Bethel

Well, this morning we look to complete Genesis chapter 28 as we really embark with Jacob on this relatively long journey toward the land of his uncle,

Laban, where we'll spend the next 20 years as far as the narrative is concerned. We won't spend that much time here at GRBC.

We continue on and really this is where the narrative of Jacob takes off. He's now leaving the shadow of his father

Isaac, having received the blessing. And so while Jacob has been in view for several chapters,

Isaac's also been there with him. And now really Jacob takes up the narrative on his own.

Of course, he's finally grasped the blessing. Remember, he's the heel grasper. His whole life has been seeking this blessing, this prominence within the family.

He's, for right or wrong reasons, had a desire to be part of the lineage of Abraham and Isaac.

I don't even know how accurately or consciously he realizes what he's seeking, but he seeks the blessing and the grasper grasps it, the very thing he had pursued throughout his whole life.

Now he, and perhaps we along with him, expect him to take up the mantle of his father's household.

He got it. Isaac himself said, indeed, he shall be blessed. And so sayonara,

Esau, you know, I'll send you a postcard, I'll get together maybe on birthdays and, you know, every now and then we'll run into each other.

But other than that, head of the house, heir of the household, this is now my estate. Thank you very much. Take your shoes off when you come to visit.

That's not what happens. Perhaps he had been looking around Beersheba, daydreaming about what he would do differently, what he would fix up.

If you ever realize that maybe some property is coming to you and you begin to think, should we break down that wall?

What color should we repaint the bedroom? Maybe he was thinking along these ways. But the twister finds himself in a sort of plot twist of his own making.

He of course had deceived his brother and now he'll go to Laban where we'll see him deceived at length.

His brother, of course, is now planning to murder him, which causes him to need to flee.

Of course, he's not only deceived his brother, but he's deceived his father. He's dishonored and shamed his father.

And though Isaac never seems to address that, Isaac has discharged him to leave the household and to go marry in Haran among his relatives.

And so we read beginning in Genesis 28, verse 10, Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran.

So contained within verse 10 is this travel. And it's very significant.

The place markers were going from the place where God's presence has been known from the place where God has manifested himself to Isaac and Abraham here at Beersheba, where there was an altar unto the

Lord God. But now he's cast away as it were from the stable, secure presence of God back toward the land of Haran, back toward the place where Abram was called out of to leave that land that he might enter into the promised inheritance.

So now there's this plot twist. There's a complete reversal of fortune, if we could put it that way.

Rather than securing his inheritance, he has to flee from it. He's reversing

God's call of Abraham, not leaving Haran to enter further into his inheritance, but actually leaving his inheritance to go further into Haran.

This was not part of Jacob's plan. But as we'll see this morning, it was a part of God's plan.

We find him en route in verses 11 and following. John Currid points out there would have been a popular route, a north -south route from Beersheba to Bethel.

It would have been most likely the same route Abraham took when God called him. And this is not a happy journey.

As we've said, he's on the run. He had to bust out the suitcase, load it up with anything he thought he could use.

It's about a 500 -mile journey. It's going to take some time to get there by foot.

We don't know that he's traveling with a retinue or servants. It's very likely that he is, but that's not recorded for us.

For all intents and purposes, he's alone on this journey. The question of whether his brother will be able to successfully murder him is hanging over these chapters.

If you were reading this for the first time, that's part of the suspense. Okay, we're leaving Esau, he's planning a murder, is that actually going to happen?

Now we know it doesn't, but Jacob doesn't know that, neither do Jacob's parents.

He's the heir and he leaves everything he has known behind. His whole life is now in his luggage on this journey toward Haran.

Everything that was familiar and comfortable, everything that was desirable to him and why he sought the blessing in the first place, he's called to abandon all of that.

It's important to point out that we've seen Jacob's fleshly and deceitful selfishness and at this point in Genesis 28, it doesn't seem that Jacob really knows the

Lord God. We could say he knows about the Lord, certainly he's been instructed by Abraham and Isaac to know the

Lord, but even in the last chapter when he talks to Isaac, he refers to God as your God, your

God has given me success in the field. Not our God, not my God, but your

God. And there's almost no indication that Jacob truly knows the God of Isaac.

And so I think what we have here in chapter 28 is what could be described as perhaps the effectual calling of God upon Jacob.

Jacob at this point, as R .C. Sproul points out, was completely secular, in other words, worldly in his activity and in his thinking.

His father sends him on this trip to go find a wife, R .C. says like most men in this world searching for a woman, they have very little time to think about God and that probably is true of Jacob.

God's not exactly first on his mind or first in his heart. How to get rid of this problem with Esau and obtain the fullness of this blessing, perhaps in an earthly sense, is really what

Jacob is seeking. But grace is beginning to work in his life, grace that God has been sowing.

Perhaps the first bud of that grace is that he listens to the charge of Isaac, he obeys Isaac in actually going to Haran and marrying among the relatives.

