chapter 28. Gracious Father be with us in
this time. Lord make yourself glorious in
our sight. that we may glory in you. Show us Christ. Reveal yourself
to us in no uncertain terms. Encourage our hearts with your
grace. Lift up those who are weary. Direct those who walk firm, lest
in the firmness of their walk they stray. We pray, Lord, that you would
be with those in our congregation who are sick. Heal them when
it seems wise and good in your sight to do so, and give them
grace to endure until that time. Lord, we give you thanks that
you heard our prayer with regard to Emma, our brother Bob's granddaughter. And she is presently in remission.
We thank you, Lord, for that was not really expected, not
in any natural sense of the word. And we pray, Lord, that you would
keep that remission in place and that she would go on to live
a normal life. We thank you, Lord, for all your
many blessings to us. There are too many to count.
And I'm sure that they are more numerous than even we know. for
you bless us over and over and over again. And we have become
so accustomed to the greatness of your blessings toward us that
it seems normal for things to be that way. But we know that
every pleasant thing we enjoy comes from your hand, from your
grace. So thank you, Lord. And it's
in the name of Christ we pray these things. Amen. All right,
we'll begin reading at verse 10. Jacob left Beersheba and set
out for Haran. 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.
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. There above it stood the Lord,
and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and
the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants
the land on which you are lying. 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. 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. When Jacob awoke from his
sleep, he thought, surely the Lord is in this place, and I
was not aware of it. 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. Early the next morning, Job took
the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar. and poured oil on top of it.
He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called
Luz. 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
so that I return safely to my father's house, then the Lord
will be my God, 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." Now according to some of the
studies I did, Jacob would have been in his
60s or 70s when these events occurred. He and Esau had already
grown up in their father's house. And I believe Esau had already
gotten himself wives, several of them, and none of them were
from the household of Abraham. He married a couple of Hittite
women and maybe some others. But for some reason or another,
Jacob had never gotten married. But his father told him that
he needed to go up to Haran. That was up north. And he would
go to the household of Abraham. Now Abraham was born in Ur of
the Chaldees. And he had gone from Ur and was
on the way to Canaan. Now this was Abraham, his father
Terah, And then his, Abraham's nephew, Lot, and of course everybody's
wives and all of that that was involved, families, and they
all went to, on their way to Heron, excuse me, on their way
to Canaan, but stopped at Heron. And there everybody but Abraham
and his household along with Lot, they all stayed there. After Tara died, Abraham went on down to Canaan,
where God had originally called him to go. And of course, Abraham
had Ishmael by his wife's Egyptian handmaid. Then he had Isaac,
the promised seed, who was born according to the promise, not
according to the natural abilities of flesh. Isaac represents according
to the Apostle Paul. He represents those who are gospel
believers, and Ishmael was a picture of those who strive under the
law. But Isaac had this Jacob and
Esau. His wife Rebekah gave birth to these two boys. And as they grew up in the house,
they proved exactly what the Lord had said regarding them
while they were yet in their mother's womb. They strove with
one another in their mother's womb. And the Lord said, there
are two nations in you, two nations, and the elder shall serve the
younger. before Jacob and Esau could do
good or evil, before they could make any supposed free will choice,
God chose Jacob. When it says the elder will serve
the younger, he was not merely saying that Jacob, who would
be the younger of the two, be born shortly after Esau, but
he was saying not only would he take the place of Esau, and
be granted the status of firstborn in his house, and inherit the
natural blessings that had come down from Abraham, then to Isaac,
and then on. They understood that these things
involved spiritual blessings as well. God had promised a land
to Abraham, but it says that Abraham lived in tents all his
life, and he was seeking a city that has foundations, whose builder
and maker is God. Even Abraham understood that
the promises of God to him concerning that land would never be fulfilled
in that land, that they would be fulfilled spiritually. He
looked for something more than could be given in this life. I'm sure Isaac understood that
as well. But anyway, The Lord made a choice
between them. Jacob was the elect of God. As
it is written, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. And those two boys, as they grew
up, became men. Each one lived out what God had
prophesied of them. And Jacob, in particular, lived
out the meaning of his name. His name Jacob comes from the
Hebrew word for the heel. And he was called that, the heel
grabber. And they gave him that name because
he was deceptive. He was underhanded. He was clever. And if you got into a business
deal with him, you were going to come out on the short end
of the stick. He's the one that always ended
up with everything. And even though God had promised that
Jacob would be the favored one, and the older one, Esau, would
serve Jacob, yet his mother favored Jacob as well and she couldn't
leave it to God to make that happen so she devised a method
by which Jacob went into the presence of his father pretending
to be Esau. Isaac was going to bless Esau
and bless him with all the blessings that should go to the firstborn. But Jacob's mother said you put
some hair on his arms make him feel like Esau because by this
time Isaac was pretty much blind and made him smell like Esau
did because Esau was a man of the field he was a hunter and
Jacob went in there pretending to be Esau and he stole the blessing
from Isaac A good lesson to learn from that.
