Jacob’s Dream
Download MP3If you would open your bibles to Genesis 28. It's also in your worship guide. And we're gonna read the whole chapter. We try to read when possible most of the story or most of the texts, if not all the texts, that we teach from here at Redeemer. And for some of you, that might be a little different than you're used to.
Joel Brooks:But we do want to take time. I think last week, the reading probably took 5 or 6 minutes. It took a long time and but I think it's good for us to hear the Bible read. Not just always to read it, but to actually hear it read. Paul tells Timothy to devote yourself to the, public reading of scripture.
Joel Brooks:And I think that it's worth it. I would rather hear 2 additional minutes of scripture read than 2 additional minutes of me saying my thoughts or opinions. And, so we do take time here to read, the whole story. So I want to read all of chapter 28. Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him.
Joel Brooks:You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise. Go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham.
Joel Brooks:Thus Isaac sent Jacob away and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramaean, the brother of Rebecca, Jacob's and Esau's mother. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan aran to take a wife from there and that he blessed him. He and that as he blessed him, he directed him. He must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. And that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padam, Iran.
Joel Brooks:So when Esau saw the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mehaloth, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nabaoth. Jacob left Beersheba and went to toward Haran. And when 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 laid down in 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.
Joel Brooks: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 and to the North and to the South. And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Joel Brooks: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 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. He said how awesome is this place. This is none other than the House of God and this is the gate of heaven.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks:And of all that you give me, I will give a full tenth to you. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would honor the reading of your word and that through the power of your spirit you would begin working that into our hearts, working it into our minds and that it would begin having a transformative effect in us. It would begin even now making us more like you, Jesus. I pray that now as I teach that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But Lord may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Last week we began studying the life of Jacob. If you remember, Jacob had a twin brother, Esau, who was slightly older than him, born from Isaac and Rebecca.
Joel Brooks:Esau was born first, but Jacob came out right afterwards, grabbing on to the heel of Esau. And indeed, Jacob's name actually means heel grabber or cheat as they grew up. And we saw how Isaac showered affection on Esau, showered affection on his firstborn. Esau was was a man's man. He liked to hunt.
Joel Brooks:He liked weapons. He was strong. He he fixed good stew. He was charismatic. And and Jacob was the opposite of that.
Joel Brooks:Jacob liked to stay indoors. Jacob was a mama's boy. Rebecca loved him. And And we saw last week how when Isaac was old, he was about a 100 years old and he thinks he's about to die even though he's gonna live a lot longer. But he thinks he's about to die and and he wants to bless Esau.
Joel Brooks:And only Esau with all of his soul. And he's going directly against God's command because God had told him the younger or the older will serve the younger. But he doesn't want that. He wants Esau to rule. He wants Esau to get the blessing.
Joel Brooks:And he wants Jacob to get nothing. He does not reserve any blessing there. Jacob deceives his father, and he gets the blessing in the firstborn. Well, he stole the blessing and and now we get to see this week how it all worked out for him. You know, does it work out great?
Joel Brooks:Does life turned out how how he wanted? Everything just kind of crumples in. Everything just kind of crumples in. Everything just kind of crumples in. Esau now wants to kill him.
Joel Brooks:Jacob has to flee. The mother that he so loves and who loved him, he will never see alive again. You have to read between the lines here. But you can even see that when Isaac blesses Jacob at the beginning of this text, even when he blesses him and sends him out that there is still bitterness, He still disdains Jacob. Yes, he's providing.
Joel Brooks:He wants to get a wife for his son. But if you remember, how did Isaac's father Abraham get a wife for him? He said, Isaac there's no way, no way Over and over he says, there's no way you are going back to the old land. We're gonna send a servant there. We're gonna find a wife for you there and bring her back here, but you must never leave the promised land.
Joel Brooks:But here he says, Jacob you need a wife. Now go 500 miles away and get her. You leave. It's a it's a banishment. Go.
