Title: Nowhere Places
Text: Genesis 28:10-19a
Thesis: It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or are going… it only matters that God is with you wherever you are, however you are and whatever you are.
Introduction
I followed my cousin, Dan, on Facebook last week as he made a Harley road-trip from Atlantic, Iowa to California and back recently. It was fun following his progress from stop to stop each way. He usually posted a photo of his Harley parked at a gas station which often gave us a glimpse of the local landscape in the background. It gets pretty desolate west of here.
I was particularly intrigued by a photo he took on his way home. When I saw it I knew he was in Ogallala, Nebraska. If you pull off I-80 at Ogallala and into the Conoco Station you will be at FAT DOGS and FAT DOGS is famous for its sign: YOU ARE NOWHERE. It is a catchy sign. You definitely could have a sense that you are out in the middle of nowhere in western Nebraska. But then the “FAT DOG” wants you to know that despite being in the middle of nowhere – you are now here… at FAT DOGS.
I think maybe that is exactly the experience Jacob had in our text today. Out there in the middle of nowhere, where he likely felt GOD IS NOWHERE, he had an epiphany in which he could say, “GOD IS NOW HERE!”
As we begin to explore our text today we find Jacob between a rock and a hard place.
I. Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. At sundown he arrived at a good place and set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. Genesis 28:10-11 (Back story: Genesis 27)
There is a back story to this text today. If you were to pick up on Genesis 28:10 all you would know is that Jacob had gone on a trip… it was dusk and will soon be dark so he decided to stop for the night. It was seemingly no big deal. When we travel we will likely stop for the night. Granted he did not have a nice Holiday Inn Express or a Hampton Inn or even an economy-budget, totally trashed, flea bag, former major chain motel. He simply set up camp.
It is all rather routine and mundane and hardly worth mentioning without the back story.
Jacob and Esau were twin brothers. They were born into what seems to be something of a dysfunctional family. His brother Esau was the favored son of his father, Isaac and he was the favored son of his mother, Rebekah. Esau was a manly man and Jacob was a mama’s boy.
The incident that precipitated his little “walk about” was his mother’s aiding and abetting his cheating his brother and tricking his old and blind father into giving him the blessing traditionally due the eldest son. Having received his father’s blessing, a blessing that could not be retracted by the distraught old man; he lit a flame of hatred and rage in his brother’s heart. In Genesis 28:42 we read that Esau consoled himself by plotting to kill his usurping, trickster brother. So Jacob’s ever protecting and doting mother, Rebekah, set about sending him away until his brother cooled off.
Under the guise of not wanting her favored son to be married to a local Hittite woman she convinced her husband, Isaac, to bless Jacob and send him away from Beersheba to Paddan-aram where he could marry one of her brother, Laban’s, daughters. So Jacob is journeying some 550 miles north to stay with his uncle Laban, whom we eventually learn, was every bit the conniving trickster as was Rebekah and her son Jacob.
So this middle of nowhere place on a dark night setting perfectly matches Jacob’s state of mind and heart. One writer artfully wrote, “The setting of God’s encounter with Jacob matches his state of mind and his spirit. The security of the son has been replaced by the dangers of the night. The comfort of his parents’ tent had been replaced by a rock. Behind him lays Beersheba where Esau waits to kill him; ahead of him is Haran where his uncle Laban waits to exploit him. He is situated between a death camp and a hard-labor camp. Back in Beersheba, Esau lies in wait like an angry lion. Ahead in Haran his uncle Laban waits with his spider web to trap and suck the life out of his victims.”
That’s the back story that Jacob brought along and those are the things that played on his mind as he rested his head on that stone pillow. He was caught between a rock and a hard place.
We may never have literally pulled up stakes and hit the road in order to escape our past. But we all must agree that life is hard…
A few weeks ago as I read the editorial page there was a letter from a lady who took exception to an article that spoke of how a government program that worked to restructure mortgages making life easier for people to stay in their homes. She wrote, “Who said life was supposed to be easy?” I guess she believes it should be hard to stay in your home.
It would be nice if life was always easy but given it is not, sometimes if feels like it would be nice to be able to just go away and leave it all behind. Broken relationship, run away. Failure, run away. Painful loss, run away. Bad choices, run away. Guilt and regret, run away. It can seem like the best thing to do is distance ourselves from our stuff.
