True Works and Dead Works Genesis 28:10-22

The Vastness of Creation and God’s Care for Humanity

One of my favorite things to do, and this might be one of your favorite things to do, is to go outside on a quiet night, at night, and look at the vast night sky, and look at the beautiful stars. I remember being up in northern Minnesota with my brother and a friend, looking at the stars with no artificial lights within a few miles of us.

One particular night, the sky was clear and we saw northern lights. It was as if the heavens were putting on a display for us to see. Anyone who looks at the sky has to ask the question, how is it that outer space is so majestic, and who put it there?

When you look at the sky, what has to come to your mind is, someone designed this. And of course, the Bible gives us the clear answer as to who this was. Genesis 1 says that on the fourth day, God placed the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens.

And as we look at the heavens, we know that God is great. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, majestic, and beautiful. And this leads one to ask the question, as great as God is, why would He care about us?

The advancements in science have shown us how big the universe is. It's so big that we don't know where it ends. Some estimate that there are hundreds of trillions of galaxies, and we live in one, the Milky Way.

We are small, very small. If something else does not humble you, this should. God is so big, He is beyond comprehension, and we are specks. Winston Churchill once said, this is a funny story, he said, we're all worms, at least I'm a glow worm.

The psalmist in Psalm 8 knew the bigness of God as he looked at the heavens. And he too wondered, why would He care about us? He said in Psalm 8, 3 and 4, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

But the amazing reality is, is that God does care. He cares deeply about you. In fact, God's greatest creation is the human race. Of all of God's creatures, only mankind is made in His image. What this means is that we reflect Him in some ways, more so than anything else in all of creation.

And in this enormous universe, the place for all the action is happening is on planet Earth, as He is accomplishing His great plans through His image bearers in this place. What is even more remarkable is that during Christmas season, we are celebrating the reality that the One who put those stars in the heavens and the moon and all of these galaxies, He came to Earth as a man.

The God-man Jesus came to this Earth to save sinners the first time, and at His second coming, He's going to reign with His people. You can see the incomprehensible God has an intimate relationship with His people.

And you can see that those who belong to Him must understand that He is always present with them. Do you know that? As you go through your day, do you understand that the Lord is always with you? Today, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, we are going to see Jacob come to the realization that the living God is in his midst.

Jacob is going to have a glorious encounter with Him. We're going to see this in Genesis 28, 10 -22, and so I encourage you to turn there with me. And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 27.

This sermon is titled, God is with us. And our big idea, our proposition, is the Lord is intimately close to His people. And we're going to see two life truths that we must understand about His intimacy with His people.

And the first is that He is always with us to fulfill His promises. He is always with us to fulfill His promises. And we're going to see this in verses 10 -15. But before we jump into the text, let me give a little recap of last week's sermon.

Every Sunday, of course, we're coming from somewhere and then we're going to be going somewhere at the end. Last week we saw the path of the chosen of God and the non-chosen of God. Jacob, who was chosen, was placed on the blessed, pure path.

Esau, who was not chosen, was placed on the non-blessed, impure path. Jacob was sent on the pure path by Him being sent to a place where He would marry from a pure people and not from the wicked Canaanites.

On the other hand, Esau was sent down the impure path. But we were thrown a curveball because while Esau's behavior was normally very poor for all to see his outward behavior, in this passage we saw that he actually tried to do something good.

So he might have been fooled to think maybe he had some kind of a conversion. But we know from what we saw last week is that he was just doing this with ulterior motives. He was doing this for selfish reasons and those reasons were to earn his parents' favor back.

And so what he did was instead of marrying from the Canaanites, like Jacob was told not to marry from the Canaanites, he actually went to Jacob's Lion through Ishmael, through Hagar, and tried to find a wife there.

But that did not work in God's eyes, of course, because he was not pleased. He was doing this for selfish reasons to win his parents back. And the application for us was that we would do true works toward God and not dead works.

