Jacob’s Ladder: When Heaven Touched Earth at Bethel

It worked our way through Genesis chapter 28. This chapter is one of the most momentous chapters in the book of Genesis and maybe even in the whole Old Testament and the reason why it will become clear hopefully in the course of the Bible study. Jacob is going to see something about, he's had to discover something about God that he did not know about God. He's going to see God in a new way. He's going to see the relationship between heaven and earth in a completely new way. In fact, you might almost say he's going to be the first to see this side of God. No other religion had ever had this kind of revelation of who God is and not even Abraham and Isaac knew God this way, quite this way. All right, so before we get to the dream that Jacob has in verse 10, let's go through the setting and I want to reach back a little bit to chapter 26

for just a moment and you'll remember that at the end of chapter 26, there's a very short note after you get the story of Isaac digging a well and then the pact that he makes with the Philistines, there's a short note that says that when Esau was 40 years old, he married Judith and Basimeth. These are Hittites and they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. All right, and then we went over last week, chapter 27, where Jacob steals the blessing Esau, not in this case by selling him soup, but by literally deceiving his father. All right, so we went through that in some detail last week. All right, Esau is extremely upset and he wants to take the life of his brother, Jacob, deceiving his father and stealing the birthright from him. All right, and then what happens at the end, remember Rebecca is kind of the mastermind behind all of these shenanigans. She is the mastermind behind the deception.

She's like a great, you know, Alfred Hitchcock sort of character. She knows how to create illusions really, really well. And then Rebecca has one more thing she needs to do before we get through with what Rebecca does in chapter 27. She's not only set Jacob up in disguise, I can successfully deceive the father, Isaac, but then she has to worry about Esau killing Jayton. What's she going to do about that? She got what she wanted, the birthright situation, but how does she keep Esau from dying? And then I'm going to take this life. The days of mourning my father are getting close, and then I will take his life. Rebecca knows this. So while Isaac's still alive, she's got another card up her sleeve, and here it is. She's going to play up on what was said at the end of chapter 26. Remember this note about Esau marrying these Hittite wives? All right, so here it is, verse 46 of chapter 27.

Let's pull it out so everybody can see it. I'm reading the NIV tonight. I apologize. I'm just using my print Bible, and it's NIV. Then Rebecca said to Isaac, I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women in the ESV. I love my life because of the Hittite women. I can't even stand living any. I am so disgusted with these people, but these daughter-in-laws of mine, I just can't even wake up in the morning and look forward to anything. And remember, Isaac's aging. She says, if Jacob takes a wife from a mother to women of this land from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living. What do you think she's trying to do? She wants Jacob sent away. And she's trying to appeal to what is obviously bothering her husband, Isaac, to the Hittite women, right? So this card that she plays is, I want to make sure Jacob is out of the reach of Esau when Isaac, my

husband, does. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get Isaac's blessing to get Jacob sent away. But in order for that to happen again, Isaac has to bless that. Isaac has to send him away. In fact, a good reason for him to send away is make sure he doesn't marry more Hittite women, so that our house becomes even more miserable. So the suggestion is, he needs to go get married in my homeland, Redacta is saying. Okay, so now we get the first one of challenge, 28. So Isaac called for Jacob. So Isaac called for Jacob. I mean, she says, I'm miserable. We're going to be miserable and I'm not even going to be able to live. And then his next thing is, so Isaac called Jacob, blessed him and commanded him. Do not marry a Canaanite woman. All right, what's the matter with the Canaanites? I've hit on this a couple of times, but we find out later that