Don't take by treachery that which God has said he's going
to give to you. Now God used that to accomplish his purpose,
but that doesn't justify Jacob's mother, Rebecca, doing
that. God doesn't need you to deceive
others in order to accomplish his purpose. Well, once that
happened, as you can imagine, Esau was very angry. And he came
hunting for Jacob. And Isaac told Jacob, you need
to leave this area. You need to go up to Haran, the
land of your forefathers, where our family is right now. And
you get your wife from there. Do not do like Esau did and grab
your wife from one of these Gentile nations around us. And so as we enter this story,
Jacob is on the run, and he is on the run because he had decided
to get for himself that which God had already said he was going
to give him. He is about to leave the land
of his father, Isaac. Now you and I might not make
as much of that, as they would have in those days, but to be
cut off from the household you grew up in, that was a horrible
thing to contemplate. But his situation demanded, if
he was going to stay alive, his situation demanded that he leave
his father's household. And so he did. I don't know how long he was up
there. At least 14 years, because he worked that long. to pay for
the two wives he got up there. The only man that I know of that
ever got the best of Jacob was Jacob's father-in-law, Laban,
because Jacob worked seven years for Rachel. And on the wedding
day, he got Leah. And you say, well, couldn't he
tell the difference? Well, you see how they dress over there. And he didn't see her face till
the next morning. And behold, it was not Rachel
that he worked for. It was Leah. So to get Rachel,
he had to work seven more years. But as he's on the way out, going
up there to Heron, he comes to a certain place.
He stopped for the night because the sun had set. Not safe to
travel at night. A lot of bandits on the road. And he has this encounter with God. Now Jacob
had been the elect of God from all eternity. And this election
of Jacob, this choice of Jacob, had been made known by God. But
God didn't tell Jacob about it until now. Until now. You know, These matters of the
timing of the events of God's work of salvation, it's his business,
not ours. Occasionally, this issue comes
up. I see somebody put it on Facebook. I remember way back
in the days before the internet, it was being argued in bulletins
and all this. When is a man justified? And if you say, well, when he
believes, they'll call you a heretic. He says that all God's people
were justified when Jesus Christ died for him, because we're justified
by the blood. And they make a big argument
about this. Well, I point out that the scriptures say that
Abraham was justified, and that was roughly, what, 2,000 years
before Christ died. But they think that they gotta
figure all this stuff out. When a person is saved is up
to God. And we need to leave it alone.
