Good to be with you uh today. Uh the
text for today is uh from Genesis 28. If
you turn there, Genesis 28:es 10 through
uh 22. Uh we're in the latter portion of
the book of Genesis, which follows
Abraham and his family, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. uh that family uh the one
through whom which God intends to bring
blessing to all the nations. Our
particular story today has to do with
Jacob, the grandson of Abraham. Gen
passage Genesis 28 10-22. I'm going to
read that and then I'll pray and we'll
spend a few moments uh talking about it
together.
Jacob left Beersa and went toward Karan
and he came uh 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 and that place to sleep. 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 and said, '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, to the north, and the south, and
in you all the offspring uh in your
offspring shall all the families of the
earth be blessed. Behold, I'm 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've done what
I promised you." 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? There's none other uh
this is none other than the house of
God, and this is the gate of heaven." So
early in the morning, Jacob took the
stone that he had put under his head and
set it up for a pillar, and he poured
oil on the top of it, and he called the
name of that place Bethl, but the name
of the city was Lutz at 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 shall
come again to my so that I come again to
my father's house in peace, and the Lord
shall be my God, and this stone which
I've set up for a pillar shall be God's
house, and of all that you give me, I
will give a tenth to you.
Uh Lord, uh we are are grateful for the
many stories of how you have interacted
with your people over the ages and we're
grateful for stories like this one that
remind us uh of your promise to be
present with us. I pray as we reflect on
that um that we would be encouraged and
we would remember uh that you are a God
who is present with and for his people.
Pray all these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
Uh, ever since I was a kid, I've loved
big standing maps, the sorts at which
you see at like an amusement park or a
zoo or a big mall. Do you know what I'm
talking about? You walk in and there's
sort of a a big map that tells you where
everything is. Seeing some heads nod.
You You've encountered these before. I
love them. Uh and my uh when I when I
encounter these the very first thing I
look for and maybe this is true for you
uh is the the little marker maybe a
circle maybe a star that says the words
do you know you are here you got it
exactly right you are here sometimes
I've encountered these large standing
maps uh that do not have that marker
which is awful
I I've wanted to provide a public
service by having having a bunch of you
are here stickers in my pocket and just
going and placing them uh on these maps.
Surely that would be helpful to the
people who have neglected the task. The
the you are here is the most important
part to me. Uh because to me in this
great big place with all these cool
things to see
that you are here helps me to know where
I am. helps to ground me to let my know
my place uh how I fit uh in the grand
scheme of things. Now here's the
transition in the narrative. Jacob
encounters God on the road
and uh as he does it's sort of a you are
here experience for him. One that
becomes a defining moment for his life
from this day forward and uh through the
rest of it. Uh as mentioned today is our
text today is about Jacob. You might
know something about him, maybe know a
lot about him. If you were an ancient
Israelite, you would certainly know the
name well because you worship the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That guy,
that's the same Jacob, of course, and
you're an Israelite. Another name given
to Jacob later on is Israel.
And his sons become the very tribes of
Israel. So to be an Israelite is to be a
descendant of Jacob. So he is certainly
a figure you would know about. Now, our
passage begins this way in verse 10.
Jacob left Beersa and went towards
Karan. Now, that's concise. You might
just skip right over it, but there's
actually a whole lot of baggage packed
into uh those few words, and you have to
have been following the story to know
why it is that he's going towards Quran
and why that uh has an impact on how we
read these words. In the in the previous
few chapters in Genesis, we you read a
lot about Jacob. He's kind of a mixed
bag at at best. Uh we read about his
birth along with his twin brother, Esau,
even though they're twins. Um Esau is
the firstborn, which means that he gets
all the right the relevant rights and
blessings that belong to the firstborn.