they routinely sacrifice children to their gods, especially Molek. The Canaanites are, whenever anyone, any of Abraham's family takes a well, what are they doing? Oftentimes, they're going behind them and filling in those wells. Who is the origin or the founder of the Canaanite people? Well, back to Genesis early in the the story of Noah. Remember, one of the sons of Noah makes fun of or mocks Noah, and that's his son, Ham. And Ham has a son named Canaan. And Noah put a curse upon not Ham so much as Canaan and says, you know, you're going to serve the older, you're probably going to follow you everywhere you go. And so the Canaanites spring literally from an incident in which you have a son mocking his naked father, naked and drunk father. And from Ham and Canaan, you're going to end up with a following. You get Canaanites, child sacrifices, enemies of Israel. Egypt springs from Ham, the line of Ham. Remember what Ham

did to get the curse? He mocked what he should not have mocked, what he should have reverenced. And in fact, in mocking your father, you're mocking the God who gave you that father. So in essence, you're mocking your God, you're mocking God. All right, the Canaanites sacrificed their children, mocking God. The Egyptians, they enslaved God's people, mocking God. All right, make a deal 10 times with Moses and then renege on that vow. So you get mocking God there. From the descendants of Ham, you also get the Assyrians. The Assyrians are, the capital city of Assyria was Nineveh. And Nineveh was the most wicked city in its time in the ancient world. They mocked God and they worshiped all kinds of other gods. And then also a descendant of Ham was Nimrod, who set up the Tower of Babel, mocking God. So you get these descendants of Ham all share this similar feature of not reverencing what they should reverence. And for whatever reason,

I don't know what all the details are here with Isaac and Rebecca are dealing with, but they simply can't stand living with these people. And so Isaac's, I don't want what is happening to Esau to happen to Jacob. So let's send him away. So I don't do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Padan Aram, to the house of your mother's father, Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself. Okay. Remember, Rebecca and Laban are this son and daughter of Bethuel. And take a wife for yourself from there, from among the daughters of Laban. All right. So marry one of your cousins, essentially. May God, verse three, almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples, may He give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham. Look at this. Look

at this. Look at verse five. Then Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to the dawn of Aram to Laban. What's missing from between verses four and five? Something is missing. When Isaac was to find or have a bride, Abraham sent his servant Eleazar to go into that same land that he's now sending Jacob himself into. But remember what Abraham did? He loaded Eleazar with all kinds of riches, wealth and canvas, all kinds of provisions to make sure that when he showed up, he would impress that family. And then there would be a bride and groom situation. Isaac didn't do any of that. Isaac just sent him away. He's unbroke. He doesn't even have enough food. He's going to have a stone for a pillow. He's fleeing for his life in a way, but he has nothing. He has nothing to defend him, nothing to barter with. He's going to show up on the front door of this guy and say, I want to

marry your daughter. Okay, show me. No, you've got the goods. Where do you work? Nowhere. Where have you worked? I make soup. I'm good at acting. In other words, Isaac, I don't know what the deal is here. I can't really understand this. There's no explanation that I can find in the text. Why Isaac is so different from Abraham in this regard. Isaac's servant was blessed with Eleazar. Abraham made sure Isaac didn't make sure. He just sends Jacob away. Maybe he thought that that would bog Jacob down. I don't know, but that would make him, if he sent all kinds of men with him, servants with him, it would have been harder for Esau to kill him, you would think. I don't know. I don't know what the reason is, but it almost speaks to this pattern in Isaac's life of not really thinking far ahead in the future. So, Rebecca has to do a lot of thinking for him. I don't know. But

even Rebecca didn't step in and say, whoa, wait a minute. Make sure he's got all kinds of predictions. None of that happened. So, Jacob, he's gone. And he went to bed on around to lay down the son of Bethuel, the Aramean. Again, when you see the term Aramean, that just means Serene. Serene is the Greek term. The Hebrews called them Arameans. Okay, that's verse, verse 6. Now, Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Padan-Iran to take a wife from there. And that when he blessed him, he commanded him, do not marry a chain-mike woman, woman. And that Jacob obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Padan-Iran. He saw then realized how displeasing the chain-mike women were to his father Isaac. You're just now figuring that out? Rebecca's miserable. Your mother's miserable. When mother and daughter and mother don't get along all that well, it's usually pretty loud and clear. So, you get to see Esau, he's