We need to preach the gospel, tell people the truth, and leave
them alone. God will call them if and when
he's ready to. Paul said, when it pleased God
to reveal his son in me. Now, you and I might think, well,
why didn't you do that before he persecuted and even killed
a bunch of your people? Another matter that belongs to
God and not to us. We cannot predict the course
that God shall guide this world, and even when we look behind,
we can't untangle all the strings of providence. That's his business,
isn't it? But this overwhelming experience
that Jacob had that night in actually communicating with the
God of heaven shook him as well it should. And when he woke up, he said, surely
the Lord is in this place. And I was not aware of it. He
came there. He laid down there. He slept
there, not knowing that the Lord was there. And he was afraid. Afraid. To hear from God is a
fearsome thing. When you see people or hear people
talking about God in ways that degrades him, and that goes everywhere
from those who openly take his name in vain, use his name as
though it's a curse word, a way to express their contempt of
something. They use it that way. And then
they'll get up in pulpits and they will use his name as a means
to get money from other people. Or even if they are sincere in
what they're doing, they will still declare him to be a God
not worthy of worship. They wouldn't say it in so many
words, but when they're done describing him, you feel more
like you ought to pity him than worship him. But when anybody hears from God
himself, the fear of the Lord rises up in them. He was afraid. And he said, how awesome is this
place? Now, this shows us that even
though Jacob had heard directly from the Lord, he didn't understand
everything. He was still of this opinion,
there are places where the Lord is and places where the Lord
is not. No, there is no place where the Lord is not. Now, there are places where the
Lord's presence is more well known and more obvious than in
other places. Our Lord said, where two or three
are gathered in my name, there I am. He's with us this morning
in a way that he's not in other places. But still the Lord is everywhere.
But it's not as like he has a place and only at that place can he
be properly worshipped. That is a geographical place
where he could be properly worshipped and known. But the Lord tolerates
our misunderstandings of things and I'm sure that when we are
in his presence Well, if we remember how things were at this time,
we'll think, wow, I really didn't understand when I thought I did. However, he called that place
Bethel. Beth, I think in Hebrew it's
like bet. And then that means house. And
then the EL ending, that's just a common word for God. So it's
house of God. You remember the city Bethlehem? Well, that's Beth, house. And
then the last part of it's a Hebrew word for bread, house of bread.
Well, this is the house of God. The Lord was in this place. Now,
where is the house of God? Now, this picture or this story
serves us to reveal Christ. That's its purpose. Like all
the other scriptures, it's to reveal Christ. It's to reveal
the gospel. And what this is showing us,
by way of illustration, is some things about God's dealings with
his elect. Well, where is the house of God?
Well, it is the place where the elect and the non-elect divide. Now, you know that when I study,
I like to look things up in the original language. I knew what
the name Bethel meant. I'd heard that long ago. But
it says that the city nearby used to be called Luz. So I looked
that up. And many said that word means
an almond tree. But one of them said it also
means separation, departure. And that's exactly what Jacob
was doing right then. He was departing. And he was
being separated, set apart from Esau. Now we who are believers in the
Lord Jesus Christ, God sets us apart And by his workings, we
depart all that we formerly trusted in. We depart all that is natural,
seeking that which is spiritual. We depart trusting our own works.
We depart trusting our own doctrinal accuracy. And we lay hold of trusting him
and him alone. And by that, we are made separate
from the world of unbelievers who are left to themselves like
Esau was. God didn't do anything to Esau.
It says, Jacob, if I loved Esau, if I hated him, it's not like
God had to reach out and do anything. All they'd do is leave him alone.
And Esau would pursue a course of fleshly reliance, which brought
him condemnation. But we are set apart from that. It's a place, the house of God
is a place where the elect of God find rest. Jacob had been
traveling all day, trying to run from his enemies. He needed
a place to rest. And this is where it was. And
it was in his rest that God revealed himself. Thirdly, it's a place where God's
people call on his name. Now, we're going to have to look
somewhere else to get that spelled out exactly, but look at Genesis
chapter 12. Now God had spoken to Abram and
given him much the same promises that he gave Jacob later on here
in chapter 28, and it says that in verse 7,
this is Abram as he's making his way down to the land of Canaan,
the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your offspring I
will give this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord who
had appeared to him. Verse 8, from there he went toward
the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent. With Bethel
on the west and Ai on the east, there he built an altar to the
Lord and called on the name of the Lord. He wasn't right in the city that
would be called Bethel. It says he was between Bethel
and Ai. But you look on a map, those
two cities are only about two miles apart. But Bethel was the one most noted. And so Jacob, as he came to this
place, he probably heard about Abraham coming down there. And that's where Abraham called
upon the name of Jehovah, called upon the name of the Lord. And
so I think, you know, as we're reading Jacob's words there in
Genesis 28, he came to that place and after he heard from God,
he said, this indeed is the house of God. In other words, it was
probably brought back to his mind what he'd come down from
his grandfather Abraham. Bethel, where I heard from the
Lord. Bethel, where I called upon the
name of the Lord. That's the house of God. And
Bethel figures prominently throughout Jewish history. And from the
time of, during the time of the judges, in fact, all the way
until David became king, the Ark of the Covenant was in Bethel.
