September 28, 2025: Stairway to Heaven - Genesis 28:10-22

Continue to work our way through the stories of our patriarchs,

stories in Genesis. And as has been my custom, I

will continue to mention that we are asking of the text and we're

asking of our lives foundational core questions to our own

existence. Who am I, what am I, and why am

I here? These are inescapable.

And if you do not come up with or are given excellent answers

to these questions, it's hard to live a flourishing life in this

world. As we see they come through

again and again through Genesis and they are reiterated and

promises, promises given to Abraham that he will have a land

to live in or a special place, that he will have a people, an

offspring, a nation that will be then fulfilling a divine

purpose, a purpose of blessing. He will see receive blessing in

order to be a blessing to the nations.

We also see throughout Genesis the devastating effects of sin,

for sin disrupts place, people and purpose.

We see it with Adam and Eve. We also see it reiterated in the

stories of the patriarchs. As paradise is lost, they are

banished or exiled out of Eden. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain

and Abel, and the one kills the other.

And then we see instead of blessings, curses enacted in

sin. These themes again come up in

the stories of the patriarchs. Most recently, we've been

talking about the rivalry between Isaac and his wife

Rebecca, expressed in the rivalry between their twin sons,

Esau and Jacob. And once again we see through

sin these purposes, these blessings of God threatened or

disrupted. Last week we came across the

second tale of deception where Jacob, whose name means deceiver

in acts a plot concocted by his mother Rebecca to deceive his

blind and aging father Isaac to receive the blessing that Isaac

intended. For.

Esau is a terrible text, with breathtaking drama, conspiracy,

ratcheting suspense, a near miss and then passionate despair,

murderous rage, and a very sad parting.

As Jacob flees the house, he leaves with a blessing, but

nothing else. In this text, he is sleeping

under the stars, but that is not a romantic picture of camping

without a tent. He is friendless, helpless,

hopeless. What's going to happen?

What's going to happen? Do any of the promises even

matter that this second cane flees?

He is scared. He is worried and vulnerable.

He is worried about his own personal safety and he needs

protection. He's worried about his stuff.

Apparently it wasn't even enough time to secure a tent before

he's leaving his house. And he's concerned about peace

as he has been cast out because of his fear and the real threat

from his older brother. And this is where we pick up the

text as was read to you. The Lord comes to Jacob as he

has come to his father and his grandfather before him with a

very special visitation, this time in his sleep, in his in his

dream. He has a vision and an Oracle,

God's revelation, specific and special to him.

But then we also see his response.

So in the first movement we have this stairway to heaven.

Sometimes it's called a ladder. And those both are appropriate

terms given the Hebrew concept. He envisions this staircase with

angels ascending and descending with God himself at the top of

it, and this amazing reiteration of the promises given to Abraham

and Isaac that you will indeed have a land and the nation and

that your nation will serve as a blessing to all the nations of

the earth. It's an incredible revelation.

Continuing on in the text in verse 18, we find out after this

revelation from God, we find out Jacob's response.

How does respond to the revelation so early in the

morning, verse 18. And 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 loose at the first.

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will

keep me in the this way that I go, and 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 10th to you. And so we see in this revelation

an amazing vision, a place where heaven, it seems, breaks into

the dark, starry night. Jacob, is that compelling to you

or are you too tired of this story from too many years in

Sunday school? What is actually compelling

about a. A portal to another world?

Many of you are fans of the Narnia series from CS Lewis.

Can you remember being captivated for the first time

with the idea, the idea that you could enter into a wardrobe,

into a a whole nother world, a whole nother universe, a whole

nother time and place? There's something so compelling

about that. And here in our text, we have a

similar idea of a portal of heaven where things are pulled

back and you can see something happening.

God himself at the top of the ladder, angelic motion up and

down, and the Oracle repeating land, nation and blessing.

And then Jacob responds with quaking knees, doesn't he?

The fear of the Lord is in him. He comments on how special the

place is. He takes his pillow and makes it

a pillar, and he anoints it and names it a stone of remembrance.

