're there.

He doesn't let this past failure or the words of the world's cynicism stop him from sharing his vision of joy and hope with those around him. He changes the laundry scene into one where it's not so bad after all. They get to sit back and watch the dog do the work. Well, the early Christian leader, Paul, reminds us just how grace and hope allow us to pursue transformation even when others doubt us.

Here's what he says. He's writing to the friends he has in Ephesus, a big, big city in Asia Minor. And this is what he tells them. For it is by grace that you've been saved. This reimagining. Seeing it God's way, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God. Not by works that no one can boast.

There's a way coming and it won't be something we can boast about, we can rejoice in it and enter fully into it. So just like Willy Wonka. Jesus enters into the world that is broken and bitter and changes it forever, offering grace that redeems and transforms. Jesus love doesn't just cover our mistakes.

Listen, it makes us new. Isn't that beautiful? If we've made the wrong choices in life, it's not the end. Jesus has a new way forward. So this ties into how Jesus persevered despite opposition. offering us a vision of full redemption from our sin and our bad character choices. Grace is like waking up to a whole new set of possibilities.

Think about those areas in your life where you feel stuck and held back. Maybe it's a relationship. Scrub, scrub. Maybe it's a personal goal that you're not achieving. Scrub, scrub. Maybe it's even your faith. Will I ever come back to faith in God? Scrub, scrub. Don't get stuck. So your past does not define your future.

God's grace does. Our final clip today is from the end of the movie. Yay. And it's really exciting, but we'll watch it now and just finish off in just a minute.

Joe. Thank goodness you're okay. Came as fast as I could.

Car struck. I'm sure it did. And you have nothing to worry about. Chief. All under control. A couple of fees broke in, but I'm afraid they met with a little accident in which they died. That's actually around the good job. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Officer, would you kindly take a look at this? Wonka It details every single illegal payment these men have ever made.

Thousands of them affable. Don't listen to her. She's lying. Well, of course she is. She's not, sir. She's absolutely right. It's incredible. Oh. Well, then that sounds like a case for the chief of police. So you can give it to me, affable. I'll, uh, I'll take it off your hands. You know, save you the paperwork.

Can't do that, I'm afraid, sir. Why's that? Because your name is written down here. Huh? A lot. Gentlemen, you're under arrest. Run! That's okay, Neil. Give it one second. What's happening? Why are we airborne? You didn't eat any of those chocolates, did you, Mr. Slytherin? Why? Because they're hoverchucks. Delayed action.

But extra strong. You think you're very Wonka? Well, there's a billion sovereigns of chocolate beneath our feet. We'll get the best lawyers. Write the charge, rig the jury. We have to. We'll be fine. I wish I'd thought of that.

Hey, Noodle!

Aaaaaaaaaaah! What is that? It's our chocolate! All our chocolate's been ruined! Ah, don't worry, gentlemen. You'll come down eventually. Probably. I think. But until then Ladies and gentlemen! Willy Wonka! And friends. I invite you to enjoy our chocolate.

Ready?

Stuff for us. Often it's kept by the worst hands. It's kept away from us. And if we don't see it the way God sees it, it's always locked away and we miss out. But what if we reimagine? What if grace comes in? What if we can see the way God sees? We're going to say it this way, grace is all about re imagining where you and I sit in relationship to our creator and to others.

We're going to say your past doesn't define your future. God's grace is does. As the worship team will come now, thank you. We want to think a little bit more about this commitment to grace in our life. Will you dream a little dream, says Jesus. Will you let go a bit and just imagine it differently? It can be different.

Grace to forgive ourselves and others is what we need. Grace to dream again and to take risks and knowing who God is with us. He is with us. And grace to believe that our best days are still ahead. I hope today you go away craving that dreamlike state with God. It's all very real. We've got real jobs to do, real lives to touch, but let's get into that place with God.

where we dream his dream for us. Like Wonka, we can create a community that reflects God's grace. Can you imagine a place where everyone feels welcome, where they all have a second chance of abundance and their joy is their defining culture? Can you imagine that?