Encountering God

Throughout our lives, we may encounter God in unexpected places and individuals. Sometimes we are the seekers, and other times God is the one finding us wandering around.

In our story today, we see Jacob on a long journey, it had been two days since he had left home we can imagine Esau boiling in the background, Rebekah weeping, and Isaac waving goodbye.

Two days on a journey of 500 miles. Jacob is on his way from Beersheba to a place called Haran in a land called Paddam Aram. It was a journey backward in time for Jacob, backward because he was retracing the steps of his grandfather Abraham who came from Haran to the Promised Land many years ago. But Abraham left behind him a settlement of people, a clan that grew and prospered over the years. So, it was natural that Rebekah would think of Haran when she cast about for a safe haven for her wayward youngest son.

It was far enough that Esau wouldn’t follow him there. Yet there was a family there so that Jacob wouldn’t be alone. All in all, Haran was a sensible suggestion.

Rebekah’s plan was simple. By sending Jacob to Haran, she was putting him in a safe place for a few months until Esau’s anger passed away. Then she would send word for Jacob to come home. In the meantime, she hoped that her son would marry one of his relatives in Haran and eventually return home, a bride in hand. It was a good plan, and in fact, it came to pass, but not exactly as Rebekah envisioned.

All of that was in the future when Jacob set out on his lonely journey to Haran. He’s been on the road now for two days. Two days to walk. Two days to think. Two days to ponder. Two days to wonder what might have been.

He left home so quickly. It wasn’t the beautiful send-off he wanted. Jacob was running for his life, relationships broken, family ties destroyed. Now, on the evening of the second day, as the sun sinks over the western horizon, Jacob stops for the night. He’s come to the outskirts of a city called Luz, a place unknown to him, a city filled with strange and possibly dangerous people. So filled with fear was Jacob that when he came to Luz, he dared not enter the city, even though night had fallen.

Outside the town, on a hillside strewn with rocks and boulders, Jacob made his bed. In that part of the world, night comes quickly. In the gathering darkness, Jacob rests his head upon a large, flat stone.

I imagine he had a hard time sleeping that night. As the stars came out, and the strange sounds of night filled his ears, Jacob realized that for the first time in his life he was truly alone. Homeless. Penniless. Helpless. Alone.

How did this happen, the grandson of Abraham? He had only himself to blame. That much is sure. And I’m sure he didn’t argue that point at all. For he was the one who cheated his brother. He was the one who lied to his father. He was the deceiver. He was the scoundrel. He was the one who broke up his own family.

Jacob got what he wanted. That night alone on the hillside, outside the city of Luz, resting his head on the stone pillow, he could only reflect on the terrible price he paid for the thing he wanted so much.

I pause to mention a point of some interest. They tell us that if you visit this area today, it doesn’t look much different than it did in Jacob’s day. Barren, strewn with rocks, it looks like a bleak moonscape. It was not the most likely place where a man would go to have an encounter with God. In fact, it’s the kind of place you might go if you were running from God.

God had never spoken to Jacob before. For all the years of his life, God had never spoken directly to him. To his grandfather Abraham—yes. To his father Isaac—yes. But to Jacob—no. For his whole life he had lived on the borrowed faith of his father and grandfather. He was raised in their faith, was taught their faith, knew their faith, and even believed their faith, but he had never had a personal experience with the God of his father and grandfather. To Jacob, it was all second-hand reality.

The amazing point is that God now speaks to Jacob at the moment of his desperation. All that has happened is a prologue. Even his deception and trickery were used by God to bring him to this precise moment in life. Now that he is running for his life, now that he is leaving the Promised Land, now that he has disgraced himself, now that he finally reached the bottom, at that exact moment, God speaks to Jacob. C.S. Lewis said that God whispers to us in our pleasure and shouts to us in our pain. Pain, he said, is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world. Now God moves to rouse Jacob even while he sleeps.

It happens in the form of a strange dream. In his dream, Jacob saw a stairway descending from heaven to earth. On the stairway, Jacob saw the angels of God going up and down the stairs. Not many people in the Bible ever saw angels. God allowed a few people to see his angels at work. It’s as if God would draw back the curtains at a crucial moment to let someone see the angels of God at work behind the scene. Jacob is one of those lucky few.

What are the angels doing? They are taking messages from earth up to heaven and messages from heaven down to earth. They are heavenly couriers who report to God concerning the situation on the earth. They also carry out God’s will—answering prayers, giving guidance, providing protection, fighting for the people of God, fending off the attacks of Satan.

