1. The Promise Restated (10-12)

Why was Jacob leaving home? (10)

It’s only been a year or so since we grazed in the spiritual pastures of Genesis, so you’ll all remember perfectly where we’re up to in the story of Abraham’s grandson Jacob won’t you? You don’t? Well I’d better take a few minutes to refresh our collective memory then hadn’t I? Jacob is making this journey that he starts out on here because he is fleeing for his life from his brother Esau.

In the stories of Abraham and his offspring, we have seen two intertwined threads continuing throughout the generations. The golden thread of God’s sovereignty and covenant faithfulness and love according to his promises to Abraham; and the black thread of human sin and foolishness and its consequences.

Nowhere is this truer than in the story of Jacob and Esau. Two sides of the family conspired against one another for the birthright and blessing that goes with it. Isaac believed God’s promises, it’s just that he disagreed with God over which child should be the heir and the one through whom the promise would continue. He favoured Esau, but God had told Rebekah before the twins were born that the older would serve the younger. It was Jacob who would be the promised ruler of the descendants of Abraham, not Esau. Just as Isaac and not Ishmael was the chosen one. Rebekah on her part believed God’s word to her about Jacob, but she and Jacob used sneaky and unjust means to secure the promised blessing for Jacob and not Esau, tricking Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob instead. They all acted unrighteously. And yet out of all that ungodly mess, God’s purposes and plan still come through intact. Even the unrighteous acts of men and women end up bringing glory and praise to God. As the scripture says elsewhere, “Let God be true, though every man a liar.” God’s righteousness and faithfulness do not depend on us. And that is a great relief.

But the results of human sin continue to dog Jacob and his family. In chapter 27 verse 41 it says “Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.” Esau plans to kill Jacob, but their mother Rebekah hears of it and hatches a plot to save Jacob by sending him away to her brother Laban back in Haran. Cleverly Rebekah makes it appear to Isaac that it is his idea to send Jacob away so that he can get a wife, when her primary aim is to get him away from Esau where he will be safe. And this is the journey that Jacob now begins. So behind this simple statement in verse 10, “Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran,” lies all of that strife and heartache. Jacob has left his home in Beersheba with Isaac and Rebekah his parents. He will never see his beloved mother again, and she has paid dearly for saving him in this fashion.

Why do angels need a stair? (11-12)

Now when I visualize this story in my head I usually see Jacob all alone in the solitude of the desert, lying by himself under the stars. But no doubt he was not alone. He would have taken servants and provisions and animals with him. Next we read in verse 11 “When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.” Now this didn’t happen on the first night of his journey, since the distance from Beersheba to Bethel is further than here to Launceston! It must have been two or three nights into his trip when he lay down to have this dream that we hear of in the next verse, and no doubt he was tired, emotional and the reality of his separation from home would have begun to set in. We must remember that God has revealed Himself gradually over history, and Jacob’s knowledge of Him was not at this stage as great as it would be. We don’t know how much he was still influenced by the beliefs of the pagans living in the land. Did he yet fully conceive of God as the God of all the earth? Or was he apprehensive and unsure of God’s willingness or ability to go with him as he left Isaac? Did he really understand that God would be with him in the same way he was with Abraham and Isaac? I think the fact that God’s message is one of reassurance means that Jacob needed reassuring, of God’s goodness towards him and God’s power. It’s easy for us looking backwards four thousand years from the other side of the cross and the empty tomb, and knowing the end of the story, to forget that for Jacob as he lay down in the dark, his future was just as dark and unknown to him as the hills surrounding him in the dead of night. He lays down with his head on a rock and sleeps the sleep of the exhausted and weary traveler with no place to call home. And Jacob dreams.

“He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”

Now what are we to understand of Jacob’s dream? I think the first thing the writer of Genesis intends us to realize is that this dream is a true Revelation from God. It is not just a normal dream, but a vision. Already in Genesis we have seen God communicate with others in this way. With Abraham. And with the pagan king Abimelech. Later in Genesis God reveals himself and his will in further dreams to Jacob. And then later still to Jacob’s son Joseph, and to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

 What Jacob dreams is truth from God. But remember, it is still a dream, so we ought not to draw too many conclusions from the details of the dream, which may in themselves be symbols. Do angels really need a literal staircase to descend from heaven? Jacob is not seeing a waking reality, but a dream. We shouldn’t be asking about the nature of the staircase or the appearance of the angels, or whether they had wings or not. Presumably they didn’t, or they wouldn’t need a staircase, but remember, this is a dream. Look beyond the symbols to the meaning. Remember what the book of Hebrews tells us about angels? It says there “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Angels are spirits. Whether they appear to us with or without wings is neither here nor there. They are beings of pure spirit who take on the appearance of men in order to do thing and one thing only – minister to those whom God has chosen to inherit salvation. And how do they minister? By bringing the Word of God, and especially His Promise of the eternal covenant. Jacob’s dream of a stairway with angels going up and down, with God at the top of the stairway and Jacob at the bottom, has a very clear and obvious meaning. That God, the Almighty God of all the earth, communicates with his people and sends his messengers to help his people on earth. The name angel, in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New, simply means ‘messenger,’ and angels have no other function, no other desire. They are not spirit guides who want you to communicate with them in their own right, as New Age gurus might tell you. They bring a simple clear message from God. And then they return to Him.

2. The Promise Restated (13-15)

I am YHWH, God of your fathers (13)

This message is clearly stated by God himself in verse 13. It says “There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” God uses the divine name that He will later reveal more fully to Moses. But it is significant that He introduces himself as “the God of your fathers.” Even Jacob had to come to know God for himself, so that the God of his fathers would be truly his own God. God’s intention here is to confirm to Jacob that it is indeed he, and not Esau from whom he is fleeing, Esau the firstborn son, who has inherited the faith and promises of his fathers.