So, we see God's grace beginning to work in Jacob's life and that will only continue as we move forward in the next chapters.

Verse 11, he came to a certain place and stayed there all night because the sun had set.

He took one of the stones of that place and he put it at his head and he lay down in that place to sleep.

We don't know at what point, I don't know how much he could have traveled within a day, it depends, of course, on the terrain and how many breaks he took, could be anywhere from 20 to perhaps 50 miles.

And the sun is now slipping beneath the horizon, step by step, day by day along this journey.

Now that the rush of all the events of chapter 27 have begun to settle, a 500 mile journey is a pretty good amount of time to think about what you've done.

This is sort of the ultimate time out, if you could put it that way. He's all alone, there's no distractions now, he's walking toward Haran, he has no game plan, this isn't what was supposed to happen, and he, of course, is thinking about what has happened.

The sun slips beneath the horizon, he places a stone by his head, for whatever reason that has been taken as a pillow.

Perhaps every illustration you've ever seen in a children's Bible, it's always referred to this stone as a pillow, that's a possibility.

It's also possible that he just found this stone and put it near his head, if you're laying on bare ground, you almost want to have something near you or next to you, feeling that alone in the darkness.

It could have even had some connotation of a sort of talisman. Again, Jacob really doesn't know the

Lord God quite yet, but we'll keep it as a pillow, perhaps he just rolled up his robe and rested on that stone.

As far as he can tell, he truly is alone. He has a family behind him, that's all in disarray, he has relatives ahead of him, but as far as he knows, in the span between, he is utterly alone.

And there's nothing like darkness to make you truly feel alone. And so as the sun sets and the night grows cold,

Jacob must have felt alone. We notice that Jacob is also being confronted with the fruit of his twisting ways.

He had deceived his brother, he had dishonored his father, and the fruit of these sins has left him alone on the run from his household.

And so you wonder this night as he curls up by this stone and he watched the stars begin to shine through the sky, you wonder if at all he was filled with regret.

Was it really worth it? What have I gotten myself into now? How can

I even go back? What's going to happen between Esau and me? Is this new life that I'm now compelled to do worth all that I've done?

You wonder if it was one of those moments, and maybe you've had a moment like this where you just wish you could go back in time, undo an action, unsay a word.

You wonder if he came to this place of regret in this night. We look at Jacob's path as believers and we find something so familiar.

We find that there's always these factors, both good and bad, both blessings and trials, especially our own sinfulness, that is a factor of God bringing us toward a certain place at a certain time to experience his presence.

We see that while God never approved of Jacob's sinful behavior, he nevertheless had chosen

Jacob. Jacob, I have loved. And this was said, Paul says in Romans 9, before the twins were even born.

Jacob, I have loved. And yet Jacob is a sinful, deceitful, dishonoring, scheming, selfish, and self -willed man.

And God never approves or condones or enables that kind of behavior in Jacob, but neither does he prevent it.

He allows it. And he allows this long strain of sinfulness with all of its relational damage to hurdle

Jacob into the wilderness on a night like this so that all of the factors of his life under God's providential control would have him at this time, in this place, to experience

God's presence. And so it is with the believer that El Shaddai overrules all the ways of our going out and coming in, and he allows that path, however twisted and destructive it may be, if we belong to Christ, if his electing love has been set upon us, to lead us to a time and a place where we'll encounter his glorious presence and change the life of his people forever.

And this happens beginning in verse 12. Jacob falls into a deep sleep, emblematic of Abraham.

He dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven.

And there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it, and behold, the

Lord stood above it. And he said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, your father, and the

God of Isaac. Here we can see that as much as Jacob thought he knew about his father's

God, he had not quite met his father's God. This is the formal introduction.

It is one thing to have it come off the mouth of Isaac. It is one thing to say, may God bless you.

It's another thing to experience God blessing you. And that's what happens here beginning in verse 12.

Jacob dreams, and this is no ordinary dream. Jacob knows the difference between dreaming about the things that we dream about.

I don't know what you dream about. I'm curious to know. I usually have nightmares about rushing to finish a sermon and not having enough time and being up here with a few sentences on a

Post -it note. Those are my nightmares. I don't know what you dream about. I don't know what

Jacob dreamt about, but he knows that this is no ordinary dream. Open before him, almost in a vision, is this vast expanse of earth.

And between this expanse of earth is a more expansive distance between earth and heaven. But between this gulf is a ladder, and on this ladder ascend the angels of God and descend the angels of God, these divine servants performing

God's will upon the earth, going to receive from him who sends and carry and execute his will upon the earth, and then, having completed that, returning to his glorious presence.

And there, beside it, we could translate, but here also it works, above it all, over it all, is the

Lord God. And how does he introduce himself? I'm the God of Abraham. I'm the

God of your father Isaac. And as he'll go on to say, I will be your

God. Jacob dreams, and this is no ordinary dream. You can almost catch the excitement of him taking it in.