At the top of the ladder stood God himself. Just think about that. Jacob at the bottom, God at the top, a stairway filled with angels in between. What does it mean?

Let me answer the question this way. There was a reason why Jacob was a cheater. He cheated because he thought God was far away from him. He has the same picture of God that a lot of people have today—a God in heaven who wound up the universe like a giant clock, set it running, and then busied himself with other things. To Jacob, God was too big, too vast, too magnificent, too almighty to ever be concerned about someone like him. It wasn’t that Jacob’s view of God was too small. Not at all. Jacob viewed God as entirely transcendent, so far removed from the earth that he had no time to worry about the details of human life.

We all feel that way sometimes. “Maybe God loves me, I know the Bible says he does. But’s it’s a big world, and everyone’s got problems, and he’s got to take care of 5 billion people. How can God have time to worry about me?”

But that kind of thinking leads to a faulty conclusion. If God is not personal, if he’s not concerned about your life, then you are left pretty much on your own. After all, you’ve got the rule book, you’ve got the Ten Commandments, but after that, it’s every man for himself. So if you have to bend the rules, so be it. Nobody is going to take care of you but yourself. That’s just the way life works.

It sounds appealing and can even be made to sound spiritual. That’s the way Jacob had lived for all these years. He cheated because he thought God either didn’t notice or didn’t care, or was too busy to help him out. Jacob reasoned this way: “If God were here, I wouldn’t have to do things this way. But God’s not here. So I’ve got to take care of myself.”

But Jacob is wrong. The message of the dream is this: “Jacob, I’m nearer to you than you think I am. Although I am in heaven and you are on earth, there’s a stairway that reaches from me to you. And my angels are constantly watching over you. They tell me what you need and I send them back to earth with my answers. I’m not very far away. In fact, I’m with you wherever you go. When you travel, my stairway travels with you. I was with you in Beersheba. I was with you when you tricked Esau. I was with you when you deceived your father. I am with you tonight. And I will be with you in Haran. Everywhere you go, I will go with you.”

That, in a nutshell, is what this dream is all about. It’s a message about the nearness of God. To help Jacob understand it, God reaffirmed the promise he had made to Abraham and Isaac. If that seems unimportant, it’s only because we aren’t today where Jacob was that night. If you study these words carefully, it becomes clear that God is meeting Jacob at the point of his personal need.

Think of all the needs that these words address:

Shame: “I am the God of your father Abraham.”

Betrayal: “I am the God of Isaac.”

Loss of his homeland: “I will give you this land.”

Insignificance: “All peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.”

Loss of his family: “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.”

Fear of the future: “I am with you … wherever you go.”

Fear of Failure: “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

This is exactly what Jacob needed to hear on the eve of his journey to Haran:

Suddenly Jacob awakens with a start. What time is it? Sometime after midnight. He rubs his eyes, stretches, yawns, sits up, and then he remembers. Was it a dream? Or was it reality? Or was it reality within a dream? Thinking, pausing, pondering, he begins to put the pieces together in his mind. “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ’Surely the Lord is in this place, I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ’How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’” The phrase “house of God” in Hebrew is the word “Bethel.”

What was it that Jacob discovered? He discovered the omnipresence of God—that God is everywhere present all the time. That’s why he called the place where he slept Bethel—the house of God. In years to come Jacob’s descendants would build a vast temple in Jerusalem and that would be called the “house of God.” But no building of brick and mortar—no matter how expensive—can contain the presence of the Almighty. When we call our church buildings houses of God, we simply mean they are dedicated to the worship of God. Some people think that God is more present in a building than anywhere else. Not so. What God is teaching Jacob is that anyplace can be a “house of God” for you if you meet the Lord there.

You don’t have to go to church to meet God. You can meet him on the freeway. Or in a hospital waiting room, McDonald’s. Or alone in a rocking chair. Or riding a bus to school. Or sitting on a park bench. Or riding in your car.

God is everywhere. Wherever you are, there God is. And wherever God is, there is a stairway to heaven reaching down from God to right where you are.

You don’t have to have a “holy place.” Anyplace can be a “holy place” if you stop and listen to God’s voice speaking to you. Sometimes we have a deep spiritual experience, and we say, “I really felt the presence of God.” Surely the presence of God is in this place.