Land, People, Blessing—Gen 12 (14-15)

 Look at what he promises Jacob. “I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

These are the same promises God first gave to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham back in Genesis chapter 12. The same promises he reaffirmed to his father Isaac, but not to Ishmael. And now Jacob has, not just the birthright and the blessing from his father Isaac, but also the renewed promise of God himself, as confirmation that he is indeed the chosen one, the one to whom the Land of Promise will be given, the one from whom will come a great people who will be the people of God, and the one through whose offspring all nations will be blessed. And of course the Lord Jesus is that offspring, born of the line of Jacob, not Esau. Land, People, and Blessing. God’s promise to Jacob is made sure so that Jacob can respond with faith and trust, by returning to the Land when the time is right. Because God is not now just the God of his ancestors, but his God too. For there is this personal promise to Jacob in verse 15: ”I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” That means God will never leave Jacob, because what he promises him includes things that will not be fulfilled until thousands of years after Jacob’s life has come to an end on this earth. No doubt the thing that Jacob most wanted to hear was that personal promise “I will bring you back to this land.” A promise that God was to fulfil in ways that Jacob had no idea of. God did indeed bring him back, to be reconciled with his brother, and to bury his father. And we will read about that in coming chapters. But Jacob did not die in Canaan, but in Egypt. And it was his son Joseph who brought his bones back to lie at rest in the cave of Machpeleh at Mamre with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah. And there his body probably still lies, waiting for the resurrection and the final fulfillment of the promise of the Land, in that heavenly Land that is to come when the Lord Jesus returns. Then, and only then, will Jacob be truly at home in the place of promise.

3. The House of God (16-17)

Is there a holiness of Place? (16-19)

Verse 16 says, “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.””

Now we have to be careful I think not to draw too many conclusions about holy places from Jacob’s words here. Does this really imply that there is such as thing as sacred ground or a holy place? You know, like in those old Vampire movies, where the vampires and witches can’t enter the church building because it is holy?

Bethel’s Future for Good and Ill

 If you examine the future of Bethel after this time, you will see that this is not so at all. Remember, this is Jacob’s response to his dream. God himself has not said that this place is holy. But God overlooks that in a sense, and deliberately sees only Jacob’s response of faith, because that’s what it is. But Bethel itself was to have a chequered career. During the time of the patriarchs and the conquest under Joshua and the period of the Judges, right up until the time of Samuel, it was indeed a place of true worship of God. But God himself, not Jacob, was the one who would choose the right place of worship. And that was to be Jerusalem, not Bethel. Indeed, Bethel was later to become one of three places that became centres of idol worship, where Golden Calves were set up for the Israelites to worship instead of going to Jerusalem. And even Jerusalem was not to be the final or true place of worship. Jeremiah warned the people of Judah not to trust in the Temple of the Lord being in Jerusalem, for God no longer dwelt there because of their apostasy.

You see, Bethel, and later Jerusalem, was not a holy place. It only became holy because God was there. Because God met Jacob there. Because God dwelt among his people there. It is God who is holy not any place or shrine or temple or church. And Jesus said to the Samaritan woman that God seeks those who will worship him, not in temples at Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim, but in Spirit and in Truth. Because Jesus himself is our Holy Place, he is the one in whom heaven and earth meet. He is our stairway to heaven.

4. Jacob’s Response (20-22)

Worship, Naming, Building, Giving

 Look at Jacob’s response in verses 18 to 22. “

18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.” 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21 so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God 22 and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

It is a response of worship, naming, building and giving. And it is an appropriate response to the revelation of God. If God truly speaks to us, then we will worship him, we will have a new way of seeing the ordinary places and things of life, we will build   God’s house, and we will offer thanksgiving to him.

Conclusion: Lessons for Us

God’s Revelation—Hebrews 1:1-3

 What are some of the lessons for us from Jacob’s dream at Bethel? Let me mention just four. First, this dream was a true revelation from God. But it was not the final revelation. We have that, and so we have something even greater than Bethel. Hebrews 1 says “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, […including in dreams, like here at Bethel…] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” And later in that chapter it says that Jesus is far superior to angels of the kind that went up and down Jacob’s ladder. The revelation we have from God through his Son is far more wondrous, far more complete, far more cosmic in scope, far more certain, than what Jacob received that night at Bethel.

Bethel—Heb 3:6; Eph 2:19; 1 Tim 3:16

 Second, remember what Bethel means – the house of God. Hebrews 3 verse 6 says “But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

And Ephesians 2:19: “And we his house, if we hold onto the hope of which we boast”

And again, in 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul speaks of “God’s household, which is the church”

 We are Bethel, the house of God. God is in this place, right now, just as much as he was with Jacob that night in the desert. Oh I don’t mean in this building. I mean in you and me as we gather as the people of God, the church of Christ. We are the fulfillment on earth of the promises to Jacob and of his meeting with God at Bethel.

The Foundation Stone—1 Peter 2:4-6

 Third, Jacob set up a stone as the foundation of Bethel, the house of God. And the New Testament also speaks of such a stone. Peter says, in his first letter chapter two: “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”” Jesus is our foundation stone, and the rock on whom we live and worship and in whom we place our trust and through whom we meet God.

Our Worship—1 Peter 2:5; Rom 12:1-2

Finally, Jacob’s worship reminds us of our own. Those verses from Peter I just read tell us we “are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” And Romans 12 tells us that our worship is by presenting our whole selves as a living sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.

God’s promises are worth remembering and trusting, just as Jacob did. We have a far better revelation, better and more heavenly promises. If we accept his revelation in Christ, and trust him, then our response of faith will be one of building God’s house and worshipping him in spirit and truth.