Genesis 28:10-22

The grace of God is astonishing, when we see it.

Once when the king of Syria was warring against Israel, he took counsel with his servants saying “at such and such a place shall be my camp.” But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, “Beware - don’t pass this place, for the Syrians are going down there.”

The king of Israel listened and saved himself by following the warnings of the man of God once or twice.

The king of Syria however was out of his mind about it and demanded to know who the spy was among his servants. “None, but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel tells the king of Israel the words you speak in your bedroom.”

At the king’s demand, horses, chariots, and a great army are sent to seize Elisha and they came at night to the city where he was.

When the assistant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out he beheld an army all around the city. Worried, he went to Elisha and said, “Alas, my Master! What shall we do? Why are you so calm?” Elisha said in reply, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

Then Elisha prayed saying “O Yahweh, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

The prophet prayed that the Lord would blind the Syrians, then led them to Samaria where Israel captured, fed and returned them never to be raided by them again. (2 Kings 6:8-23)

O, Yahweh, please open our eyes that we may see!

I think I live most of my life like the servant before Elisha prayed. The weight of life bearing down, anxiety rising, wondering how some can be so calm… and I know better!

That’s why we are given consistent reminders and invitations back into reality. To see things the way they really are. When life is going great and everything seems to be falling into place; or when we are so lost it feels like we don’t have a rock to rest our heads on; and everything in between. That our Creator is in control. His royal messengers traverse from his throne room to earth carrying out his decree, constantly. And he has told us, this is for our good.

We get a hefty dose of this goodness today in the story of Jacob's dream, a vision of reality, and his response to seeing God.

The grace of God is astonishing, when we see it.

Astonishing: extremely surprising or impressive; amazing.

I want to take the text in two movements: Bethel over Babel; and Grace over Gumption. Along the way see what the story has to do with us!

Bethel over Babel

Genesis now shifts to focus on the life of Jacob. We’ve barely met him in our study. Child of prophecy, “younger shall rule over the older.” Last we saw him, this younger twin son of Isaac was scheming with his mother to trick his father into giving a blessing he intended to give his macho brother Esau.

It worked, but it ruined the family. Esau wants to kill him, so Isaac, at the behest of Rebekah, sends Jacob to her family to find a wife and avoid death at the hands of his brother.

Genesis 28:3–4 “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. [4] May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!” (ESV)

Jacob leaves with nothing. None of the inheritance. No troupe to camp with. No resources, which will become part of his story in finding a wife. So without, as the sun set at a certain place, he grabs a stone as a pillow.

Exhausted from the journey, and maybe the emotions of being threatened with death and losing family, he sleeps.

And he dreamed… Oh what a dream. Jacob, in a moment of vulnerability and fear while fleeing from Esau, encounters God's presence in a dream.

Pastors and props - ladders, and pastors outdoing each other using ladders as props. Such a missed opportunity here! Because I don’t think ladder is a good translation!

It’s more that Jacob sees a grand staircase. A stairway (as some translation rightly get it). Set up on the earth and reached to heaven.

“Angels of God were ascending and descending on it!”

This is a chariots of fire moment.

Our modern imagery of angels does a disservice to the imagination here. In entertainment today, the angel has to tell you they are an angel. But in Scripture, you KNOW they are an angel.

C.S. Lewis made the point that when angels appeared in Scripture their usual refrain was “do not be afraid.” You only have to say that if people's natural response is to be afraid!

“Mal-ak” Messenger of God, supernatural beings. Jacob is given a vision of divine commerce. The decree of God being carried out. Sovereignty at work. Royal messengers taking orders from the king throughout the realm ensuring his commands are accomplished.

This should come as a huge relief to us. God is in control!

Jacob is given a glimpse. As if we would be brought up and able to see how everything connected and where all the tributaries of our existence flowed into the larger rivers of life, how it all makes sense. On the ground we can see it, but from the heavens it is clear, from the map room it fits together.

