MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Genesis 26:34,35; 27:46, 28:1-22
Today, as we continue our sermon series through the Book of Genesis, we will land on a passage that we have all heard about, but most of us have never really studied. Two weeks ago, we read about Abraham sending his servant on a tripe with the stated goal of finding a wife for Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac. The servant was to find Isaac’s wife from amongst Abraham and Sarah’s relatives who lived in northwestern Mesopotamia. Why was that important? Because unlike the potential wives in Canaan who worshipped other gods and who could thus lead Isaac, if he had married them, away from YHWH and thus away from God’s covenant made with Abraham, a covenant that promised the land of Canaan, as well as blessings, and prosperity to Abraham, Isaac, and their descendants. Because their relatives back in Mesopotamia knew about YHWH, there was every chance that a wife from there would worship YHWH and embrace His covenant and its blessings. We read that Abraham’s servant prayed to the Lord for guidance to the woman of His choice for Isaac and, Rebekah was the one who appeared. She and her family, which included her brother Laban, agreed that she should go to Canaan to marry Isaac. Last Sunday, we read how Isaac and Rebekah then had twin sons, the elder of which was Esau, an impulsive, unwise man who – because he was hungry – exchanged his birthright as the firstborn son for the bowl of stew Jacob offered him, thus negating for Esau the privileges that had been his with the birthright, privileges such as inheriting twice the amount of Isaac’s estate than any of his younger siblings would. Sheer foolishness by Esau but it wasn’t the first time he had acted foolishly for, without getting the agreement of his parents for we also know,
When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah. (Genesis 26:34,35)
When she was pregnant, God had given a prophetic word to Rebekah, that the older son she was carrying would be supplanted by the younger one and would end up serving him. Rebekah thus knew that Jacob was the one to and through whom God’s covenant would come so she when she overheard her husband Isaac planning on giving Esau his blessing, an act that would have complicated God’s covenantal plans as well as the word she heard from God, she arranged for Jacob to trick Isaac and steal that blessing from Esau. But after that event,
Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” When Rebekah was told what her older son Esau had said, she sent for her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you. Now then, my son, do what I say: Flee at once to my brother Laban in Harran. Stay with him for a while until your brother’s fury subsides. When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I’ll send word for you to come back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?” (27:41-45)
Rebekah then coyly deflected her role in Jacob’s stealing of the Isaac’s blessing by pointing out Esau’s indiscretions.
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.” (Genesis 27:46)
Rebekah knew that Isaac also had little appreciation of the fact that Esau had brought Canaanite/Hittite women into their home and family.
So, Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.” (Genesis 28:1-4)
Isaac knew the importance of preserving the covenantal blessings first given by YHWH God to his father Abraham and then passed on to him. Isaac realized that now was the time to bequeath to Jacob and his descendants those covenantal blessings promised by God.
Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau. (Genesis 28:5)
Insert map https://headwatersresources.org/map-of-jacobs-journey-to-haran-and-back/
The consequences of these family events hit home hard with Esau.
Now Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, “Do not marry a Canaanite woman,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Paddan Aram. Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; so, he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had. (Genesis 28:6-9)
Well, one has to give Esau some credit for trying, I suppose. Recognizing that his only hope for gaining back some favour with his parents was to correct the wrongs he had done in marrying Canaanite women, Esau concluded that he needed to marry a relative. He should’ve just apologized but he didn’t. Instead, he went to his father Isaac’s brother, his Uncle Ishmael, and took one of Ishmael’s daughters as his third wife. Again, though, Esau had acted unwisely for he did that without consulting beforehand with his parents. His plan didn’t work as his parents remained unhappy with his choices. We will come across Esau later in the Book of Genesis but now, for several chapters, Genesis next focuses on Jacob’s trip to his family in located in the area of Paddan Adam, near the city of Harran, in northwest Mesopotamia, the things that happened along the way, Jacob’s experiences there, and then his return to Canaan. These chapters are filled with fascinating, intriguing stories. They started with Jacob, having been instructed by his father Isaac to embrace YHWH God’s covenant and its blessings for himself and his descendants, set out in obedience. Jacob would change as a result. The first step to his transformation into a servant of YHWH’s lay in the fact that he got moving. The lesson for us to realize is that often we saw we want to experience God, but we remain glued to our couches and in our comfort-zones. We need to get moving! in wanting to experience God is to get off our couches and away from our comfort-zones and get moving. So,
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 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.” (Genesis 28:10-15)
God here restated and promised to Jacob the covenant He had made with grandfather Abraham and father Isaac. In his dream, Jacob saw God at the top of the ladder and heard Him talking to him. As angels went down and up the ladder going from heaven to earth, doing God’s work and reporting on things to God, God’s message to Jacob was, “I am here. You can see me. I am accessible and my covenantal blessings are for you. Remember my words!”
