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Genesis 28:10-22, John 1:43-51
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 ladder1 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 it2 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,3 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.”
[1] 28:12
[2] 28:13
[3] 28:19
(ESV)
43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 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.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 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,1 you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
I invite you, if you have a Bible, to turn to Genesis 27. We'll be looking at chapter 27 and 28. Last week, we began looking at the life of Jacob and how Jacob stole the blessing of his brother Esau by pretending to be him, and he went through this elaborate scheme. He wore Esau's clothes, put lamb skin on his his arms and behind his neck, and he made some of the stew, or his mom made some of the stew that his dad would like, and, all just in order to deceive his dad and to get the blessing of the firstborn. And actually, this desire to be blessed is going to be the all consuming desire in Jacob's life.
Jeffrey Heine:You cannot make sense of his life apart from understanding this need that he has to be blessed. So how did it all work out for Jacob? Did he get everything he wanted? Is that hole in his heart now filled? That's what we're gonna look at this morning.
Jeffrey Heine:And we couldn't put everything in the worship guide from this point on as we're going through Genesis. The narratives are so long, we only could put a part of it. So I'm actually gonna begin reading though in chapter 27, begin beginning in verse 41. Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are approaching.
Jeffrey Heine:Then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebecca. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, behold your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise.
Jeffrey Heine:Flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while until your brother's fury turns away. Until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day? Now go to chapter 28 and begin reading in verse 10.
Jeffrey Heine:Jacob left Beersheba and he went toward Haran 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 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, the God of Isaac.
Jeffrey Heine: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.
Jeffrey Heine:Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. And he was afraid. He 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 he set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.
Jeffrey Heine:He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 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. This is the word of the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:Thanks be to God. You would pray with me. Father, we pray that you would honor the very reading of your word, that even now it will begin to do its work through your spirit, that you would begin to change us. I pray that the result of this time gathered together with our brothers and sisters in Christ would be that we grow in our affections of you. And now I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Jeffrey Heine:But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So you can't really steal a blessing, can you? I mean after all of the lies and the deceptions, things we see don't really work out too well for Jacob here.
Jeffrey Heine:His life begins to fall apart at the seams. Esau now wants to kill him. The one person that actually does love him, his mom, he will never see again, because he has to flee and he flees penniless. So although technically technically he he has now received this fought after blessing, one that would promise him vast riches and kingship. It actually, well, the result of that blessing is that he has to leave penniless, scared, alone, friendless.
Jeffrey Heine:And although once again his dad technically blessed him, his dad actually still seems to despise him. I mean, he shows such disdain for Jacob that he sends him away with absolutely nothing. He's sending them away on a 500 mile dangerous journey without any money or provisions. So Jacob is now at the lowest point of his life. Esau, who remember didn't get the blessing, he actually gets to stay behind in the promised land living off his father's wealth in his father's house.
Jeffrey Heine:He seems to still be the blessed one at this point. Now before we really dig into this story, I want to ask you this question. How do you feel about Jacob at this point? How do you feel about him? Do you think he gets what he deserves here?
Jeffrey Heine:Or do you feel a little sorry for him? I mean he did lie, he did cheat, and he's not like he was cheating at monopoly or something like this. This was a big deal. What he did was more akin to this, going to a nursing home and conning an old, feeble disabled man out of his inheritance. It's about as evil as you can get.
Jeffrey Heine:That's what Jacob did. Yet, he only did this because he wanted his father's blessing. He wanted for once in his entire life to be treated like Esau. To have his father look at him with love and affirm who he is and what God's plan is for his life. Yet, he lied and he cheated for it.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, we're we're conflicted when we look at his life. It's complicated. We're not really sure how we're supposed to feel about Jacob at this point. I do know this, that probably most of us in this room can identify with him. When you look at some of the hurts that you have received in this life that you've experienced, some of them are 100% your fault.
Jeffrey Heine:Completely the result of your own sin. You cannot blame anyone else for the pain that you are in. But I bet there's some other pains in your life that you were not responsible for. You didn't do anything wrong, but other people did something wrong and you were hurt in the process. And actually, what I have found is I've observed life is that most of our pain is a mixture of these things.
Jeffrey Heine:That that we're in a world of hurt. Yes. Because we have sinned and we brought pain in our life. And, we were wronged by other people and they have brought pain into our life. Make no mistake.
Jeffrey Heine:When you sin, it's a 100% on you. You are 100% responsible when you sin, but you're not 100% responsible for your woundedness. Usually, it's both through your sin and the sin of others. Lauren and I, we have a family member, not our kids. I feel like I have to say this when they hear.
