Gateway to Heaven

A sermon by Dwight A. Moody on Genesis 28:10

 

“Jacob left Beer-sheba and west toward Haran.  He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he set it under his head and lay down.  And he dreamed there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it.”

 

Years after this restless night on a strange hill, Jacob takes a new name, Israel. He gave his name to his entire clan, so that the children of Israel would become the chief moniker of the ancestors of our Lord Jesus Christ. But early in the docudrama of Jacob, Jacob has a dream. Today we watch this early episode, we see the rock he takes as a pillow, we watch the angels step up and down the ladder, and we listen as Jacob names this place, the house of God.  And we contemplate the meaning of this gateway to heaven. May the same God who sought that day to convert the wayward soul of Jacob, appear to us today; May God descend from heaven and speak to us a word of hope and encouragement and forgiveness and purpose.  May God use that gateway from heaven to make us the people we are destined to be.

 

Jacob left home. Home was Beer Sheva. It was a toxic place. His relationships with mother, father, and brother were dysfunctional. The heart is deceitful above all things, the Bible tells us, and desperately wicked. To illustrate this general rule, we have the family of Isaac. He and Rebecca had two sons, twins: Esau and Jacob. That was their birth order, but Jacob and Esau became their life order. Twice Jacob snatched from Esau the rightful blessing of the first born. So it is no wonder that Genesis chapter 27 verse 41 reads like this: “Now Esau hated Jacob.” Part of this unhappy situation was this: the mother Rebecca favored Jacob while Isaac preferred Esau.  This, no doubt, signaled trouble in the marriage; and so it was passed on to the second generation. No wonder Jacob was eager to leave town, to get away, to start fresh somewhere else where nobody knew his name, where he was free to make his own way in the world.

 

Beer Sheva, as it is called today, sits at the tail end of Israel, out in the desert, the Negev. Palestine, the holy land, then and now, sits square in the center of that great fertile crescent that stretches from Egypt in the south to Iraq in the north. Caravans of soldiers and merchants moved constantly on the roads of this ancient route, trading, trampling, and traversing from one end to another. Now comes Jacob, a refugee from the rage of home life, setting his face toward Iraq, then called Mesopotamia, to a place near the top of this crescent curve, a place called Haran, in what is today, Syria.

 

As Jacob left Beer Sheva he had a choice of three routes. He could have left the desert and headed toward the coast. The beautiful Mediterranean sea. One beach after another. This was the preferred route of all travelers, up the coast, through Gaza, ancient Asheklon and modern day Tel Aviv, around the horn of Mt. Carmel, through Haifa, and into the famous Jezreel Valley. It is exactly the route followed by the merchants from Median, years later, who fetched from a cistern the boy with the coat of many colors, “Joseph with his techno-color dreamcoat,” the son of this very man Jacob.

 

Jacob could have turned east toward the dead sea, and followed the even older route up through the great rift valley, past Masada and Jericho, along the banks of the Jordan River where centuries later John would preach and then baptize Jesus,. The route rounds the Sea of Galilee and steps up into what we now call the Golan Heights on its way to Syria and Iraq.

 

But Jacob avoided these two easier routes.  Perhaps he feared his brother might follow him to do him harm. Perhaps he knew that a single man traveling alone might not fare so well along these heavily traveled roads. So he struck out due north, straight toward the Hill Country.  The hills of Israel sit like a knotty spine between the Mediterranean on the west and the Jordan on the east. The valley’s or wadis run down in both directions. But at the top of this rib ridge is a road that runs from south to north, past Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramalah, and Samaria. These names remind us of all the gloried history of the children of Israel, and especially that one child of Israel, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born on this road and was crucified and buried on this road. This is the road chosen by Jacob.

 

Night came. Jacob the lonely refugee lay down to rest. It was a no-name place, a certain place, the Bible says. Jacob took a rock for a pillow, and as best he could he went to sleep. I prefer a foam pillow, or even a feather pillow, don’t you. I sleep better with one. Are you particular about your pillow?  I sometimes see travelers with a purse, a suitcase, a backpack, and a pillow. I’ve slept on a bad pillow, haven’t you? You go to camp or a cheap hotel or even to a friends house, and on your bed is what is called a pillow. Yes, it is the size of a pillow, rectangular, 18 inches by 30 inches; yes, it has a clean pillow case; but low and behold, it is thin as a pancake. I don’t sleep well with such a pillow. I roll it in a ball.  I look around for two or three more. Maybe if I stack them one on top of another I will have a decent pillow. By this time it is midnight and I despair of any real sleep. So Jacob must have felt when looking around that certain place for some way to sleep.

