Genesis 28:12-15
By Pastor J.W.T. Spies
The story of Jacob and his brother Esau is a tangled one, filled with deceit, dishonesty, conspiracy and animosity. Esau despised his birthright, and sold it to brother Jacob for a pot of stew. Jacob then deceived their father and got him to bless him as the ruler and chief heir of the family.
There was so much anxiety that ran high between these two men. The problems continued so much that Jacob eventually had to leave home, because Jacob feared for his life, so he began packing his belongings, and moved to live with his relatives who lived in the east.??Now if you don’t know let me tell you who Jacob is. Jacob is the grandson of Abraham and Sarah and the son of Isaac and Rebecca. When we look into the scripture, it looks like Jacob did not seem to have much time for God.
We don’t read of any conversations between him and God before he leaves home. We never read about him worshiping, nor having any encounters with God in all of his life up until now. Jacob has had little time for God, because he has been too busy scheming, lying and conniving, and planning on how to get ahead.
Too much of his time had been wasted on thinking only of himself. There was no time for God, and there was no time for anyone else but himself.
But God is about to dramatically interrupt his self-centered life. God is about to shake his world. God is about to disrupt his lifestyle. God is about to intervene, interfere, intercede and get involved in his life. ??As Jacob is dealing with his problems, Jacob has been dwelling on this all day. And now He is running from his problems, and finally, the night comes and he falls asleep.
As he fall asleep he has a rock for a pillow under his head, and above his head are the open heavens. As he is asleep, God reveals himself to Jacob in his dream, where there appears to be a large ladder, or staircase of light, to which at the top of this ladder it reaches to heaven and the very throne of God.
On the ladder there are the messengers of God who were traveling up and down, between heaven and earth. They were delivering the people petitions to God in heaven, and they were bringing God’s answers back down to help the people of the earth.
Now Jacob was one of the few privileged ones who saw with his own eyes the workings of the kingdom of God, he seen the spiritual activity of heaven itself. Even though he didn’t have a great relationship with God yet God revealed himself to Jacob.
Here God reveals himself Jacob and gives Jacob his promise that Jacob will be the heir to the promises, which God had made to his father, and his father fathers before him. The Lord repeats those promises to him personally saying, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. And this tells me just because we don’t have a relationship with God, doesn’t meant that God don’t have a relationship with us.
He says I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying in. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth. All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
He says, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:13-15). This was so amazing to Jacob that Jacob calls the place Bethel, which in Hebrew means ‘House of God.’ This special place seems to be the very dwelling place of the Lord.
Jacob has met God. He wasn’t expecting to meet him. He wasn’t even thinking of God. It was purely grace. It was probably the last thing on his mind. He did not even want to meet God. He was only thinking about getting away from his brother. His mind was full of thoughts about where he was going, and what was ahead of him.
But, God broke into Jacob’s self-absorbed world in an amazing way. God came to Jacob even when Jacob was not seeking God. God opened his world to Jacob, even when Jacob had closed his world to God.
And that’s a word for somebody this morning and that is God will come to us even when we won’t come to him. God will visit us even when we won’t visit us. In other words, God will talk to us even when we won’t talk to him.
?This whole incident tells us something very important about the Lord. Isaiah the prophet quotes God in Isaiah 65:1 as saying, “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I. What I Love about God is that he is good about showing up just when we don’t expect to meet Him.
There were times in the Bible when God came into people’s lives and showed up in an unusual way who he was.
Ask Moses and he will tell you: “The funniest thing happened, as I was taking a walk one day up in the mountains so that I could talk to the master. As I was walking and talking to God, a bush that caught fire and God spoke to me out of it.”
Paul, on the Damascus road, who only had hate on his mind when the Lord stopped him in his tracks and changed his life.
Gideon was busy with his job, threshing wheat, when the Lord came to him and announced that he was going to use his life in ways that Gideon had never dreamed of.
The list of Bible characters could go on and on, but there is enough evidence to show us at PTMC that God sometimes interrupts the ordinary in our lives to come to us in extraordinary ways. And he is still doing it today. ??I’m reminded of a young man in one of the towns where I served, and as he was driving to work one day and he encountered God unexpectedly.
He was far away from God; he had lived in the pleasures of the world. He had nearly ruined his life with drugs and alcohol.
He never came to church, and God was the last thing on his mind, but one day on his way to work God put his ladder down and stepped into his car.
There was no vision, but he felt the Lord moving in his heart in an unmistakable way and pulled his car off to the side of the road, the record is that he bowed his head and gave his life to Christ. His world was dramatically different from that moment on. He began to work with the youth in the community, telling them the miracle that had taken place in his life, and helping them to see what could happen to them if they gave their lives to God. ??Most of us cannot say that we have seen the sky open, nor have we passed by any flaming bushes.
We have not had a blinding experiences like Paul on the road to Damascus. But there are still those times when God came unexpectedly into our lives. It may be in our sleep. It may be when we are least thinking about it. It may have been in the club, or it could’ve been while you were sitting in church, or even some place where we should not be.
Some of us can remember the day and time when the Lord came in our lives. He may have come when we needed him the most, or when we feel we do not need him at all. It may have been in a time of crisis and depression, or it may be in a time of great blessing and joy.