Jeffrey Heine:But, yeah, I mean, pray for PKs, and they have it hard. We have a family member, not one of our children, who is an alcoholic. And, he became an alcoholic at the age of 13, because of a wound essentially that was dealt him. And it was his way of coping with the severity of that wound. And he has made a total mess of his life drinking it away, making poor decision after poor decision.
Jeffrey Heine:And I have such conflicting emotions when I'm with him. There are times I just wanna reach out and I want to hug him. And, there are times I want to hit him. I wanna do both. I wanna hug him just for the woundedness that he has, and then I wanna hit him for the sin that he continues in.
Jeffrey Heine:Some of you you can identify with this. This is where some of you are right now. Perhaps your marriage is an absolute train wreck and it's causing you a whole lot of pain. Like Jacob, you would love nothing more than to have somebody look at you with deep affection and love and affirm who you are. But you know that, well that's likely never going to happen.
Jeffrey Heine:Due to the sins that you've committed. Perhaps some of the sins that you think might even be unforgivable. And so when you look at your relationship and you think, who's to blame? Well, you are. Your sin.
Jeffrey Heine:Yet at the same time, you were acting out of a wound that was already there. But you didn't respond to that wound by going to God, you responded in sin. Perhaps you have an addiction. Maybe it's an addiction to porn or an addiction to shopping or a substance addiction. And this addiction has consumed you.
Jeffrey Heine:It promised you a blessing. I'll bless you if you do this, but it ultimately brought nothing but a curse and a wrecked life. Who's to blame? Well, that sin, it's on you. It's on you.
Jeffrey Heine:But, of course, the reason you this temptation to go to that addiction was there was because you were already wounded and you're trying to cope. This is how we often deal with our woundedness. It it lowers our resistance to temptation instead of driving us to God. And if this isn't you, I bet you know people who is just who are just like this and you don't know whether to hug them or to slap them. And that's how we are with Jacob.
Jeffrey Heine:We don't know whether to hug him or to hit him. We only know this, he is in pain. He is in a lot of pain. Some of it's self inflicted. A lot of it's self inflicted.
Jeffrey Heine:And, some of the pain was from wounds he's carried from a from a father who never loved him. But, he did not respond to this woundedness in a righteous way. So the question is this, how does God deal with people like this? How does he deal with the Jacobs of this world? Deal with people who, in their woundedness, will not turn to him to be healed, but instead, rebel against him in sin.
Jeffrey Heine:And by going to sin, make things much, much worse. Do we have a God who says, go at it. You're gonna get what you deserve. Or do we have a God who comes after us? Well, let's look.
Jeffrey Heine:Verse 11. Verse 11 says that Jacob came to a certain place. You can underline that word place. It's actually used 6 times in this brief story here. It's a theme here.
Jeffrey Heine:It's just a place. It's a reason, there's a reason this place is not named at this point, because there's nothing special about it. It's in the middle of nowhere. Jacob is utterly alone and he's neither here. He's neither there.
Jeffrey Heine:Today we would say he's in transition. He's in transition. He's he's come from some place but he hasn't arrived at whatever destination he wants to arrive at. It was customary during this day that if you were traveling, you could always count on the kindness of strangers. That every night, strangers would be invited into people's homes to sleep there.
Jeffrey Heine:They would be fed. But Jacob doesn't have that here, which either means that this place is so isolated that no one else is around or perhaps nobody wants to be near Jacob. We're not sure. We only know this, he's alone. The sun sets.
Jeffrey Heine:Jacob tries to make camp. By that, I mean he just lies down. He just lies down and he lays, when he lays down, he uses a rock for a pillow. Now, how stupid is that? Alright.
Jeffrey Heine:Any of you ever ever, when you have gone camping, have used a rock for a pillow? No. I mean, you wouldn't you would never use that. You you Even if you don't bring one of those little inflatable pillows, you know, with you, you're going to roll up an extra blanket. You're gonna roll up some extra clothes.
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna do whatever it is and you're gonna lie down on that. You're absolutely not gonna use a rock unless you have absolutely nothing. Nothing else. And that's just the author's way here of kind of artistically telling us, Jacob had no other options. All the possessions he had was he was wearing.
Jeffrey Heine:He didn't even have an extra shirt that he could roll up and use for a pillow. Well, the the real miracle of the story is not the vision. It's that he was actually able to sleep. Alright? He was somehow.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. I mean, I at our house, you go to our bedroom. We have, I don't know, maybe like a 116 pillows on our bed. I used to think at one time that those pillows were just decorative, and then as you get older, you realize, no, you actually use all of them every night, Propping up different body parts and stuff to try to get comfortable. Jacob doesn't have any of that.
