Jacob's Ladder

Good morning.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rastman.

I'm the pastor here.

We're gonna do announcements at the end, but I have one quick announcement.

My cousin is visiting today, and she's thinking about moving to Denver.

But she decided to make her whole decision based upon how she was received at this church.

So pressure's on.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we thank you for a day to gather and a place to gather as your body to worship you, Lord, to begin our Sunday morning in a song together, as a congregation, to worship together, hear one another's voices, to praise you.

Lord, we thank you for the way that you've worked our stories, each of ours and our lives, to lead us to a morning like this.

What a grace to get to sing and worship you.

Lord, I pray for the leaders of particularly our state.

Lord, I pray for uh your work in the hearts of our lawmakers.

There's law being passed that seems um uh just so particularly heartbreaking.

Lord, we pray for your grace upon us and your mercy upon us in this.

Lord, there are wars, there's a war raging in the world, and Lord, we know that you are the one who makes empires rise and empires fall, you make wars happen, you make wars cease.

Who can we ask but you to bring peace to your world?

Lord, here from this small congregation, we pray for your work, even in the largest things in the world.

Lord, we pray coming to you together out of the ordinary woes of life.

Lord, we pray that you would meet us in those places from common colds to disappointing news to difficult family relationships or difficult work decisions.

Lord, we all come together with those things on our hearts and our minds.

And Lord, we know that you meet us there.

We pray that you would this morning.

Lord, we pray that out of an ordinary morning like this, we would get a glimpse of you in your word, and that we would see you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Today's story is one of my favorite passages in Genesis, particularly because of this connection that it has to uh the story that takes place in the beginning of John's gospel in John chapter one.

And so we're gonna look at that and see that happen through uh the throughout this sermon.

But what I love about this story is it's an unprovoked intervention of God into a very ordinary place.

We see that same pattern take place.

And what I love about that, and what my hope is, is that as we see this in the Word today, perhaps for some of you, in a very ordinary moment, on an ordinary Sunday morning, you might have an encounter with Jesus and see that the what you thought was ordinary just isn't.

That there's some grand narrative, that there's a remarkable story that's taking place, not despite the ordinariness, not on the other side of the ordinariness, but right in those things that you consider and call ordinary, that those are the places that Jesus comes and meets us.

So I hope that we get to see that together this morning.

And I have a side goal.

I just love this story so much and the connections that it makes through scripture.

And so part of what uh my intention is for you for us this morning is I I want you to I want you to hear this and see this connection and then think to yourself, wow, the Bible's amazing.

I kind of want to read it and ask questions of it and get involved with it and see what the Bible has to say.

So if those things happen, you have a life-changing encounter with Jesus and you fall in love with Scripture, then we'll call it a win.

Typical Sunday morning here at Redemption, hundreds saved, thousands blessed.

Genesis 28, 10 through 11.

Jacob left Beersheba and 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.

We left off last week in our continuing sermons through Genesis, when Jacob was told by his family, You've got to run away because your brother wants to kill you, because you tricked him out of receiving his birthright.

And so Esau, Jacob's brother, is trying to kill Jacob, wants Jacob dead.

Jacob is basically a fugitive on the run, uh, like Harrison Ford, and he's being taken uh into the land of his mother.

Um so he's going to live with his uncle, Laban.

But on his way out of the promised land toward Haran, toward where uh his uncle, who he's going to stay with, um runs out of daylight.

And so this fugitive on the run, Jacob, and one thing that we know about Jacob, you know, Bible character descriptions, you don't get much.

So the few things that you get, you've got to hang a lot on.

And one of the things that the Bible explicitly says about Jacob is he likes the indoors.

How much must you like the indoors for the Bible to say it?

Very much.

And so he finds himself homeless, on the run, sleeping outside with his head on a rock for a pillow.

Now it's not as though people didn't know that laying your head on soft things was more comfortable.

This isn't like uh in Bible days.

This was before softness was discovered.

No, uh laying your head on a rock is bad, you know?

And it that's about, if you think about it, it's about as low uh as you can get without digging, you know, as laying your head down on a rock.

