All Saints Oakham, 10.30 Holy Communion
Genesis 28.
Since the beginning of June, our Old Testament readings have been from the second half of Genesis. We have been following the lives of Abraham and Sarah; their son Isaac, and Isaac’s wife Rebekah.
Last week’s reading would have introduced us to the next generation – Isaac and Rebekah’s boys – Esau & Jacob. But we missed the reading because it was our Mothers Union celebration last Sunday.
So today apparently from nowhere in our Genesis reading we are with Jacob on a journey, and he has a dream. To make sense of this, we need to understand what has brought the young man Jacob to this place at this time. We need to understand what kind of man this is, what is his life experience to this point.
When I remind you of what last week’s reading from Genesis 27 tells us, you may not be too sorry we missed it out . I’m afraid to say that it is a pretty sordid tale.
Isaac, the son of Abraham, and his wife Rebekah had twin boys – non-identical twins – Esau and Jacob
Esau came out first – one of those very hairy babies – and he grew into a young man with a lot of body hair,
Jacob came out second – smooth-bodied, and stayed smooth.
They were chalk and cheese, not just physically. Esau was an outdoors lad, he was a skilful hunter, Isaac’s favourite, his father’s boy.
Jacob by contrast was no man of action, a quiet lad, who was happy hanging around the family tents– Rebekah’s favourite, his mother’s boy.
They may be twins, but by a few minutes Esau is the firstborn. And in their culture being the firstborn really mattered. The firstborn had a birthright – to inherit. And this would be confirmed by a blessing. As the father came towards the end of his life, he would pray for his first born and bless him, he would inherit. This was all a very big deal.
One day Esau, when a young man, comes back starving hungry after a long day’s hunting and finds Jacob cooking a stew which smells delicious. And he says ‘Come on Jacob, give some of the stew, I’m starving to death’ And Jacob says ‘Sure as long as you sell me your birthright’ And Esau says ‘I’ll be dead from hunger if I don’t eat soon, what use will a birthright be, so you can have it’.
Worse was to follow:
Some years later Isaac, now old and blind and frail, one day says to Esau – go off hunting, son, catch some game, cook me one of your special stews. Bring it to me, I will eat it, and I will bless you before I die. The all important blessing.
Rebekah overhears the conversation and hatches a plot. While Esau is away, Jacob cooks a stew, she dresses him up in Esau’s clothes, puts hairy goatskins on the back of his hands and neck. He goes in to blind Isaac with the stew. ‘Who are you, my son?’. ‘I’m Esau’ lies Jacob. The old man is confused – ‘you sound like Jacob, but you smell and feel like Esau. You must be Esau – so he prays for Jacob, thinking it is Esau, he gives the all important blessing.
A little later Esau arrives from his hunting – the blessing has gone, it cannot be repeated.
Isaac is beside himself. Esau is beside himself , and wants to kill Jacob.
Rebekah helps Jacob flee to the home of his uncle Laban until the dust settles.
Talk about a dysfunctional family.
We get not the slightest hint that Jacob has any moral compass, any wish to reject his mother’s ridiculous trick, indeed will tell a flagrant lie to his father for his own gain.
And so we find Jacob on the run, on his way to uncle Laban’s place at Haran, and stopping at night to sleep.
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. 11 He came to a certain place (which we read at the end is called Luz) and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones …, he put it under his head and lay down …… 12 And he dreamed……..
Now when he woke in the morning after his dream, he called the place Bethel. 19 He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Bethel means ‘House of God’.
There is nothing in this story to suggest that Jacob went to Luz to seek God. A feckless young man, happy to join his mum’s plot to steal the blessing, and gain the family wealth. He was just trying to save his skin by getting away to uncle Laban’s place. He was to be frank a bad lot. If I was God I‘d probably have nothing to do with him. Jacob only renamed the place Bethel, which means ‘House of God’, after the dream because only then did he realise that he had met God in that dream, that God was with them in that place.
What was the dream? 12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him…
There is often a human desire to reach out to God, to ascend to heaven. But we see here that actually it’s God who is committed to reaching out to us.
Here it is called a ladder. Some other translations of Genesis call it a ‘stairway’ to heaven. But if you’re about my age you perhaps think , like me, that ‘Stairway to heaven’ as the title of a rock song by the group Led Zeppelin, from the 1970s (don’t worry I shall not try to sing it to you). A stairway, a ladder, or perhaps an escalator. The exact word does not matter, the picture is clear: God has reached down, God has made a connection between heaven and earth – God standing beside Jacob, and God’s messengers – angels- going up and down it, both ways.
