The scripture reading for this morning is Genesis
chapter 28.
Remember, in the context of Genesis chapter 28,
we have in the preceding chapter been given
an account by Moses of the stolen blessing,
and then of the response of Esau to
the confirming of the blessing to Jacob, of
the threat of Esau to murder Jacob, and
then the reaction of Rebekah to that threat
in urging that Jacob leave and go to
the east in order to escape the wrath
of Esau.
Genesis chapter 28 begins with, so Esau called,
so Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and
charged him and said to him, you shall
not take a wife from the daughters of
Canaan.
Arise, go to Paten-Aram, to the house
of Bethuel, your mother's father, and from there
take to yourself a wife from the daughters
of Laban, your mother's brother.
You'll notice from this that Jacob is to
take a wife from his first cousins, and
this of course has caused some difficulty due
to the fact that it is not our
custom to marry within that particular relationship.
But as we've mentioned from time to time,
the genetic problems probably did not exist in
those early days of the human race, and
consequently this really is no serious problem at
all.
The third verse continues the account, and may
God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful
and multiply you that you may become a
company of peoples.
May he also give you the blessing of
Abraham to you and to your descendants with
you that you may possess the land of
your sojournings which God gave to Abraham.
Then Isaac sent Jacob away and he went
to Paten-Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel
the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother
of Jacob and Esau.
Now notice the order of the words.
That probably is not a slip of the
pen.
Instead of Esau and Jacob, as one might
expect, for Esau was the older brother, now
in the light of the preeminence of Jacob,
we have Jacob and Esau.
Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob
and sent him away to Paten-Aram to
take to himself a wife from there, and
that when he blessed her he charged him
saying, when he blessed him he charged him
saying, you shall not take a wife from
the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob had
obeyed his father and his mother and had
gone to Paten-Aram.
So Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan
displeased his father Isaac.
And Esau went to Ishmael and married, besides
the wives that he had, Mahalath, the daughter
of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth.
Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward
Haran.
And he came to a certain place and
spent the night there because the sun had
set and he took one of the stones
of the place and put it under his
head and lay down in that place.
And he had a dream and behold a
ladder was set on the earth with its
top reaching 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
your father Abraham and the God of Isaac,
the land on which you lie, I will
give it to you and to your descendants.
You'll notice from that threefold occurrence of the
word hine translated behold in verses 12 and
13 that this was, is designed to be
presented as an account that was a surprising
and startling experience for Jacob.
In verse 13 we read, and behold the
Lord stood above it.
Now that little expression, if you have a
Bible with a marginal reading, may be rendered
beside him rather than above it, the ladder.
In the light of verse 16 in which
we read that Jacob said when he awakened
from his sleep, surely the Lord is in
this place and I did not know it.
It would seem that the translation beside him
is really better than above it.
So we'll take it that way.
And behold the Lord stood beside him and
said, I am the Lord.
Continuing with the words of the Lord in
this theophany in verse 14 we read, your
descendants shall also be like the dust of
the earth and you shall spread out to
the west and to the east and to
the north and to the south and in
you and in your descendants shall all the
families of the earth be blessed.
And behold I am with you and will
keep you wherever you go.
Isn't that interesting?
I will keep you wherever you go.
It's not I will keep you in all
places wherever you follow the divine leading, but
it's I will keep you wherever you go.
In other words, the keeping is a keeping
that is guaranteed regardless of the experience of
Jacob.
I will keep you wherever you go.
And I will bring you back to this
land for I will not leave you until
I have done what I have promised you.
In other words, as we've been saying over
and over again in the exposition of the
Bible in Believer's Chapel, the God of the
Bible is a God who cannot be frustrated.
Again, that sentiment is expressed.
It's expressed so much in the Bible it's
a miracle that so many people do not
understand that.
Cannot see it.
I will not leave you until I have
done what I have promised you.
Verse 16, 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.
The authorized version renders that how dreadful is
this place.
The adjective dreadful, of course, has different connotations
now from its connotation when the King James
Version was rendered.
Dreadful then meant awe-inspiring.
And that's the meaning of this Hebrew word
no-rah, which is a participle from the
verb which means to fear.