Jeffrey Heine:He's only 40. No no arthritis yet, no bad back, he can lay down, use a stone for a pillow and he actually falls asleep. Now, up to this point, God has never appeared to him. God has never spoken to him. And I want you to just take time to think about that.
Jeffrey Heine:Jacob has lived his entire life unloved by his earthly father. And he's never known his heavenly father. He's been fatherless this time. Felt fatherless this time. And not only that, but he gets to hear all these stories from his granddaddy Abraham and his dad Isaac about their great faith in this God.
Jeffrey Heine:And yet they were terrible fathers. Isaac was a terrible father to him. So why would he ever care about this God that Isaac told him about? Plus, he had never heard from him. Never even a peep.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, I can only imagine the woundedness that he has felt after 40 years of this. So he's hopeless. Once again, he he could not be in a worse position than he's in here. And yet when he is sleeping, this is when God appears to him. God gives him this strange, this remarkable dream here.
Jeffrey Heine:He sees this giant staircase or ramp going up to heaven. Your Bibles might translate it latter, but there's likely a footnote there. It's a really hard word to translate because it is the only time this word is ever used, ever. And so at that point translators are essentially playing Mad Libs. I mean it's just a blank and they're filling it in with whatever they think.
Jeffrey Heine:There's something there reaching to the heavens. It's a ramp. It's a ladder. Something gigantic going up to the sky. That's the idea here.
Jeffrey Heine:And there's angels traveling on it. On this this ramp or likely this ziggurat. There's there's angels, probably 1,000 of them ascending and descending this. So what does this mean? Well, what God is doing here is he is showing Jacob that although it seems like God is distant, that God is not involved in the things of this world, not involved in Jacob's life, He's actually near and he's actually working and he's doing a whole lot behind the scenes.
Jeffrey Heine:We see here that God's messengers, his angels, don't think of angels as like, you know, babies playing harps, you know, with wings. This is, these these are his royal messengers. The people who are doing his bidding and his work. And they're going back and forth between heaven and earth doing this work. And so we see here the heaven and earth they are connected.
Jeffrey Heine:God working, God giving orders, God making declarations, God receiving information. He's doing all of the things that a king does. Legions of angels coming and going at his command. And when Jacob sees this vision, his entire world view is shattered at this point because he now understands that although his life is a wreck, and although he is in the middle of nowhere and he is going nowhere, he is not alone and God is at work. God is at work.
Jeffrey Heine:Church, it's easy to forget that. Isn't it? It's really easy to forget this, that God is actually at work in this world, that he's doing things, he's orchestrating everything towards his own end. It takes faith to believe this because you're not gonna hear this outside of these walls. If you leave this place and you go home and you bring out your tablet or you open up your computer and you read the news, what are you gonna read?
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna you're gonna read about all these articles about, you know, Iran, China, the coronavirus, immigration, the election, some celebrity who's died, some global crisis somewhere, something about the economy. You're gonna read all of these articles, but God will not be mentioned one time in it all. Not once. Think of that. The creator and the sustainer of all the universe.
Jeffrey Heine:The one who we owe our very next breath. The one who commands the sun to rise and the one to set is not even going to get a footnote in those articles that you read because the vast majority of the world thinks God has nothing to do with those things. If there is a God, he's certainly not involved in things like that. So if God's mentioned, it'll be in the religion section, which is right next to the comics. It's blasphemy what it is.
Jeffrey Heine:That we don't believe that God is so involved in every single thing. But here in this dream, God tells us what the papers are not reporting. God is at work. He's actually working in our midst. He's in complete control of everything.
Jeffrey Heine:And just for a brief moment, God peels back the curtain and He lets Jacob see it. And not only is God working, but he's near. He comes near to us when we least expect it. He comes to us when we're in between places. You know we spend all of our life trying to get to this next stage and we keep thinking once I get to this next stage, then I could live a blessed life.
Jeffrey Heine:Then things will settle down for me. But God here, he doesn't wait. God often does this. It's when your life is a mess, when you're in transition, when you least expect it, is when God shows up. Any of you like this?
Jeffrey Heine:Are you in a place like this? If so, don't lose hope. The heavens are opened up. God is there. The ladder is there, connecting Heaven and Earth together.
Jeffrey Heine:Look at verse 13. And behold, the Lord stood above it. Stop right there. The Lord stood above it. Once again, your Bibles, they probably have a little footnote there, saying that you can also translate this not as above it but as by Him.