In a later episode, when they have grown
to some extent, Jacob makes this, we
read about how Jacob makes this red
stew. Now, Esau is out in the field,
maybe he's hunting or something, and he
comes in hungry, and he asks for some of
the stew, and Jacob offers the stew in
exchange for Esau's birthright, to which
Esau agrees. Now, on the one hand, we
might hear this story and think, well,
that's a time when Jacob took advantage
of his hungry brother. On the other
hand, you might say, well, Esau doesn't
seem to hold his birthright in much
esteem either. We might say that neither
brother is blameless in this instance.
Later on, when Isaac, their father, is
old and nearing the end of his life,
with the help of their mother, uh, Jacob
conspires to fool his father, you might
know this story, into thinking that he,
in fact, is Esau.
And he does this and he receives the
blessing due to the firstborn. And Esau
finds out about this and he is greatly
angry, as you might expect. And he
decides that he's going to kill his
brother after their father dies. As a
side note, never doubt that God will
show grace to and use families that are
uh messy.
Their mother Rebecca hears of Esau's
anger and she tells Jacob to flee
to go stay with her brother whose name
is Laban. That's Jacob's uncle in a
place called Haron.
And at the beginning of chapter 28,
Isaac, their father, sends Jacob off to
Karan as well. And the trip is
characterized as a way for Jacob to go
and find a wife. Is he fleeing from his
murderous brother? Is he going to find a
wife? Is this a convenient combination?
That whether Isaac is in on this or not
is unclear. In either case, all of that
is packed into the background of these
words. Jacob left Beersa and went toward
Haran.
Now, for the sake of context, uh this is
not a short walk to a neighboring
community. It's a journey roughly
northward of about 500 miles.
If you were driving on the highways, 500
miles would take you to Birmingham,
Alabama or Oklahoma City roughly.
So, this is not a short trip. And, uh,
as you might expect, Jacob doesn't have
a car,
as was common back then.
Uh, he's walking or he's riding on an
animal the distance to Birmingham or
Oklahoma City.
plenty of time to think, plenty of time
to encounter danger along the way.
And our passage finds Jacob somewhere
along the way. We're told later in the
passage where exactly he is, but the
narrator is very careful at the outset
just to tell us that he is at a certain
place
perhaps to highlight that for Jacob,
this is just a nondescript place along
the way where he's stopping for the
night. uh he's seems like he's far
enough away uh from any sort of
lodging that he has to set up camp for
the night outside.
And before going any further, I want to
just pause for a moment and think about
the circumstances
for our guy Jacob
who finds himself at the present in this
kind of in between place on the road and
in his life.
He has some sense of where he's going.
Yet surely the details of his
destination remain shrouded in the
unknown.
Certainly possibly he's never been to
Haran before. And even if he has,
what'll happen with his quest to find a
li a wife when he gets there? Will he be
safe there? If he gets there because the
road is fraught with plenty of perils.
On the other hand, while the future is
sort of shrouded in the unknown, he
knows all too well about where he's
coming from.
when he looks back on his home in
Beersha, there's on the one hand comfort
and familiarity. In an earlier passage,
when we're first introduced to Jacob, we
read that he was a quiet man, dwelling
in tents, probably communicated he was
something of a homebody.
So, you could imagine him longing to be
back home.
But when he looks back, it's also not
all rosy.
There's also grief and pain and guilt in
his past back at home. He took advantage
of his twin brother. He deceived his own
father. And as a consequence, Esau is
going uh has murderous intentions.
In fact, that is at least part of the
reason why he's on the road in the first
place.
So the home that is a place of comfort
and familiarity is also a place of guilt
and pain and consequence for sinful
decisions.
But Jacob's in neither of those places.
He's not in that shrouded cloudy future.
He's not in the home that is a combo of
familiarity and
sadness.
He's at the present on the road in this
in between sort of place. I I wonder if
present moments feel like that for you.
Maybe like Jacob, you look back on
things in your past and what you see is
familiar and welcoming, friendships,
special moments, stability.
You long for those things that were
there in your past, but now they're
gone.