But it's also looking forward to the future, and it's hard to

interpret his language here. It's full of conditions.

If the Lord does this, protects me, if he gives me provision,

food and clothing, and if I return in peace to my father's

house, then the Lord will be my God.

It's hard to interpret. It's an oath, but with

conditions concerning his safety, scarcity, and sanctuary.

But we also see him desiring to give a tithe like Abraham his

father, in response to the Lord's fulfilled promises,

should that happen in his life. Interesting, isn't it?

I'm going to move now into the New Testament and talk about how

our Savior is in parallel or in conversation with this

particular story in John's gospel.

If you'd like to turn there. Chapter one, we have a very

interesting story and a set of stories where Jesus calls out

his disciples and they leave everything and follow him.

John's Gospel beginning in chapter 1.

I think I want to start in verse 43.

Let's start in verse 43. The next day Jesus decided to go

up to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him,

Follow me now. Philip was from Beseda, the city

of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel 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.

Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of

Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and

see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming

toward him instead of him. Behold, an Israelite indeed, in

whom there is no deceit. I'm going to stop right there.

There's a lot going on right there.

What we think has happened is that Jesus hasn't met this guy

before and that Nathaniel had been underneath a fig tree

contemplating this story from Genesis 28.

The story of this ladder with angels ascending and descending,

Why? Well, the first clue is in verse

47, because Jesus is riffing on the name of Jacob.

If you remember the word Jacob means deceiver.

And if you've read ahead in your Bibles, you find out that he

gets a name change later on. He is called Israel.

So think about this. Nathaniel's under a fig tree.

He's thinking about Jacob and Jacob's ladder, and he comes up

and this guy's never met him before.

Is saying, look, an Israel, not a Jacob.

Nathaniel's like, whoa, you read my mail, you know my mind.

What's going on? Nathaniel 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. Nathaniel is impressed by this,

to say the least. Nathaniel 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.

Again, another very clear and direct reference to this story

from Genesis 28, except Jesus is going to apply it to Himself.

I am the stairway to heaven. If you follow me, you're going

to experience things you cannot even imagine regarding the

spiritual world and angels and who I am.

So let's continue to sort of unpack the life of Christ and

think together a little bit about how Jesus could be this

stairway to heaven. As you may have already guessed,

He says I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

He's a stairway to heaven, isn't he?

He also refers to himself as the gate for the sheep.

As it says in Genesis, this is the the gate of heaven.

Jesus is the gate. He's the stairway.

But this text in Genesis also talks about the Lord's ongoing

presence with him. I will be with you wherever you

go. And what do we, what do we learn

about our Lord's name? We love to talk about this

during Advent and Christmas time.

He shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.

It's beautiful, but we can consider how our Lord came down

from heaven and went back up to heaven.

So let's consider for a few moments the descending and

ascending of our Lord, the stairway to heaven, how He

indeed acts in our behalf. Jesus comes down.

He leaves his home in heaven. Why?

In order to give one to you and to me, as He prepares a place

for us, He left the wealth of heaven.

Why He comes down? He descends into poverty in His

earthly life. Why?

In order to make you and I rich in heavenly blessings, He comes

down. He gives up His heavenly food in

order to give bread to you and to me, to His disciples, in

order to be our bread, in order to feed us with these provisions

in some way. He does not cling to his

heavenly robes, but descends into the earth in poverty to

wear clothes that get dirty and soiled.

Why? To provide for us clothes.

He gives up His clothes even more when they strip him to

nakedness on the cross. Why?

In order to provide for you and me the robes of righteousness,

he left his home to give you a home, he left his wealth to give

you wealth. He like gave up his bread in

order to feed you, He's giving up his clothes in order to

clothe you. He gave up his safety the

fortress of heaven, to come down totally exposed to the hands of

sinful men who will beat him and pluck out his beard and spit in

his face and scourge his back and drive nails into his wrist,

hang him from a tree. He gave up his safety in order

to be your refuge. He gave up his safety in order

to protect his sheep. Jesus is indeed the stairway to

heaven. He came down from heaven in the

incarnation, Martin Luther said he went from the highest of

highs to the lowest of lows, despised and rejected, and the

climax of his crucifixion. Just think of a stairway.