The way that we are able to do true works is after coming into a saving relationship with God through Christ. And once you come to faith in Christ, you're given the Holy Spirit. And then we are able to do works that are empowered by the Spirit for the glory of God.

And so that your works are actually truly righteous and pleasing to Him. We should not do works like Esau or the Pharisees, as I mentioned, who did works the wrong way to earn the praise of man or of God in the wrong way.

And that brings us to today's text. Jacob has now been sent on the path to find his future wife from Abraham's extended family. So he's heading north to find this wife from this pure line. And let's set the stage in the first two verses here, verses 10 and 11.

And Jacob is going to have the encounter of a lifetime. So Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep.

Let's stop right there. So Jacob leaves Beersheba. Beersheba would have been on the southern part of the land of Canaan, the land of promise. And he heads north to Haran. And Haran, just to give you an idea, is located in modern-day Turkey, if you can mentally imagine that.

So this is a long trek that he has taken. The distance from Beersheba to Haran is 550 miles. So a flight would have been nice here. But of course, he had to go on foot. And as he's traveling through the land of Canaan, the land of promise, the day gets old and the sun starts to set.

And what people have done since the beginning of time as the sun starts to set is go to sleep. That's the most obvious statement of the day. And unless you're one of those strange night owls, right? Of course, some people like to be awake at night, but that's pretty rare.

And he finds a stone and puts it under his head to sleep. These are the days before my pillow. Brianna was saying this week as she was looking at this text, why did he use a stone? That's a good question to ask.

Why not something softer? This must have been normal back then. That's all we can say. So he puts the stone under his head and goes to sleep. And what we are about to read is that he had a dream. A dream unlike any other he had ever experienced.

We have verses 12 and part of 13 here. And he dreamed and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

And behold, the Lord stood above it. Have you ever had a dream in your life that stood out? So my parents are here today and they still live, and I grew up in Mound near Lake Minnetonka. And it's such a beautiful place to live because when you go down to the lake, it faces the west.

Of course, the sun sets in the west, and so there was always a beautiful sunset every night. And I always imagined as I read passages in the Bible about the return of Christ, I always imagined Jesus coming down and seeing him come from the west down on the other side of the lake, just like the sun does.

And one night I had a dream, and at this point in my life, I was not walking closely with the Lord, and the Lord providentially gave me a dream that Christ had returned. Just like I imagined he had returned in the west sky over Cook's Bay on Lake Minnetonka.

And I woke up relieved that he had not returned. I was like, okay, it's just a dream. And I was relieved, of course, because I wasn't walking closely with the Lord at that time. And I was thinking, I'm not ready to meet him.

And that's a fearful place to be. Now, Jacob here has a far more vivid dream than I have. His dream was a direct encounter with the living God. And we get the picture of this dream. Jacob is, of course, on earth as he sees a ladder that stretches from the ground to heaven.

If you can remember all the way back to Genesis 1, I'm sure, how many people were here during Genesis 1, right? When we started that over a year ago? There are different meanings of heaven. There's three heavens in scripture.

The first heaven is the atmosphere. The second heaven is outer space. And the third heaven is the place where God dwells. So the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, right? When he is caught up to the third heaven, right?

He's caught up to the place where God dwells. And even though the ladder goes up through the atmosphere here, the first and second heaven, what this chiefly has in mind is the third heaven. The place where God dwells.

This is an encounter with the living God. This is an encounter with heaven. And what we see is that on this ladder, angels are descending and ascending or going up and going down the ladder. So they're going back and forth between heaven and earth.

And the beginning of verse 13 says, the Lord stood above it. And that is what the English Standard Version says. That's the version I'm using. That's the version of the Red Bibles. Another possible interpretation is that the Lord was standing beside Him, meaning beside Jacob, just like He'd be standing right here, right next to me.

And with this interpretation, that He's beside Him, the Lord would be on the base of the ladder, not at the top. So it depends how the Hebrew is here, the language that this is written in, to see is He on the top or is He on the bottom of the ladder.