We have, behold, right, then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder. In Hebrew, that particle, that exclamation, hina, it appears with each thing that he sees.

And so it's literally, behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and look, angels of God ascending and descending, and behold, the

Lord standing above it. He just keeps seeing more and more within this vision. Is this a ladder?

Very interesting to take a little detour through art history and see how this scene has been depicted in the

Luther Bible or in stone carvings upon cathedral walls. And generally, it is taken as a literal ladder.

This is the only place we have the term ladder within Genesis. We have other language cognates,

Akkadian cognates, that use a similar term, a similar sounding term, and it has the idea of a royal staircase or a ramp, and that may be closer than what we might think of as ladder.

This is not the aluminum two -stage Home Depot get -up going to heaven. This is something far more grand, far more glorious, this paved way between the earth and heaven.

What a scene has unfolded, and we want to keep in mind the context here. This sinful, scheming man, a fugitive from his own household, having destroyed a relationship between his elder brother, brought dishonor and shame to his own father, now completely exhausted as he's on the run to go fulfill this earthly desire to build up his inheritance, to go get a wife in the process.

He's here in the wilderness alone at night, reaping the results of his sin, wallowing in the consequences of his actions, trying to find rest, trying to find refuge among the rock and the dirt that he's sleeping upon, and his eyes are closed by slumber, but in the next moment his eyes, though closed, are very much open, and he beholds the presence.

Now this vision is significant not only that it comes to Jacob at this particular point in time, but it's also important because of the content, and we'll go into more detail about the content later, but let's just spell it out.

The issue here is that heaven and earth cannot meet. The issue here is that Jacob is on the dirt by a rock, looking toward heaven, and there's no conceivable way for him to enter the presence of God in heaven, the place where angels ascend.

He's not able to ascend, and therefore within this vision is opened unto him a way, a ladder, a ramp, a bridge between the glorious presence of God in heaven and his lowly place upon the earth.

There is this ladder, this stairway, the access point to heaven, a bridge between God and man.

That's the vision that Jacob receives, and he recognizes. He says in verse 17, this is the gate of heaven.

He recognizes the significance of the vision. He had felt all alone, utterly alone.

Perhaps he had never felt this alone in his entire life up to this point, and perhaps this was the least place he would expect to encounter his father's

God. Maybe he thought he would encounter God while he was walking as an heir among his new estate, the place where the altar was that Abraham had set up, where his father had taught him in the household to worship.

Surely, inevitably, calling upon the name of the Lord in Beersheba would bring Jacob to encounter

God, to take up the mantle of the covenant. But now he's a fugitive. This is not where he's going to find

God's presence. If anything, he sort of has a territorial mindset, as would have been common to the ancient mind, that God is

God's over territories, the God of the Philistines, the God Kimosh, or the

God Baal, and the high places, or the territories, or the people groups. And it's like, you know, every people group has their own

God, and he's sort of contained among them where they are. But here he's leaving the land on the way toward Haran.

He's not expecting to find God's presence here. And as his eyes are opened to behold the

God of Abraham and Isaac, he no longer feels alone. He feels known, seen.

He realizes that God knows him, knows everything about him, knows his cruelty, knows his crooked, knows that he's not happily wandering to go fetch a wife and walk in this honorable way, but that he's on the run, and it's unknown whether the damage can be undone.

God knows the depth of his heart. He knows next to that crookedness that however mutated,

Jacob had genuine spiritual desire. He was a seeker, if we could put it that way.

And we know, taking a step back, that this was not of Jacob. These were the seeds of God's grace that had been sown long before, before he was even born.

Jacob would have known that God knew every detail about his life, and he knows every detail about your life.

He knows your thoughts, knows your crookedness. Doesn't matter that we can't detect it.

It doesn't matter what kind of front I put up or how I act. Who I am, even to the closest people in my life, is not how

I'm known by God. Hebrews 4 .13 says, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, like nothing hidden.

All things are open unto the eyes of him. But the striking thing about this vision is it's not even a rebuke.

Notice that when God brings this vision to Jacob, it's not a confrontation. We find nowhere in this vision

God saying, I finally found you and caught up with you. I know what you've done, and look, your heart and your thoughts and your wickedness is open before me.

I'm going to make life really hard for you. I'll show you what things you must suffer for my name's sake.

Is that the kind of vision that Jacob experiences? Not at all.

Is the vision this haunting memory where he can start to see in fullness the tragedy that he's brought upon Esau?

The heartbreak that he's brought upon his mother, Rebecca? The shame that he's brought upon his elderly and blind father?

Does God give him a vision of his past to help lay in the weight and the burden of his sinfulness?

And so here's the vision, here's who you are. Take a look in the mirror, Jacob. Do you think

I'm going to be your God? Is that the vision that Jacob receives? As Bruce Waltke says, this is not a morbid review, but it's rather a future with God.

That's the vision. And we have that in the language beginning in verse 13. The land on which you lie,

I will give to you and your descendants. And your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth.

You shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And in you and in your seed, all of the families of the earth shall be blessed.

This ought to sound, if we're tracking rightly, just like Genesis 12. This is the summary of God's promise to Abraham when he called him out of Haran.

I will make you a great nation, he said to Abraham. I will bless you, make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

Here we have the Abrahamic promise affirmed to Jacob, even though he's going in the opposite direction.

Abraham had been called out of Haran by this promise. Jacob's now heading toward Haran, and yet the promise remains the same.

God is faithful. And then he says, beginning in verse 15, behold. Jacob's been going, look, look, look, and now

God says, look, behold what I'm going to do for you. I am with you.

So we've had the great I am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and now we have the great

I am with you, Emmanuel. I will keep you wherever you go.

It doesn't matter that you're leaving your household, Jacob. Are you going to Haran? Are you heading into, as it were, exile?

It doesn't matter where you go. Wherever you go, I will keep you. And when that exile has served its purpose, when

I have completed the purpose of that estrangement, I will bring you back to the land.

How significant would this have been for Moses' hearers, for the nation of Israel to receive, knowing what would be their destiny?

And then God says, I will not leave you until I have done what I've spoken to you, until I fulfill my promise.

And Jacob awoke from his sleep, verse 16, and said, surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.

God was here, and I didn't even know it. I wasn't even expecting it.

I wasn't looking for it. I wasn't desiring it. To be honest, I didn't want it. And here was

God's presence all along. Here is God's presence, not as a rebuke, but as a comfort.

Not as a confrontation, but as a blessing. He pledges to be with Jacob, to be for Jacob, to keep

Jacob, strengthen Jacob, prosper Jacob. And so it is in the

Christian's life. We often encounter God in the place and time where we least expect

Him, in fact, where we don't desire to receive Him. And I trust that's been a testimony for many of you, that you were found when you weren't looking.

You weren't seeking, but you were being sought. And in a place, and in a time, and in a circumstance where you thought, this is not the way to God, this is not the way toward holiness, as it were,

God opened up the pathway between earth and heaven. He showed you that His journey would now be toward heaven.

It reminds me of Psalm 121, where the psalmist asked the rhetorical question, where does my help come from?

This is part of God's reassurance to Jacob, isn't it? I'm going to keep you. I'm going to be with you.

I'm going to fulfill all that I've promised you. Your help will come from me, Jacob. No longer relying on yourself or on your schemes, on your own manipulation, trying to find a way to have control over your life and the lives of others.

I will be your help. I will be your provider. You don't need to manipulate and scheme and lie and live a false life anymore,

Jacob. You look to me and live for me and walk by faith in me. Your help will come from the

Lord. And so it's asking the question, what is the ultimate security the believer has?

Where does our help come from? Even if it's not the schemes and the manipulations and the deceit, is it just from our own skill, our own work ethic, our entrepreneurial spirit?

Is it from how we can just muster up strength, pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps?

Is that where our help comes from? Is that what gives us security or stability? Is that ultimately what will keep us?

Where does my help come from? This is what God is confronting Jacob with on this long and dangerous journey as he's so alone and had been only depending on himself in very self -destructive and family -destructive ways.

He's brought here in chapter 28 to realize that his help will come from the Lord. And then we read the next verse within that,

Psalm 121, verse 7. The Lord shall preserve you, keep you from all evil.

The Lord shall preserve your soul. This is the God who encounters us, who makes himself known, and he says,

I'm going to keep you. I'm going to preserve you. I've numbered the very hairs on your heads.

My power is such that there is no circumstance, no relationship, no tragedy, no trial that will overwhelm you.

I will be with you in the furnace. I will walk with you through the flood. I will keep you and your soul will be preserved.

It's a very individualistic way of understanding God's providence, isn't it?

Not as some minor cog within the larger machinations of a blind universe, but a personal

God intruding upon the personal life of someone who was not looking for God, did not desire truly to follow after a way of holiness, and here

God pledges to be his God, to keep his soul. We see this with Jesus, don't we?

He doesn't say, well, there's one sheep missing, but I've got 99. That's not bad.

99 %? I'll take that any day. Of course, you're going to lose some along the way, right?

We've known shepherds. You're going to lose cattle. One gets hit by a car. One falls into a ditch.

One just disappeared. You'll never know what ever happened to that sheep, but that's okay. We're doing pretty good. One, I can spare.

Two or three. You know, if we start going above 10%, then maybe I start taking some actions to preserve the flock.

God is not a God of the flock so much as he is a shepherd and overseer of your soul, and that is what

Jacob is understanding here in chapter 28. This personal God has come to me on the run, outside of this altar, outside of the household, and he has encountered me and brought this blessing and these promises upon me, and there's not even a place for Jacob to respond.

There's no conditions laid out. This is what I'm going to do for you, Jacob. This is what

I'm going to do for you. Where does he say, let's sign the contract here. This is what you're going to do for me so that I can do this.

