You remember the circumstances, Jacob had deceived his father stolen the blessing which was itself a testimony that he had no faith that God would bring about what He had promised: since Jacob (and his mother) didn’t believe God’s word they took things into their own hands and created heartbreak instead!
How very much like us, God has promised us that he will care for us if we will but seek his kingdom first but we lack trust and risk falling into destructive ways of getting what we perceive we want.
Jacobs failures were born out of faithlessness, but Jacob himself was about to go from faithless to faith-full. It wouldn’t mean automatic righteousness outwardly but it would begin a life of transformation over the long haul which is no different than what we experience – a long slow growth towards righteousness.
Turn to Genesis 28:10-22 and we’ll read this together.
When Jacob gets to the end of a full day of traveling he’s exhausted and while he may think it’s little more than coincidence that he should be at that place; God has set up for him a divine appointment. Bethel is a place with many stones and he took one to use as a pillow supporting his head for the night and soon fell fast asleep. I’ve always been a bit amused by this because, even though I like a hard bed, the thought of using a rock for a resting place does little to get me feeling comfortable. It’s here in the midst of Jacob’s exhaustion that God comes to Jacob with a Three-fold promise promise. And it starts with...
1) The promise of God’s Presence:
God will never leave us nor forsake us. I have taken more pleasure and peace basking in this promise alone over almost any other. To know that God is with me is the most sacred medicine my heart could receive in times of doubt or trial.
Immediately we are invited into the scene as if to watch it, Three times starting in the twelfth verse we see the word “Behold” or “Look” because it’s important that we catch the magnitude of God’s appearance here which is the central point which the passage pivots on.
When God appears to Jacob in this dream it’s apparently the first time Jacob has had a direct association with God. Until this day everything has been through his father Isaac, now it begins to become personal. Numbers 12:6 tells us that dreams are the normal way God begins the prophetic relationship "... if there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream."
So the promise of God’s presence begins in many ways with this dream it is the first communication Jacob has had from God and the substance of the dream matters as well. In the dream Jacob’s dream involved a ladder or a staircase which had it’s foundation upon the earth and yet reached into the heaven of God. In Jacob’s dream the angels of God where going up and down upon the stairway.
In John 1:51 Jesus and Nathanael first meet Jesus makes a clear allusion to this passage as he speaks to Nathanael. Immediately the new disciple confesses that Jesus was the Messiah / the Christ and the son-of-God! Jesus responds then to his new disciple telling him that he would see greater things than that, but that he would see the angels ascending and descending on the son of Man. In other words, "Jesus announces to Nathanael, whom in contrast to wily Jacob he called an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile, that he himself is the ladder set up between heaven and earth which Jacob saw."1
Jesus is the stairway to heaven, he came and provided a foundation upon the earth for men to have access to God.
As the 15th verse begins the first promise is the promise of God’s presence, and it’s not lost on Jacob. Imagine if you can the position Jacob was in.
"Jacobs heart was probably filled with regret for the past, loneliness in the present, and uncertainty about the future..."2 But as Jacob looks at the top of the staircase he sees the Lord there; and what he hears is that God himself will be with this deceitful arrogant self-centered little man until all that he has promised is fulfilled.
We also have the same promise from Jesus in
Philippians 1:6 "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."
I for one am grateful for the promise because the road is long and there are times when we feel as if we are alone and God is distant - it is in those moments when we cannot see the hand of God that we can still trust Him because he has promised not to leave us.
The promise of the presence of God is a recurring theme throughout all of Christian history. One of the latest expressions is a song named "Never alone" (Barlowgirl) The Lyrics are virtually identical I think to prayers that we’ve all prayed from time to time:
"I waited for you today
But you didn’t show No no.
I needed you today
So where did you go?
You told me to call
Said you’d be there
And though I haven’t seen you
Are you still there?
I cried out with no reply
And I can’t feel you by my side
So I’ll hold tight to what I know
You’re here and I’m never alone
And though I cannot see you
And I can’t explain why
Such a deep reassurance
You’ve placed in my life.
We cannot separate
’Cause you’re part of me.
And though you’re invisible
I’ll trust the unseen.
The promise of God’s presence has been sacred for centuries. And it “summarizes one of the great themes of GenesisGods faithfulness to his chosen people despite their unfaithfulness.(Willmington, H. L. Willmington’s Bible Handbook. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1997.)
2) The Promise of A Place:
After God promises his presence he also promises a place. Like Jacob We have a place in heaven even as Jacob received a promised place in the promised land of Israel.
The promise here, is relevant for all of Israel. In fact I need for you to remember this promise and the many just like it which promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as to Moses and Joshua and all the People of Israel that the Land belongs to Israel. It’s important that you consider that promise in light of all that goes on in the Middle east today.
Throughout the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua the layout of the Land and it’s borders are spelled out. You need to know that this sacred promise known as The Palestinian Covenant; has not yet been fulfilled. Israel the nation has never once owned every square inch of the Land of Israel. The promise that they will is a coffin nail to the liars and wicked men who claim that Israel has been replaced by the church.
Since it hasn’t been fulfilled yet, we have to know that it will be eventually. Numbers 23:19 says "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?"