Jacob has run away and now we find him lying on the ground, his head resting on a rock, asleep. He is asleep in what some might call a thin place.
II. Asleep in a Thin Place
As he slept he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway. At the top of the ladder stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord…” Genesis 28:13-15
A thin place is a place where it seems heaven and earth come closer. There is an old Celtic saying that goes, “Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places the distance is even shorter.” A thin place is a place where we encounter God in a transforming way and it can be anywhere. It is interesting though how God makes himself known in solitary places like the wilderness where Moses encountered God in the burning bush. Or a place like a dark temple on a night like when God woke Samuel from his sleep. Or a stable in a tiny little village called Bethlehem. Or sleeping in the middle of nowhere with one’s head resting on a rock.
Actually it is a marvel that he was asleep. One of my worst nights of sleep was the night I drove to a camp site near a small lake in the middle of the Flint Hills in Kansas. It was as lovely a place as can be found on the face of the earth. A picturesque lake surrounded by a vast prairie. I was the only one there. It was a little spooky… but I enjoy being alone and I was about as alone as alone can get out there in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night a thunderstorm broke loose with jagged lightning bolts lighting the dark sky as thunder cracked overhead and boomed in the distance. I abandoned my tent and took shelter in our VW Vanagon. When I looked up to the high ridge to the north I could easily imagine Kevin Costner doing his Dances with Wolves Indian dance around a blazing campfire as the storm raged. Being alone in the middle of nowhere is a unique experience that gives way to all kinds of thoughts and emotions.
I don’t know what you think about and feel when you lay your head on the pillow at night. My life is not always chaotic but our schedules, the general chaos of life and all the demands that make for too much busyness and the need to get things done and cross things off our to do lists and those nagging things that did not get done can keep our minds busy well into the night.
I don’t know what Jacob thought or felt but I suspect he was at least a little apprehensive about his plight. To this point Jacob’s life was a life of struggle and conflict. You could say:
• Physically: He was in a nowhere place
• Socially: He was separated from his family and fleeing for his life
• Materially: He had nothing but the shirt on his back
• Spiritually: He was distant from Go and alone and without hope.
I was fascinated when Smithsonian Magazine printed a story about a family discovered in 1978 living in a crude hovel described as a “low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar.” They lived in a forest in southern Siberia, a Siberia that stretches into over 5 million square miles of nothingness. The Lykov family had fled to this remote and previously unexplored mountainside in 1936 to escape persecution from the Communists where they lived for 40 years, totally cut off from civilization, 150 miles from the closes settlement. 71 year-old Agafia Lykov is the sole survivor of the family and she still lives there in the family home.
I wonder how old Karp Lykov and his family felt that day in 1978 when four Russian geologists scrambled up the mountain, followed a rough path, crossed a log laid across a stream, came upon a small shed filled with birch-bark containers full of dried potatoes and then their hut.
The old man invited them into his home where the silence was broken by sobs and lamentations and hysterical praying from the two wide-eyed, terrified girls.
When the geologists showed up there was fear and even hysteria. Someone had unexpectedly showed up way out there in the middle of nowhere.
Interesting how when we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere physically, socially, materially and spiritually and we most need to be discovered God shows up. It so happened that God showed up that night in Jacob’s dream.
When he woke from his dream he realized he was in a sacred place.
III. Awake to Sacred Place
Then Jacob awoke and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!” Genesis 28:16-22
I sometimes make a sarcastic remark when I am going through a rough patch: “I’m living the dream and it’s a nightmare!”
Dreams are common in our human experience.
A. Dreams as human experiences
Freud believed that dreams are an outlet for our subconscious thoughts. Karl Jung believed dreams are a way our subconscious solves problems we are having in our waking life. These are only two voices of a myriad of voices ranging from beliefs that we dream because of subconscious fears and anxieties. Some believe dreams are caused by illness or trauma and prescription medications. Generally recurring dreams are thought to be the result of underlying unresolved emotional issues.
I recently read an article in Time Magazine, Invasive Species: Coming Soon to a Habitat Near You. The article cites Florida as a microcosm of what will eventually be our entire country as invasive species continue to threaten species native to our country.
