Genesis 28

¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. ¹¹ 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. ¹² 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! ¹³ And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” ¹⁷ 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.” ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. ²⁰ 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, ²¹ so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, ²² 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.”

The Hutterite Chronicle is an important book that tells the story of Anabaptist followers of Jesus and the many trials and persecutions they faced. Harold Bender passes on a beautiful comment from “a moving account written in 1542 and taken from the ancient Hutterian chronicle where it is found at the close of a report of 2,173 brethren and sisters who gave their lives for their faith.” The comment about these martyrs is this: “Their faith blossomed as a lily, their loyalty as a rose, their piety and sincerity as the flower of the garden of God.”[1]

What a testimony to these brave men and women. What a witness! Would that such could be said of us. Perhaps it still could be!

Irenaeus, the great father of the early church, once said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”[2] To be sure, the glory of God is more than this and greater than this, but Irenaeus is certainly correct that God’s glory is magnified in lives lived in harmony with God. How then, do we get there? How do we exhibit the glory of God and live a life that looks like a flower of the garden of God?

Life must be lived in forward movement into God’s promise and empowered by the upward movement of God’s dynamic presence.

Jacob is now on the run. He is going to his mother’s family, to the house of Laban where he is to find a bride. But he is running from the fractured home of his upbringing and, specifically, the wrath of his older brother Esau who has expressed his intent to kill Jacob once their father, Isaac, dies. Along the way, as Genesis 28 records, something powerful and fascinating happens to Jacob.

¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. ¹¹ 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. ¹² 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! ¹³ And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” ¹⁷ 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.” ¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. ²⁰ 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, ²¹ so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, ²² 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.”

Here is one of the most famous scenes in all of scripture: Jacob’s ladder. Jacob, weary with sleep, uses a stone for a pillow and goes to sleep. He then dreams and sees the ladder stretching up to heaven, angels ascending and descending and God at the top. How should we envision this in our own minds? Gerhard Von Rad writes that “we should not think of an actual ladder” because “[t]he Hebrew word (sullam, from salal, ‘heap up’) points to a ramp, or, in any case, a kind of stairlike pavement.”[3]

Regardless, there is some means of ascent and descent and it is alive with heavenly traffic, angels in constant movement. Most importantly, God is present there and He speaks the word of the covenant promise to Jacob, pulling him into the great triumvirate of patriarchs who received the promise. God’s framing of the covenant in this instance is particularly powerful:

¹³ And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ 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.”

I love this. I love God’s emphasis on His presence with Jacob: “I am with you…[I] will keep you…[I] will bring you back to this land…I will not leave you.” Jacob is on a journey, but his journey does not break the covenant. God will bring him back. This emphasis on God’s presence wherever Jacob goes may be what led Rabbi Rashi to see two types of angels in the vision: the angels who were ascending, or going up, were angels who were with and protected Jacob in the land and the angels who descended, or came down, were those who protected Jacob outside of the land of promise.[4]

God was saying that He would never leave Jacob and that the promise still stood. Jacob, in turn, was overwhelmed. “Divine reality assaulted his quivering soul,” writes R. Kent Hughes.[5] Yes! And, as a result, he was strengthened for his journey.

Put another way, the upward movement of God’s presence empowered and emboldened Jacob for his forward movement toward God’s promise.

Each part of this was vitally important to Jacob living life like a flower in the garden of God: upward to God, onward toward His promise.

We must reclaim both components of Jacob’s vision for the right and beautiful ordering and living of life. R.R. Reno puts it well when he writes:

The two movements—forward toward a wife and upward toward God who transcends space and time—operate together in the life of Jacob. After all, although the ladder reaches upward, he is not called to ascend the ladder in order to leave his worldly life behind. He does not stop and remain in his place of vision. He offers worship, makes a vow, and then continues on his way.