But God is the God of the unexpected. He can come knocking on our door when we least expect him. He may even come when we least want to hear from Him.??Their was a story is told of an atheist who fell off a cliff, but as he was falling he reached out and grabbed a root. He was barely able to hang on and felt himself slipping. In a fit of desperation he screamed, “God, if you are up there, help me.” In a flash the voice of God came back and said, “Son, do you believe in me?” “He cried Yes,”, “I believe in you! What do you want me to do?” The voice of God came back strong and clear: “I want you to trust me and let go of the root.” There was a long pause before the atheist responded and said, “Is there anybody else up there?”
There are a many who want to know if God is up there until he tells them something they do not want to hear. And then we don’t want to let go and let God. ??God does not work the same with everybody does; we never know when he is going to show us, but we have to know that he will show up.
May I tell you that God is as interested in us, as he was in Jacob. And he can meet us in a way that we cannot imagine.
?I know that it was not until after I allowed God to come into my life that I began to understand some of the ways that he was trying to reach me.
I now have began to understand the times that he had been watching over me, I now know that he was trying to speak to me, but I wasn’t listening.??Notice that Jacob did not try to climb the ladder that he saw. He knew that he could not climb up to God, he had to let God come to Him. It wasn’t Jacob that was trying to find God, God was trying to find him. In these day and time it seems like people are not trying to find God, but it’s him that’s seeking to finds us.
God came to Jacob that night and opened the door to heaven. Jesus said: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). He is the God who looks for you and knocks at your heart’s door. ??Well, someone may ask how can we find God? By letting him find you. Just stop running! When you come to your personal Bethel, he puts his ladder down next to us, we need to listen to what he is saying, and do what he tells you.
The song writer says: “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” Trying to get closer to the Lord. But the truth of the matter is that we cannot do it by ourself, but we need the help of the Lord.??Jesus identified himself with Jacob’s experience at Bethel. He said to Nathanael, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
In other words, He is the door to heaven, and to the house of God. He said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.
The only way that we can get to God is by going through Christ. He is looking for us. He brings the stairway of God to us, and it is beside us right now.
It does not matter that no one loves you, he does. It does not matter that you may feel unimportant. Jesus says that we were important enough to die for. It does not matter if you have sinned, he died to forgive you and take your guilt away.??It may be that we are running like Jacob. We may be running from family, from problems, or from God. It may be that your life is in an upheaval. There may be broken relationships as they were with Jacob. It may be that you are heading into an uncertain future. But God can come handle any circumstances that we may endure.
?What we must know is that the Lord is there with us. The Psalmist said: “Where can I go from the Lord’s Spirit? Where can I flee from his presence? If I go up to the heavens, he’s there; if I make my bed in the hell, God is there. If I rise on the wings of the morning, if I settle in the deepest part of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. No darkness will hide me, and no light can blind the eyesight of God.
Like Jacob, we need to wake up and realize that God has been talking to us, and we need build an altar in our heart where he will be worshiped, a place where he can live. Make your heart the house of God. ??The Bible says that later on Jacob would wander away from Bethel the place where he first met God, but God call him back again.
Perhaps today there are people here today whom God is calling back to Bethel — the place where they first met God.
Maybe you have gotten off track. You know that you have met God, but it was a few miles back, and you have wandered from that first experience and you need to renew it. God is calling you back to live near the place where you first met Him.
I’m reminded of a story about a man and his boy who were walking through the jungle and came upon a man who had fallen into a pit dug to trap lions. He had been trying in vain for hours to climb out and had accomplished nothing except to exhaust himself.
Nighttime was about to fall and both he and the man with the boy knew that if they did not get him out he would die before morning.
Seeing nothing readily available to make a ladder with, the man looked up and high in a tree just over the pit he could see a vine, that with one end cut would reach down to the pit and give the man something to hold on to and climb out.
The problem was the tree was not strong-looking and the branches could not bear a lot of weight.
The small boy volunteered to climb up and cut the vine, pointing out that his light weight could be borne by the slight branches. The father finally agreed and the boy climbed with his father’s knife up to the high branches, where he cut one end of the vine so that he could let it down into the hole in where his father was trapped.
As he did so however, the branch on which he was there snapped under his weight and the boy came crashing to the ground where he instantly died.
As the father held the broken and lifeless body of his precious son to his breast and wept, he heard the voice of the man in the pit calling to him. He stepped to the edge of the hole and looked down, and the man said, “Look, I’m very sorry about your son. But that vine does not look strong and the branches of the tree look brittle. I think you should provide another way – a safer way out of the pit for me.
The father stood silently and looking down for just a moment, then in controlled anger he quietly said to the man, “My son died providing a way for you to be saved; and the only way you are going to get out of that pit is if you take advantage of it.”
The man in the hole said do you know a way out, and the voice from the top of the hole said yes I do. He said I am the way way the truth and light, I am the true vine, I am the ladder that will never fail. Hold to my unchanging hand.
Now I must tell you that you can’t get to God by lying.
You can’t get to God by being a Backstabber.
You can’t get to God by being a hell raiser.
You can’t get to God by tearing your brothers and sisters down.
You have to come to God saying Lord here I am, and I’m yours Lord, everything I am, everything that I’m not, I’m yours Lord try me now and see if I can be completely yours. ??Whether you have never been to Bethel, or you have been there and moved away, the ladder is there; God is opening the door of heaven for you so that you can enter in. There extends a stairway from the heart of God to your heart right now. Wake up and say with Jacob: “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it... How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16,17). Christ is the door and he is beside you right now. He wants to come in.?