Jeffrey Heine:Above it or by Him. And actually, that is how most contemporary scholars translate this. Translate it as, and behold the Lord stood by him. So Jacob, he's looking up. He's looking up and he is seeing, this tower, not that God is up there in heaven, but that the Lord has actually come down this ramp, down this staircase to come and to be next to him.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, up to this point, up to this point we we have never seen Jacob at all even seek after God, but here we see God actually coming down to him. All we've seen from Jacob at this point is deceitfulness, lying, cheating, emptiness, total lack of faith. And God says, I've got you right where I want you. And He comes and He blesses him. Don't ever think you are too far removed for God to come to you.
Jeffrey Heine:God's grace is like a river. It flows to the lowest places. And you see that over and over in scripture. His grace goes forward like a river and it is going to go down to the lowest of the low. God's grace goes to the Jacobs of this world.
Jeffrey Heine:Now in this dream, God tells Jacob several things. 1st, he says, I'm gonna give you all this land. Then he says, I'm gonna give you all this offspring. And then finally he says this, and this is big. Finally, he says that he will be with him.
Jeffrey Heine:Look at verse
Connor Coskery:15.
Jeffrey Heine:Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. Stop right there. I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. Now, this is the first time that the Lord ever says this to anyone. It's the reason he says, behold.
Jeffrey Heine:Because he's declaring something new here, something that the world has never heard before. Behold, I am with you. God never says this to Noah. He never says this to Abraham. He never says this to Isaac, but he does so for Jacob.
Jeffrey Heine:Once again, this river of grace is flowing down to this lowest place here. And can you think of what a comfort it would have been to Jacob? He's not alone. God is with him. God is real.
Jeffrey Heine:God is active. God is doing things in the world and God will not leave him alone. This is the first time we have in scripture that God reveals himself as Emmanuel, God with us. He's come to be with us. After this big revelation, how is Jacob going to respond?
Jeffrey Heine:Well, he responds to all this when he wakes up. He does some good things. He names the place Bethel, which means house of God. We actually find out towards the end of this story that the place did have a name. The author purposely didn't tell us the name, he kept saying a place a place a place and then finally at the end, he lets you know that this place was named Luz.
Jeffrey Heine:And the reason he held out telling us this to the end is because the name Luz is very significant. Luzz means separation. Separation. Jacob was living in separation from God, but it was here that God came to him. Heaven and Earth were separated before, but no.
Jeffrey Heine:Now he sees Heaven and Earth are not separated. Where he was was the house of God. God had come to dwell with him. So we see some faith here that he names this place Bethel. But hear me, it is just a mustard seed of faith.
Jeffrey Heine:It is enough faith to to get Jacob to pray. For the first time in his life, he prays. We don't have any prayer of Jacob before this and he prays. And it's a pathetic prayer people. It's a really bad prayer.
Jeffrey Heine:It's a it's a selfish prayer. He essentially prays this. After everything that God appears to him and does this, he goes, okay. I'll allow you to be my God if you do these things. And he gives God a checklist.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, if you do stay with me, if you do keep me, if you do give me food, give me clothing, bring me back to my father's house, give me peace. If you do all of that, I will allow you the privilege of being my God. And that is his prayer. It's actually not different than how a lot of us pray. God, if you're real, do these things.
Jeffrey Heine:Similar prayer. But it's it's a mustard seed of prayer and at least he is praying. But the reality is this, very little of Jacob's life is gonna look any different after this moment. I mean you would expect, I mean this was his like road to Damascus moment. It's not.
Jeffrey Heine:Very little changes with him after this. But don't worry. God does not give up on the Jacobs of this world. And what we're gonna see in the weeks ahead is He is relentless in His pursuit of Jacob. God's gonna keep pursuing him.
Jeffrey Heine:And I'll say this, perhaps we need to be a little forgiving towards Jacob for not quite completely trusting God in this moment, because we have the advantage of knowing things that He did not know. We have the advantage of understanding who Jesus is. Jesus gives us a much clearer picture of who God is than this dream. This is still a dream. Things are still fuzzy for Jacob.
Jeffrey Heine:It's his first introduction with God, but we have the advantage knowing 4000 years later, right now, we can look back and we know who Jesus is. And that's really what the story is about. It's about Jesus. It points to Him. Just as the Lord came down and stood by Jacob, we know that the Lord came down to this world in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus, who is our Emmanuel, our God with us. Jesus, who is our Bethel. He's the one who came and He tabernacled in our midst. He's the temple. He's the house of God.
Jeffrey Heine:Mean, this isn't just me making this connection. Jesus makes this connection Himself in the Gospel of John. Turn there. It's also there in your worship guide, John chapter 1. We'll begin reading in verse 43.