Or maybe like Jacob, you look back and
what you feel is grief over things that
you've lost.
pain over ways that you were harmed,
regret over things that you've done or
decisions that were not made.
Probably though, if you're like me, if
you're like Jacob, you look back and
it's a mixture of all that.
And now in the present, you like Jacob
are in this kind of in between place on
the road. I know about what was and
maybe there's some general sense of
where God will lead in the end. There
certainly is an anchor of hope in
eternity, but right now
nothing seems totally sure.
Everything's undefined.
I'm in a certain place on the road, but
it's hard to tell exactly in this moment
what God is up to.
And coming back to our story, this it's
precisely in this place
that God comes and meets with Jacob.
Take a look back at verse 11 if you
would. He Jacob came to a certain place
and stayed there that night because the
sun had set. Taking one of the many
stones of the place, he put it under his
head. That doesn't sound pleasant. And
lay down uh in that place to sleep. So
Jacob falls asleep in this place. And
the text tells us he has a dream in
verse 12. And in that dream, there's a
vision of a ladder. And instead of a
ladder you might use to put up like
Christmas lights or clean your gutters,
imagine something more like a staircase.
That's what's in mind here. Uh, and this
ladder or staircase is in his dream
connecting heaven and earth in this
certain place where he has stopped on
the road for the night. Angels are
walking up and down the staircase
traversing between heaven and earth as
servants of God. And the Lord himself is
standing there and in the vision uh God
also speaks. Now the imagery here
communicates that God is not far off.
God is not distant or detached. He's not
busy somewhere else.
He's not just back at home with Jacob's
father Isaac
or in the distant memories of their
grand his grandfather Abraham. Uh God is
present with Jacob at this moment and in
this place in the vision the Lord
speaks. He identifies himself as the God
of Jacob's grandfather Abraham and his
father Isaac. But then he reiterates to
Jacob the same promises first made to
Abraham that were renewed to Isaac and
they now belong to him,
the heir of this special family. And not
because Jacob is a super great guy
worthy of such honor, but because God in
his grace has chosen this family to
bless. Now, there's certainly much we
could unpack with all these promises
that are reiterated to Jacob that form
the foundation for the Abrahamic
covenant, but I want to focus especially
on what God says to Jacob in verse 15.
He says, "Behold, I'm with you and I
will keep you wherever you go, and I
will bring you back to this land, and I
will not leave you until I have done
what I promised you." With these words,
God communicates directly the point of
the latter image.
that he's present with Jacob. Behold, I
am with you.
But notice also what God says is uh it's
not just that he is with in a passive
sort of way. Jacob, I'm with you. Don't
worry, I'll be hanging around as you go
from place to place.
He also promises to keep you
wherever you go. That word keep in
Hebrew is the word shamar which lexicons
will offer translations like guard or
protect, watch over, attend to
carefully, keep that God promises to be
with Jacob but also for him with and for
him. Um, a number of years ago uh I was
had a conversation with one of my sons.
Uh this was when he was smaller and he
had just gone on his first roller
coaster.
Uh and you know he he's he was a nervous
little fella and we had just gone on the
roller coaster and we were having a
conversation. I remember asking him how
did you you know what made you so brave
to go on this roller coaster. Well he
said well you were sitting next to me
and I knew this these were his words. I
wrote them down because I memorable. I
knew I would be okay because you were
with me. I knew you would help me and
hold me in if I fell out.
Could you imagine being a kid and just
getting in a roller coaster and
thinking, "Well, there's a chance I
might fall out, but hopefully my dad
will grab me on the way down." That was
what he had in mind. Uh, I was with him,
not just sitting next to him, hanging
out,
but he believed that I was with him and
for him, that I would keep him, to use
the words of the passage, from harm. So
God promises to be with Jacob, but also
to keep Jacob. And um not just in this
place along the road where he has this
dream.
He says it's wherever you go. You see
that that God is with and for Jacob
wherever.