Joel Brooks:In all likelihood, he knows he's he's never gonna see him again. And so Jacob leaves. He's now on the run. And so although he has received this blessing, you know, of of land and wealth and and prosperity and descendants and and all of this, he's now having to run while his brother Esau stays in the land of promise. He leaves penniless.
Joel Brooks:He leaves scared, and And yet his brother Esau is back there living in his father's household. And so it certainly seems that this blessing isn't really working out for him. And he is now coming to the lowest point in his life. Verse 11 says that Jacob came to a certain place. Place is mentioned 6 times in this text, just this generic place.
Joel Brooks:It's not named at first. The author wants to point out that that Jacob is in the middle of nowhere. He's neither here nor there. He's just in this this place. It's not even worth worth naming.
Joel Brooks:He's utterly alone here. It's customary that when one is traveling that you would go into a village and and you would stay the night, and people would welcome you into their home. Hospitality was huge then. People would welcome you in. They would give you a meal, give you a place to stay.
Joel Brooks:And the fact that there wasn't a place like this means Jacob is in the middle of nowhere. Or if there was a place like this and he couldn't go to, it means that other people disdained him as well. We're not sure, but I think he's in the middle of nowhere. And the sun is setting, and so he has to make camp. We know that Jacob liked to live indoors, and so he was not really an outdoorsman.
Joel Brooks:But I mean, still he uses a rock for a pillow. I mean, you know, you you you you roll up a garment, you know, you you roll up your coat to something. You use it as a pillow. But here, he uses a rock as a pillow. And it's just an artistic way for the narrator to tell us that he had nothing else.
Joel Brooks:He didn't have an extra coat with him on this journey. He didn't have extra luggage that he could use. He had nothing. All he could use was to slide over a rock and to lay down his head on it. He falls asleep, and he has a dream that is remarkable.
Joel Brooks:It's it's strange. It's bizarre. He see sees this giant staircase or or ramp. Some of your bibles might say ladder and then probably have a footnote. I went through 17 commentaries and not one of them used the word ladder.
Joel Brooks:They all say it's a ramp or it's steps, but but for some reason we we have ladder here. But don't don't think of like these little rungs going up to heaven. Think of it as, more like an ancient ziggurat. In which this stairway or this this ramp or this kind of pyramid reaching up into the heavens. That's the idea here.
Joel Brooks:And it reaches all the way up to the heavens and you have angels ascending and descending on this, possibly thousands of them going up and down. And that's the dream Jacob has. So you've got to ask, I mean, you kinda scratch your head and you're like, well, what the heck does this mean? What is what is God trying to communicate here? Well, for Jacob, God has never appeared to Jacob.
Joel Brooks:God's never talked to Jacob up to this point. And Jacob's lived his whole life in the household of a unloving father, And he also has felt pretty distant from his heavenly father. I mean, just kind of picture how frustrating it would be, you know, to grow up hearing all these stories about Abraham and how Abraham had all this faith. Your granddaddy had all this faith, and God kept appearing to Abraham over and over and over and kept blessing him. You're like, that's great.
Joel Brooks:And then Isaac tells about how God appeared to him and how God has blessed him and how they've had lots of conversations. And Isaac has exercised faith. And then it comes to you, and there's nothing. God has never appeared to you. God has never blessed you.
Joel Brooks:It's it's just the religion of your parents or your grandparents, but it's not yours. Who is this God? I'm sure he wants to know who this God is, but God's never shown himself to him. And here he's supposedly the blessed one. He just received this firstborn blessing, and yet, look at what look at what his life looks like.
Joel Brooks:I mean, if he's really wanted any blessing, he's had to take it. He wants a birthright, take it. Want the blessing of the firstborn, deceive, get it. Where is God in all this? I'm where I am because I'm having to work hard for it.
Joel Brooks:God's not even in the picture. And if God had never appeared to him as yet in his life, it's likely that God wouldn't, considering all that he's done up to this point. Now he's pretty much just lied and deceived and been an evil person. So why would this god ever appear to him? And then God shows up.