There's none of that. This is what I'm going to do for you. Just grace abounding, grace overflowing to this sinful, scheming man, and so there's a comfort that Jesus is the one who leaves the flock, if anything, to pursue that wandering sheep on the way to Haran, laying alone in the darkness of the night, and it may not be that you're traveling physically some distance, but it may be this morning that you are, in a sense, all alone in a wilderness, not expecting to encounter

God. We consider

God's attitude toward those he sets his love upon. The only motivation here is nothing within Jacob, nothing about Jacob's life, nothing about his demeanor.

There's not one little gem that we can retrieve from his character to somehow motivate

God to show him this kind of blessing. The sole factor, the sole ground of this encounter is that God in eternity past said,

Jacob, I have loved. Jacob, I have loved. My sheep hear my voice,

Jesus says. I know them. They follow me. I give them eternal life and they'll never perish.

No one can snatch them out of my hand. That's what God is saying to Jacob here in chapter 28.

I will keep you. Nothing will happen to you. No evil will overcome you until I have fulfilled all that I have promised.

God is the maker of heaven and earth. Here he is in this vision, enthroned above the heavens, and yet he promises to be the personal

God of Jacob, concerned about Jacob's days and nights, concerned about the relationships and events of Jacob's days, concerned when he's mistreated, overcoming injustice with blessing.

We'll see just how personal this relationship is between God and Jacob. But notice the response of God's encounter.

There's a few things to note here in these verses. The first thing is really the response of Jacob initially, which is always a genuine response of someone who's encountered the presence of God.

Verse 17, he was afraid. That reads authentic to me.

I have a lot of suspicion about people who claim to have encountered the presence of God and it doesn't seem to well up fear within them.

If you had been on the fisherman's boat catching nets of fish for your life, your whole career and all that you know is in hauling nets full of fish.

But the one time Jesus says, cast it. And you have the gall, you have the stones to say, you know, you're a great teacher, you're a great preacher, love the miracles, but I'm the fishing expert here.

There's no fish to be caught. And when he finally gets that net that practically capsizes the boat, the response is then, this is amazing.

We could really go big with this. You know, think of the fishing in it. We could control the Sea of Galilee. Let's make a racket out of this.

What's the response? It's fear. Get away. I'm a sinful man.

He wants to dive in the net. He wants to be out of that boat. And that's just from a haul of fish.

When you encounter the presence of God, it is a traumatic event. And here

Jacob knows this is not just a dream. This is an encounter. And so he's afraid.

And that fear, of course, is not only and ultimately a terror.

He's not overcome by terror, but neither should we say he was reverent.

It has to be more than that. There has to be a little bit of terror within that reverence.

It's not just that he went, hmm, yes, this is an awesome place. I'm very reverent now that I've encountered God. This was traumatic.

The living God had exposed him and pronounced a blessing on him. And as it were, his whole life now has been claimed by God.

And so he's afraid. And he exclaims, how awesome. I love that that word awesome actually contains terror with reverence.

It used to be awful. How full of awe. And so we have, I believe in our hymnal.

How sweet and awful is this place? And not a very popular hymn these days, you can imagine.

No one wants to sing how awful is this place to the Lord. Awful has taken on new meaning.

But it originally meant how full of awe, how dreadful would be a synonym.

He was terrified. But this terror is one of utter humility. He says, this is none other than Bethel.

This is none other than the habitation, the house of God. This place where God made himself manifest to me.

This is God's house. This is the gate of heaven. In other words, he recognizes the significance of place.

And I wish evangelicals had a better theology of place. We come out of a

Protestant heritage that rightly was pushing against the idolatrous ways of Roman Catholicism.

And so you can read Spurgeon decrying thousands at the Vatican who fall down to venerate bones and knuckles of saints, right?

That's a good Protestant criticism to have. There was this view that holiness is almost a substance that you can locate and will have some sort of meritorious benefit to you.

And even when those things are in contradiction, if you have two sets of staircases, doesn't matter, both will bless you.

So the contradictions become rather frustrating. But in reaction to that, perhaps we've swung the pendulum a little too far.

And that's not going to be helpful as we're reading Genesis. The theology of place is one of the major themes of Genesis.

And so if we have a theology that says place doesn't matter, space doesn't matter, and maybe we have an eschatology that says space doesn't matter, you know, material location doesn't matter, well, then we're going to misread

Genesis and we're going to have a hard time understanding the significance of even Genesis chapter 28.

This is the house of God. This is where I encountered

God. Not here, not there, not at Beersheba, but here. This is where I encountered the living

God. And so he fashions this pillar, right?

He took that stone and he made it into this pillar. Most likely that pillar was meant to sort of signify or portray the vision because we have him pouring oil over the top of it.