And probably the whole tabernacle was set up there. So indeed,
it was kind of the house of God. And there, God's people call
upon God's name. Of course, you can see all of
this, that the house of God is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. For in him we find rest. In Him
is where the elect and the non-elect are divided. In Him and through
Him we call upon the name of the Lord. The house of God is
the place where God reveals Himself and His grace to His elect. Look at Genesis 35. You know,
people stumble over the doctrine of election, and one of the reasons
is they aren't looking at it from the right spot. They just
look at it as this barren separate doctrine. Election is in Christ. Praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly places according as He has chosen us
in Him. In Him. And nothing can be understood
about the grace of God apart from seeing it in Christ. Now
in Genesis 35 verse 7. He's coming back. He spent all
those years up at Haran. Now he's coming back down into
the land of Canaan. And he gets to Bethel. And it
says, there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel. So he emphasized the presence
of God. El, God, house of God. Because
it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing
from his brother. The house of God is where God
reveals himself. He reveals himself as being above
all. Remember in Jacob's vision, there was that ladder or stairway. from heaven down to earth, and
the angels were coming down and going up, the messengers of God
on that ladder, on that stairway. But it says, in standing above
it was the Lord. Now the Lord gave
visions to these people. They weren't literal pictures
of things actually going on. You say, how do you know that?
Well, there isn't a stairway to heaven. The people that built the city
of Babel thought they could build one to heaven. The Lord said,
no. But there is a way to heaven. And these angels, the word angel
actually refers to a messenger. God sends messengers down to
declare that way. And they, these same messengers,
will pray to God to make his word effective. But above all
of this, above all of this that has any root in the earth, because
that stairway did, it said, reach down to the earth, above all
of this is God. God always reveals himself as
above it all. Be turning to Ezekiel chapter
1. When God reveals himself, you can be sure of one thing.
He's going to reveal himself as the absolute sovereign above
everything. controlling everything, unbothered
by the things going on down here. The way God is preached by many,
you'd think He's all upset and running around wringing His hand
because things aren't going the way He wants. No. Everything's
happening exactly as He purposed. In Isaiah 6, Isaiah saw that
vision of the Lord high and lifted up and seated on a throne. That's
the way God always represents Himself. And here in Ezekiel
chapter 1 verse 25, Then there came a voice from
above the expanse over the heads as they stood with lowered wings."
Ezekiel is being given a vision of the presence of God. And this
vision consisted of the earth and then these four beasts and
then over that this expanse. Now this is the same word that's
used when it said that God created the sky, or the firmament. And
this picture that God is giving to Ezekiel is a picture of how
things really are. You know, Ezekiel was in captivity. It didn't look like God was in
control. But what God, he says, what God
shows him in that picture, he says, all right, there's the
earth, there's the firmament, and that's, you know, to man
back then, okay, the earth to the firmament, that's all there
is. That's creation. That's all I can see. And then there's God on the throne
above all of that, serene, undisturbed, in control. That's how God reveals
himself. This God is Christ. John chapter
12 verse 41 comments on Isaiah's vision of God in chapter 6 of
Isaiah. And he said, these things spoke
Isaiah when he saw Jesus' glory and wrote of him. Well, who did
Isaiah see? He saw Jehovah high and lifted
up, seated on a throne. And John says, that's Jesus.