And this is the thing that becomes
defining for Jacob in his life towards
the end of his life in Genesis 48. Jacob
who will be talking to his son Joseph
and his grandsons Ephraim and Manessa
will remember this event and make
reference back to it. And the thing that
he will say in that context is that God
has been my shepherd all the days of my
life
that he remembers this. It becomes
defining for him. Now Jacob is certainly
a unique figure in redemptive history
and this moment is unique as well. And
God's promise to be present with and for
his people wherever they go is one that
we can find all over the scriptures. A
promise that's given to us as well.
Plenty of places we could go for this.
We might think for example of the
beginning of Matthew's gospel or
Matthew's gospel as a whole which begins
with identifying Jesus as Emmanuel the
God with us and ends with a great
commission where Jesus tells his
disciples promises them surely I am with
you always to the very end of the age.
He is Jesus the with us God. Maybe more
pertinent though for our conversation
today is the time when Jesus alludes to
this very story at the beginning of
John's gospel in chapter 1. That text is
going to pop up. There it is. Pop up on
the screen
speaking of an encounter that Jesus has
with Philillip and Nathaniel. I'll read
that. The next day Jesus decided to go
to Galilee and he found Philillip and
said to him follow me. That Philip was
from Baseda the city of Andrew and
Peter. that Philip found Nathaniel and
said to him, "We found him of whom Moses
and the law and also the prophets wrote,
Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
And Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything
good come out of Nazareth?"
And Philip said, "Come and see."
Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him
and said, "Behold, an Israelite indeed
in whom there is no deceit."
Nathaniel said, "How do you know me?"
Jesus answered, "Before Philillip called
you, when you were under the fig tree, I
saw you."
Nathaniel answered him, "Rabbi, you are
the son of God. You are the king of
Israel." And Jesus answered him,
"Because I said to you, I saw you under
the fig tree. Do you believe you'll see
greater things than these?" And he said
to him, here's the pertinent part for
our conversation.
Truly, truly, I say to you, you'll see
heaven opened and the angels of God
ascending and descending
on a ladder
on the son of man.
Uh that last phrase is of course the key
that Jesus speaks of the son of man and
he's talking about himself of course and
he alludes to this story of Jacob's
dream when he's talking about angels of
God ascending and descending. with his
words. Jesus puts himself in the place
of the latter. What's the point? Well,
Jesus is the one preeminently who
bridges heaven and earth
for he is the God who is with us. He is
Emanuel.
As Christians, we're sometimes able to
look back on past experiences and see
God's hand at work. See how God was with
us in retrospect.
Sometimes we're also sometimes able to
look ahead and trust that God has a
distant plans for us in the future. I
know he'll be with me.
What I think is often the hardest thing
though
is knowing,
feeling, believing, trusting that God is
with me right now in this moment. To
have a sense of what God is up to. Even
believing that even though I might not
understand it, to know that he is with
us. This is hard
for us and it's going to be hard for the
people that you're called to minister to
in all the various capacities that you
are in the mundane details of my life
when day after day goes by
seemingly without purpose at times. Is
God with me?
When hard things happen to me, hard
things happen to those I love. Is God
with me? Then when I'm dealing with
strife in my family, is God with me?
When I feel alone, like I'm on a road
going somewhere, but I'm far away from
my destination. Is God with me? Then
what about when I'm worn out physically
exhausted emotionally? Is God with me?
The answer to all those questions is, of
course, yes.
God is always with us. With the
psalmist, we declare God is our refuge
and strength, a very present help in
trouble. Psalm 46.
And yet we also continually have to
remind ourselves and one another that
this is true.
Don't misunderstand though he promises
to be with us and keep us even as he did
with Jacob, God does not promise that
things will always be smooth sailing.
The same Jesus who promises to be with
us always to the very end of the age
also says in this world you will have
trouble. But you know the how the rest
of that verse goes. You'll have trouble
but take heart for I have overcome the
world. We live in this tension uh living
in a world with trouble but being with
the one who has overcome the world. And
that's the good news we cling on to.