not, the light bulb, it's just not real bright. He doesn't pick up on things immediately. Or maybe he's such a heatheness that he just doesn't, he's not real reflective on things. He just kind of takes what he sees. And he, but now he's at a different place in his life maybe. And he's like, oh, on the dead sent him over to find a wife amongst people of our faith. Maybe I shouldn't have married a Hittite. Maybe that's risking something. And I want to please dad still while he's still alive. So what does he do? First night, so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalith, the sister of Nabiath and daughter of Ishmael, son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had. All right, so his move is to go and he's going to marry in kind of the family, but he marries the castaway, the son of the Egyptian Hagar. And remember, Ishmael was cast out and the prophecy over him

was that he was going to be a wild donkey of a man and always set against his neighbor and always a whore. So he tries to adjust and pleases dad by marrying. And note, it doesn't say if he tried to please his mom or do what his mom wanted to do, since he did what his dad wanted or his dad liked and he goes to Ishmael. So he almost makes things even worse. Esau, I feel for this brother. He can't really win, it seems. But by the way, I said this a couple of times, I need to say it every week for a little while now. Jacob is not an admirable person at this point in his life. God is not taking a morally pure person here. In fact, he's taking somebody who does things that are even worse than Esau in a lot of ways. So we're going to get to see a great revival in the life of Jacob. He's going

to have to be converted. He's not converted yet. And this next story is going to show you what I mean by he's not converted. He's even going to have an encounter with God and he's still not converted. All right, now that's the setup. Jacob's on the run. Verse 10, Jacob left Bersheba and set out for Huron. Okay, now Abraham, when he was called, he came out of Hur and went to Huron. And from Huron, he went and took Canaan into the light of Canaan. Jacob's going in the opposite direction. He's going back to where Abraham came from. Jacob left Bersheba and set out for Huron. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Now we're going to find out he's near a city, a city named Luz. But he doesn't have any habitation there of any kind, no inn of any kind. He's not taken in by anybody. He's got to sleep outside. This is

how destitute he is. He might not have the wages to be able to pay for a night's lodging. I don't know whatever the case is. It's night. And the only thing he can do, and he's near, he's in the city, is sleep outside. So that was very fortunate. He slept outside that night. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and laid down to sleep. I don't know what that means. The stone was his pillow. We're probably resting back against one. A large stone, larger stone, can be too large because he's going to end up using this as a building and alter it out of it. And that pillar. But he lays down to sleep, verse 12. He had a dream. And in this dream he saw a stairway resting on the earth. All right. The ESP there has the word matter. All right. And this Hebrew word can mean matter or stairway. But it seems to me, given

what is said there, this seems to be a kind of ziggurat. You see a ziggurat, like an ancient pyramid. And pyramids or ziggurats, they have a stairway of one. They have a stairway right here up the center of it where you can go up and down. Okay. And those ziggurats were meant to be up at the top of the ziggurat. There is usually some kind of shrine up there in the ancient world. And that's where you go to meet the God at the land or whatever. And Jacob sees one of these great stairways up into heaven. He's going to call it a gate of God here. And the word gate of God is literally the word of Babylon, which means gate of God or the gates of heaven. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching the heaven. And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. All right. There are

quite a few things to get to right here. Angels ascending and descending. The ascending angels seem to speak to the angels that are guarding Jacob in Canaan. And then there are the other angels, the descending angels guarding Jacob outside of Canaan. So the ascending angels, they're not needed any more because they are guarding Jacob in Canaan. The descending angels are angels coming down to guardian outside of Canaan. They're ascending and descending. And look at verse 13, there above it stood the Lord. And he said, I am the Lord. I am the I am, the God of your Father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and the east and the north and south. All peoples of the earth on the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with