That's Christ. Christ is the eternal word, the
creator of all created things. He's Lord of all, possessing
all authority in heaven and in earth. And then now back in Genesis
28, God reveals himself under the name Jehovah. This is the
name that God would use later with Moses to enter into a covenant
relationship with that nation. And then he revealed his grace
to Jacob. He says, beginning in verse 13,
now we're back in Genesis 28, verse 13, about halfway through,
I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.
Now, here's the interesting thing. This promise is made to him right
as he is leaving the land. that God had promised him. Now if Jacob had already grown
rich in that land and already expanded out there and had his
roots deep in the land of Canaan, this promise wouldn't have meant
much, would it? But now he's running away from an angry brother. And he doesn't even have a household
yet. He doesn't have a wife. Four
years later, he would have two wives. He doesn't have children. And look what God promises him
there. This land you're laying on, I'm going to give it to you
and your descendants, which means he's going to have descendants. And God goes on to say, and I
will be with you. I will be with you. And we'll watch over you wherever
you go. Oh, is that not a blessed promise
to hang on? Because you know, I go some places
I shouldn't go. You hear some preachers say, you go there,
God just might, you know. Just let you go. No, he won't. Not
if I belong to him. You say, preacher, you telling
me I can be as wayward as I want and God will still watch over
me? How wayward do you want to be? If that's what you're looking
for, a way to sin as much as your flesh desires and still
go to heaven when you die, you probably never heard anything
from the Lord. But any of you who have heard from the Lord,
who've been taught of God and have come to Christ, know this.
You will never go somewhere that God won't go with you to watch
over you and protect you. And you know that's most needed
when we go someplace stupid, that we shouldn't have gone in
the first place. When do I need the most protection? When I'm
in the most danger. And I'm in the most danger when
I follow my own way instead of his. But there he goes, watches
over us. He said, I will bring you back
to this land. He said, I'll bring you back.
You may stray. And I tell you, in our minds,
don't we get locked up in legalistic thoughts? Our sins and the sense
of them begins to overwhelm us. And we begin to think, oh, maybe
I'm not a child of God. But God will watch over us. He'll
let us wallow in that a bit, maybe teach us a little lesson.
But he'll bring us back. He'll bring us back. And he promised
Jacob the greatest blessing of all, Christ himself. He says in the last part of verse
14, all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you and
your offspring. Now does that mean that the whole world was
somehow going to be blessed by Jacob and all the Jewish people
that arose from him? The Jewish people, the descendants
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they're just like all other people.
And some of them have done things profitable to the world and some
of them have not. The Jewish nation has not brought
any particular blessing to the world. No particular curse either.
I'm neither pro-Semite or anti-Semite in what I'm saying. I'm just
saying that's the way. What did he mean? He was speaking
of Christ. All nations would be blessed
through Jacob because it's through Jacob that the promised seed
of the woman would come. Here's the offspring, the seed. that God is mentioning here,
Christ. What a blessing. But there is a point in this
story that has always confused me. 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. For years, I've wondered something
about this story. Who tries to make a rock into
a pillow? I don't know about you, but I would
lay on the bare ground and let my head rest on the dirt before
I put a rock under my head. Of course, the rock might complain
to my head it's too hard for the rock, but the rock would
be too hard for my head. I wouldn't want it. I don't know
how I would sleep there. I would roll up some of my other
clothes, anything soft to put my head on. Jacob uses a rock
for a pillow. How can that be? Well, Christ is often set forth
in the scriptures in the figure of a rock. First Corinthians
10.4 refers to that rock from which water flowed to supply
the needs of the Israelites as they went from Egypt up to the
land of promise. And he says that rock was Christ.
That rock was Christ. The Lord himself told the parable,
or the illustration, saying the wise man builds his house on
a rock. Foolish man builds it on sand.