Even though it gave me the willies I kept reading about the Burmese Python which is literally taking over the Everglades. The Burmese Python is not native to our country yet somehow, likely people who didn’t know what to do with their pet pythons turned them loose. So now these creatures, that like to choke their prey with their powerful muscles and enjoy snacking on raccoons, rabbits and small alligators, are slithering around all over the place.
I don’t know if I have underlying, unresolved emotional issues but after reading the article just before going to bed I fully expected to dream about a Burmese Python licking his lips in anticipation of enjoying the snack of a lifetime. (Bryan Walsh, Invasive Species: Coming Soon to a Habitat Near You, Time, July 17)
I know dreams are one of the most studied but least understood phenomena in our lives. They obviously are triggered by something even if by nothing more than the pizza we had for dinner. In his little book Dreams: A Way to Listen to God, Morton Kelsey says, “Dreams not only reveal the stresses of the day past; they reveal the forgotten depths of the human being and even give intimation of a spiritual world that surrounds the human being as totally as the physical one.”
Dreams may also be part of one’s spiritual experience.
B. Dreams as spiritual experiences
There are numerous references in Scripture of instances in which God used visions and dreams to speak with some individuals. Abraham had dreams. Jacob had dreams as did Joseph, the Prophets, Stephen the martyr, the Apostle Paul and the writer of Revelation… the Apostle John (and others). Both the Old and New Testaments attest to the activity of God in and through dreams. God even spoke to unbelievers through dreams… think King Nebuchadnezzar and Cornelius the Centurion.
We could go all over the map on this but suffice it to say, God spoke to Jacob that night in the middle of nowhere in a dream. And in that dream God gave Jacob a beautiful vision of how linked are heaven and earth. God gave Jacob a vision of all the servants of God climbing up and down the ladder carrying out God’s will. They were answering prayers, giving guidance, providing protection and doing battle with evil.
And if that were not enough Jacob had a vision of God standing at the top of the stairway. Then he heard God speak to him assuring him of his faithfulness, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father Isaac… God went on to reaffirm the promises he had made to Abraham and Isaac and to assure him that they were his as well.
One take away is that God has indeed carried out that promise in that through Abraham’s seed, so to speak, God has blessed the earth or as some put it, “all the nations.” Christ has been given to us from God through the Israelite people and today Jew and Gentile alike may be called “Children of God” through faith.
Another take away is that the very personal Word God gave to Jacob is also a personal word to each of us: “What’s more, I will be with you and protect you wherever you go.” Genesis 28:15
It’s a good word to any of us when we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere, stuck between a rock and a hard place… We may hear it time and time again,
• “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
• “Come unto me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
• “Cast all your cares on him for he cares for you.”
• “No power in the sky above or in the earth below… indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the Lord of God in Christ Jesus.”
• “What’s more, I will be with you and protect you wherever you go.”
God may well speak to you in a dream but God for certain has spoken to each of us in his Word!
When Jacob woke up from his very vivid dream he knew he was in a sacred place… “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it! What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!” Genesis 28:16-17
I wonder if maybe we need to understand that what Jacob experienced as a spiritual epiphany is in reality a spiritual constant. God was as present with him back in his family home as God was present with him there in the middle of nowhere as God would be with him when he finally arrived at his Uncle Laban’s home in Paddan-aram.
Conclusion
The Siberian Taiga forest stretches over a quarter of Russia’s territory. These forests are as dense as the Amazon Jungle and of which 62,000 square miles are completely unexplored and uninhabited. The Taiga forest is known today as Earth’s last great wilderness… as I mentioned earlier it is so remote that one family was entirely lost there for decades until discovered in 1978. (fox news, travel/2013/10/23/worlds-most-remote-locations)
We know that remote places may be physical, emotional and spiritual places. When we are in one of those places emotionally or spiritually it feels like we are lost in the Amazon Jungle or the Siberian Taiga… in the middle of nowhere.
But as Jacob discovered in his seemingly god-forsaken, middle of nowhere place…
God was there and we too may be assured and emboldened to declare from our middle of nowhere, GOD IS NOW HERE!
Your GOD IS NOW HERE experience may be while stopped in traffic, at the hospital, while on a walk or hiking a mountain trail, when you are reading your Bible and praying, in flight to Chicago or while crossing the Continental Divide, or maybe even in your dreams.
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or are going… it only matters that God is with you wherever you are, however you are and whatever you are.