Jeffrey Heine:The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and he said to him, follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Jeffrey Heine:Philip said to him, come and see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him and said of him, behold an Israelite indeed and whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi you are the Son of God.
Jeffrey Heine: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. There is so much going on in this story.
Jeffrey Heine:We can't unpack it all. It's one of my favorite stories, in the gospel of John. Raises so many questions. You have to wonder why Nathaniel acted the way he did. Why do you get that response?
Jeffrey Heine:Because, I mean, Jesus would later heal people, raise people from the dead, and he doesn't get responses like this. Jesus just says, I saw you under the fig tree and he's like, you're God. You're the Son of God. Something is going on here. Philip goes to get his friend Nathaniel and he tells him I have found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
Jeffrey Heine:Of Nazareth is really important here because Nazareth was a no place. It was in the middle of nowhere. It was neither here nor there. A place, you might say, where you would go if you were in transition. And Nathaniel picks up on this.
Jeffrey Heine:He goes, Nazareth, how can anything good come from Nazareth? In other words, Nazareth is an is a nowhere place. God doesn't go to nowhere places like Nazareth. But Philip urges him, says, come and see. When Jesus meets Nathaniel, he says, here's a good Israelite who'll shoot straight with you.
Jeffrey Heine:And there's a play of words going on here. What Jesus is saying is really subtle, but but it's impactful here. When he says, here's an Israelite in whom there is no guile. Remember Israel, Jacob has his name changed later to Israel. That's where we get the name Israel.
Jeffrey Heine:It's actually the descendants of Jacob. Jacob and Israel are the same. And remember Jacob's name also means deceit. And so Jesus is looking at Nathaniel and says, ah, here's a descendant of Jacob in whom there is no deceit. Here's a descendant of Jacob in whom there is no Jacob.
Jeffrey Heine:And Nathaniel goes, that's right. What an idiot. Like he's walking right into it. He's literally he's walking right into it. He goes, that's right.
Jeffrey Heine:How do you know me? And Jesus says, I saw you. I saw you when you were under the fig tree. And he breaks. Now we have no idea what Nathaniel was doing underneath this fig tree, But we know that it was something that we don't know if he was with somebody or what he was doing, but it was likely something that he was very ashamed of, and he thought that no one was watching and no one could see.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus says, I saw you. I saw you. And Nathan's response is, you are the Son of God. Jesus, because you were impressed by that, And then he he picks up on this idea of him being the Nazarene, and and that being the source of Nathaniel's doubt that that Jesus can't come from these nowhere places, he tells him a story about how God did meet somebody in the middle of nowhere. And he reminds him of the story of Jacob.
Jeffrey Heine:And we read this in verse 51. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. So Jacob, he or Jesus, recounts this story of Jacob and the vision that Jacob had, but he makes one change. One really important change here. Look closely at what the angels are doing.
Jeffrey Heine:They are not ascending and descending on a stairway. They're ascending and they're descending on Jesus. Jesus is the stairway. The angels are not going up and down to Jesus. The angels are going up and down on Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is the bridge. He's the ramp. He's the one who connects heaven and earth. Jesus is the way to heaven. So through Jesus, heaven is now open to us.
Jeffrey Heine:And this isn't like the Tower of Babel in which we're through great effort are trying to work our way up to heaven, which can never work. This is the bridge, the ramp in which Jesus condescends and he comes down to us. It's the answer to the question, how can a holy God ever come to a sinner like me? Well, it's through Jesus. And so I'm not sure what's going on in your life.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know why you're here in this moment. I don't know if you feel like Jacob or not. Perhaps you've made a total mess of your life. Yes. You were wounded.
Jeffrey Heine:But in your woundedness, you did not turn to God. In your woundedness, you turned towards sin, making an even greater mess. I do know this, that God's grace is like a river and it comes to you. God cares about you. He loves about you.
Jeffrey Heine:He loves you so much that He sent His Son, Jesus, to be the bridge. Through Jesus, we now have access to the father. And if you would believe this, if you would receive this, heaven is now open to you. And although Jacob here, he doesn't give the best prayer, he does give a prayer. There's a kernel of faith here and it's enough.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the beginning of a relationship that we see here. And I would encourage you, if you do not have that relationship, call out to Jesus today. Pray with me. Father, we thank you that you don't leave us here in our misery. It'd be well deserved if we did, if we just stayed here and suffered in our in the pain we brought on ourselves, but You would not leave us.
Jeffrey Heine:Through Jesus, You have saved us and You have brought us close to Yourself. Thank you, and I pray that we would lean wholly on Jesus and trust in Him and Him alone. And we pray this in His name. Amen.