Genesis chapter 28, and we're
going to read from verse 10 actually. After Jacob had deceived Isaac
in order to obtain the old man's blessing, that blessing which
had come from Abraham to Isaac and now fell to Jacob, We learned
last time that Esau planned to kill his brother Jacob. And we also learned that Rebecca
again shows much wisdom by warning Jacob to flee to her family in
Haran. and then persuading Isaac to
send Jacob away. So there was Rebecca both telling
Jacob that he had to get out of there, but rather than him
simply disappearing, also arranging the circumstances with Isaac
with a winsome argument, a convincing argument that Jacob should be
sent away to get a wife. So she persuades Isaac to send
Jacob away to find a wife amongst her relatives and so Jacob leaves. And so we come to verse 10 in
Genesis chapter 28 and this is what it says. And Jacob went
out from Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a
certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was
set. And he took of the stones of
that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in
that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a
ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.
And behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above
it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the
God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give
it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the
dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and
to the east, and to the north, and to the south. And in thee
and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with thee, and
will keep thee in all places, whither thou goest, and will
bring thee again into this land. For I will not leave thee until
I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob
awaked out of his sleep and he said, Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid and said, How
dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up
early in the morning and took the stone that he had put for
his pillows and set it up for a pillar. and poured oil upon
the top of it. And he called the name of that
place Bethel, but the name of that city was called Luz at the
time, at the first. And Jacob vowed 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 raiment to put on, so that
I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord
be my God. This stone which I have set for
a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give
me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee. Amen. May God bless to us this reading
from his word. This journey that Jacob embarked
upon to Haran was a long journey and indeed it's likely to have
been around 600 miles that he had to travel and it would have
taken him several weeks to make that journey. Now just because
I showed you this a long time ago but let me just flick up
this little map on the screen because if we look at the blue
arrow there, or the blue line, we find that that is the journey
that Jacob took. So he went from Beersheba, down
there in sort of the bottom left hand corner where it says Edom,
above that there's a place called Beersheba, and he went from there
up to Bethel, that's where he stayed at least that night and
raised that pillar as a memorial to God. And then he went all
the way up, passing by Damascus, all the way up to Haran, about
600 miles that journey would be. And this was the journey
that that Jacob took. So that's just a little map there.
You can see that fertile crescent there again. We spoke about that
in times past. But it was a long journey. And
of course we know part of the reason was to get out of the
road of his brother Esau while he was so angry at what Jacob
had done as far as the blessing was concerned. But when we think
about this, we discover that not long into the journey, just
indeed where he gets to what we call now Bethel or what he
called Bethel, he had a stop and that was about 50 miles or
so into his journey. And he had to stop because it
was getting dark and he had to rest and he had to sleep. The day's light being gone and
it being impossible for him to continue. And as he slept, we're
told that he had a dream. Now, most people dream, of course,
and sometimes our dreams can be quite vivid. But this dream
was special because God used this dream. There was a time
in days gone by when God used dreams to speak to his people. Well, we don't look to our dreams
now to tell us messages from God because we have the scriptures,
but in days gone by and on this occasion, God spoke through a
dream and he spoke to Jacob in this way at this time. He used it to communicate with
Jacob and to give him a personal reassurance of the part that
he now had in that divine covenant that God had made with Abraham
and with Isaac. In this dream, Jacob saw a ladder. And the vision of a ladder is
very interesting. I mean, we might just pause for
a moment and think of this. It was a ladder that he saw.
It was a ladder with its steps, with its rungs, with the purpose
of a ladder, the idea of rising up and being able to climb up
and to climb down. and that's what you use a ladder
for. And so here we find this tool,
this very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless, being used by God
in the dream of Jacob to communicate a lesson and a message from God
to this man, Jacob. And we find that just as a workman,
or a workwoman for that matter, going up and down a ladder, that's
what the angels were doing. They were ascending and descending
this ladder. The bottom of the ladder was
on earth and the top of the ladder was in heaven and the angels
were going between. It was as if the angels were
coming from heaven to earth and then returning back from earth
to heaven. And some people have wondered
what this message was, what this ladder meant. And I think we
can make some assumptions about what the vision or the dream
meant from what the Lord says to Jacob here. The Lord made four main statements
in the three verses that we read, verse 13, 14, and 15. The first main statement that
he made was that he said that he was the covenant God, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac. And so he identified himself
as the God who keeps his promises. He was basically telling Jacob,
Jacob, I am the God and you can trust me. And then he restated
that covenant promise that he had made to Abraham concerning
the possession of the land of Canaan. And you see here where
the Lord speaks to Jacob and tells him that he will have all
the land the land that he is lying on, and to the east and
the west and the north and the south. So all the land of Canaan
was to become the property, the possession of the children of
Israel. And he also spoke about a promise
that had been made that all the nations would be blessed in Canaan. Jacob's seed. So that of the
people that flowed, as it were, from Jacob's children, there
would be a blessing that would go to all nations. And then the fourth point was
that God promised to protect and provide for Jacob and indeed
to bring him home. That's quite an important part
to this promise because it was going to be a long time before
Jacob got back home again. But more of that on another occasion. So the ladder therefore pictures
these statements in a sense. It is given as a graphic picture
with which these statements are complemented. and it speaks about
the Lord's plan and the Lord's purpose. Here was a ladder, it's
fixed on the earth and it is in heaven and God is communicating
And it is showing us that because of that connection by a ladder,
by a way of access, God is communicating from heaven to earth. And that isn't something that
we should simply take for granted. God could have made this world
and then, because of sin, had nothing more to do with it. that
he did create the world and that he does retain an interest and
involvement in it is a mark of his mercy and his grace and goodness. So here is the Lord showing that
because he has given us a ladder, a means of access and a way of
moving between, He is communicating, he is engaging, he is involving
himself, if you like, with men and women. And he's making provision
for his people. The angels ascending and descending
shows this. These angels were messengers
that did the bidding of God on behalf of the Lord's church and
the Lord's people. But there's more than that, because
the ladder itself joined both earth and heaven. It wasn't simply
a means of access. It provided steps or rungs speaking
about a way of accessibility to God from earth. There was
now a door open. There was now a way into God
by that ladder. And the ladder was very important. Heaven's gate was not shut, but
it was open. And there was a way being shown
to Jacob by which one might enter in. And that shows us that this
ladder itself is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ because
he is the one who is the way. Just as he was the life in the
wilderness for the children of Israel, so here he is pictured
as the way, the way of entrance and access, the door if you like.