What's he talking about there? Foolish man will try to build
his house of salvation, so to speak, his hope of eternal life
on the sandy foundation of human works and human religion and
effort and all that, and their house is going to blow over when
the storm of judgment comes. but the one who digs down deep
and finds that bedrock below the soil and builds on there,
that rock is Christ. And the one whose house is built
on Christ, it may not be a very good looking house, but it's
gonna stand because it's on the rock. Say, okay, Christ is pictured
as a rock. That still doesn't answer the
question Why or how can a rock become a pillow? Well, the things about Christ
which make him look hard and unyielding, undesirable in the
eyes of the natural man are to the believer softness and comfort
and rest. The very things that anger the
unbeliever most, that make it so he can't sleep, that make it so he cannot find
any comfort in Christ, which makes him come up with a nice
soft Christ that he made up all of his own, those very same things
about Christ are the very things that a believer takes most comfort
in. For example, Here's one of the
hard things about Christ. Even though he appeared as a
man, he is the living God. Men can't understand that. They
won't accept it. It's too hard for them. In John
660, our Lord had just preached a rather strong message. And many of his disciples said,
that's a hard saying. Who can accept it? Well, what
things has the Lord said? We don't have time to look at
them in each of the scriptures, but things like this, that salvation is
not of our own works. Things like that Christ is the
fulfillment of the Old Testament. That faith is not a natural thing. That God has given a people to
Christ. That Christ is completely successful and everyone that
was given to him by the Father shall be saved. That Christ has
life in himself and gives it to whomever he will. that we are utterly unable to
come to Christ unless the Father draws us there and teaches us. And that the proof of being divinely
taught is that one comes to Christ and that salvation is in Him
and Him alone. You know, our Lord had a lot
of disciples just the day before He'd fed 5,000 men plus their
women, their wives, and their children. And then he'd gone
across the lake, and they found a way
over there to him. And he said, you followed me
because you got your stomach full of the loaves and fishes. He said, quit looking for natural
things. Look for spiritual things. Look for that bread that came
from heaven. Then he says, I am that bread that came from heaven. And from that time on, many of
his disciples no longer followed him. That pillow got too hard. The Lord said to the other disciples,
you all going to go away too? Peter said, where are we going
to go? Where else is there? You have the words of eternal
life. What is hardness to the natural
mind is softness and comfort, indeed, a spiritual pillow to
the head of the believer. He's glad to hear that salvation
isn't by his own works. He takes comfort in that. He's
glad that Christ fulfilled all of the Old Testament types and
pictures. He's glad that his faith is not
natural because the natural aspect of his faith has failed so many
times. He's glad there's something else, another kind of faith given
by God that doesn't fail. He doesn't resist the doctrine
of election. He's glad for it because he knows, as the hymn
writer wrote, "'Tis not that I did choose thee, for Lord,
that could not be. This heart would still refuse
thee if thou had not chosen me." Oh, I love election. I'm glad
the choice wasn't left to me because I know what choice I
would have made. I'm glad that Christ is completely successful
because I'm exactly the opposite. I'm a complete failure. I rely on his complete success. I'm glad Christ has life in himself
because I desperately need life. I don't need an improvement to
the life I already have. I need a life different, a different
kind of life than the one I was born with. The truth that we are unable
to come to Christ apart from the grace of God apart from the
Father drawing us, apart from the Father teaching us. I love
that. Why? Well, I came to Christ. What
does that mean? The Father did a work of grace
for me. The fact that I came to Christ proves it. And if I
came to Christ because of what the Father did, I can be assured
I will never leave Him. That salvation is in him and
him alone. Glory, hallelujah, I can sleep
on that. It may be a rock to the world,
but I can find rest on that rock. That I don't contribute anything
to my salvation. That the gospel that God has
devised requires nothing of me. And I find comfort in that because
in my years, 67 and a piece now, there have been times I've tried
and I have failed every time. I'm always brought back just
like Jacob will be brought back to Canaan, the land of promise.
I'm always brought back. Joe, you never had anything to
do with this in the beginning. And you don't have anything to
do with this now. And you will not have anything to do with
it throughout all eternity. Salvation's of the Lord. It's
in Christ and in Christ alone. If I have him, I have everything. If I don't have him, I have nothing. May God be pleased to add his
blessing.