you and will watch over you wherever you go, wherever you go. Remember, angels ascending, angels descending, he's making sure there's constant guardians around Jacob. Remember the Psalm, he will give his angels charge over you. That's you dash your foot against the stone. The angels of the Lord can camp around those who fear him. Jacob, I don't know to what extent he fears the Lord yet, but God is watching over him and promises to be with him. This is not just a promise for Jacob. This is a promise made in the New Testament or the saints of God. Jesus says, as he's ascending into heaven, doesn't he, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you, even to the end of the world. Never. All right. Okay. All right. So Jacob, Jacob has this dream. I just want you to notice something. The Lord is said to be standing on top of the staircase. All right. I think that's highly significant. And there's

a wonderful thing that the board says, I'm gonna be with you. All right. But there's still this gap between heaven and earth and the Lord is up there. He's at the top. I want you to go and look at John chapter one, which the story of Jacob slayered ends up being replayed. In John chapter one, Jesus has a couple of early disciples. One of them is Andrew. And the other one is Evert, John, and some of his fellow, we're not sure, of whatever the case. They end up going out and finding other disciples or relatives to come and follow Jesus. And Philip has a friend named Nathaniel in verse 43, 44. Andrew, Philip, like Andrew Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathaniel and told him we have found the one Moses wrote down in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nazareth, Nathaniel says, can anything good come from there? He's

sort of like asking if there are any billionaires from Gorsht. Can anything good or great come from Nazareth? That's just not what I associate. I think we've never heard of anything good coming out of Nazareth. And then Philip says, come and see. I like that. I really really like that. Philip doesn't have all the answers yet. Does he just come and see? Sometimes we think if we're going to be a witness and testify and we're going to bring others to the board, we have to have everything figured out. We need a degree in religion and Bible, the Old Testament and Greek and Hebrew and everything all lined up. No, no, no. Sometimes it's, I'm still learning myself. She needs to come and see. All right. And somebody out there needs you to do that for them. All right. Don't make them wait for you to have a PhD. All right. When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said of him, here's a true Israelite

in whom there is nothing else or nothing false. I'm sorry. It's not clear whether or not Jesus was it within earshot of Nathaniel saying, can anything good come from Nazareth? Whatever the case knows what he's saying. Here's a true Israel in whom there's no deceit. What is Jacob's synonymous with? Deceit. His name means you serve her or supplant her or see her. Oh, there, Jesus is saying, here is an Israel and there's no Jacob. We're back in the Jacob story, it seems. There's no guile in this one. Jacob is always trying, Jacob was always trying to negotiate. He's always looking for the angle. He's looking for the deception, the opportunity to deceive. But here's Nathaniel. He just speaks whatever comes to his mind and Jesus says, this one's true. What he says is true. And Nathaniel says, how do you know me? Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Phil called you. I don't know what

Nathaniel was doing. He looked into the fig tree. He must have been an awfully significant event for him. You ever been there? You remember where you were? Your lowest moment or your highest moment, whatever it was. You remember where you were, that laying mark? I saw you under the fig tree. Imagine looking into those eyes and it all dawned on you in that moment. I just say nothing good can come from Nazareth. Oh my was there. He knows and Nathaniel declared rabbi are the son of God, the king of Israel. I says, not some casual reminiscence. And Jesus said, you believe because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that. I tell you the truth. You shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. Where's God now in Jacob? And Jacob's story is at the top of the ladder. The Lord is standing above it.

It's not an invitation for Jacob to fill up. Just says, I'll be with you. And then the very one who ascends into heaven saying, I will be with you always. He's at the bottom of the ladder. The ladder is descending or the staircase is descending upon him because he's not only where you're headed. He's not only the destination, the truth, but he's also the way. So he takes you staircase himself. Oh, praise God. So this is what the disciples all end up seeing all throughout the gospel of John. There's this heaven and earth binary sort of situation. And those who follow Jesus most closely see, they see ordinary human flesh, but something ordinary or supernatural happening. So you have heaven literally in the life of Jesus constantly coming down. And ordinary things constantly being elevated up to heaven. So there's this, what do you call it, a highway between heaven and earth? But let me use one more metaphor rather than just a