So Jacob is at, we could say, a low point.

This is a very low point in Jacob's life.

This is actually where the expression low point comes from.

Rock bottom.

Oh, Matthew.

Wow.

That was really good.

With his head on the rock, on the run from his family, headed towards a place he's never been, outside where he hates it, he dreams.

Genesis 12, Genesis 28, 12 and 13.

And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on 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.

You know, when you're down in a pit, uh a nice thing to dream about might be a ladder.

And this ladder that he dreams about is on the earth.

It's standing on the earth.

You know, it's not floating above it, it's touching, it's standing on the earth.

But then the top of it extends all the way and it touches into heaven.

And when he looks at the ladder, he sees uh another another race that God has created, another creature, and that's God's angels, and they're ascending and descending on the ladder.

Another translation, another translation for this is stairway.

But of course, for copyright reasons, we can't say stairway to heaven.

Now, Matthew, you say, no stairway, denied.

And this what we see here is this connecting point between earth and heaven, with the messengers of God ascending and descending on it.

And they must be doing those things that angels do.

What are those things that angels do?

Angels, throughout scripture, we see they're constantly moving about on the earth, and they're in charge of things.

They have delegated responsibilities to them.

In Deuteronomy 32, verse 8, it's explained that the Lord established the nations and the numbers of the people of the nations in correspondence to the numbers of the sons of God.

Deuteronomy 32:8

Sons of God is a phrase, biblical phrase for angels.

And so we see there that there's this sort of delegated responsibility over groups of people in nations, and angels are kind of in charge of those things.

That the states of our world are guided and directed by these angelic powers, by these personalities, these rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Angels are responsible for the rise and fall of empires.

They're the ones working those things out.

In Daniel 10, we see that the angel that comes to speak to Daniel says, I intended to come to you sooner, but uh some of the uh angels over the kings of Persia prevented me from coming.

Weird.

Right?

How did they prevent him?

Until the archangel Michael intervened and said, quit preventing him from coming, let him go to Daniel.

This is all very mysterious.

But we know that the angels are delegated this incredible responsibility of these things that we are very interested in.

The rise and fall of empires.

These are the highest achievements or the most newsworthy things that humans can experience are the rise and fall of empires.

And this is the delegated responsibility of the angelic realm.

And so when we see the angels of God ascending and descending on this ladder, we can see they are distributing power throughout the world and organizing the world towards God's purposes.

You know, when you pick up your phone in the morning and you read news about the rise and fall of empires, you might think this is the most important things that are happening in creation.

We are filtering out all of the petty little normalities that we experience in life and we see the real news is happening with the rise and fall of empires.

But it is not an angel that speaks to Jacob in the presence of this ladder.

That story, those stories of the rise and decline of empires, that authority which is grand and meaningful and incredibly important, which is delegated to the angelic realm, that's playing itself out on this ladder of ascending and descending authority.

That's the background to what the Lord says to Jacob.

And what the Lord says to this man on the run, this is the real story.

This is the story that shows the true thread of history throughout time, with the rise and fall of empires as just a background to it.

It is not an angel that speaks to Jacob here.

It's the Lord Himself.

And strangely, it says here that when the Lord speaks directly to Jacob, it says, and behold, the Lord stood above it.

But each of the commentaries that I had read explains that that word is actually ambiguous because it could be translated above, but it could just as well be translated beside.

And that type of ambiguity is pretty wonderful.

Because there's a difference between the Lord standing above the ladder.

That makes sense to us.

The Lord is transcendent and he's in the heavenly places.

He has delegated his power to the angelic realm to be dispersed and distributed throughout the world.

But for him to get down into the world seems like a very strange thing.

It seems like a very creaturely position.

But then for the word to just as likely be translated beside, that he's standing beside the ladder, it would mean that the Lord's feet are somehow on the ground.

He's involved in what's happening on the earth.

And particularly with this man who is on the run, who is Jacob?

And the Lord gives to Jacob this promise.

He says, I'm 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.

We have to look at the utter graciousness of God towards Jacob in this moment.

Jacob had made no sacrifice to the Lord.

He had prayed no prayer of desperation.