Now we should assume this is a theophany. What that means, of course, as we've seen a lot of these throughout Genesis, is that God takes on a human form. And the Lord speaks to Jacob directly. This intimate, close conversation indicates that the Lord, I think, is at the bottom of the ladder and not at the top.

And I say this because the Lord does not call down from heaven. He did that in other places, like He's shouting. He's talking to him here as if He's having a close, intimate conversation, like He would if you're sitting across from someone.

And I'll explain this more in a little bit. And we'll also see in verse 16 that Jacob describes the closeness of the presence of God with Him, which is also a reason I think the Lord is actually staying at the base of the ladder, the bottom of the ladder.

But what is so important to see in this text is how this connects to Jesus Christ. As we've gone through Genesis, some passages of Scripture clearly connect to Jesus, and this is one of those passages.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus is calling His disciples when He's starting His ministry. And as He calls the disciple Nathanael, He demonstrates His supernatural abilities. Jesus told him that He saw him under the fig tree before He called him.

And as Nathanael heard this, he was amazed. And Christ said to him, if you're amazed at this, wait for what is coming in the future. Think of all the glory that He saw in the future. And Jesus says in John 151,.

Now, Nathanael was an Israelite. Nathanael read the Old Testament. He would have known the story of Jacob's ladder, where the Lord brought heaven to earth. And what Jesus said in this verse is that He is the ladder.

In other words, He is the bridge between heaven and earth. And as we think about Jesus and how Scripture describes Him in His work, we can see that He is indeed the bridge between heaven and earth. Jesus shows us how intimate God is.

After all, the Creator of the universe became a man. A man who dwelt among us. And it is fitting that this sermon is during this Christmas season. Since this time of year is the celebration of God becoming a man.

And this is known in theology as the Incarnation. And if you want to talk about, as I mentioned already, the most remarkable event in human history, put this right at the top of the list. The Creator became a man.

Philippians 2 says that He emptied Himself by leaving the high place of heaven to live a humble life here on earth. He breathed the air you breathe. He drank the water that you drink. He had family and friends like you have.

And this is wonderful as we ponder this. So this Christmas season, here's my challenge to you. Do not set your mind on your iPad, Facebook, Twitter, sports, shopping, Santa Claus. But ponder that heaven came to earth through the Son of God coming here.

This is a season of distractions, isn't it? Don't be distracted this season. He came to this earth to save sinners. And He's coming a second time to judge the world, to gather His people and for them to reign with Him forever.

And the number one way that heaven has come to earth in this fallen world is through the arrival of the God-man 2 ,000 years ago. He truly is the bridge between heaven and earth. And Jacob here gets a picture of this.

And in this dream, as the Lord is on the base of the ladder, in my understanding, He speaks to Isaac close up as a man speaks to his friend. What might the Lord say to Jacob? Now, if you've been here a while, you might guess what He said to him.

He's going to tell him the promises. The promises that started with his grandfather Abraham that continued through his father Isaac and now are going to continue through him. So let's look at what the Lord says to him.

Of all the things He could have said to him, this is what He chose to say. 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.

Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in you and in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, 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. What we see here is that the Lord tells Jacob of the promises that are His.

And you have to think that Jacob heard these promises before from his dad and from his grandfather. You can imagine them having those conversations. But this is the first time he hears it from God's mouth.

He hears it from God Himself. And the Lord tells Jacob in verse 13 -14 that the land that he is laying on as he's sleeping is the land that will be his and he will multiply his offspring. And the Lord tells him that his offspring will be like the dust of the earth.

And it's fitting that God told him the dust of the earth right here because what is he laying on? He's laying on the dust of the earth. So he's pebbles that he's laying on. He's saying your offspring is going to be so many that this is what it's going to be like.