So how awesome is this place.
This is none other than the house of
God and this is the gate of heaven.
So Jacob rose early in the morning and
took the stone that he had put under
his head and set it up as a
pillar and poured oil on its top.
And he called the name of that place
Bethel, which means, of course, house of God.
However previously the name of the city had
been Luz.
Then Jacob made a vow saying, If God
will be with me and will keep me
on this journey that I take and will
give me food to eat and garments to
wear and I return to my father's house
in safety, then the Lord will be my
God.
That's often been taken as a kind of
a bargain that Jacob made with God and
of course it's possible but rather unlikely.
When Jacob says, If God will be with
me, he does not mean to suggest any
doubt about the matter.
God has just said in verse fifteen, And
behold, I am with you.
Now this if is the if of assumption
such as we might make if you were
to say to me, I'm going over to
North Park to do some shopping.
I might say, Well if you're going to
North Park would you mind buying this for
me?
Now that would not be an expression casting
doubt upon the truthfulness of what you've said.
It would be an assumption of the truthfulness
of what you said.
So when Jacob makes the vow he says,
If God will be with me in the
sense of since God will be with me
and will keep me on this journey that
I take and will give me food to
eat and garments to wear and I return
to my father's house in safety, then the
Lord will be my God.
And this stone which I have set up
as a pillow will be God's house and
of all that thou dost give me I
will surely give a tenth to thee.
That's a tithe.
And you can see that the tithe again
is a voluntary gift.
The tithe became a requirement in the law
of Moses later on.
But here it's a voluntary gift.
The tithe in the law of Moses was
like the income tax.
It was something that you had to give.
It really was not even a gift.
Gifts and offerings were above the tithe.
But this is something voluntary.
I will surely give a tenth to thee.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
The subject in the exposition of the book
of Genesis is Jacob's Ladder, Grace Unsought, Unstinted,
and Unforgettable.
The vision of Jacob's Ladder is a stunning
display of the divine grace.
It provoked in the patriarch Jacob a rather
telling response of thanksgiving and gratitude.
It was a display of grace that one
of the commentators has called unsought and unstinted.
It was unsought because Jacob was no pilgrim
or prodigal returning after having spent a long
way away from God.
It was not the picture of the prodigal
son, Jacob rushing out to meet the Lord
and the Lord rushing to meet him.
But rather Jacob was taken wholly by surprise
and it was unstinted because there was no
word of reproach or demand in spite of
the experiences of Jacob.
All that Jacob heard was a stream of
promises that flowed from that central utterance, I
am the Lord and I am with you.
He was promised that his influence would extend
to the four corners of the earth and
that he would be by virtue of his
relationship to Abraham and Isaac and the promised
seed a blessing to all of mankind.
These words that the Lord spoke to Jacob
were remarkably relevant to the condition of Jacob
because the promise of the presence of God
was just what the solitary, lonely sojourner on
his way from Beersheba to Haran needed.
And the mention of the divine covenant was
something that was calculated to sustain him in
a very special way.
The promise of the land as an inheritance
has been repeated over and over again and
that too would have been an encouragement to
him because he was now being forced to
leave that land.
But most of all the promise of this
omnipotent, powerful God, I am the Lord, being
with him was the thing that would have
been a means of tremendous encouragement and assurance
to him.
The sovereign assurance that this God was the
one who could not be frustrated in his
purposes and that they would ultimately come to
pass must have also been an encouragement to
Jacob.
And we know that this experience was so
unforgettable for Jacob that he erected a permanent
remander of the occasion at Bethel, the house
of God.
The response of Jacob has sometimes been called
a mere bargain, but I tried in the
scripture reading to make it plain that Jacob
is not really bargaining.
He's arguing or expressing his own affirmation, his
own dedication on the basis of the promise
that God has just given him, behold I
am with you.
And so this is not a bargain that
the patriarch makes with God, it's really an
expression of his faith.
Now when you think of the story of
the life of Jacob and it certainly is
an interesting story, almost as interesting as the
life of Abraham in the minds of some,
even more interesting because Jacob seems at times
to be more like us.
You notice that right here there begins the
series of experiences that have to do with
his sanctification.
