20260201 Genesis 28:10-22 The Stairway to Heaven
So far, in the life of Jacob, we have a problem. God promises to bless the whole world through a family. So far, in this family, we have three generations of deceivers with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Jacob’s generation, his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, are bad communicators and they work against each other. Rebekah undermines her husband’s authority. She uses a son to trick her husband. In this family, there is a lack of nurture and care. They use manipulation and practice favoritism. There is deceit, feelings of betrayal, shame, and contemptuous murderous rage. We seem to have a problem.
How many of us grew up in homes that had or have some of
these elements? Sometimes the dysfunction is more subtle, but it is there. Either
you are aware of it, or you are not.
In Gen 27, Isaac blessed Jacob. This blessing was the result
of scheming. God made no direct appearance in this chapter. Now, Genesis 28 is
a divine confirmation of the blessing of Jacob. Genesis 28 teaches that though
there was sin and scheming in Genesis 27 to get the blessing, God’s plans will
advance. We learn in Genesis that God uses even our sin to advance his
purposes.
God will use Jacob, the deceptive deceiver, this scheming
schemer. God also uses us. If we are Christians, we are adopted descendants of
Abraham and are part of his dysfunctional family. Today, God uses us to fulfill
the Great Commission. God will use Abraham’s family and Jacob to bless all the
families of the world. His blessing does not depend on the faithfulness of man,
but on his sovereignty and faithfulness. This remains true for us in the church.
In Genesis 28, God reveals his grace to Jacob in a special dream. We will see
that nearly everything that is true of this text is true for the church. Jacob’s
dream is fulfilled for us in Jesus.
Our text is about a famous dream that has a stairway to
heaven. Parts of me wished we could have included Stairway to Heaven by the
rock band, Led Zeppelin in our worship today. But the Led Zeppelin song is
about a lady who is buying a stairway to heaven, in our text, the good news is
that this access to God’s heavenly realm is a gift. It is not something that can
be bought or earned.
We will study Gen 28:10-22 under three headings, the Dream,
the Blessing, and the Response.
Gen 28:10-12 The Dream
The context for our text is that Jacob is on the run. He is
beginning what will be a 20-year-long exile out of the Promised Land (Gen
31:41). He is escaping his twin brother’s murderous rage.
Gen 28:10-12
In Gen 28:11-12, Jacob falls asleep and has a dream. While
Jacob is in a desperate situation, God meets him in this dream.
So far in
Genesis, dreams have revealed glorious truths to God’s people. In Gen 2, Adam
fell in deep sleep and God gave him a picture of marriage, of two becoming one which
points also to union of God and his people.[i] In Gen 15, Abraham fell in
deep sleep and God revealed to him in a dream that God would assume all the curses
of the covenant to guarantee his promise to bless Abraham and the world.
Both Gen 2 and Gen 15 offer gospel pictures. So it is now
with Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28. In this vision, there is a ramp, or a
stairway, or a ladder with its top in the heavens. On it, the angels of God are
ascending and descending. This heavenly traffic shows the heavens and earth are
connected and there is access from one to the other.
The appearance of angels elsewhere in the Bible help us to
understand what is going on. The Garden of Eden was the place where God’s realm
and the human real met. In the garden, God dwelt with mankind. Following the
first sin, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. God placed angels to guard
the entry to this divine garden sanctuary. In the Tabernacle and the Temple,
angels are woven into the blue and purple curtains (Exod 26:1). The Tabernacle and
Temple represent Eden. We can conclude that Jacob sees angels on his way out of
the Promised Land, because the Promised Land is the new Eden.
This dream of a free access to heaven teaches Jacob, that God
will be with him during his exile. This dream is significant. The last time a physical
structure tried to have its top in the heavens in Genesis, was the human
attempt to build the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. While the human effort to
access heaven to get a great name failed, God reveals and offers this access. Access
to God is God's initiative, a gift of grace, not a reward for human effort. Jacob
may be in exile, but God is with him.
Application
Sometimes because of our individualistic mindset, we want
our own personal dream like Jacob. Because this dream is recorded in our Bible,
it is also our dream. God reveals himself to us to tell us he is also with us.