In the Bible, we find that what is seen makes sense when we know what is said.
The things that God says to Jacob here are promises, two groups of promises:
- 13-14 ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth —The Lord reiterates the promises that he made to Jacob’s father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham—he promises him this place—the whole land— and people—lots of descendants— and blessing. In spite of Jacob’s previous.
- And the second group of promises which God makes? Much more personal promises for Jacob, precious promises for someone facing a very uncertain future:
- 15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ 16
- ‘I am with you,
- I will keep you, wherever you go,
- I will bring you home, back to this land of promise.’
- I will not leave you
Notice three things:
- FIRST This is God confronting Jacob. Jacob didn’t go looking for God. He didn’t go to Luz to make his peace with God. No – he’s on the run from the effects of his own dishonesty and moral turpitude There is no evidence that Jacob is the type of guy who has had any interest in God at all in his life to this point. But God finds him.
I hope you shuddered a little earlier when I said that if I was God I would have nothing to do with Jacob because he was a bad lot, too bad to trouble God. Because that’s completely wrong – the opposite is true. God reaches out and confronts all of us – whatever and however we are, however much we have made a mess of things.
- SECOND This is God’s grace in action —Jacob like us is not someone who deserves God’s promises—but God confronts Jacob with who he is, God gives Jacob His promises. This is our God— forget that old trope about the God of the OT being completely different to the God who Christians worship. Here in Genesis is the NT God of grace—who takes sinful, unpromising people like you and me and Jacob —and gives them amazing promises.
So: 1. God confronts Jacob when he is not seeking Him
2. This is God’s grace in action
3. THIRD Jacob Surrenders to God
Jacob wakes up, he realises what has happened to him, and:
- he says, ‘Surely God was in this place.
- He sets up some stones to mark the place.
- Jacob says:
‘If God will be with me and will watch over me… so that I safely return to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God…’
It sounds like he’s bargaining with God, but that’s partly due to our English translation of the word, ‘If’. Actually, in context here, the sense of what Jacob is saying is much more like ‘Since God will be with me, and will watch over me… then the Lord will be my God’ This is Jacob beginning to grasp the enormity of what God has said to him.
All the offer is on God’s side—all the response is on Jacob’s side.
God confronts Jacob—and in response, Jacob surrenders to God. [And that is how the Christian faith always works]. Jacob does not become a fine and different man overnight after this dream – but for the first time he has faced God, and his life begins to change. He’s a man on a journey of faith, it’s just beginning: years later will return to Bethel to build an altar and worship. Jacob the Deceiver has become God’s servant.
What does this mean for you and me?
This is a significant point in history, because Jacob will be the founder of one of the biggest movements in the history of the world. But more important, this encounter is a pointer to how God always confronts people and looks for a response. And it is also a pointer to the coming of Jacob’s descendant, Jesus Christ.
When Jesus near the beginning of John’s gospel calls Nathaniel to be one of his first disciples, Nathanael, you may remember is pretty sceptical: ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth?’
Jesus amazes Nathaniel by already knowing all about him Nathanael is bowled over, and responds that Jesus really is the Son of God. And then Jesus deliberately harks back to Jacob’s dream: ‘Truly I tell you, Nathaniel you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (which is one of Jesus’ names for himself).
Jesus is saying…. that famous dream that happened to Jacob nearly 2000 years earlier—it was also pointing to me.
Jesus is saying: Where is God’s house to be found? Where are the gates of heaven? Not in a temple in Jerusalem, or a shrine at Bethel, or any other place—but in me. ‘If you want to find God, he is wherever I am. In Jesus, God is dropping a ladder down to connect heaven and earth.
And it’s not just that we meet God wherever we meet Jesus.
It’s also that in Jesus, we get all the promises that God made to Jacob at Bethel. Only in Jesus, do we find God saying to us, as He said to Jacob:
- ‘I will be with you,
- I will watch over you,
- I will bring you safely home.’
God confronts and calls deceitful Jacob, Jesus confronts and calls sceptical Nathanael, and they respond to him. God confronts and calls us.
Have we understood what it is that the Lord Jesus offers us, if we will only respond to him by acknowledging him like Jacob and saying, ‘You will be my God’.
Whatever the future holds – joblessness, homelessness, poverty, illness, failed relationships……
Whatever we face, God says to us, ‘I will be with you, I will watch over you, I will bring you safely home’—I will do all of these things for you because you have surrendered to the King Jesus, who is the true stairway to heaven. AMEN