A stairway is something that's between high and low.

And there's our Lord suspended on a tree between heaven and

earth. Stairway to heaven.

Angels minister to him. They ascend and descend upon him

in the wilderness temptations and in the Garden of Gethsemane

and other places as well. They're mysterious to us, but

they bring Him down from the cross.

So we see another descent. But now not only from the cross,

He goes into the ground, into the grave.

He is apart and dead, descended into the grave.

But thanks be to God, on Easter morning, as we sing up from the

grave, he arose, comes out of the grave, ministers again to

his followers, but he doesn't stay there.

He ascends now up into glory where he lives and reigns to

make intercession for believers. He does not merely leave

everybody alone, but now the Holy Spirit is the one coming

down. The Holy Spirit is sent and

descends on the Church of Pentecost.

And now the ever present Emmanuel is with believers by

the Holy Spirit. He is always with you.

You're never alone if you are in Christ.

But there's another descent promised by Holy Scripture that

we look forward to and pray for. When we say come quickly, Lord

Jesus, it says he will descend again to judge the living and

the dead, and to finally and forever deliver peace on earth.

Shalom. How do we respond to this?

What can we say in response to such a story, to such a message?

Well, I think the first and most obvious thing to say is what

Jesus was saying to Nathaniel that very day.

Follow me, Follow me. How do we respond to the

revelation of God? It's an interesting question.

I think I've always been a little bit convicted and

surprised to actually at how quickly Jesus's disciples seemed

to drop everything and instantly follow him.

And Bible doesn't give us a lot of details, but they seem like a

lot of instantaneous, hey, follow me, drop everything,

follow Jesus. And I think that's super

compelling to a lot of us who've experienced Jesus in that very

way. And people testify to a very

day, a very, very week, a very hour, a very, very specific

time. I once was lost, but now I'm

found was blind. But now I see the experience in

a rapid moment. Jesus said, follow me and I said

yes, Sir. And it's been one day after

another of walking with the Lord since then.

I think for many others of us, there's been more of a

gradualism. And the thing that's so

interesting about the character of Jacob specifically is that he

is called basically a scumbag by this text.

Grasper deceiver. These are not compliments.

The first two stories we get. He's cheating a really hungry

person and then a really old and blind person.

This is not somebody that you would exalt and make a hero.

He's a loser. He's a scumbag and yet the Lord

out of his divine Providence and his goodness and his infinite

grace that is greater than our sin, condescends to give him a

vision of condescension of God and and and mediating stairway

to heaven and promises the promises again to his

forefathers. And we see Jacob respond to

this, but it's an ambiguous response.

He makes an oath. He sets up a stone of

remembrance. He anoints it.

He calls the place Bethel, but there's a lot of conditions.

God, I'm swearing that these things will be done if you keep

up your end of the bargain. Too hard to know what to make of

that. But it's the faith journey of a

lot of us who meager meagerly and weakly try to make a

commitment and we're going to see 20 years story coming down

after this and even longer of Jacob's ups and downs.

But I don't know about you whether you were the quick to

follow type or whether you're the learn the hard way kind of

slow person to there's something here for everyone to respond to

the call of the gospel when Jesus says follow me.

Follow me. He makes his oath.

He consecrates a worship, consecrates worship, and

promises to give back out of his wealth if this happens.

So if you've never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior,

if you've never responded to His command, follow me.

I'm issuing that as clear as I can this morning.

If you've never given your heart, your life, your dedicated

oath to the Lord, do it today. Pray in meekness and humility

and cry out to God and say, Lord, here I am, save me.

I want to follow you. I repent of my sin, I want to

walk with you. Or maybe you've had a lot of ups

and downs and it's time to make some changes.

There's no time like the present to follow the feet of our Lord

and say, Lord, here I am, save me, heal me.

Walking with him looks like a slow, struggling path.

That's what's normal. Jesus says if you want to follow

me, take up your cross and follow me.