highway between heaven and earth. Stake of Jesus as the staircase itself between heaven and earth. He's the interlocking mechanism between heaven and earth. He's that which holds heaven and earth together. Think about all the different binaries in the Bible, heaven and birth. If I had a chalkboard or I'd write this down for you, for you to be able to visualize this, but just try to visualize with the words. Okay, heaven, earth, God, man, righteousness, sin, infinite, finite, eternal, temporary. You see all these different, high and low. Look how Jesus is both of these and all these at the same time. Heaven, he's the spirit of God, but he's also born of a woman, earth, heaven and earth together. God, man, righteousness, but he became sin. He didn't sin himself, he became sin. That is, he took the punishment or he took the sin of the world upon himself. Look at that. Look out. He's also, he's infinite. He was there before the beginning.

In the beginning was the word. The word was God, the word was God, but also, also, he was mortal. He was not only infinite, but he was also mortal. How do you get some, some body or something that is both heavenly and earthly? It is both God and man. It is both righteousness and takes on the sin of the world. Someone who is infinite, but also local. Someone who is omnipresent, but is also here and now. Someone who is eternal, but yet is temporary in the sense that he's, he has mortality and he died. You see, you see, you could, you just draw a cross between all of these things and, and, and you see, he's the, he's, he's that which connects heaven and earth. He's the stairway between heaven and earth. And, and in John 14, it's beautifully said, he said, Jesus says, I'm going away. And, and, and the disciples say, where, where are you going? And I'm going to go

prepare a place for you. And, and, and, and how are we going to get there? Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. I am the way, I am the way. So look at how Colossians 1 is put up verse 15 up here. This is absolutely marvelous right here. Look at the way the apostle Paul puts it, describing Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. He's going by him. All things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. See these, these connections between opposites, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. If you ever ask yourself, are you ever asked God, what's the meaning of my life? What am I here for? Remember what Paul said, all things were made by him, through him and for him. He's your meaning. He's the reason. He's the purpose in the life to glorify God in

Jesus Christ and to behold his glory. Okay, next verse, watch this. He is before all things and in him all things hold together, heaven and earth. So you might say, well, where was all of this in the time of Jacob? Did it all sudden happen where you had heaven and earth together at the time of the incarnation? No, it's not, no, he is before all things. So in the time of Jacob, there was already that highway between heaven and earth. It was always Jesus, always Jesus. If we do not get back to Genesis 28, we're not going to fulfill our mandate for tonight. All right? So what I, what I, what I'm arguing here and the one I'm arguing here tonight is Jacob saw about God something about God's character that had never been revealed to anyone before. And Jacob still didn't understand it himself. Okay? In the ancient world, God is very distant. There's a gap between heaven and earth and there's

snow bridging that gap. That's why you do things like try to build a tower, that eat the forbidden fruit, some chicken delight God. There are all these illicit attempts to bridge an unbridgeable gap. Right? The reason why that none of them are supposed to do that sort of thing is because only God himself could make that bridge. And what he's really essentially doing is he's called the mission of Israel through, from beginning with Abraham, I said, Jacob, to become kind of ladder itself, bringing God in the Messiah to earth. That was Israel's whole purpose was to bring the Messiah forth. And so the humanity of the Messiah comes from the nation of Israel. And so in many ways, the nation of Israel just consummated in Jesus is the component of that ladder between heaven and earth and it starts here with Jacob. Right? God is non-distant. He's here. I'll be with you. I'll be close to you. And that gap between heaven and

earth and what it's in here of that, right? That's something that Abraham didn't see, something Isaac didn't see, the rest of the nation, the world didn't policy. Jacob sees the closeness of God, the witness of God is with us. Okay. When Jacob wrote verse 16, he thought, surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of. Like the King James there, surely the Lord is in this place and I knew he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. What he literally said there in Hebrew is, this is none other than Bethel. So in Hebrew, Beth is the house and then Elv is God in the house. So this is the house of God. This is the gaint of heaven. All right. Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.

