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Weeks after winning my license, I crashed my car. It was a wet night and my friends and I decided it would be fun to drift around corners with wheels spinning. I lost control, the front of the car hammered into a high curb, and the steering was wrecked.
I limped the car home, too ashamed and embarrassed to tell my parents. I drove it first thing in the morning to the repairers in town. The mechanic hoisted it up and showed me how I’d bent the wheels and steering arms. Repair would be very costly.
I remember pacing the wet streets car-less, wondering where on earth I would find the repair money and still too ashamed to tell my family. For just a few hours I felt unusually helpless, almost nauseous with worry and loneliness. Looking back, I see how unnecessary my suffering was. All the help in the world was all around me, and I was blind to it.
So it is with Jacob in the book of Genesis.
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran (Gen. 28:10).
What tragedy we read in these few words. Jacob was born into a rich and loving family. But he tricked his twin brother out of his birthright (Gen. 25) and then pulled a seriously devious and nasty deception on his blind father, tricking Isaac into giving him Esau’s covenant blessing (Gen. 27). So now Jacob is fleeing Beersheba, his home in the south of the Promised Land, to Haran in the strange and distant north: beyond Galilee, beyond Syria and Damascus, right up near Assyria and the Euphrates River.
Jacob means “Grasper.” Grasper had betrayed his family. And by lying and cheating and dishonoring his father, he had also dishonored God. What had he accomplished? A family in humiliation and disarray. He himself running, alone, and far, far from home.
Remember, this is the father of Israel. According to the principle of corporate identity as explained in Hebrews 7:1-10, the entire nation was physically latent within him at that moment. Jacob is Israel. Grasper personifies the church. What is true of him is true of the church.
What is true of Jacob is true of the church.
And 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 lay down in that place to sleep (Gen. 28:11).
After fleeing all day, night falls with no motel or friendly house nearby. In verse 20 Jacob prays for “food to eat and clothes to wear.” So we see a lonely, guilty, destitute man. He lies in the open air with a rock for a pillow. He is exhausted physically, morally, spiritually, and relationally. This by nature is you. This by nature is your church.
Sleeping on rocks gives anyone strange dreams. God gives Jacob a vision. It is a kind of apocalypse; God pulls aside the curtain to show Jacob what is going on behind his desolate circumstances.
God showed Jacob a staircase joining heaven and earth.
And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. 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” (Gen. 28:12-13a).
God cast our rebellious parents, and thus us, out of Eden. Cherubim wielding blazing swords barred the way back (Gen. 3:24). Humanity, and not least Jacob at this point, live within the desolation of that separation. But God showed Jacob a staircase joining heaven and earth.
The people of Babel attempted something like this, to build a tower to reconnect heaven and earth, to manufacture greatness and security (Gen. 11:1-9). But it was human-made and prideful, and God razed it. If God separated humanity from heaven, what can we do to bridge the gulf?
We cannot reach up to God, but he can reach down to us. That is the staircase.
Why are angels dashing up and down it? “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14). They rush down with God’s word and salvation (Heb. 2:2), and rush back up with our prayers (Rev. 8:4). The staircase establishes communication between Jacob and heaven. It is a conduit of help—of salvation.
The One who speaks to Jacob is “the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac.” He made that unbreakable promise to Abraham:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” (Gen 12:1-2)
At that point Jacob must have doubted those promises. “Land? Great nation? Great name? Blessing? I’m an exile from the land. My ‘great name’ is Grasper. I’m cursed, not blessed!” Jacob had betrayed family and God and had lost everything. Yet God was working right then even in Jacob’s betrayal and desolation to fulfill his promise. God was there, heaven and earth were joined. God’s ministering servants rushed up and down for Jacob.
How gracious God is! How kind, patient, and longsuffering. How wise and mighty that what we intend as evil he intends for our good (Gen. 50:20).
God would fulfill his promise through Jacob.
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. 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” (Gen. 28:13b-15).
God reiterates that he will make a vast people for himself, from all corners of the globe, to be a blessing to the nations. God would go with them, watch over them, and relentlessly accomplish his promise beginning with Jacob himself.