Joel Brooks:God comes and he shows, okay, Jacob, despite what you think, I'm real and I am working in the world. I am, I'm ruling. Jacob sees these angels. And these angels are not just, you know, don't think of people dressed in white with wings playing harps. You know, that's that's not what angels are.
Joel Brooks:They're they're royal messengers. They're God's agents doing his bidding throughout the world. This is a picture of a king working in the world. He's working behind the scenes. He's giving orders.
Joel Brooks:He's making declarations. He's receiving information. He's doing all the things that kings do. That's what this is portraying here. And so he has this king has legions of angels coming and going at his command.
Joel Brooks:He is the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of the army of angels. And so Jacob's entire world view at this point is shattered. As God appears to him, he's like, God, you are real and you're at work. My life stinks, yet you're at work. Think this is significant for all of us who do not see God at work, in which, you know, we look at our lives and we feel nothing.
Joel Brooks:We haven't really experienced anything. And, you know, you open up the paper if anybody actually reads the paper anymore and you, you know, you read things about Darfur or Egypt or Iraq and you're like, all these horrible tragedies. And I bet you didn't read God in there, what God was doing in all this. You know, when you open the paper. And so you just think, well, is God even around?
Joel Brooks:And here you have like kind of the curtain being removed so you can see what's going on behind. You're like, no, God is at work. He is sovereign. He is moving behind the scenes here. And one of the things I think of here is he comes to us even when we're between places.
Joel Brooks:I know a lot of you feel like you're in this transitional period in life. You're no longer, you know, that place you really loved, yet you're not where you want to be yet. You're in this kind of transitional limbo. And you're like, my life just doesn't really feel like has any purpose or is doing anything. That's where God meets Jacob.
Joel Brooks:And he meets him when he's doing nothing. He's asleep. He has no control at this point. Look at verse 13. Says, and behold the Lord stood above it.
Joel Brooks:That's the the ramp or staircase. And said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac. Probably a number of your bibles have a little footnote at it. Most contemporary scholars do not translate, that is above it, but they translate it as by him. And that the Lord is by him.
Joel Brooks:And I'll even look through, you know, a lot of Jewish commentaries and every Jewish commentary I read translated by him. So when he sees this and he has a picture of the Lord, the Lord is not in the top, but the Lord has come down by him. He sees the heavens opened up and then he sees the Lord come down standing by him. It's very reminiscent, if you remember in Genesis 15, of the vision that Abraham had. When Abraham was incapacitated, he was asleep and God came to him as the melting pot.
Joel Brooks:And here you have the same thing. Jacob is asleep, and now it's the Lord once again coming to him, seeking him. Jacob's not seeking God here. Jacob didn't ask to hear from God. He didn't ask for God to make an appearance.
Joel Brooks:Up to this point in scripture, we have never seen Jacob pray, and we have never seen him show even the slightest interest in God. We've only seen seen him lying, deceiving. We've only seen his evil heart, and it's here that God comes and blesses. I think that's one of the main points of this story is that no matter where you are in life, and no matter where your heart is, God can come and visit. God comes to us.
Joel Brooks:Don't ever think you're too far gone. Jacob calls this stairway to heaven. He he calls it in verse 17, the gate of heaven. And when you hear the gate of heaven, he's immediately making a connection back with Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel, which Babel means gate of God or gate of heaven. That's that's what it means.
Joel Brooks:In which you had this other ziggurat, this other staircase or ramp that was trying to reach up to heaven, but it couldn't. It couldn't reach up to heaven because it was man trying to build it. Man trying to reach God. And that cannot work. The Babel, it represents every failed religion out there, whether it's Hinduism or it's or it's Buddhism or or it's or it's Islam.
Joel Brooks:And which is always you have to do these things. You know, Islam is the 5 pillars. Buddhism is the 8 fold path. You know, Hinduism, it's where you have to keep the the social customs, and you have to honor your family, and you have to make these these temple sacrifices. You have to do all these things in order to reach God or the gods.