Then in verse 15, the Lord gives Jacob the comforting words that he will be with Him wherever he goes. And once he finds a wife way north in this region of Haran, the Lord will protect him by bringing him back to the land that He had promised him.

And the Lord says that He will sustain him in order to give him all that He had promised. Think about how wonderful this promise is to Jacob. The Lord's blessing is upon him as his grandfather Abraham was blessed and his father Isaac was blessed.

And the Lord's fingerprints are on his life. And the Lord is going to guide him on this journey through it. Everyone in this room who belongs to the Lord has the promise of the Lord's presence with you.

He is going to bring His purposes and His promises for your life to pass for His good purposes. You can count on that. We must count on that because the Lord is always faithful. And I've said this verse to you many times before, but it's worth repeating, right?

Romans 8 .28 says that all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. If you think about it, the story for every believer ends well. Because every story ends in heaven if you belong to Christ.

And what happens then is that you enter the presence of God even though in your life here on earth, right, there's going to be bumps along the way. But the Lord will never leave you since He will bring His promises to pass in your life as He's promised Jacob here.

And if you think about it, right, all these promises that He made to him right here, we have the promises of God, right? They've been written down in the Bible, right? So if you belong to Christ here today, these are your promises.

Everything the Bible says that God is going to do in your life, in your future, those are the promises. And they're every bit as sure as the promises to Jacob. And as we think about the Lord's presence with Jacob, like I mentioned, it's like he's a friend here who's with him.

And we can think about our lives, right? You have friends as you've gone through your journey through life. Some dear friends, or maybe one in particular that you can think of. And of all the people in your life, you're thinking this person has been the most faithful, loyal person.

They're always with me through thick and thin. It might be your spouse. It might be someone else. And when you think about God, the Lord is like your best friend on steroids, right? He never leaves your side.

And He's always working everything for your good to bring glory to Himself. He's a friend who will never let you down. And that's one of the most beautiful truths of Scripture, right? It says the Lord is our friend.

It's wonderful. The same God who created all things. He's your friend. And the Lord speaks to Jacob with deep fellowship here. And He's committed to him over the long haul as He is to you who follow Him.

So the Lord is intimately close to His people. And the first life truth that we have seen that we must understand is that He is always with us to fulfill His promises. The second life truth that we must understand is that His presence must fill us with awe and wonder.

The Awe of God’s Presence in Jacob’s Dream

His presence must fill us with awe and wonder. And we'll see this in verses 16 through 22. As Jacob awakes from the dream, he is amazed at the experience he just had. Let's see what he says in these verses, 16 and 17.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Obviously everyone in here sleeps, right? You know how it is that when you wake from a dream, and it was a bad dream, you're relieved to say it was just a dream. Sometimes you wake from a good dream and you're bummed that it was just a dream.

What we have to understand is that many times in Scripture, God actually speaks to His people in their dreams. And I want to make a point here. Don't count on God speaking to you in your dreams in your own life.

I think that God did this at specific times in history for His good purposes. I think the Lord providentially does everything, right, in our lives. And so He might have you have some kind of experience, but it's not because... you shouldn't expect it, okay?

Let me say that. Like all these supernatural experiences that these people had, that only comes at certain points in history. This is not a normative thing that God does today. However, here He did it, right?

And He spoke in other ways in history. He spoke through visions and He spoke through prophets. And in each case, the Lord is speaking directly to His people. So this dream is not some fantasy. This is the Lord speaking to Jacob directly.

And as Jacob had this experience, what He states is that the Lord is in this place. Jacob's grandfather and father had close encounters with God. And now for the first time, he has a close, intimate conversation with the Lord as the Lord is standing right before him.

Up to this point in Jacob's life, remember, Jacob's not a good man, right? At this point in his life. He thought that God was distant. And you could tell this by what he says here. Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.

He lived his life up to this point feeling like the Lord was some far off deity. He thought if there is a God, He's somewhere far off. And now he's like, wow, He is close. And if you think about it, right?