Following what seems to be complete family dysfunction, and
uncertainty, God gives Jacob a glorious picture. We can look at our lives and
be discouraged, but God’s truth to Jacob is still God’s truth to us. He is not
done working out his perfect plan. We can have difficulty with our families,
our work, our school, or elsewhere, no matter where we are, we can close our
eyes and remember God is with us.
Jesus tells us we have this access or this stairway to
heaven. In John 1:47-51 47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said
of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” then, he
says, “51 “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the
angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus is
alluding back to Jacob's dream. In his retelling of the dream, Jesus is the
ladder. He says, “You will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of
Man.” Jesus is the way between heaven and earth. He is the new Eden, the true temple
where God lives. He is God with us and grants us access to God.
We rehearse this dream every week when we gather for worship.
In worship, we experience the fulfillment of the Bible's great dreams. In our union
in Christ, we experience the two becoming one from Genesis 2. God revealed to Adam
a picture of marriage. Adam is cut in half to form the woman, and in marriage
the two halves form a whole. When we worship, the Christian church is a
gathering of a diverse people who gather to form one unified body, and we are
united to Christ. In Genesis 15, in Abraham’s dream, God went through the
animal halves. We celebrate this reality every time we break the bread and feed
on Christ. Christ took on the covenant curse to guarantee God’s blessings for
us. Now, the ladder that is Christ is proclaimed in worship. Our sins separate
us from God, but Christ reconciles us to God. Now, his head is in heaven as he
is at the right hand of God. And, his body, the Spirit filled Church on earth
proclaims the gospel giving people who believe, access to God. The dream teaches
Jacob in exile that God is with him. Today, this dream reminds us that God is
with us. We have an access to heaven.
Gen 28:13-15 God's Blessing
Gen 28:13-15
In Gen 28:13, the LORD Himself stands above the ladder and
speaks to bless Jacob. Even if the blessing was obtained by deceit in Genesis
27, God confirms the blessing of Jacob.
God repeats the four big promises. These are the promises of
land (Gen 28:13), offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth (Gen 28:14), blessing
for all the families of the earth (Gen 28:14), and God’s presence (Gen 28:15). These
promise the reversal of the consequences of sin in Genesis 3 and they are all fulfilled
in Christ. Christ is God with us. He is the offspring who brings the blessing
of the forgiveness of sins, to renew humanity to live in a renewed Eden. Key to
the following chapters of exile is God’s promise in Gen 28:15, that God will
bring Jacob back safely to the Promised Land.
Application
This promise of a safe return in the Promised Land is
relevant in the whole Old Testament. As Israel learns to study Jacob’s life as
a pattern of their own life as a nation, they learn to see God’s promise to
bring Jacob back in the land as God’s promise to bring them back as a nation. This
was relevant when they were in Egypt, and then when they were in Babylon. If
God promised to bring Jacob home and fulfills that promise, Israel can expect
the same following his promise to bring them back from exile.
For us, we are
heirs of all these promises that are fulfilled in Christ. Like Jacob, even if
we had to become slaves in exile, God remains faithful. By faith in Christ, we
possess every spiritual blessing in Christ. Even if we have to live with the
hard consequences of our sins or the sins of others, this remains true for us.
To experience more
of God’s blessing, some of us need a broader perspective of God’s work in our
lives. If we only experience God’s blessing through times of comfort and
success, God will often feel far like he has forsaken us. We must remember that
God fulfills his purposes through suffering as well. It is through suffering
that Christ fulfilled God’s promises to Abraham. Through suffering, God makes
us more like Jesus. Through suffering, we are formed to help those who suffer. If
we remember these things, we can experience God’s work and blessing in all
circumstances.
Third, we turn to Jacob's Response in Gen 28:16-22
Genesis 28:16-22
There is a mix of positive and negative in his response.
First, in Gen 28:16-17, he is filled with awe and reverence.
He wakes up and exclaims, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not
know it!" Then he says, "How awesome is this place! This is none
other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." This is the right
response. He recognizes this special moment. He takes his stone pillow, sets it
up as a pillar, anoints it with oil, and names the place Bethel, which means
"House of God."