He had offered no offering or made no vow to the Lord or requested no help.

And yet, with no provocation, the Lord seeks him out in this desolate place.

This is completely the Lord's impetus.

This is the grace of God not being drawn out by Jacob by some means that he'd concocted or by some righteousness of living.

He's a fugitive on the run, and he'd gained the hatred of his family by sinning against the Lord.

But from the Lord's heart, his heart himself, his grace pours out from himself and goes towards Jacob.

So that Jacob need only receive it.

This is the heart of our God.

This is the heart of our God throughout all of Scripture.

We hear this when Jesus describes himself.

He says, I am the good shepherd.

I would leave the 99 to go after the one.

I'm the good shepherd who lays down my life for the sheep.

Our God is one who seeks his people.

He doesn't just teach them how to draw out his own good intentions, he seeks them, even when they're at rock bottom.

And look at this promise that the Lord gives to him.

Remember, Jacob right now is homeless.

And what is the promise that he gives to him?

The land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring.

It's the same promise of the land.

Jacob's thinking, how could we possibly get there from here?

From laying my head down on a rock in this field, this desolate wilderness, on the way to a family member in a land that I've never known or never met.

How could I possibly come to possess this land and come to have offspring that possess this land?

Do you see the promise that God gives, how personal it is?

He gives them the promise of a home.

What comfort in the middle of the night.

This won't be forever.

I promise you a home while you're wandering homeless in this wilderness.

And he continues with his promise to Jacob: Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth.

And you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, the north and the south.

And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

I want you to uh picture a very desolate place and then put Jacob right in the middle of it, laying down with his head on a rock.

And then zoom out, and there's still nothing there.

You know, the the largest zoom that you can that you can find.

Uh the as high as you can possibly fly your drone, and there's nothing around Jacob.

From that point of a man that you can still see.

Look at the vision that God has.

All of the dust that surrounds him will correspond to his family and his offspring.

Look north, they move there.

Look south as far as you can, his offspring move there.

Look east as far as you can, and they are there.

Look west as far as you possibly can, and his offspring are there from this single man.

God looks at that man and in this absolute desolation, and he sees a nation, a world of blessing.

Jacob couldn't possibly see that.

He couldn't possibly imagine that.

You know, we have proof of this now.

Because where are we?

Like northwest corner of Denver, gathered together, worshiping this same Lord, participating.

We are we are the families that have been blessed through this offspring of Jacob, who's Christ, by the way.

We are the heirs of this promise.

So how far out did you zoom?

Did you include Denver?

Were you zooming through time?

Which is a new Zoom update that'll come up next pandemic.

The scale of the Lord's blessing is unsearchable.

It's an unsearchable scale of blessing.

But look at the object of this unthinkably vast blessing.

It's Jacob.

And somehow, with this vastness of blessing in mind, God remembers Jacob.

Because he ends his blessing by saying this in verse 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.

So the Lord looks at your life and sees this unthinkable range of blessing that might ripple out throughout creation.

And that unsearchable blessing is not.

It doesn't distract God.

Or it doesn't capture his imagination so much that he wanders off and drifts away and forgets you.

He never wanders off and drifts away and forgets Jacob.

Because what is Jacob doing now?

Jacob now, you know, he can't see that blessing.

It's mind-crushing.

It's it's like trying to grasp infinity.

And he he shows him this glory that's beyond imagination.

And then he says, Now I remember and I will be with, and I promise I will never forsake.

And I will be with you.

I'll bring you back to this land.

You, I will for you.

Do you see the impossibility of this?

This is the absurdity of Christianity.

It's Christianity, like when you start to understand it, you realize that there's there's almost there's never any like meeting in the middles, there's never any middle grounds with Christianity.

And so uh church history is fighting over a bunch of apparent contradictions and then resolving them by saying, I think it's 100% of both.

What is God?

Is He absolutely transcendent, totally removed from us, so far above us, he lives in the heavens, he does.

He pleases.

His ways are not our ways.

His thoughts are not our thoughts.

What is God?

Yes, he is that, absolutely transcendent, incomprehensible, beyond space, beyond time, unimaginable.