He anoints the top of it. And so if the Lord God was at the head of sort of this ramp, this pillar toward heaven, then he's blessing, worshiping, anointing

God at the head of that pillar. And so that's what he sets up. And though the place had been previously called

Luz, and Luz will appear throughout the Old Testament later, it's now known as Bethel. And so now

Israel has a place where they can go and say, this is where our father

Jacob encountered the living God. One of my favorite, actually

I have to amend that, my second favorite Austrian composer, Anton Bruckner, Mahler always takes the cake, has a, you should watch this on YouTube, a beautiful choral piece that he composed called

Locus Ista. And it comes from a larger

Latin phrase in three verses, Locus Istae adeo factus est. This is the place that God has built.

And he wrote it to mark the building of a chapel off of a cathedral in Linz, Austria.

And I'm not here urging us to go back toward a place quite in this way. But to me, it helps me understand the significance of Genesis 28 and what

Jacob experienced when I listened to that and understand why it was written. It was written in the same way that this stone was carved.

This is the place. This is the place that God appeared. So the whole idea of holy space, as well as holy time, carries us through not only the rest of Genesis, but even

Exodus. Think of God manifesting his presence to Moses in Exodus 3.

Similar circumstances, you have a man who's a fugitive. He's on the run. This is not the place you would expect to encounter

God. He's among the wilderness of the Midianites. He's a shepherd leading the flocks by the desert.

And on a day, just like any other day, in the midst of these long years of exile, as it were, he encounters an angel of the

Lord. Exodus 3, beginning in verse 2. The angel of the

Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, same construction.

Behold, behold, behold. It was burning with fire, and yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I now turn aside, and I see this great sight. Why, the bush does not burn.

And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, here

I am. It's not what Moses was expecting to find in this particular time, in this particular place.

Do not draw near to this place. Take your sandals off your feet. This is holy ground.

And what does he say in verse 6? I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the

God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And what's Moses' response?

He hid his face. He was afraid to look upon God. Just like we read in verse 17, he was afraid.

And so here, this revelation of the God of Abraham and Isaac comes in a place that's not expected, and it makes that place holy.

The afternoon prior, that place had not been holy. It had just been dirt, no different.

Moses could have gone there and pulled a rock by his head and taken a nap. But God encountered him at this place, at this time, and it became holy.

And the response of that encounter was fear. The evangelical church at large spends a lot of time trying to remove fear from worship.

And I wonder if that's a very dangerous mistake. If we remove reverential fear, even dread from the worship of God, how can we warn those who may be walking in a way that they will fall into the hands of the living

God, who is a consuming fire? It's an appropriate response in worship to encounter

God and be both comforted and also intimidated. As Luther was, there was one

Sunday where I was shaking, trying to hold two communion cups, and Tony pointed out that he thought

I was like Luther, spilling wine. You have that sense of the awe, the fear of God's presence when it comes to matters of holy worship.

And of course, as John Newton said so well in his famous hymn, it was grace that taught our hearts to fear.

And that same grace that teaches our hearts to fear God is the same grace that also relieves that fear.

And so what starts out perhaps as intimidation, even terror, becomes something of fatherly reverence and even comfort.

We read in verses 20 and following, closing out our passage, Jacob made a vow saying, if God will be with me and keep me in this way that I'm going, give me bread to eat, clothing to put on, so that I can come back to my father's house in peace, then the

Lord shall be my God. And this stone that I've set as a pillar will be

God's house. And of all that you give me, I will surely give a tenth to you. So here we have in seed form the establishment of the temple, a certain act of giving that will become codified in Mosaic law, the tenth that is given to the

Lord at the Lord's house. But most importantly, we have Jacob's pledge. The Lord shall be my

God. He went from knowing about the God of his father Isaac to knowing

God. He went from saying in chapter 27, your God's given me success in a lie, to saying, you shall be mine.

But the thing that strikes me about this is everything he says to God, I think, betrays just how spiritually immature he is, how unlovely he is.

It still seems rather self -centered. It doesn't seem to be filled with much gratitude. It seems to be more concerned about his needs being met, what's going to happen in the short term, rather than the fact that if this is the way

God introduced himself, Jacob's just going to serve and trust God like Abraham did. Look at what he says.

If, so God comes with no conditions, pure blessing. Now Jacob is putting a condition.

All right, you want to be my God, huh? Well, if you do this for me, I'll let you be my

God. So already we're going, oh man, Jacob needs a lot of help. And God's like, mm -hmm, 20 years worth,

I'm under labor, it's coming. Jacob made a vow saying, if God will be with me and keep me in the way that I'm going,

I've got plans, I've got ambitions. You know, I've got an inheritance that's awaiting me.

If you keep me in this path, yeah, you can definitely be my God. In fact, make sure I've got food to eat, make sure

I've got good clothes on my back, make sure that I can actually come back to my house. It really is my house.

And then you can be my God. And God just, blood of Christ, blood of Christ. Yes, Jacob. Yes, Jacob.

But we also see this heartfelt desire for the Lord to be

Jacob's God. He sets up the pillar, that fear leads to worship. He anoints the pillar.