You'll notice that Jacob on the one hand
is a man of faith and then on
the other hand he's a man of slick
maneuvers and cunning ways, as someone has put
it.
He was by nature strong-willed and ambitious
and self-reliant and shrewd and at times
unethical.
Jacob was a man of domestic capability and
fidelity and Esau was a brave, generous, heroic,
rugged hunter who broke away from the quiet
pastoral life and lived a reckless, self-indulgent
career of pleasure.
Unfortunately because we possess the sin nature we
are often influenced toward Esau rather than toward
Jacob.
But the important way in which Jacob differed
from Esau is something that we must see
if we are to understand God.
Because you see he's not influenced by how
attractive we are.
He's not influenced by the fact that we
are in the eyes of men appealing.
The thing that is important to God is
the fundamental spiritual commitment of an individual.
And Jacob with all of his ways that
are very often almost despicable to us had
the fundamental relationship to God upon which the
Holy Spirit builds a foundation.
But in the case of Esau there is
no foundation at all.
Esau is the unbelieving man.
Jacob is the believing man.
They both are crooks but in different ways.
And Jacob is one in whom the work
of God has begun and it's a long
ways from being perfected.
The work of sanctification is a lengthy work
and you will see in Jacob's life that
it takes a long time for him to
reach the stage where we might say in
our own self-righteous, hypocritical way, well I
see that he is worthy of our pronouncing
upon him the fact that he might be
one of the faithful.
The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints
must be understood in the light of the
experiences of the saints of the Old Testament.
And if you have some idea that the
perseverance of the saints means that the saints
live a perfect life outwardly after they've believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ, then of course
you must change your views.
He's an excellent illustration of what a Christian
is and also what a Christian must go
through on the way to the perfection which
is in the future.
George Swinnock, one of the Puritans said, a
sanctified person is like a silver bell, the
harder he's smitten the better he sounds.
Well we learn that at the heart of
Jacob is a heart that is right with
God, but there is an awful lot of
chaff.
And as we follow him in his experiences
we'll learn how a supplanter and a crooked
man can become a prince with God in
reality.
The road is hard and it's difficult and
it's rocky, but the one who's set on
this road by God is certain to reach
the destination.
That's what the perseverance of the saints mean.
It means they persevere in the faith.
It does not mean that they are holy
and righteous and that we cannot see any
flaws in their character.
It means there's been a fundamental transformation in
the inmost being and that they do not
apostatize from the faith.
Now our account begins with the story of
Jacob's departure to Paten Arim from Beersheba and
the chapter opens specifically with a charge from
Isaac.
What a great amount of trouble would have
been averted if Isaac long before this had
called Jacob to him and charged him to
go and get himself a wife from the
daughters of the family in the north and
in the east.
Isaac evidently delayed telling Jacob that he ought
to find a wife for himself because he
was still hopeful that Esau might be the
recipient of the promised blessing.
But Jacob was God's choice to perpetuate the
line of the promised seed and furthermore there
was some danger that Esau might attempt to
slay Jacob.
And I think also if you'll read this
account fairly closely you'll see that Rebekah had
some personal feelings about those wives of Esau.
He married two Hittite women and they were
difficult people around the house.
In fact verse 46 of chapter 27 says
that Rebekah said to Isaac, I'm tired of
living because of the daughters of Heth.
It's not pleasant to live in a house
in which there are believers and unbelievers.
Unbelievers and believers do not think the same
way.
They have different worldviews and when issues come
up unbelievers respond one way and believers respond
another.
I sympathize with Rebekah.
She must have had a great deal of
trouble.
And so in the light of Esau's threat
to slay Jacob and in the light of
the wives of Esau, those Hittite women which
were giving her difficulty, she saw immediate need
of sending Jacob off to escape Esau and
to give her some relief.
Now I think also she used the occasion
and the occasion was simply that Jacob needed
a wife.
And so she went to Isaac and she
said look he needs to have a wife
and he needs to have a wife from
our family because it was not easy to
find those who truly believed in Jehovah.
And the faith still was part of the
possession of the family to the north and
east.
Isaac's charge to Jacob reflects Abraham's to the
servant which he gave.