            Because the bodily, historical dimension of the covenant cannot be separated from the transcendent and spiritual aspect, we need to avoid separating the realities of life from a love of God. Jacob’s desires are distorted by sin, but the basic direction of his worldly aspirations is essentially compatible with his divine inheritance. Jacob is not called up and out of life. Grace perfects rather than destroys nature.[6]

Yes, upward and forward. The upward enables the forward. God’s presence in our lives equips us to live, to move, to progress. We must understand this or we will be doomed to repeat continuously certain tragic errors.

Error #1: The Separation of the Upward Movement from the Forward Movement—Hypocrisy

One error is to see the upward movement (God’s presence) as detached from and separated from the forward movement of life and its demands. This detachment, this separation, has a name: hypocrisy. When we try to put the upward component of our lives over in this compartment (call it our religious or spiritual lives) and put the forward movement of our lives over in this compartment (call it “real” life or practical day-to-day living) and keep those two compartments separate, we set ourselves up to be hypocrites.

Jacob did not see this ecstatic vision as a powerful spiritual moment that happened back there in Bethel. On the contrary, he saw it as the animating vision and experience that equipped him to move forward.

Jacob knew nothing of the so-called spiritual/secular distinction that modern Americans speak of. There was no realm of his life not informed by and empowered by God’s presence!

When the upward is detached from the forward then hypocrisy ensues and the upward, no matter how passionately we might talk about it in our “religious moments,” is shown to be inconsequential to our lives. Theodore Jennings wrote one of the most chilling statements I’ve ever read. He wrote:

People learn to be atheists not from too much contact with the world, but from too much contact with the church. No number of closely reasoned proofs for the existence of God will ever overcome the impression gained Sunday after Sunday that our prayers are addressed to ourselves[7]

Separate the upward from the forward and it really is all about you. God, in such a scenario, becomes at best a game.

Error #2: The Rejection of the Upward Movement in Favor of the Forward Movement—Materialism

A second error is to simply reject the upward movement altogether. Jacob, like a good modern person, could have simply concluded that at the wrong time before dinner before he went to bed or that he simply had a really trippy dream. Jacob could have woken up, said “Well, that was weird!”, and then gotten back to his business of finding a wife. He could have, in other words, written off this powerful moment from God as simply an unexplainable transcendental experience.

It is amazing how many modern people ignore the voice of God, turn a blind eye toward the evidences of God all around us, and then press on as if life really is a matter of blind materialism and chance. When we close the door on these Bethel moments, we refuse to hear the voice of God.

When many people say that cannot hear the voice of God what they really mean is they will not hear it.

Indeed, you can come to church week after week and shut your ears to the voice of the Spirit of Almighty God. You can explain away the spiritual as wish-projection or “the opiate of the masses,” or as some kind of hallucination.

When we reject the upward we gut the forward of all meaning.

Error #3: The Rejection of the Forward Movement in Favor of the Upward Movement—Mysticism/Religiosity

On the other hand, some people reject the forward movement of life in favor of the upward religious experience. These are the people who love religion. They love spiritual experiences. They love ecstaticism. Religion is their drug. They cannot move forward because they are stuck trying to recreate Jacob’s ladder. They are chasing a vision, a dream, a miracle. These are the people who abandon the forward for the upward. They do not have time for a job, or to care rightly for their families, or to contribute to society, or to create, because they believe that their job is to sit in the pastures of their own religious emotionalism and try desperately to conjure up another great moment.

What they fail to see is this: Jacob woke up and moved forward.

Again, he did not wake up, move forward, and leave the vision behind. No, not at all! It was because of the vision that he was able to move forward with hope and joy and determination and faith!

Religious epiphanies and experiences are not incidental. They are determinative. They are generative. They enable us and equip us. They do, in other words, what they intend for us to do.

Let us be clear: had Jacob woken up and put up that stone and poured oil on it and refused to move forward he would have dishonored the vision and shown that he completely misunderstood what God was saying to him!

You do not honor God by chasing ecstatic visions and experiences. You honor God by allowing His reminders that He is with us, powerful though they are, to wake us up and move us forward!