Then, Gen 28:20-22 reveal signs of Jacob’s devotion to God, but
it seems like he is still scheming and bargaining with God. Jacob vows, “If God
will be with me … and give me bread … and clothing … so that I come again to my
father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone shall be
God’s house… and I will give a full tenth.”
Some interpreters read these verses favorably and see Jacob
as a changed man. While others stress the lack of change for three reasons. First,
Jacob is bargaining. It appears that Jacob places conditions on his devotion,
God must bless him. Second, while God repeats all the promises he made to Abraham,
Jacob only seems to care about his immediate circumstances – his safety, food,
and clothes. The third reason to see his response negatively is the location,
Bethel. This is the origin story of Bethel, which is the house of idolatry in most
of the rest of the OT. While the people wanted to make a house to reach God at
Babel, here God reveals a ladder that shows God’s presence with Jacob, but then
Jacob refers to the stone he has set up.
It is like he does not yet understand God’s presence cannot
be manipulated but is offered freely. Later in the Bible, according to 1 Kings
12:28-30, Bethel serves as the anti-Jerusalem. A golden calf will be placed in
Bethel to represent God, so the inhabitants of the northern tribes of Israel
would no longer have to go to Jerusalem. If Jacob is anything like his Father
and his Grandfather, it could be that his response does reveal a bit of both
faith and struggle believing.
Application
There are parts
of Jacob’s devotion that we can copy. Jacob responded with reverence and awe
(Gen 28:16-17). As expressed in Gen 28:21, We want the Lord to be our God. In
Gen 28:22, Jacob speaks of giving a full tenth to God. We want to acknowledge
our possessions as gifts from God that can freely give back to him. The
principle of giving a tenth to God was found before God gave the law to Israel when
Abraham gave a tenth to Melchizedek, and now Jacob promises to give a tenth to
God, so there is continuity of this constant principle.
Now, more negatively, we might also recognize ourselves in
Jacob’s bargaining. Jacob grew up in a dysfunctional family, in which everyone
had to fight for themselves. His father, Isaac, cares about good food. Esau did
not have his mother’s delight. Favoritism strained Jacob and Esau’s
relationships. They learned to rely on themselves. Even when God reveals his
presence, Jacob’s reflex is to fall back on his family way of not trusting, so
he fights for himself, he bargains. He cannot just receive. He needs to control
and place conditions and test God's love is genuine. Perhaps, we struggle
receiving gifts from people and by extension we struggle receiving God’s gifts.
Are we able to stop and delight in God and his good news, without needing to
show our worth?
In Luke 10:38-42, there is a story of two sisters that
highlights this tension. One is working hard serving while the other just sits
at Jesus’ feet to listen to him teach. Jesus says, the second, who could sit
and listen chose the good portion. This is not an excuse to get out of working,
serving, and doing chores. But we need to be able to receive a gift from God, delight
in him, without needing to work as if we could pay it back. Service is good, but
not if it takes away from enjoying the gifts God wants us to enjoy. We need to
learn to receive from a gracious God.
Conclusion
This text is quite significant in the Bible. It is here that
God blesses Jacob for the first time. Jesus uses the vision of the ladder
connecting heaven and earth to explain his ministry. He came to reconcile
sinful people to God. This account is also the origin story of Bethel. Above
all, this story is a gift to us. Gen 25, 26, 27 highlight human depravity and
dysfunction. After Jacob has fled for his life, he is sleeping with no shelter.
Here, God chooses to reveal Himself to him. The dream shows God’s presence with
Jacob and his faithfulness to his promises.
This account offers the Christian message. Jacob’s story is
our story. Jacob’s sin and God’s grace remind us, who are sinners, that we can
experience God’s grace. Like for Jacob, when our lives are messy, we can know
that God provides the ladder, the stairway to Heaven, His Son, Jesus Christ. When
Jesus took the sins the world, and died on the cross, he did it to forgive the
sins of those who believe in him and to be our stairway to Heaven. God promises
us the same promise to Jacob, to be with us, to keep us, and to bring us home. Our
job is not to build the ladder, but simply to trust and worship the one who is
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
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