He commits a tenth of whatever the Lord gives him back to the Lord as a show of that gratitude and worship.

The key is that the Lord will now be Jacob's God. And we have to remember that in the chapters ahead because it won't always be easy for Jacob in the path that God directs him.

And so, just like Jacob, we need to go back to the pillar, back to the

Ebenezer and say, this was the time. If you know where it was, this was the place where I made a vow,

I made my commitment. I said, you will be my God. And though the path has not been easy, and though in many ways my life has been filled with trial, you have not failed me yet.

You're doing your patient work within me, keeping your promise, and you will be my God. Grace is meant to have this effect, reverence, worship.

It's meant also to be a place of trust that Jacob can go back to. And we're gonna see him come back to Bethel when we get to chapter 35, so significant.

Well, as we move towards some brief application, I have a few points of application, but the most significant thing, of course, is this.

God was at the place and at a time that Jacob was not expecting.

Jacob did not seek it, Jacob did not desire it, Jacob wasn't looking for it, as far as we can tell.

But God showed up. His presence was not sought, but his presence was found.

And that's true of every believer, and even if you're not a believer, that can be true for you as well.

When we read of Nathanael in the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and of course, he's at this stage in the

Gospel calling together the disciples. And so we read in verse 43, he found

Philip, said, follow me. We read Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and Philip found

Nathanael. We don't have a description of Nathanael, but it's written in a way that we should know who

Nathanael is, which likely means that Nathanael was known to the earliest believers. He was one of the eyewitnesses and earliest followers of Jesus.

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we've found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote,

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

You know, what does Hubbardston have? Like, they don't even have one gas station, no restaurant. Can anything good come out of Hubbardston?

Philip said to him, come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said, behold, an

Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. And Nathanael said, how do you know me? I'm minding my own business.

I'm sitting by this tree. Maybe he has a rock by his head too. How do you know me? I've heard about you.

How do you know me? And Jesus said, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree,

I saw you. Now, what does that mean? We have no idea.

How personal is God? So personal that he put something in the scriptures that is only known between him and Nathanael.

We have no idea the significance of that statement. I saw you under the fig tree.

We have no idea what that meant. Only God and Nathanael does. How privileged is Nathanael?

But we have at least recorded Nathanael's response. You are the son of God.

You are the son. The only way that could be known is if you could see like God.

You are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. And Jesus now, you asked, how do you know me?

Now Jesus is like, oh, let's play that game too. This is amazing to you that I said

I saw you while you were under the fig tree? You believe me because of this? You're gonna see a lot greater things than these.

Then he says something so striking. It's the only direct allusion to Genesis 28 in the

Gospels. He said to him, verse 51, I say to you, hereafter you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder, no, not the ladder, upon the son of man.

So Jesus has come in this equally intimate moment at an unexpected time in an unexpected place.

He's come to Nathanael. He's revealed who he is, or at least Nathanael exclaims, you are the son of God.

And then he says, you're going to see the heavens opened and angels ascending and descending upon the son of man.

So the son of man now takes the place of the ramp, the ladder, the way, the truth, the life, the one mediator between God and man,

Christ Jesus, our Lord. And as the Scottish Puritan Ralph Erskine points out, this title, son of man, it's the messianic title.

It's the title of his state of humiliation. Not the divine son of glory, but the son of man.

This is speaking to his incarnation. And so he says, have you seen at this or any former equation,

Christ to be as it were, the ladder set upon the earth in his humiliation, reaching from heaven down into the ground, round and round of steps of the ladder being completed first by his incarnation, then his whole life, then his whole death until he ascends by his resurrection and ascension to sit at the right hand of the

Father. I think it's a great insight. The significance of the descent and ascent being the very coming and going of our

Savior. So three applications as we come to a close. I'll try to be brief. The first thing we see is this, the

Lord knows his people. The Lord knows the lost sheep. The Lord knows Nathanael.

The Lord knows a fugitive named Jacob or Moses when they're in the wilderness, not expecting to find him.

And if the Lord knows his people in these unexpected times and places, the Lord knows you. The Lord is good,

Nahum writes, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who trust in him. It should astound us as we read in Psalm 144 .3.

What is man? That you take knowledge of him. What's man that you reveal yourself to him?

Not to some king sitting upon a golden throne, but to a fugitive, a twister and deceiver out in the middle of the desert.

And if God is such that he reveals himself to sinners like Jacob, then he'll reveal himself to you.

Second point, the Lord not only knows his people, he calls his people. Sometimes we hear people say things like,

I found the light. You know, I read this or I did this or met this person and then I found the light. And we usually give that a pass.

We know what they mean by it. But we almost want to correct them and say, the light found you, buddy. You didn't find no light.

Light found you. It's in his light that we see light, as Augustine prayed.

You might hear someone say, I found the Lord. And as the great hymn puts it, I sought the Lord. That's how it feels to us, right?