 

No wonder his mind went crazy through the night.  No wonder he had dreams and saw visions. Sometimes dreams and visions are caused by God; but sometimes it is just a bad pillow, or a strange place, or a plate of bad food; and sometimes it is a guilty conscience, or a troubled soul. “Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus tells us. Sometimes in the midst of our troubles, God gives us a vision, God comes to us in a dream, God is able to reveal something to our unconscious mind, something we are not ready to receive in our conscious mind. Sometimes we are just too far away from God and sanity and the Spirit that the only way God can appear to us is through a dream.

 

In a strange place, with a rock for a pillow, Jacob had a dream. He saw a ladder, resting on the earth right where he was, reaching up into the sky, into heaven. And on this ladder were the messengers of God coming and going from the throne of God. On this ladder were the angels of God, leaving the presence of God and coming to Jacob, coming to that no-name, non-descript, rock-covered hill side where Jacob lay resting from his flight from home. At the bottom of this ladder, I see some of the angels placing notes beside the rock pillow; I see other angels pausing to whisper something to the sleeping Jacob. One angel bends low and lays a celestial hand on Jacob as if to say, “God Speed!  God Bless You!  God go with you! God go before you and prepare for you a way.” Maybe an angel lays hold of Jacob and shakes him, as if to say, “Something big is happening in you and with you. Wake up, Notice. Look. Hear. See. Rejoice. Live.”

There are things you and I must DO to be the people God wants us to be.

• We need to read the Bible and pray without ceasing;
• we need to love our neighbors;
• we need to repent of our sins and change our ways;
• we need to give freely because we have received freely;
• we need to bless those who curse us;
• we need to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
• Honor your father and mother, the Bible says; and
• remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

 

Right now, God is speaking to you, directing, calling, rebuking, wooing, inviting you to leave some things behind and take your own journey into the future God has for you. God is calling you to DO something. Today some angel is handing you a note from God. Today Jesus is calling you. Today if you hear his voice, harden not your heart. Jesus says to us exactly as he said to those long ago, “Come onto you, you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke and learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and have it in abundance.” Yet even as I call you to hear something and do something, I know this: it is not all about you and me; it is not all about what you do and what I do. The real story of the world is what God does, sometimes while we are sleeping, or dreaming, or wasting time, or even wondering far away.

 

Long before Jacob knew he was to be the father of a great nation, God knew, and was at work to make it happen.  Long before the sheep knew it was lost, the shepherd was out looking for it. Long before the sinner had the first thought about repentance, the Lord had extended his mercy in forgiveness. Remember the lyrics of that old gospel song?

 

In loving kindness Jesus came, my soul in mercy to reclaim
          And from the depths of sin and shame, through grace he lifted me.

          He called me long before I heard, before my sinful heart was stirred.
          But when I took God at his word, through Grace he lifted me.

          Now on a higher plane I dwell and with my soul I know ‘tis well.
          Yet how or why I cannot tell through grace he lifted me.

 

From the beginning of time and history, this is the story of God and his love. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For God so loved Jacob, and you, and me, that God gave the only son, long before you or I or Jacob were even awake to our condition, that whosoever receives and believes and awakes and rejoices might have eternal life. Jacob did not know that old gospel song, There is no hint in the text that he woke up and started singing a gospel song. But we do know this. Jacob awoke. And even in his half aware state, he knew that something momentous had happened. Jacob knew that God, maker of heaven and earth, redeemer of all people, had appeared and spoken and acted on his behalf. No, Jacob was not clear about what it was and what it meant: years later, perhaps, but not that night, not that moment.

 

Jacob sensed deep in his spirit that in that night God had come to him, stood beside him, blessed him, and created a future for him. The ladder he saw in his dream was not a gate INTO heaven, not a ladder for Jacob to climb up; it was a gate FROM heaven, a ladder for the Lord to come down, to God to come to us and stand beside us and speak what we need to hear. Isn’t this the gospel as described years later by John the disciple of Jesus? “The word was in the beginning, was with God, was God. All things came into being through the Word.  But, (and here is the good news), the Word became flesh, (came down the ladder, stood beside us, whispered to us, shook us awake, lived with us, died for us). The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.”

 

Jacob took that rock, that nameless, clueless rock, and made of it an altar.  He stacked one rock upon another and poured oil over it. It was all he knew to do. Jacob knew he had encountered the eternal and everlasting God. He said, “The Lord was in this place, this place, and I did not know it.  I assumed God was there, back there, over there, up there.  But no: God was here, beside me, around me, within me. God is behind me and before me and over me and under me.” And so he named the place, Beth-el, which means, the house of God. This is the house of God, not because it is a sanctuary or a church; not because it is beautiful or blessed.  It is the house of God because you are here and God is here; because God is trying to awaken you to your purpose in the world; because the Lord is calling you, “Come, follow me.”