Right, put it on oil. This is the first instance, I'm pretty sure, in the Bible of the use of oil in terms of anointing. First time we have a mention of anointing. The Hebrew word for anointing is Mashiach, where we get the word Messiah because Messiah means the anointed one. I'm not altogether clear. I'm not sure that I'll ever know in this life what the association is between divine favor and the oil, the anointing oil. But Jacob takes anointing oil or oil, pours it over the top of that rock that he slept against. Now, it turns out that this was an ancient practice across the ancient eras, whenever anything especially from divine oil over the top of it, it is somehow associated with some of the divine. I don't know what exactly how that works, but if you pour oil on something, it shines. Maybe that's a very primitive way of thinking about it. But whatever the case, he pours oil on it.

Somebody help me out and go downstairs and there's somebody's playing drums that they can do all kinds of things, but drums is that way during Bible study. Also, somebody tell me what time it is real quick. 48, okay, 10 minutes or eight minutes. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. So he was in the city, but yet he's sleeping outside. Okay, so there it is. There's 20 then Jacob made about saying, if God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and close to where so that I return safely to my father's house, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be my God's house and all and of all that I that you give me, I will give you a tent when he's in pay ties. He's going to set up

a temple here and he's also going to set up a pillar of testimony. Okay, but look at Jacob. He's had this great dream of God. He says, surely the Lord is in this place. I didn't know it. He has this great spiritual experience, but what does he say? If God will be with me, if you will watch over me, if you will get any food to eat, it's hungry and close to where so that I return safely to my father's house, then the I am the one I saw at the top of that ladder or staircase will be my God. Still putting in condition. Oh, human being is a strange creature. Oh, look at him. He's still negotiating. He just got up from the altar, tears still in his eyes. He's just a complete mess. He's been, he's been here at the altar for hours. He's just seen an epiphany of the God of the universe who's promised him great and wonderful things.

And by the way, he's been with his, his father and his grandfather. Well, all right, let's get our calculator here. All right, and he starts doing his calculations, still in the transactional mode. You, you, if you, if you, if you, then I will call you my God. See, the scriptures are not trying to portray him as a hero. That's going to come back. That happens because of God's grace. It's taking a very, very broken and flawed human being, Jacob, deceiver, and turning him into champion. That's what's happening. That's what's happening. It's beautiful. And the Lord is doing that all the time. He does it every day. He turns people's lives upside down. You give the Lord a chance. You walk with him and watch what will become of your life in 10, 20 years. It'll be unrecognizable. You'll go from deceiver to champion. That's what God does. He's been doing it for thousands of years. Praise God. Remember in the last chapter, and

Jacob was standing before his blind father with that, the wool, the wool skin on. Jacob says, what does it sound right? And how in the world did you come back so soon from the field after I sent you out to hunt for game and makes, how did you have time to go hunt, dress, and then prepare a stew? It's just not enough time for that. I mean, I said, he saw how and next thing I know, I'm getting stew. I go into the buffet. How'd that happen? What did Jacob say? He said, the Lord your God helped me. The Lord your God helped me. See, he's not there. And he's still saying, you will be my God if you will fulfill all these conditions. And does God say, sorry, I don't work that way. No, just silence, silence, and then 20 years of hard 20 years. Yeah, you want to do things that way? Okay, you want, you want to go the good

way? Or do you want to go the hard way? No, let's put it this way. Do you want to go the hard way or the harder way? Okay, harder way it is. And that's what's going to happen to Jacob. I love this story and of the marvelous change that we're going to see. He tried to take shortcuts and we're making things twice as hard for you. But look, God said, I'll be with you. I'll be with you. And he was, he was with him to the very end, not because Jacob was a great guy, but because God is a great God. Man.