I sought the Lord. I decided I've had enough of this. I'm gonna go seek the Lord now.

I'm gonna start going to church. And it feels that way, doesn't it? I sought the Lord. But then what does the hymn say?

And then after I knew, it was not me seeking, but him seeking me.

It was not I that found the Savior true. No, I was found of thee. And so we find this as a pattern.

Jacob on the run from home, heading back to Haran, not looking for the Lord, but the Lord finds him.

Moses out in the Midian desert, a shepherd caring for his father -in -law's sheep, doing that work for 40 years.

And the day that God encounters him is not like this amazing thing, and he just knew it was gonna happen.

It was just another day within that 40 -year stretch. But this was the time and place that God was going to encounter him.

We think of it with Samuel being a little boy lying on the bed in the temple, hearing the voice of God speaking to him.

Samuel, Samuel. We think of this little teenaged girl, terrified by the angelic vision, humbled, singing the

Magnificat. Her soul blessing the Lord, who had promised that she would bear the

Savior, who would blot out the sins of her people. We think of James and John, or among all the disciples, come, follow me.

They weren't seeking him, he was seeking them. This is how Jesus makes disciples still today.

He calls them, he calls them. It's not that he called the 12, and ever since then, everyone else just stumbles their way toward Jesus.

He's always calling disciples of him, just like he calls

Zacchaeus, the tax collector, perched up in that tree so foolishly to come down.

Because out of all the worthy households in Jericho, it was gonna be Zacchaeus, the sinner, the hated, despised, schemer,

Zacchaeus. That's where Jesus wanted to stay. That's where his presence would be known. Saul, persecuting the church.

If ever there was a man who God should not find, it would have been Saul, the chief persecutor of the earliest

Christians. Even when God came in other visions to his people, Saul of Tarsus is coming,

Lord, no, no, no, no, you got this one wrong. We want nothing to do with Saul.

This is a trap, a trick, we want nothing to do with him. So surprising is God's call, the grace of God beginning with the call.

So first point, the Lord knows his people. Second, the Lord calls his people. And third, the

Lord is with his people. Ultimately, the

Emmanuel pledging his presence to Jacob is our Emmanuel, God with us.

We turn to Revelation 21 and we read, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place, the house of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, they will be his people. God himself will be with them as their

God. Even as Jacob vowed, you will be my God. Jesus ascended to the father where he's now at that right hand, preparing a place for us to dwell.

And even though now, according to Luke 24, Acts 1, even though now we experience the presence of God by his spirit, we have his great promise.

When we're going through this journey amidst trial and blessing, when we're feeling alone in darkness, when we're not looking for but are found by these moments of God's presence, this isn't a one -off for Jacob.

This place where God was known is not only in Bethel, it's at Mahanaim, it's at Penuel, it's back in Beersheba.

God makes his presence known. At certain places, at certain times, often unexpected, he makes it known to his people.

Blaise Pascal, if you ever read anything by Blaise Pascal, he has a very famous diary entry from,

I think, 1653 around St. Clement's Feast, this is how he dated it. And he's just writing in his normal diary events of the day and thoughts he's having.

Known for his book thoughts, pensées. But he writes in this particular account of just this encounter out of the blue.

And he just can't even make complete sentences, he just writes from a certain time, don't quote me on it, like 1130 till, no, 15 past midnight.

Fire, the presence of God, Father, Son, Spirit, fire, fire.

And he just starts writing out of the ordinary in unexpected ways,

God communes with his people, he gives them a time and a place to, as it were, build a pillar and say, you'll be my

God, I'll walk with you, you're keeping me. And so fulfills Jesus' promise to his people, lo,

I am with you, Emmanuel, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your promise, we thank you for the grace that finds sinners and twisters like Jacob, that your grace seeks them when they would not be found, when their own sins have caused them to flee, but they flee yet further into sin, flee further from your presence, and yet your presence breaks through, it intrudes, it confronts.

And as we can all attest, Lord, when you came to us in our sinful flight from you, you came not with harsh mirrors or rejections or tanks of regret to drown us in, but you came with blessing, you came with mercy and tenderness, how you wooed us to stop our rebellion, how you overcame our abject slavery with the bands of your love.

We thank you for the grace that seeks us, the grace that saves us, the grace that will never let us go, we thank you that you have pledged for your own eternal love set upon us, that you will keep our souls, that you will guard our ways coming and going forever, that you will be with us as your people.

I pray, Lord, that we would have eyes to see and hearts to desire your sanctifying presence as Jacob goes on to experience,

Lord, that we would not shrink back from the trials and tests that you call your people to, that we would be faithful so that we might be made more like you and therefore have deeper and more constant communion with you.

We pray, Lord, if there's any in this room that do not know you, however dark the night may be, however alone they feel in the desert, may they be encouraged by the presence that invades with irresistible grace and conquers hearts of stone, making them hearts of flesh.

Do that work that only you can do by your spirit. These things we ask in your son's name, amen.