In all the hardships that Jacob’s exile would bring—his battle with Laban, home dramas, more poor decisions springing from his diehard manipulative habits—God says “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will fulfill my promise and bring you back to this land.”
The Lord is with Jacob, even in the bad place where Jacob found himself.
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (Gen. 28:16).
Jacob speaks geographically. Grandfather Abraham had been a Chaldean pagan (Josh. 24:14-15), from a people who believed in localized deities. Likely Jacob thought, “The Lord is God of Beersheba. I didn’t think his jurisdiction extended this far. But it does!”
Note the double entendre. Grasper’s decisions had put him in a bad “place,” both geographically and spiritually. But the staircase showed him, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” again both geographically and spiritually. When God’s people are in a bad “place,” even a bad place of our own making, we must nevertheless say, “Surely the Lord is in this place.”
God’s angels were coming and going, ministering to Jacob.
And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” 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 (Gen. 28:17-19).
Jacob stopped near what was or would be the city of Luz. He himself named it Bethel, which means “House of God.” Jacob realized God was right there and that shook him. “I am evil, and yet I am in the presence of the holy God!”
Note this carefully: God didn’t build that staircase that night. It was there the whole time. What changed was Jacob getting a vision of it. Because God promised to bless Jacob, he joined earth to heaven and had been right there with him the whole time, his angels coming and going, energetically ministering to him.
We have a huge advantage over Jacob.
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. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you” (Gen. 28:20-22).
Jacob’s vow sounds like it is focused on what God can give him: food, clothing, and restoration. Instead of confession and repentance he attempts a deal with God (and you only make deals when you think you have something that the other person wants or needs). But Jacob had nothing that God wanted or needed. God has everything; Grasper had nothing but his sin. So, God had much more work to do on him.
We have a huge advantage over Jacob. We can look back to Genesis 28 through the 1,800 years of revelation that followed. Let’s now jump to AD 30, and a scene both comical and sublime.
Jesus Christ has just called Philip to follow him. Philip brings the great news to his friend Nathanael,
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” (John 1:45-46)
While Jacob saw the vision, Nathanael would see the reality.
See the parallel with Jacob? A man hears about God’s provision, but he can’t see the truth, and acts improperly: Jacob with deceit, Nathanael with parochial snobbery. God was there and he didn’t know it.
“Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’” This is not just “Come and meet him,” but, “Open your eyes, my friend!”
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael 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.” (John 1:47-48)
Jesus is saying, “Nathanael, though you didn’t know it, I was there the whole time. I am with you.”
Nathanael 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? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:49-51)
Jesus is saying, “Nathanael, you will have a revelation. You will see what Jacob saw. Although he saw a vision, you will see the reality. You will see the angels ascending and descending on me. You will see that I am the bridge between heaven and earth. You will see that all of God’s promised blessings will come through me.”
Christian, you are standing at the gate of heaven!
I recall that wet day, seemingly a lifetime ago, those few hours of shame, loneliness, and helplessness. I was blind. I had a loving mother and father right there, more than willing and able to carry me through the trial. And in your time of pain and trial right now, or as you struggle as a church, lift up your heads to see this heavenly vision.
Though you are lonely, you are standing at the gate of heaven and it is open before you. “But my own poor decisions, and those of others, have put me here.” That was true of Jacob, yet he was the whole time in the presence of heaven. And so we are, for God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). Christ is there, right with you. All the angels of God are ascending and descending upon Christ, for your help and your blessing.
And as a church struggles—and every true church must struggle—heaven’s stairway joins her to heaven and all heaven's mercy and safety. The stairway is not built by our faithfulness, but God’s promise. The stairway is not our obedience and steadfastness, but the person of Christ come down to rescue us from our sin and rebellion.
God’s people, wherever you are and wherever you are at, look up now with eyes of faith to Jesus Christ, and “you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).
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Campbell Markham has been a pastor in the Australian Presbyterian Church for over twenty-two years and lives in Perth, Western Australia. He blogs at Campbell Markham: Thoughts and Letters.
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