Opening illustration: Children sometimes seem like they have holes in their ears. You tell them what you want them to do, and it goes in and out without ever being registered. But if you promise something special to a child, they will not ever forget.
Try to tell your child that you can’t go to Disney World anymore because you don’t have the money. “But you promised!” Try to tell your child that you don’t have time to make it to McDonald’s still. “But you promised!” Try to tell your child why they can’t stay up late today. “But you promised!”
Perhaps we parents get ourselves in trouble at times when we make empty promises we might not be able to keep. But the reality is that we are imperfect people in an imperfect world. Broken promises are something we are used to by now.
Yet this is something God has never done, and will never do. When God makes a promise, he will keep it. God is not a man who will tell a lie but is recognized for the promises He keeps to the T. God has not ever broken a promise, and he never will. Trust in his grace and love and power! He will not fail you!
Let us turn to Genesis 28 and catch up with our story where Jacob immediately recognizes God even though he was unaware of His presence …
Introduction: The most wonderful thing that can happen to anybody is for God to turn up. The problem is that we don't always recognize Him at the time, and we only see later that it was God. The trouble is, we think God can only come in one particular way, and that's the way we've met Him. The question is this: If He turned up in an unexpected way, would we affirm Him?
The sooner we learn to recognize the Lord, the better. For some, it may take years to see that God has been in a situation with them; for others, it may take only a few seconds. But the narrower the time gap, the better, for it shows our hearts are in tune with what God is doing. I can think of nothing worse in the world than for something that God is in to be happening and I not recognize it.
If you're not a Christian, then it's also true for you that the sooner you realize when God is there, the better, because the Bible says, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever" (Genesis 6:3). Let me put it like this. It may be that whenever you hear preaching, you sense that the Holy Spirit is dealing with you, that God is on your case. You know that the preacher wouldn't know much about you, if anything at all, and the only way he could speak in this manner was if God had led him to do so.
If you are a Christian and the Lord turns up and you don't recognize Him, you are impoverished since you miss seeing God for who He is, then. I guarantee you will wish later you had seen it was the Lord sooner. Be open to the unexpected time. Be open to the unexpected manner in which God might turn up. He came to Jacob in a dream. God can do that.
Jacob affirmed God. Fortunately for him, it didn't take him long. The question is, how long will it take us?
How to Recognize God?
1. Connection between heaven and earth (vs. 10-12)
He dreams in verse 12 of a ladder that reaches to heaven with angels (messengers) of God going up and down on it. One probably should not think of a ladder in the contemporary sense of the word, but rather something like the Mesopotamian ziggurat; a ramp-like structure that served as a divine sanctuary through which heaven and earth were connected. This stairway to heaven does not give Jacob access to heaven; rather, God speaks to Jacob where he is, denoting God's immanent presence rather than a faraway removed God calling from a distance. It is significant that this surprise encounter completely comes from God -- breaking into Jacob's state of sleep which signifies a brief cessation of anxious fleeing.
These statements of God and Jacob fit together nicely, especially in the light of the context of the vision. Jacob was about to leave the land of promise for a twenty year sojourn in Paddan-aram. He might be tempted never to return to this land again. By means of this dramatic vision God impressed Jacob with the significance of this land. It was the place where heaven and earth met. It was the place where God would come down to man and where men would find access to God. It was, as Jacob asserted, “the gate of heaven.” Throughout those twenty years Jacob would never forget this dream. He would realize that ultimately, to be in the will of God, he must be in the place of God’s choosing, the land of promise. It was in the land that God’s blessings would be poured out upon God’s people. While Jacob must leave, he must surely return.
Retrospection of future events makes it quite evident that God was sending a message to Jacob who would no more be called Jacob but Israel. A holy nation would be borne through him. The King of all kings would be born through his lineage that would bridge the gap between heaven and earth … between man and God. He would be the one who would bring reconciliation between God and man. The ladder was the imagery of God not only visiting Jacob but meeting him where he was and opening the communication lines between both of them. God’s purpose was to impart the same family blessings that were incurred upon Abraham his grandfather to him who was to continue the chosen family which was to be built as a chosen nation.