“What we’re told here is you and I can’t see it, we’re blind to it, but God is working. That’s what it’s saying. God is not remote. Heaven is not a closed book. The power of God is out there working in the world. That’s the first thing we’re told… The point here is nobody is up high enough over history, except God himself, to see how this connects to this and why this has happened and why that has happened and how they all fit together. Nobody can see it. God is just simply saying it, “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.” Timothy J. Keller

To that, the human response and question is often, “why do you let bad things happen? Why this suffering?”

“if you have a God who is infinite and great enough for you to be mad at him for not stopping the suffering, then you have to have, at the same time, a God who is infinite and great enough to have a perspective on it you don’t have and to have reasons for it you can’t see.” Timothy J. Keller

And that gives us relief or comfort because we can know who God is, from Scripture, and that he works for good. That he is merciful, patient, gracious. With those he calls his own.

Not a big point for Jacob, but a big point for me.

So he sees the stairway with angelic traffic. Then the crazy thing happens. And again I want to change the translation or tweak it.

V. 13: “And behold, Yahweh stood beside/before him and said “I am Yahweh…”

Some have translated that as “above” as if God was at the top of the stairs but the sense of the text is nearness. He is coming to Jacob.

Lord “standing “over him”

Not only did Jacob see a stairway, not only did Jacob see a stairway filled with angels coming and going, he saw the Lord descend the stairway and come and stand right over him in a posture of intimacy and nearness.

God comes down with all holiness and majesty, unasked for, stands right over him like a father or a mother stands over a sleeping child, and says words of love and assurance.

Genesis 28:16–17 “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” [17] And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (ESV)

“He was astounded because he was like the rest of us who naturally forget that God is present when we are in trouble, especially when it is our own fault. Surprise, fleeing sinner, God is there! Surprise, sinful sufferer, God is there! Surprise, evil schemer, God is there! Surprise, faithless one, God is faithful!” Hughes

He takes his pillow and sets it up as a sacred stone to mark the spot. Calls it Bethel, “house of God.”

Bethel over Babel. This corrects humanity’s confusion of how to relate to God.

Seventeen chapters earlier, unified humanity built a ziggurat, pyramid like temple, with a grand stairway reaching from the ground toward the sky. Trusting in their own ingenuity, ability, labor.

Their perspective was, and ours can be, that we have to climb.

We have to build something worthy, big enough to reach heaven.

Yahweh though shows Jacob, and us, that he comes down, in grace to the undeserving.

Opposite Babel and oh so better because Jacob is promised persistent presence.

“I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

We can be prone to feeling alone, even in a crowd. Jacob is experiencing it in its fullness. And he moves from belief to encounter.

That’s what this story is, an invitation to encounter, to see.

You don’t climb but he comes to you.

“In his own time the Lord would ‘come down’ and reveal that he was not far away, but close at hand, ‘a very present help in trouble’ (Ps. 46:1), even to an unscrupulous youth, running away from the brother he had twice robbed. The fact strikes us as shocking, even immoral, until we come to see that we are all in the same desperate plight, unworthy to approach God and unable to save ourselves. Then we begin to marvel at the significance of Jacob’s experience, and join to praise ‘the God of Bethel’, for the God who bothered with him is willing also to bother with us, and make us something we could never otherwise have been.

Then, with my waking thoughts

Bright with Thy praise,

Out of my stony griefs

Bethel I’ll raise:

So by my woes to be

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee!”

Joyce G. Baldwin

You are in the middle of his presence and the business of angles at this very moment. His MO hasn’t changed. There is still a stairway…

Grace over Gumption

All that Jacob brings, all that he has, is need. “All I have is this lousy pillow, and I don’t own that!”

More than that, he is here because of his sin, lying to Isaac. And still, Yahweh comes.

Genesis 28:13b–14 “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. [14] Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” (ESV)

Jacob is included in the covenant. The promise.

When Isaac received the promise it was because his “father Abraham was faithful.” Which was still gracious.

But here, Only promise, because he is God.

Promise Jacob will cling to, wrestle to keep, grace that dominates his life. And all he brings is his need. He didn’t have to prove he could handle the pressure, he won’t always. He didn't have to wait for the promise until he fully trusted, he with struggle with that.

He is given promise, covenant, presence, by sheer grace. Because someone else traversed the cosmic stairway, because God came down.