Joel Brooks:And that's what the Tower of Babel represents. And God said, no. He destroys it. He said, you can never reach me through your effort. I come down to you.
Joel Brooks:I come to you. And when God comes down, he tells Jacob several things. 2 seem pretty familiar. First, he says, I'm gonna give you land. And then he says, I'm gonna give you a lot of offspring, Very familiar.
Joel Brooks:And then finally, he says something huge. And God has to preference preface it with behold. It's like, listen to this. This is new. This is shocking to you.
Joel Brooks:Verse 15, 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. This is the first time the Lord has said this to anyone, that he will be with them and he will never leave them. He did not say that to Abraham. He did not say that to Isaac. He didn't say it to Noah.
Joel Brooks:He has not said that to anybody. But here he says it to Jacob, I am with you and I will not leave you. And God reveals himself as Emmanuel. God with us. We just
Connor Coskery:we just read this.
Joel Brooks:We opened it with Psalm 46. And you you have that refrain that says, the Lord of hosts. That's the Lord of this angelic army. The Lord of hosts is with us. God with us.
Joel Brooks:Emmanuel. The God of Jacob is our fortress. That's what we see here. Emmanuel God with us. And what a comfort this would have been, not only to us, it should be to us, but to the people of Israel who are in the desert and they're hearing this for the first time.
Joel Brooks:You know, they they've God's delivered them out of Egypt and now they're they're wandering in the desert. And now they hear this. They hear this. They're like, you know what? God will be with us.
Joel Brooks:Until he fulfills his promise, he will be with us. Despite our sin, despite how we have run away from him, despite our lack of prayer, despite us being in the middle of nowhere, God is with us. And he will remain faithful to us. So Jacob names this place Bethel, meaning house of God. And then we find out at the end of the story that this place actually had another name called Luz.
Joel Brooks:And the author, he waits to put this at the very end because Luz means something. Luz in Hebrew means separation. It's very symbolic of Jacob's condition. When he first arrived there, all he felt was separation. But now God has met him there.
Joel Brooks:And this is the house of God. God reached down and touched his wounded heart. Jacob wakes up from this dream. He has an unusual reaction. He's scared to death.
Joel Brooks:Verse 17 says that he was afraid, and he says, how awesome is this place? And I think one of the reasons he's so scared is because he still doesn't understand God's grace fully yet. Because he still thinks, you know, he is sinful. God is holy. Therefore, God can judge me.
Joel Brooks:God can smite me. And I think he still feels this this holy fear. God never mentioned Jacob sin. God never mentioned his past. God only mentioned words of blessing to him.
Joel Brooks:As sad as this is, we'll see later that this vision actually had very little impact on Jacob. Very little change. And you might think, well, hey, well, he's praying after this. Notice his prayer. Okay.
Joel Brooks:God, if you do this, and if you do this, and if you do this, and if you do this, then I'll do my part. It's a very conditional prayer. I think we need to, before just, you know, being really harsh on Jacob, we need to be a little forgiving and understanding of him because 2000 years removed, or 4000 years removed from this, we have a much better a You know, Jacob calls this place Bethel or House of God, if you remember. What did Jesus call himself? He said, he's the temple.
Joel Brooks:He is the house of God. He's where God dwells. Jesus also said, you know, he is God with us. He is our Emmanuel. God with us.
Joel Brooks:But even more than this, go to John chapter 1. John chapter 1. I love this story. There's there's so much here. I I get excited every time I read this text.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 43. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote.
Joel Brooks:Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Philip said to him, come and see. And Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered him, before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
Joel Brooks:Nathaniel answered him. Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe?
Joel Brooks:And the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. And there there there is there's a lot going on here that we don't have time to unpack. You've got to wonder why Nathaniel reacts this way to Jesus. I mean, Jesus, we've seen in the gospel, he raises people from the dead, you know, he heals people, he he calms hurricanes down, and you don't get anything close to a reaction like this. Behold, you are the you're the son of God.