Don't take a wife from the daughters of
Canaan but go to my family and select
a wife there.
Jacob is urged to find a wife among
his cousins.
And these were first cousins too.
Not first cousins once removed or second cousins
or third but first cousins because the race
was relatively young still and the mutational defects
in the race were probably very minimal at
this time.
So off to the relatives in Mesopotamia Jacob
goes and the patriarch is sent off with
a blessing from God Almighty or El Shaddai
reminding Jacob of the covenant promises given to
Abraham.
Incidentally he was to go and select a
wife who would be a believing wife.
Now this was to be a scriptural marriage
in other words.
It was to be something well Abraham had
made that very plain that believers should marry
believers.
The Apostle Paul makes it very plain in
the New Testament.
It is still a truth that we should
pay strict attention to because you see the
Christian home is the simplest form of the
church of Jesus Christ.
It's the simplest form in this respect that
the husband is to love the wife as
Christ loved the church.
And the wife is to be in submission
to her head as the church is to
be in submission to its head.
And so in the Christian home there is
the simplest illustration of what a true local
church should be.
How foolish it is for a husband to
marry a woman and not love her as
Christ loved the church.
And how foolish it is for a woman
to marry a man and not desire to
be in submission to him as the church
is in submission to Jesus Christ.
And what a tremendous testimony a Christian home
is of the relationship that exists in the
true church when the husband loves and the
wife is in submission.
So Jacob is to find himself a wife.
Incidentally you can certainly tell a great deal
about a man if you meet the woman
that he loves.
And you'll learn something about Jacob when you
meet Rachel and you'll learn something about Abraham
when you meet Sarah.
And I think that you can tell something
about a woman by the man that she
loves too.
So we'll learn something about Jacob when we
get acquainted with Rachel.
Now Jacob left and he stayed in Mesopotamia
for twenty years so he was given a
rather lengthy period of discipline.
As a matter of fact Rebecca so far
as we know never saw Jacob again.
Why this lengthy time for Jacob?
Why didn't he simply go and get himself
a wife?
Well evidently he needed some disciplining.
And so he went there because he needed
some maturing.
He was after all a man of the
home.
It was not like Esau who was out
on the mountains but he was a person
who was a homebody.
He was also clearly under the influence of
Rebecca and what he needed to do was
to learn some waiting upon God for himself.
He needed to get off by himself in
the pastures as a shepherd which he did
become and to think about spiritual things.
He needed to learn to wait upon God.
That's a lesson that we sadly desperately need
in the twentieth century, waiting upon God.
There are people who say we cannot really
meditate upon divine things in the twentieth century.
We cannot really wait upon God as they
did then because our lives are so busy.
No that's not the problem.
The problem is we don't really want to.
We don't really want to wait on God.
If we wanted to wait on God, if
we wanted to spend time meditating upon him,
there'd be plenty of time to do that.
And furthermore you would discover that God would
make it possible.
So if the Holy Spirit has implanted within
your heart the desire to wait upon him
and to get off by yourself with him,
follow the urgings of the Holy Spirit and
learn to wait upon him.
So it was a form of discipline that
Jacob needed.
As Stephen Charnock has said, we often learn
more of God under the rod that strikes
us than under the staff that comforted us.
So Jacob needed to have some experiences that
were disappointments to him, that would try his
patience.
And his patience was really tried too.
Now the marriage of Esau is inserted and
it's a beautiful illustration of how unbelievers often
seek to imitate believers in order to gain
an accolade or two from other professing believers
and even believers.
Have you ever noticed in the Christian church
how there are some genuine believers who, guided
by the Holy Spirit in true desire to
please the Lord and in meekness and humility,
serve the Lord effectively.
And then there are others who seek to
imitate.
Now Esau heard the words that were spoken
by Isaac to Jacob or he found out
about them.
He knew that Jacob had said, go and
get yourself a wife from our family, not
from the daughters of the Canaanites.
Well, he'd already married two of the daughters
of the Canaanites.
He'd lost his birthright, he'd lost his blessing
and evidently thought, well, at least I can
get some commendation from Isaac by marrying within
the family.
So he went off to Uncle Ishmael and
married one of Ishmael's daughters.