“This is a stairway from heaven. This is a stairway chosen by God. This is a stairway of grace. It’s not a way to ascend up to God and get the blessing through important people. It’s a stairway from God, chosen by God in sheer grace, where he comes down into nowhere places in the lives of nowhere, messed-up, broken people, sheerly by grace. He comes to you; you don’t go to him. He comes all the way and stands right over you and gives you unconditional love.” Timothy J. Keller

Here’s the thing, we have the same hope that Jacob is given if we have the eyes to see it. Because God has come down, even to you, the stairway is still open, but gloriously you don’t have to visit Jacob’s sacred stone to encounter grace.

We are included when Jesus claims this stairway for himself.

Jesus calling the disciples.

John 1:43–51 “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” [44] Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. [45] Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” [46] Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” [47] Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” [48] Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” [49] Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” [50] Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” [51] And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (ESV)

Proving sovereignty, “I saw you.” We don’t know what Nathaniel was doing or saying under the fig tree. The Chosen dreamt something up. Whatever it was, it was meaningful enough that he calls Jesus by the messianic title “Son of Man” when he says he saw him there.

Then he tells him he will see greater things. Jesus is saying “I am the stairway jacob saw. I am the link between heaven and earth.”

This is the answer to why Jacob’s stairway works in a completely opposite direction from every other conception of religion.

Jesus is not standing at the top of the stairs. We even wonder from his statement, what are the steps?

Requirements, the steps to God? Every religion had them. Five pillars of Islam, steps to God. Ten commandments of Judaism wrongly viewed, steps to God. The eightfold path of Buddhism to enlightenment, they’re steps to God.

Is Jesus giving steps to God? No.

He does not say “You will see angels ascending and descending to the Son of man..” Jesus says, “You will see angels ascending and descending ON the Son of Man.” What’s that mean?

He’s the steps!

The real path to heaven is a person. He fulfilled the requirements. He did the steps. He lived the life you should have lived. He died and took the penalty we should have taken. He did it.

All we had is our need.

Not by our gumption, initiative or resourcefulness. Not by our climbing. Jesus didn’t come to say what the steps to God were, he came to be the steps, he came to be the stairway.

He is the link between heaven and earth.

1 Timothy 2:5–6 “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, [6] who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” (ESV)

“It is Christ alone, therefore, who connects heaven and earth: he is the only Mediator who reaches from heaven down to earth: he is the medium through which the fulness of all celestial blessings flows down to us, and through which we, in turn, ascend to God.” John Calvin

“Even the old Bethel (i.e., “the house of God”) has been superseded. It is no longer in Bethel where God reveals himself, but in Jesus. The temple is likewise obsolete, because Jesus is the temple (cf. Revelation 21:22). And, believers, there is nowhere we can go where he does not mediate commerce between Heaven and earth for us. His promises to us stand. He keeps his word. Everywhere we go is “the house of God” and “the gate of heaven.”’

When we understand that, grasp what the Son of Man came to do, then heaven will be open to you, you will see.

Hear him say, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Like Jacob, respond in worship.

From his vision he sets the sacred stone, gives a declaration of covenantal commitment. To us it sounds unsteady. “He will be my God if he follows through.” but it matches the covenant language of the age.

Names the place as the house of God.

Commits to giving a tenth of all he is given as a recognition of the divine commerce, all he has is gift from the One orchestrating it all.

This is his worship, a life setting markers, giving in response to what he has been given.

Astonishing grace, how can we not worship!

What’s more, in Christ we are the sacred stones.

1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (ESV)

We become the markers, the reminders to the world around us of the grace of God in Christ, of his nearness, of his glory.

Jacob’s life is before hime. Anchored now in this encounter. “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Our lives are before us. Anchored in the grace of God in Christ.

That those who are with us are more than those who are with the enemy.

Lord, open our eyes to see.

The grace of God is astonishing, when we see it.

See Jesus - Bring your need, bring whatever it was under your fig tree, your night in the desert. Believe in him.

Set your Stones - Determine to worship, live under his sovereignty. Let others see this open heaven in the way you trust the Lord and have joy in him.

From belief to encounter. From understanding to astonishment.

May it be so in us.