He is God in glory and He is God upon earth. He is the God-Man. And you see how, even with the
picture of the ladder, that those who had faith to see and to hear
and to understand, those who had spiritual illumination and
revelation given, could begin to see that there were dimensions
to this communication from God. that was beyond the mere normal
things of life, the spiritual truth that was being revealed. The ladder, of course, was a
very powerful symbol and no doubt it gave Jacob plenty to think
about for the years to come. And as I said, there would be
many of them. But this whole experience, it
shook Jacob and he was filled with awe and he was filled with
wonder at what God had shown him and what God had told him. Indeed, we're told in the verses
that we read that it was fear and dread. And I think that is
in the sense of realizing the glory and the majesty of this
God with whom he had to do. It doesn't appear that there
had been Too many, if any, direct communications between God and
Jacob. Jacob, in many ways, appears
to have been a man who was more circumspect and thoughtful than
his brother Esau. Esau was a man who was more interested
in indulging his passions. Jacob seems to have been more
thoughtful and more appreciative of the promises that God had
given to his grandfather and to his father. And now he is
seeing that as heir to those promises there is this spiritual
dimension and this spiritual communication. And Jacob dedicated
himself to the Lord at this time and he expressed faith in God's
promise. He set this stone pillow as a
memorial and he marked it as Bethel and the house of God. He trusted that the God who had
spoken to him here would keep his promise, would keep his word
and do all that he had covenanted with him to do. I want to make
just three quick points, three quick applications, no more than
a sentence each that we might just take away from this narrative,
this story about Jacob and the ladder in his dream. And here's
the first one. These blessings, or the blessing
of all nations, that would come through Jacob is not because
we are literally Jacob's children, but because we have the same
faith as Jacob, and indeed the same faith as Abraham and Isaac. It is that the faith that comes
to men and women and boys and girls is where the blessing flows
to all the nations of the world. That one who would come from
the seed of Jacob was the Lord Jesus Christ. And as men and
women and boys and girls have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
so the promises of God and the covenant blessings of God that
were revealed in these days gone by become the property and the
possession of all the nations. Another point here is this, that
we remember that this ladder is the way of access so that
we are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is Christ who's
pictured by that ladder. The second one is this. Jacob
was told, I am with thee, and I will keep thee, for I will
not leave thee. And you know, you can be eight
years old or 80 years old. But if you trust the Lord, that
promise that God gave to Jacob is a promise to you as well. And you might just be young and
you might have worries and concerns that nobody knows about, or you
might be old and struggling and have trials and difficulties
that you never thought you would have to face. But the Lord's
word is to you today. I am with thee, and will keep
thee, for I will not leave thee. The writer to the Hebrews tells
us that that is our promise. That's not just Jacob's promise. In Hebrews chapter 13, verse
5, the writer says there, let your conversation be without
covetousness. and be content with such things
as ye have. For he hath said, I will never
leave thee nor forsake thee. That's a reference to the promise
that came to Jacob. So that we, the church of Jesus
Christ, believers in Jesus Christ, may boldly say, the Lord is my
helper. I will not fear what man shall
do unto me. And the third thing is this,
and then we're done. Jacob vowed a vow and we're going to come
back to this vow another day, but I believe that when the Lord
reveals himself to a child of God, that person has an urgent
desire to commit and dedicate himself or herself to God and
to his work. When we have seen the Lord Jesus,
when we have seen him as that, as it were, ladder, that way
of access, that way of entrance, that way of approach, that way
of life, then it draws forth from us a desire to commit ourselves
to the Lord. And that's what Jacob did here
when he vowed this vow. Now we should not make vows to
God lightly, but when the Lord God shows us Christ, shows us
the way of salvation, shows us the way of peace and access to
God, that is the moment when we should commit our lives to
Him and trust in His promise. May it be so. Amen.