Some commentators point out that whereas in the Tower of Babel episode in Genesis 11, humans had decided on their own to reach heaven and be like God but failed miserably, here God reached down from heaven to earth. As long as God is involved, there is a way to heaven, but it is not based on human effort. Jacob was all alone in his journey, or so he thought, but God was with him and would be with him in all of his trials and experiences. Jacob’s dream of a ladder from this world to heaven and into God’s presence became a story of hope and assurance for him, but it also became a powerful source of encouragement for others journeying through life.
African-American slaves in the United States, despite attempts by their white slaveowners to submit and be passive at all times, used the stories of the Bible to gain strength and hope as they lived through their miserable existence. Slaves were not permitted to speak while working in the fields so instead they sang spirituals they had made up. Having embraced Christianity, the slaves found hope in hearing of Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching into heaven and to God, and they formed a spiritual which was well known by the late 1700’s. The spiritual known as “Jacob’s Ladder”, widely sung in the cotton fields by the slaves as they toiled, brought to them the message of valuing perseverance. As they went on through the life, the spiritual reminded them, they were getting closer to God, overcoming their trials, and ultimately achieving freedom. Using the biblical teaching that believers are soldiers fighting injustice and evil, the traditional lyrics held out hope that the slave could step up, drawing closer to God, and eventually escape slavery. It was a call to service of Jesus as they persevered through life by climbing the ladder God had provided them.
“We are climbing Jacob’s ladder. (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
Every round goes higher, higher. (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
Children, do you love my Jesus? (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
If you love him, why not serve him? (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
Rise, shine, give God glory. (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder (3x) Soldiers of the cross.”
Returning now to the Biblical text, many centuries after Jacob’s dream of that ladder to heaven, someone else in the Bible commented on Jacob’s dream of God, the angels, and the ladder. That later person was Jesus, who identified himself as the ladder, the way, to God and to heaven. The setting for that revelation was this: John the Baptist had disciples who travelled with him. When John was baptizing people in the Jordan River, and right at the start of his Gospel ministry, Jesus went to see him. John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, but he also pointed to Jesus and said to his disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Andrew and Philip were two of John’s disciples who later became part of Jesus’ own set of 12 disciples. Hearing that Jesus was as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Andrew, excitedly brought his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus. Meanwhile, Philip told his good friend Nathanael about Jesus. Nathanael was intrigued but when Jesus went to Nathanael and told him of a vision he had had of him sitting underneath a fig tree, Nathanael was blown away in wonder. who then shows up and tells Nathanael that He saw him under the tree before arriving there. All that information combined to convince Nathanael that Jesus was special, and he responded by saying to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” Jesus countered.
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” (John 1:50,51)
Jesus is the ladder to heaven, the connection to it from this world. He later expanded on this by telling his disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14:6)
Friends, Jesus is the ladder to heaven, our way to God. God is standing at the top of the ladder, watching over you as you live your life, waiting for you to come to Him, talking to you and giving you instruction. Are you listening to Him? And are you stepping higher, moving closer to Him? Jacob made a vow to do exactly that. Concluding that story…
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 Jacob 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 household, 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.” (Genesis 28:16-22)
Jacob set apart that place as holy, acknowledging that God’s presence was revealed to him here. Beth-el – “house of God” – Bethel would become a key location in Israel’s history, a center of worship. The African-Americans who worshipped God did so where they were, trusting Him for His guidance, mercy, and salvation. As Christians, we don’t need any shrines or special places in which to worship God. They are nice but aren’t what we are called to. What we are called by God to do is step out in obedience to Him and in anticipation of the blessings He will bring to us. God is calling us to, in the words of the Jacob’s Ladder spiritual be soldiers who are climbing Jacob’s ladder and getting closer to God as we go higher and higher.
“Children, do you love my Jesus? (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
If you love him, why not serve him? (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
Rise, shine, give God glory. (3x) Soldiers of the cross.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder (3x) Soldiers of the cross.”
Let’s pray…