This is the experience of many in the present day. They think that if God is truly there, He does not care about the details of my life. Have you ever thought that way? I think we're honest, right? All of us at one time or another have thought this way.

Yet God is closer to us than anyone else in our life. He is with us every second of every day, right? You can't say that about anyone else.

But God is.

And it's a tragedy when people think that God is far off. Theologian R .C. Sproul wrote this about this common problem as he's commenting on this story. He said, Jacob was unaware of the presence of God.

This tragic ignorance of God's presence is played out in our culture every day in the lives of millions of people. God is here, but we are unaware. Then he goes on to say, how awesome is this place? This was Jacob's response to being in the house of God.

People do not normally feel that way in church. There is no sense of awe, no sense of being in the presence of one who makes us tremble. People in awe never complain that church is boring. End quote. If you pull our culture, everyone's going to say church is boring.

There's better things to do. I'm wasting my time. It's the exact opposite. This is the least boring place, right? We're encountering the living God in a special way as we meet together. And if you think that church is boring, then the devil has his hold on your life.

And that's a sad reality, right? And you need to turn from that and truly seek after the Lord. And do you realize that God is in our presence right now? As I speak, He's listening in to what I'm saying and to your listening.

Do you realize that when you go home, God is there? Do you realize that when you go to work, God is there? Do you realize that when you sin, God is there? Do you realize that when you do something that pleases Him, He is there?

And as we think about this, it may make us think twice, right? Before we do certain things or say something. And we might not hear a direct voice from God, right? Like Jacob had this visible encounter with Him.

But He's every bit as here right now as He was with Jacob. And we might think, wouldn't it have been great to be in the presence of God like these men experienced or to have lived in the presence of the incarnate Christ?

And yes, of course, that would have been neat. Yet, God's presence is every bit as much with us today as it was then. And the only difference is that we can't see His powerful presence with our eyes as they saw.

And the beautiful truth of Scripture is that one day we will see Him with our eyes. And what He will tell us is that He was with us at every moment of our lives. Some of you maybe have seen the poem. Mary Stevenson wrote this poem in the 20th century, the Footprint poem, where there's footprints in the sand, right?

And there's two sets of prints going along. And at one point, there's only one set of footprints. And the person says to God when he or she sees Him, where were you when there was only one set of footprints?

And the poem says that I carried you during that period. I never left you. I was always with you. And I think that poem does a good job of explaining, right? The Lord is always with us. And we must understand that He never is away from you.

And as the Lord was commissioning Joshua to take over the promised land, He told him in Joshua 1, 5, Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. The Lord is always with us, and this would astonish us.

As much as it astonished Jacob. When was the last time you thought, The Lord is right with me, right now. Jacob said in verse 16, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. He says it in an astonishing way.

And we should say how awesome it is that the Lord is here. And Jacob says that in verse 17. And the text says that he feared. And this is a healthy, trembling, Whenever you're in the presence of greatness, you tremble.

I can think of a time where I met a pastor that I look up to and I was shaking. Just being in his presence, thinking I really look up to this person. Or maybe you have an experience where you're in the presence of someone you always wanted to meet.

And you look up to, and you're finally in their presence. And there's kind of this trembling that is there. If the Lord were to appear right now, With all of his glory in this room, all of us would fall to the ground.

Because his presence would be so awesome. And there would be a certain fear, right? That he is great, he is so much greater than I am. And you would tremble. And how wonderful it is that Almighty God, The most important person there is, is with us at all times.

And this must amaze you, right? Ask yourself this question today. Does this astonish you? Does this fill you with awe and wonder? Because if it doesn't, there's something wrong with your heart. And I say that in love.

I don't want you to stay in that place. I want you to grow. That's a part of growing, right? You're more in awe of the Lord. You're more in awe of being in his presence. And he cares for you. And he's always working things for your good.

For everyone here today who belongs to him. And at this point, Jacob realized he was living for all the wrong things. And now his life has true meaning. As he is officially on the path of following the Lord.