The Russian philosopher and theologian Vladimir Solovyov wrote, “The highest aim for Christianity is not ascetic detachment from the natural life but its hallowing and purification…The purpose of Christianity is not to destroy life, but to raise it towards God who comes down to meet it.”[8]

Amen and amen!

For the upward movement of God’s presence not to dissolve into mysticism or religiosity, it must be defined and shaped by Jesus.

To understand Jacob’s vision and our own experiences rightly, we must use the wider light of later revelation to help us define it more clearly. The God who Jacob saw at the top of that ladder has a name and has a Son. In an absolutely fascinating passage from John 1, Jesus alludes to Jacob’s ladder in a surprising way. Listen:

⁴⁷ Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸ 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.” ⁴⁹ Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰ 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.” ⁵¹ 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.”

Nathanael, amazed at Jesus’ knowledge and power, worships and extols Him. Jesus, in reply, in essence says, “Nathanael, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” and then says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

What? Amazing! Jesus likens Himself to the ladder on which the angels ascend and descend. Johannes Brenz, the 16^thcentury German reformer from Wurttemberg, observed:

Christ here interprets himself to be the ladder which Jacob saw in his sleep…This ladder is Christ, who fills all things…Accordingly, however many strive to ascend into heaven are able to ascend by this one ladder, beyond which there is no other way to those things which are above…The Lord leans on the ladder because Christ is God, and all good things of God are in Christ.[9]

The danger with religious experience is that, without definition and shape, it merely serves to satiate the general sense of religiosity in the hearts of human beings. N.D. Wilson once wrote that “people assume that God is diffident and distant, with all the personality of the Great Gray Yawn in the Sky. On the other, people act like God is their personal gnome of narrative manipulation.”[10] Wilson is correct: without proper and God-revealed definition, we tend to manipulate our understanding of God, even in the aftermath of genuine encounters with Him, toward this or that end, always with our own assumptions and desires in mind.

What Jesus says in John 1:51 is important therefore because it gives shape to Jacob’s ladder. It reminds us that religious experience is only authentic and from God if it points us to and looks like Jesus.

Jesus is the ladder by which we come to God! Jesus is the ladder by which God comes to us, and the cross is the work that makes it possible! “Planted at the top of the world,” Peter Leithart writes, “the cross is a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on the Son of man.”[11]

Jacob did not know the name of Jesus the Messiah, but it was Jesus he was seeing. So, too, if our religious moments and spiritual experiences and visions are truly from God, it is Jesus that is being shown to us.

Religion that is not cross-shaped is counterfeit, for only Christ can truly bring us to God.

Are you seeing an experience out of the gospel—the good news that God in Christ is reconciling the world to Himself? Are you wanting to be spiritual but outside of the cross? Then you are chasing a mirage.

Do you want to see Jacob’s ladder, that enlightening and empowering encounter with God that equips you for the living of life? Then come to Jesus, for He is the ladder! Do you want to see angels ascending and descending? Then come to Jesus, for they ascend and descend upon Him!

 

[1] Bender, Harold. The Anabaptist Vision (pp. 7-8). CrossReach Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[2] Quoted in Proeschold-Bell, Rae Jean. Faithful and Fractured: Responding to the Clergy Health Crisis. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis. Revised Edition. The Old Testament Library. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1972), p.284.

[4] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26. The New American Commentary. Old Testament, vol. 1B (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, Publishers, 2005), p.450.

[5] R. Kent Hughes, Genesis. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), p.359.

[6] R.R. Reno, Genesis. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), p.29-233.

[7] Quoted in Dan R. Crawford, The Prayer-Shaped Disciple. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), p.144.

[8] Quoted in Peters, Greg. The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality (p. 107). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[9] Craig S. Farmer, ed., John 1-12. Reformation Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed., Timothy George. New Testament IV (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), p.63.

[10] Wilson, N. D.. Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent (p. 5). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

[11] https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2011/04/christ-and-him-crucified