God cannot revoke his promise to give the land to Jacob and his descendants. May it bury any question as to who owns the Holy Land. And I know that Our God will give it to our brethren the Jews who confess and believe in Jesus Christ!
Incidentally is this not also another promise of the resurrection? If Jacob has yet to receive the land God promised, is it not necessary that he be resurrected in order to share in it’s ownership? God has promised us a resurrection’s and a place with him in Heaven and we will have it!
Notice too what it is that the Lord says, "I am the Lord the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac..." Notice that He is not yet Jacob’s God, but He is about to be when we get down to verse 21 (Gen 28:21).
I point that out because it displays how we normally come to God. Nobody chooses God - but that God comes first to them. 1 John 4:19 "We love, because He first loved us." John 6:44 "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him..." John 6:65 "... No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."
Jacob, though he had grown up in the tents of his father Isaac had not taken Isaacs God as his own. So there is another lesson here. While we need to train our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren if we live so long – in the faith they must of their own accord make a decision to believe in and obey Jesus.
3) The promise of Protection
Look at verse 14. Again the promise of more descendants than can be counted is passed on to the succeeding generation. It started With Abraham in Chapter 12; moved to Isaac in the prophecy of his birth in chapter Genesis 17:21 "...My covenant I will establish with Isaac..." In addition to the promise of children it’s also a promise of protection, because for God to fulfill this promise he will have to deliver Jacob from every danger that he meets.
The next portion of the promise is the blessing of all the families of the earth through Jacob and his Offspring: here is Jesus!
Whenever we study the old testament we need to have our eyes pealed for the appearance of Jesus! As it is written in
Psalm 40:7 Then I said, "Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me."
Remember that Jesus on the Road to Emmaus with the despondent disciples Jesus began to teach them... Luke 24:25-27 "And He said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 "Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?" 27 Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures."
The heart of all of these promises is Jesus himself.
I want to quickly bring this to a close then because after God gave Jacob these promises in a dream, Jacob responded in real life, and it’s in the response that the promise is perfected in that it achieves it’s purpose.
4) The Promise Perfected
The promise Is Perfected in Worship
Look at Gen 28:16 where Jacob’s response begins with a transformation. Everything that Jacob has witnessed takes the heart of this dishonest man and sets him trembling down in the depth of his soul. No man can encounter the living God and remain unchanged.
In fact the measure of our worship is never did we like the songs, but it is always “did we encounter God?”
Notice that it’s the presence of God that fashions Jacobs reaction.
Jacob, suddenly being aware of the presence of God, made him afraid. His reaction also was one of awe. How often have you been in mouth-hanging-open awe of the presence of God? We become too comfortable with the almighty treating His glory with flippancy rather than fright.
Jacob entered the presence of God without even knowing it, but when he became aware he began to tremble. In the same way His great might and glory when we are exposed to them, and when we recognize them should move us into the awe of worship and adoration; so that we say "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God...!"
The promise perfected in Sanctification:
In verses 18-19 Jacob commemorates the holy with a ritual and visible reminder by anointing this rock with oil. As he does this he renames the crooked (Luz = Turn aside/ crookedness or deviation) into the Holy (Bethel= house of God). How appropriate that the place once known as something crooked should be changed into the house of God.
Are not our very lives that once were Luz, now Bethel? We have become the temple of the Almighty as the Spirit dwells in us. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your Body.)
The promise is Perfected in Expectation:
Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. What a sacred promise this is: and it is given to Us; and not merely to Jacob some 3500 years ago.
In response to God’s promises, Jacob cuts a deal saying
“If you can do all that you’ve promised you are God and you will be my God!”
Jacob anticipated the provision of God, even as we are told to do when we "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness...." (Matthew 6:33) We can expect that God will take care of us. The evidence of His care for us is itself continued evidence that God is indeed God.
The promise Perfected in Sacrifice
As we come to verse 22 we are prepared to close but not before looking at what Jacob does here in promising to give God 10% of everything He provides.
The Journey from Beersheba to Haran is about 400 miles and the journey from Beersheba to Bethel that Jacob has made in tonights text is 40 miles so that the journey thus far is a tithe and the end of the passage also ends with a tithe.
“...To give a tithe was an act whereby a person acknowledged that everything he had belonged to God. Faith outwardly recognizes this fact in token form.”5
As a measure of Giving in the NT era we are not bound by law to a tithe. But I have to say something very important here regarding the tithe as a standard.
“Those who say that the tithe is not for this age of grace miss the fact that the early saints practiced tithing [before the law was given] It was their expression of faith and obedience to the Lord who guided them, guarded them, and provided for them.”6 In short for the fathers, tithing was not a commandment but an act of love.
I believe that today the tithe of all that God has given us is a merely starting point of the heart and not the law. It is an example from which we may expand upon. But let me ask you, Is not the grace we now live in greater than the law? How then can we give less than what the law demanded if we are the recipients of something so much greater?
In the midst of Jacob’s depravity, God revealed himself and promised his presence, place, and protection. Jacob responded with faith and perfected that promise with WORSHIP, Sanctification, Expectation and sacrifice from a heart of Love. His response is a model for ours.
AMEN.