How should we respond for our part?
Hearing this good news that God is with
us has promised to keep us wherever we
go. How should we respond? Let's look
back at our story to see how Jacob
responds.
Bless you.
First, he's amazed, astounded,
in wonder.
Waking up from the dream, verse 16,
Jacob woke from his sleep and said,
"Surely the Lord in this place is in
this place, and I did not know it." And
he was afraid and said, "How awesome is
this place? There is none other than the
house. This is none other than the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
Because God had met with him there. In
our context in which a theology is a
matter of academic study,
there is a danger that the knowledge of
God's presence becomes ordinary,
mundane,
hoham.
I confess that it's sometimes that way
for me. It might be for you, too. May it
never be so
for any of us. In Christ, God became a
human being and will one day see Jesus
face and dwell with him again. Jesus is
Emmanuel, God present with his people.
That is amazing.
God's very spirit, the Holy Spirit
dwells within Christians,
leading, guiding, convicting,
instructing, encouraging, and so on. God
is present with his people. And that is
amazing. When we pray, the God of the
universe, the creator and sustainer of
all things, inclines his ear to us as a
loving father. He hears every word,
cares deeply about everyone.
God is present with his people. That is
amazing. May we never cease to be
startled, shocked,
stunned
that God has seen fit to be present with
us as his people here right now and
always wherever we go. So amazement
after expressing his amazement, we also
have this demonstration of trust from
Jacob. He takes the stone that has been
had been his pillow. He sets it up. He
pours oil on it. setting it up as a sort
of memorial to remember the event that
occurred on this day. He calls the place
Bethl, which is a combination of two
Hebrew words meaning house of God. And
he makes a vow binding himself to the
Lord in trust. He says, "If God will
be," this is 20 and 20 through 22, "if
God will be with me and will keep me in
the way that I go, I and will give me
bread to eat and clothing to wear so
that I come again to my father's house
of 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 all
that you give me, I will give a full
tenth to you." Some will read that if at
the beginning uh as if this is sort of
evidence of an imperfect commitment on
Jacob's part that maybe even now he's
somehow bargaining with God.
I don't think so. I think what he's
doing is simply connecting the promises
that God made to the trust that he's now
giving to God. In other words, God, you
have promised to be with me and keep me.
Therefore, you'll be my God and I will
trust you. God makes promises to us as
well, of course. Promises that he'll
never leave or forsake us, that he will
be with us. Promises that he works all
things together for our good, even when
we don't totally understand how
do we trust these things. It can be hard
when our experiences in the moment tell
a different story or seem to anyway.
But God continually asks us to trust
him, to look back on the ways that he
has cared for us in the past, to trust
what he's doing in the moment, and look
forward to this great anchor of hope
that we have in the future. So, how do
we respond to the news that God is with
us? We should be amazed and trust even
as Jacob does. This story, as I started
out with at the beginning, this is sort
of Jacob's you are here moment. It's the
thing that situates his life in the
world.
uh he's not a perfect person going
forward. Of course, uh but this is the
moment that he looks back on when God
promised to be with him.
God calls us to remember that even as he
was with Jacob, he's with us, too. Uh he
calls us to trust him in all
circumstances for he is with us and will
keep us wherever we go.
And that's our great hope that he will
never leave or forsake us. Let me pray
for us. Uh Lord God, uh we all are here
in different places, have different
things going on in our lives.
Some of us rejoicing things, some of us
dealing with really hard things,
some of us just going about the daily
grind.
Lord, I confess that uh in the daytoday,
in the present, it's so hard at times to
see what you're doing, to remember that
you're with me.
Pray that you'd help me to remember.
Help us all to remember that you are
with us and for us and there's no place
that we can go
that you're not there with us as well.
Would you encourage us today, Lord? We
pray in Jesus name. Amen.