The Christian life is described as being crucified to self.

It's painful, but it's also loaded with all kinds of joyous

blessings that are impossible to comprehend.

You start talking to old Saints and listen to their stories of

faith and how the Lord met them in their need with protection,

provision, and peace. Follow Him.

Follow Him, my friends, and receive His blessing.

And this isn't some sort of health and well thing, you know.

Sign up for the Jesus thing and watch your bank account grow

better than the stock market. If you have enough faith, sign

up for the Jesus thing and he'll heal all your diseases.

Sign up for the Jesus thing and he'll make you successful in

your job. That is not biblical.

What is biblical, however, is that if you follow Jesus in

company with the church on this hard Rd. of discipleship, you

will experience blessing even in this life and then unimaginable

blessing in the hereafter. That's the deal.

Die with Him, to be raised with Him, to rule with him forever

more. So when we receive His blessing,

we think not only of our physical lives and our spiritual

lives, we think of them together.

But I wanted to show you how this works even now for for

sufferers. And in order to demonstrate

this, I thought it would be fun to kind of unpack briefly the

language of the benediction that I enjoy using when we're in the

Old Testament, the language of blessing that comes from Aaron

to the people and Numbers Chapter 6 to say over the

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

congregation. And we'll see how the themes

that were in the text of Genesis and in John are here also

proclaimed over the people. Do you remember this?

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine

upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance

upon you and give you peace. The word for protection is keep

the Lord protect you from your spiritual enemies, from the

roaring lion who's seeking to destroy.

Lord, leave me not into temptation, but deliver me from

evil. I need your protection.

Be my refuge, my strong tower, my wall.

Protect me from evil. But I also need stuff.

I need food, I need clothing, I need shelter that pertains to

physical blessing and spiritual blessing.

But then have you noticed, have you read ahead?

Are you looking? Are you saying, what does it

say? At the end?

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

And couched in the middle, there is this bit about his shining

face. Countenance also means face.

And so the Gospels couched right in there.

Because when we are enemies with one another and we're enemies

with God, we don't want to look at each other, do we?

If I'm mad at you, unless I'm blowing up and I want to yell at

you, it's more likely that I'm just going to be like, oh, don't

even look at me. Get out of my face.

You're going to treat to a different part of the house.

Get away from me. I don't want to see you.

Not only enemies with God, but the Bible says we're with each

other, but we're also enemies with God.

What happens when they sin? They're hiding.

Jesus. The Lord comes to them in the

cool of the day to walk and they're they're hiding.

I don't want to see his face. They're afraid.

They're guilty, but because of the gospel, because of the

blessings that we have in Christ and the protection of in Christ,

we have something even better than that.

We have the sunshine of His face.

Lord, make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

It's like light in Indiana in February.

It is so dark and it is so cold. It is so dark and it is so cold

and you just want, you just want to like feel the warmth and the

light. And when I hear this, and when I

think about it, the Lord, the sunshine of His grace in Christ,

the countenance of full loving regard, shining into my doubtful

heart when I experienced the Shalom that comes from being in

Christ. And I guarantee you, friends,

that's for here and now too, not just then and later.

Jacob's got a long way to go. So do you, and so do I, but the

Lord's grace is greater than all of our sin, greater than all of

our idols. He smashes these things and

builds up something beautiful in their place.

So to conclude, as with Abraham and Isaac, the Lord in this text

is community, communicating directly with Jacob, the

scheming Sinner, communicating with him according to his

matchless grace. The Lord reiterates the promises

Jacob worships. Looking to the future, all

Christians are sinners called into relationship with God

through our Savior Jesus Christ, the one and only stairway to

heaven. Let us respond in gratitude as

we pray and sing together. Father, I pray for our restless

hearts that seek security and provision and peace through

idols. So we pray Lord, that you would

meet us in our need as we gaze upon our Savior, the one and

only stir in US a heart of deep love and affection in response

to your revelation this morning. It's in Jesus name we pray, our

intercessor, and by his Spirit who helps US one God

forevermore, Amen.