He didn't put away his other two, he
just added a third.
So he has three now.
And furthermore, he also married one of the
daughters of Ishmael and it's already evident that
Ishmael had been cut out by God as
far as the national promises were concerned.
But I'm sure there were some people who
said, wasn't that nice of Esau?
He went out and married someone who's in
the family.
But only immature people make statements like that.
This is clearly an indication of how the
unbeliever seeks to imitate the believer.
In the Christian church there's a great deal
of that.
There are those who see a true deacon
rise in the church who has a desire
within his heart to truly serve.
And he hears somebody say, isn't that nice?
The way God has implanted in that man's
heart the desire to serve.
And he's serving so effectively.
And then the individual says, well, he's doing
this work and he's being commended for it.
I think I'll do it.
And so he does it out of a
desire for commendation.
Or a man rises in the midst of
the assembly with a deep desire to shepherd
the flock, to have the oversight.
And the elders see that this man has
been appointed by the Holy Spirit as an
elder.
That's the way incidentally you become an elder,
by the appointment of the Holy Spirit.
And there is implanted within the heart by
the Holy Spirit a desire to oversee.
You don't elect them by voting upon them.
There's only one vote that really counts, and
that's the vote of the Holy Spirit, who
appoints an elder to office.
An elder always exercises oversight before he's recognized,
not afterwards.
You don't go and say to a man,
we'd like for you to be an elder.
And he says, well, I've got to be
an elder now, so I'll have to exercise
oversight.
No, no.
That's the reverse of the way in which
it should be done.
You look and see what God has done,
and you see there is a man who
is exercising oversight, who has a desire to
serve the flock, to guard them, to keep
them, to shepherd them.
And then the elders recognize that which the
Holy Spirit has done.
But then someone sees and hears someone say,
isn't it nice the way he has been
appointed by the Holy Spirit and is serving
the flock in humility and in self-abnegation?
I think I'll do that.
And so in imitation, in order to gain
commendation.
One of the commentators says it was a
rather pathetic attempt, a closing of the barn
door after the horse was gone.
Well, the major part of the chapter has
to do with Jacob's dream at Bethel, and
we turn to it.
The distance from Beersheba to Haran was over
400 miles, and so this was a lengthy
journey for Jacob.
It was a lonely and trying trip because
he was not used to this kind of
thing.
He was already 70 miles out when he
reached Luz.
He'd left Rebekah.
He'd left the comfortable environs of his home.
And the text of Scripture says he lighted
upon a certain place.
Now, we're not to think of this as
a chance location.
God does not throw dice, Einstein has said.
He does not lead people by chance.
This is something that was determined by God.
It was at Luz that Luz became Bethel.
It was there specifically.
And when the text says that he lighted
upon this place, it means that so far
as Jacob was concerned, he had no special
purpose in camping at that spot.
This incidentally is the first of seven theophanies
which Jacob experienced.
So he was a man who was blessed
by God with seven appearances of the deity.
And I think it's significant that this theophany
occurred to Jacob while he was alone.
I stress that because I do think that
one of the reasons that we do not
experience the blessing of God is that we
do not get alone with God.
Now, I don't suggest to you, of course,
that you're going to have a theophany if
you get alone, but you might have something
just as valuable.
You might have some experiences of getting to
know the Lord that would be just as
significant and effective in your life.
Well, the description of the word of God
is rather striking, and it's startling to Jacob,
no doubt, and that's why we have these
beholds.
And he had a dream, and behold, a
ladder was set on the earth with its
top reaching to heaven, and behold, the angels
of God were ascending and descending on it.
And behold, the Lord stood beside it and
said, I am the Lord, the God of
your father Abraham, and the God of Isaac.
The ladder.
Now, what is signified by the ladder?
Well, I think it's very plain that this
is designed to be symbolic of something.
The ladder that he saw, which must have
been very wide because the angels were both
ascending and descending upon it, and it was
certainly very tall because it reached to heaven.
So it was a very large ladder, and
it was a very wide ladder, very high
and very broad.
One of the Lutheran commentators, a very good
commentator, H.
C.
Leupold, has said, such a clear-cut dream
must embody a deeper symbolism.