Joel Brooks:Because Jesus saw them under a tree. There's a lot going on here. Philip goes and he finds his friend Nathaniel and he says he's found the Messiah. I love First off he says this, he goes, I I I we have found him of whom Moses in the law spoke about. Whom Genesis, that's Genesis and that's Exodus.
Joel Brooks:Speak of Jesus. The stories that we we have read so far in Genesis are about him. They're about Jesus. We have found the one who Moses and the law wrote about, and it's Jesus of Nazareth. I love Nathaniel's answer.
Joel Brooks:How can anything good come from Nazareth? Nazareth? That's just some podunk dink little town. Nobody lives in Nazareth. I mean, it's just it's I mean, it's a no place.
Joel Brooks:God doesn't go to nowhere places, Philip. He goes to the big cities. He goes to the to the temples. He goes to Jerusalem. He doesn't go to places in the middle of nowhere.
Joel Brooks:So Philip urges him though, come and see. And when Jesus meets Nathaniel, he says, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. And Nathaniel says, that's right, that's right. I'll shoot straight with you. I want you to notice Jesus, Jesus's subtle words.
Joel Brooks:He says, here is an Israelite. Here is a son of Jacob and whom there is no Jacob. That's what he's really saying. Here's a son of Jacob and whom there is no Jacob. There is no deceit.
Joel Brooks:And Nathaniel says, that's right. How do you know who I am? And then Jesus says, Nathaniel, I saw you. When you were under the tree, I saw you. Now I have no idea what Nathaniel was doing under the tree, but whatever it was when he realized the Lord saw him or heard his inner thoughts right after he agreed, that's right.
Joel Brooks:I'm an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. And the Lord says, Nathaniel, I You are the Son of God. You're the Son of God. He's blown away. Jesus knows what's going on in the person's heart.
Joel Brooks:He sees it. He he's he's not distant. Like Jacob thought he was distant. No, he's, he's here with us and he was with Nathaniel. And then in verse 51, Jesus recounts the vision that Jacob had.
Joel Brooks:And he says, truly, truly, I say to you, you'll see heaven opened. And the angels of God ascending and descending. Here's the draw. Not on a ladder. On the son of man.
Joel Brooks:They will do that on me. Not that they're they're landing on him or anything. Jesus is saying, I am the staircase. I am the ramp. The angels, they come and they go on me.
Joel Brooks:Heaven is connected to earth through me. God makes himself to earth through me. You are not alone because of me. Emmanuel God with us because of me. He would say it later, interestingly enough, also to Nobody comes to the father except through me.
Joel Brooks:I'm that stairway to heaven. Jesus says, you don't have to do any
Connor Coskery:works. I've done them all. You don't have
Joel Brooks:to try to build yourself up to God. You don't have to do that. You have nothing to fear. I've blessed you. I will remain with you.
Joel Brooks:I'll be faithful with you. And you no longer have to feel distant from God because I am with you and I will always be with you to the end. Have you ever had such an encounter with Jesus? Have you ever had such an encounter with the Lord or when you think of him, are you just scared? Are you just ashamed?
Joel Brooks:Do you think there's no way he would ever want anything to do with me? Just look at Jacob. Hear Jesus's words. Believe in him and we have heaven opened up to us. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we thank you that you are the way. You are not a way among many ways, as if there are many roads leading up a mountain, all reaching to God. And you are one of them. You are not a way in which we could, you know, maybe do some works, or some people can believe, or just be a good person and all those are good ways. That's not it.
Joel Brooks:Lord Jesus, you are the way. You are the staircase. You are the only way that heaven is open to us. You stood beside us. And Jesus, you came down.
Joel Brooks:You stood beside us. You stood beside us. You stood beside us. You You stood beside us. You were crucified for us.
Joel Brooks:You bore the wrath of God in our place and you will take us up to heaven itself. One day. We give you praise. We pray this for the glory and in the name of Jesus. Amen.