2. God taking the initiative to reach out … (vs. 13-15)
This promise of God in verses 13-15 is the 8th reiteration of the promise of a land of their own that has repeatedly come to Abraham and Isaac, and the 7th direct or indirect promise of becoming the father of a large nation. God's promise to Jacob also contains the 5th and final statement regarding the nations being blessed by means of the patriarchs and matriarchs -- a powerful reminder that Jacob's life should not be governed by self-interest and self-aggrandizement, but by becoming a channel of God's blessing to others.
Moreover, God also promises Jacob that God will be with him -- a promise that is even more imperative given the fact that Jacob is traveling far away from home, entering an unknown future in an unknown land. This promise of God's presence and protection has deep roots in Israel's communal memory, e.g., the beautiful priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-26 that holds up God's safekeeping and blessing in the wilderness, as well as Psalm 121, a psalm of ascent which prays for God's protection on the way.
A promise that is unique to Jacob is that God promises to bring Jacob back home (verse 15) -- a promise that speaks to Jacob's unique circumstances of being a man on the run, but also a promise that for the displaced community in the exilic context in which the Pentateuch probably received its final form, was all the more poignant.
God meets Jacob where he is even though he is leaving the Promised Land with an undisclosed intention to return or not! Anyway God promises his return and imparts the Abrahamic blessings upon him. It is apparent though Jacob has taken no initiative to reach out to God, God took the first step to do that thus making Jacob aware and giving him a hope and trust in God.
In fact no one other than Christ the Son of God has already reached out to us and redeemed us by paying with His blood on the tree so that we will not fear as a big wrathful God in the heavens but trust Him through the love He has exhibited for us to follow.
3. Testify to Witnessing the Presence + Fear of God (vs. 16-17)
When Jacob awoke from his dream, not only the place has been changed by God's presence, but also he is a changed man. Professing God's presence in this rather ordinary place, Jacob builds an altar, converting his "pillow" - just another stone from that place - into a type of memorial stela that marks the life-altering encounter with God. He calls this place without a name "Bethel" - house of God, professing that God is here, on the way right there where Jacob finds himself.
It is significant that God's interruption of Jacob's anxious journey, which displays God's renewed commitment to Jacob in his own right, does not contain a word of judgment regarding Jacob's prior actions with regard to his brother and his father. Rather God's address to Jacob contains one unconditional promise after the other. In this grace-filled encounter, we see how God can transform an ordinary stone and an ordinary place into something special; a place where God's presence has made a home in the world. Similarly, this trickster who has deceived his father and brother, and who since birth has lived in strife with the people around him can be transformed by God into a richly blessed man who serves as a source of God's blessing to others.
How many times we have woken from our slumber and realized all this while during our ups and down and our hard times God had been with us all the while? We were so focused on ourselves and others that we forgot the equation of God in our lives. We had been chasing frivolous things in life and messed up so much that thought nothing could help and mend us. And here God comes along to assist and reassure and we don’t even know that He was there all the time. He had been long-suffering and patient with us. The amazing thing in the narrative is that a man who feared and respected no one was acknowledging the fear of God. It is nothing spooky but an awareness of God which brings about a fear in the positive sense. It also makes one wise and fills them with godly knowledge. It made a new man out of Jacob though he was not completely transformed.
Application: Many a times we have wondered what would it be like if God showed up? Will I be able to recognize Him? How will I react toward His manifestation and would it be profound and evident to others? In fact God is looking for that time alone with you so that you would voluntarily shut yourself out from the busyness of life and respond to His attention. He has already made a bridge through Christ and taken the first step to reach out to us … do we really experience His presence and fear in our lives?