Why a ladder?
Why the angels?
Why the Lord above it?
Answer, in order to convey by a visible
sign what the words themselves also convey as
Yahweh speaks.
That's right.
In other words, this is designed to express
in symbolic fashion what is expressed by the
words that are spoken at this theophany.
Now, you can, of course, immediately sense that
if we have a ladder that reaches from
the earth to the heavens, that there is
a communication between earth and heaven.
So there is some communion between earth and
heaven.
That would be signified right at the beginning.
There is an uninterrupted communion between heaven and
earth, and it is mediated by the angels.
Now also, Jacob needed help, and he needed
protection, an assurance of protection.
And the angels going up and down, for
the angels are the ministers of God for
those who are to inherit salvation, that would
suggest the divine help that comes by virtue
of his servants, the angels.
That would surely be involved in this.
Now when we turn to the New Testament,
we see something else that's not obvious from
the Old, because remember, in the Bible we
have progress in the divine revelation.
We do not have in the book of
Genesis the same full, clear unfolding of the
ministry of the Lord Jesus that we have
in the New Testament.
We don't mean by this that the saints
of the Old Testament did not have a
personal faith in a Redeemer to come.
They did.
That's very obvious.
The New Testament writers affirm it.
The Old Testament also expresses it.
But it was not as plain and clear.
And so when we turn to the New
Testament, we can expect that certain things should
be added to it.
Now there is an interesting passage in the
fourth gospel in which this particular text is
referred to.
It's the incident in which Nathanael is brought
by Philip to the Lord Jesus.
Philip was one of those individuals who thought
that the best way to propagate Christianity is
to proclaim it.
And so he proclaimed it.
And he also was one who thought that
the simplest and profoundest apologetics was come and
see.
Now Nathanael in that little incident at the
end of John chapter 1 had evidently been
meditating on Genesis chapter 28.
That's clear from a couple of things.
It's clear because when he comes to the
Lord Jesus, the Lord said to him, Behold
an Israelite in whom there is no Gaal.
Now remember an Israelite is a follower of
Jacob.
So it's almost as if he was saying,
Behold an Israelite in whom there is no
Jacob.
Now Nathanael was a man like that.
He was a man who was Gaal-less.
Not sinless, Gaal-less.
He was a very frank man.
He said, Can any good thing come out
of Nazareth?
Didn't realize of course that the good thing
comes out of Nazareth.
And later on he will acknowledge it.
He will say, Behold the Son of God,
the King of Israel.
The Israelite acknowledges his King of Israel.
But he comes to the Lord Jesus and
the Lord said to him, Nathanael before you
saw me, I saw you sitting under the
fig tree.
And sitting under the fig tree incidentally was,
according to rabbinic thought, the proper place to
sit when you wanted to meditate on the
Bible.
So he was meditating.
And furthermore, he was obviously meditating on Genesis
chapter 28 because the Lord Jesus refers to
this specific incident.
And he says in his conversation with Nathanael,
Because I said to you that I saw
you under the fig tree, do you believe?
Well you'll see greater things than these.
And he turned to Nathanael and then evidently
there were others about Nathanael, for he moved
from the singular to the plural in verse
51 of chapter 1 of John.
And he said, Truly, truly I say to
you, plural, you shall see the heavens opened
and the angels of God ascending and descending
upon the Son of Man.
Now Nathanael knew what he was talking about
because he'd just been reading Genesis 28.
That's one reason why we don't have experiences
with the Lord.
We don't have the knowledge of the scriptures.
And so the Lord Jesus comes to him.
He's been meditating on Genesis chapter 28.
And he says, Look, you're going to see
greater things than you have seen when you
were meditating on Genesis chapter 28.
You're going to see the heavens opened.
That's striking, isn't it?
The heavens opened as if there is access
to heaven for sinful men.
And you're going to see the angels of
God ascending and descending.
There is going to be communion between the
opened heavens and this earth down here.
But you're going to see the angels ascending
and descending, not upon a ladder, but upon
the Son of Man.
Did you notice that substitution?
That's what you call interpreting the Old Testament
by the New Testament historical realities of the
life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He was, in effect, saying the ladder in
the Old Testament is a symbolical item and
it is symbolical of the Son of Man.