And to remember this significant moment in Jacob's life, He takes the stone that he was sleeping on. And he makes a memorial of it. And he honors the Lord. And we'll see this in verses 18 through 22. So early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head.

And set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel. But the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go.

And will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear. So that I come again to my father's house in peace. Then the Lord shall be my God. And this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house.

And of all that you give me, I will give a full tenth to you. So Jacob here, in verses 18 and 19, Takes the stone, sets it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He names the place Bethel, which means house of God.

We've already seen Abraham name a place Bethel as well. So my understanding is that this is a different place, of course. Then in verses 20 and 21, Jacob says that if the Lord indeed protects him and brings him safely back to his father's house in Beersheba, that's in the land of promise, then the Lord will be his God.

And some say here that the conditional nature of this shows that Jacob has not been converted yet. That he's still an unbeliever. But I think that's being a little too hard on him. We can all think back to when we first came to faith in Christ.

You're going to say silly things. You're going to say things that aren't sound doctrinally. And I think Jacob should be saying this in a conditional way. If the Lord does this, then I will do this. He should be saying, the Lord's going to do this, and because of that, I'm going to set up a pillar here to honor him.

And as we see this,.

Jacob is filled with amazement at the reality of the Lord. This God he had always heard about from his grandfather and father is indeed near him. And this same amazement is what we must have as we ponder that the Lord's constant closeness is with us.

The Lord is intimately close to his people. And the second life truth that we must understand is that his presence must fill us with awe and wonder. So to wrap up this sermon this morning, the Lord is intimately close to his people.

And we've seen two life truths. The first life truth is that he's always with us to fulfill his promises. And the second life truth is that his presence must fill us with awe and wonder. The testimony of the nearness of God is the clear teaching of Scripture from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation.

And what a beautiful truth it is that God who created all things cares deeply about his creation. He cares about you. It is not as though God created everything and cares nothing, right? Like he's some far-off deity.

No, he cares about the tiniest details of your life. And if you belong to him today, this should impact your life greatly. Understanding this. We need to be thinking rightly as we walk with him. God is always with you to take care of you and guide you.

And this should fill you with a sense of awe and wonder, amazement at this reality. And if you do not belong to him, I say this to you. Understand that this opportunity to have intimacy with your creator is there.

And what better thing to do or to have, right? To have intimacy with him. And what you have to do is to believe in God's Son, Jesus, who reconciled heaven and earth. He bridged the chasm between the holy and the unholy.

Some gospel tracts have actually had Jesus as a bridge, right? God is here. Man is over here because of man's sinfulness. And Jesus is the bridge, right? He brings us to God so that we can now have fellowship with him.

And if you've never trusted in Jesus and his saving work for you at the cross, when he died for your sins and was raised from the dead,.

Believe in him today.

Receive him. And then have this close intimacy with him. There are no ordinary days when you realize that God is with you. And for those who truly know the presence of God is with you, it changes everything.

Your life focus changes as you go through life with him and live for him every day. Now, next Sunday, we're going to continue seeing the story of Jacob here. And we'll see that after this encounter with the Lord, Jacob's going to arrive to his destination to find a wife.

And we'll look at that next week. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord. We praise you that your presence is with us right now. Every word that we speak, you hear. Every thought that we have, you know.

Every deed that we do, you see. You sustain us, Lord, every day. You walk with your people as we journey through the life of faith. And Lord, our world goes through this life. Most people go through this without even understanding this truth, Lord, that you are there.

And I pray, Lord, that if anyone came here today and didn't understand that, that they would leave understanding that. And that they would be encouraged by that. And if anyone, Lord, has this gap, Lord, between them and you, because they don't have faith in Christ, come to faith in Christ.

And so, Lord, I pray for this today. We praise you, Lord, that you are indeed in our midst. And it's in your Son's name we pray.

Amen.