It is by virtue of the Son of
Man who has come from the open heavens
and has carried out or is to carry
out his ministry of sacrifice.
It's by virtue of this mediator that the
heavens are opened and there is communion, enduring
communion between heaven and earth.
That is, those who approach heaven through the
ladder of the Son of Man who is
the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father except by
him.
I am the door.
By me, if any man enter in, he
shall be saved and shall go in and
out and find pasture.
So you see, the ladder is symbolical of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jacob didn't understand the fullness of that yet,
but Nathanael did.
Nathanael came to understand it and I've come
to understand it too.
That's what he's talking about.
You shall see greater things than this.
You shall see the mediation of the Son
of Man.
Well, that's a magnificent, symbolical expression of what
is going to take place, but the words
that follow are just as great.
Now notice the promises.
First of all, he begins by saying, I
am the Lord.
I am Yahweh.
I am the Lord, the God of your
father Abraham and the God of Isaac, the
land on which you lie, I will give
it to you and to your descendants.
That very piece of land on which Jacob
was putting his head is to be given
to him.
So he's talking about something very specific.
But listen to the other promises.
Your descendants also shall be like the dust
of the earth.
You shall spread out in all directions.
All the families of the earth will be
blessed.
And behold, I am with you.
Now what a tremendous, climactic, final promise this
is.
I am with you.
I will keep you wherever you go.
I'll bring you back into the land.
I will not leave you until I have
done what I have promised to you.
What a relevant promise this was for Jacob
because there he was, seventy miles from home,
four hundred miles almost from his destination, out
alone, mother's boy.
He was fearful, disturbed, no doubt, wondered what
the future held.
He was lonesome, one of the commentators has
said, so God said, I will be with
you.
He feared Esau.
God said, I will keep you.
He didn't know what hardships he might have
to face.
God said, I will do what I have
spoken to you.
And often, you know, appearances seem so contradictory
to the promises of God, don't they?
You're going through some deep experiences and you
hear the promises, the Lord is going to
be with you.
But it seems that the last truth that
is really valid in such a situation is
that very truth that the Lord is with
us.
And so it's almost as if Jacob said,
well, Lord, you say that you will be
with me.
You say that you will keep me.
You say that I will not be forsaken.
But it certainly looks as if I'm forsaken.
I'm certainly fearful and I don't see any
evidence of you around.
Well, it's at that time that the Lord
adds, I will do what I have spoken
to you.
In other words, I'm not going to be
frustrated.
Now, of course, these are promises that belong
to believers.
They don't belong to unbelievers.
They belong to those who have put their
faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
by the grace of God.
Now, that great promise, I am with you,
must have had a special meaning to Jacob
beyond that suggested above because Jacob was a
man influenced by the times and in those
days they didn't think of God as we
do.
We think of God and when we think
of the term God, we think of someone
who is a God.
In Timbuktu as well as in Waxahachie and
Paducah, Kentucky, he's the same God.
But they didn't have that concept.
Beersheba had gods of Beersheba.
Dan had gods of Dan.
In other words, they were local deities.
Now, Jacob has gone 70 miles from his
father's home and he no doubt would have
had in his mind some question, is Yahweh
the God who dealt with Abraham and Isaac?
Is he still out here now where I
am?
And so, the Lord says to him, I
am Yahweh and I am with you.
He was reminding him that he's not a
local deity at all.
Now, that of course is a guarantee of
an infinite kind of love and it's a
guarantee also of help no matter where Jacob
might be.
Jacob's response is very interesting.
You'll notice what he says in verse 16.
He says that the text says he awakened
from his sleep and said, surely the Lord
is in this place and I did not
know it.
How true that is of our experience.
You know, I have a hunch there are
lots of people sitting in this audience right
now that don't realize that the Lord is
here.
You'd rather think that the Lord was back
there with Jacob.
But he's not in the auditorium of Believer's
Chapel.
Oh, you remember the Bible says that where
two or three are gathered together, there am
I in the midst.
Well, that has reference primarily to disciplinary matters,
I grant.
Read the context and you'll see that.
But the Scriptures also speak of the gathering
of the church as the temple of God.
It's the temple of the living God.
The Lord God, the same God who appeared
to Jacob by the side of that pillar
on which his head was lying is here
with us.
He said surely the Lord is in this
place and I did not know it.
It's tragic to be ignorant of spiritual truths.
Someone has said astronomers see the universe yet
do not see the God of the universe.
Physicists follow the track of the electron in
the cloud chamber but are themselves in a
cloud without God.
Philosophers are lost in human thought and know
not the Lord in which are hidden all
the treasures of wisdom.
And saddest of all is ministers get sermons
from the Bible yet they do not really
know the Lord of the Scriptures himself at
all.
So Jacob confesses the Lord's in this place
and I didn't know it.
And it's important to note that he used
the term Lord too.
Yahweh is here.
And the thought of the nearness of God
induced fear in him.
How dreadful, the authorized version says, how dreadful
is this place.
Now of course we don't want to be
deceived by the term dreadful.
In New American Standard Bible has rendered it,
how awesome is this place.
By the way that is the same Hebrew
word that is rendered reverend in one place.
That Hebrew participle no rise rendered reverend in
one spot in Psalm 111 about verse 9.
And many have pointed out that the term
reverend which we apply to men is a
term that is applied in the Bible only
to God.
Well it's not really applied only to God
but let's put it this way it's never
applied to man.
But we use the term man.
When I was living in Scotland they loved
to speak of a preacher as the reverend
Mr. So and So.
I used to get my mail the reverend
Dr. Johnson.
Upset me every time I got a letter.
The reverend.
Reverend is a term that applies to God.
That's an expression of one of his attributes.
He's awesome.
He provokes awe and worship.
There's something rather humorous about the fact that
it's usually rendered dreadful.
The dreadful Dr. Johnson.
Some people think that's very appropriate.
Dreadful.
Why do we want to steal attributes that
belong to God and God alone and call
preachers reverend?
Well anyway the word means awe inspiring.
Dr. Barnhouse and some comments on this says
that the basic idea of this word is
tremble and Jacob was experiencing the emotion expressed
by the spiritual.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
I know you've heard that solo or that
spiritual.
So he said how awesome, how awe inspiring
is this place.
This is none other than the house of
God.
This is the gate of heaven.
In other words Jacob had met God there
and he saw that at this spot there
was a way of communion between earth and
heaven.
A way to heaven through the Lord and
a way from heaven by the Lord.
The next morning in response Jacob got up
and put a memorial pillar there and called
the place the house of God.
It was his way of responding to the
experience that he had had.
Well it was a magnificent dazzling display of
the grace of God to a man whose
life stands in stark contrast to it and
yet the entire account is so fitting for
the great God of mercy and grace Yahweh
the God of Abraham.
Behold I am with you reverberates down through
the centuries until finally Yahweh himself in the
person of our Lord Jesus Christ stands in
our midst and says lo I am with
you always even to the end of the
age.
Isn't it a tremendous thing that as believers
we have the same experience that Jacob had.
A revelation from Yahweh who confesses to us
that he is the Lord and that he
is with us to the end of the
age.
And with that he guarantees that he will
fulfill his promises to us.
He will not be frustrated and he will
ultimately be seen to be a God who
is effective in the usefulness of his grace
to the accomplishment of his purposes.
If you're here this morning and you have
never believed in our Lord Jesus Christ we
invite you to come to him who is
the true ladder between heaven and earth who
has by virtue of the shedding of the
blood opened the heavens and made it possible
for us to have fellowship with the triune
God Father Son and Holy Spirit through the
cross and death of the Son of God.
May God through the Holy Spirit bring you
to the conviction of your sin and may
you come and receive the forgiveness of sins
through the work of the Holy Spirit.
We invite you to come.
Don't stay.
Come.
Come and receive everlasting life.
Come and receive the forgiveness of sins.
Come through the ladder the Son of Man
and receive life.
May we stand for the benediction.
We are grateful to the Lord for these
great lessons which are found in the Old
Testament scriptures.
May the Holy Spirit accomplish the proper work
of bringing men to Christ and of strengthening
the saints.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.