And what is God?

He is a baby in a manger who will grow up like one of you, and will have a mother and a father, and he will be raised, and he will experience things like pain and hardship and difficulty.

He will reach out and touch people, and he will experience something like death.

So he's 100%.

And so we have this Christ figure, and the church is like, what do we do with that?

And so they argue back and forth.

And we see we have these two categories.

We've got human, I know what those are like, and we've got God, and I know what that's like.

So what is Jesus?

And then all these different heresies develop, and it's like, well, he's just kind of like a picture of a man, and he's not really fully man.

He's he's uh you know, just like he appears like a man, or he's he's not really God, he's just sort of participating in the goodness of God, and he's really just like a whole man.

And then we we we come together and search the scriptures and argue and fight with each other until we realize it's what do we say, but it's both.

Our categories are breaking down because we're dealing with something that's that's impossibly transcendent, so far beyond us, and yet could be hugged, could be killed, because he's a man and he's a 100% of man, and so it resolves that way.

And we see the same thing taking place with this story, you know, where what are these promises?

They're unsearchable, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

And where are those promises given?

What are the objects of those promises?

It's you, Jacob, right there in the dirt, here, wandering in the wilderness, homeless, scared.

I meet you there, that point to give these unthinkable promises of God.

Which is it?

Are they unthinkable or are they particular for here, right now?

When you start to get Christianity, you stop trying to resolve that mystery.

And you say, I think I think I just have to stand in awe of it.

Do you know what it's like, that type of connection?

It's almost like you could imagine like a ladder that at the same time touched the earth and then reached up into heaven.

How could it do both?

How could heaven, how could heaven where God is connect to earth where man is?

And we're just talking about transcendence, distance, and immanence, closeness.

Those are contradictory.

We aren't even talking about the moral component, the purity component, the holiness, the glory, the perfection of the Lord, the sinfulness, the selfishness, the decrepitness and decay of humanity, and yet the latter touches both.

I like to say, get yourself a faith that does both.

You're gonna need one.

Here's the way that the Bible describes humans.

It's one of my favorite descriptions of humans in Ecclesiastes 3.

It says, He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Strange.

That's strange.

We'll table that.

And he has set eternity in the hearts of man.

Yet, so that they cannot grasp what God has done.

They cannot grasp the end of what God is doing from the beginning.

Okay.

Eternity is in your heart.

Yet, you can't grasp it all at once.

That's what it's like to be human.

It's one of my favorite descriptions of what it's like to be human.

I can give you an example.

Infinity.

Do you know what that means?

Now I'll change my question.

Do you know what that means?

Do you see?

That's eternity is in your heart.

Eternity, I can get that.

Infinity.

These are things I can grasp.

Okay, well then start counting with me.

You can't grasp the end from the beginning.

What is a person?

But this thing in which eternity is and this expansiveness is, and then we are this point.

Where do we live?

We must be met.

The only experience of life we have is here on the earth, grounded in this world.

But we are our lives, in order to be meaningful, they have to be connected to the absolute glories of the eternal because that's the way we were made.

And so I hope you see that this ladder, this isn't just like a it's not just like a playful image or something.

What's being described here is this is the very nature of reality.

When you start to grasp this image, you're starting to understand this is what it actually means to be human.

And so you see that all this religious talk that has taught me to condemn the ordinary is it's it's like a ladder that goes into heaven and never touches the ground.

What use is it?

And all this talk of strategy and find in trying to uh technically put together a life which evokes a certain amount of happiness, uh, and thinking of life as just gathering experiences of happiness for yourself here so that you can experience them in this life in the world, it's meaningless because it's like a ladder that touches the earth and then is leaned against nothing in heaven.

The ladder has to touch both.

And I know you experience this difficulty because you think I understand what it means to trust in Christ, to perhaps even bear witness to his name in an extreme circumstance.

And I understand how my life could be used as I as I witness to my friends, or as I as I do work that the Lord blesses, as I'm generous and as I'm kind and caring, I can see how that could perhaps connect to something glorious like the kingdom of heaven.

But as I spoke to one of you this morning, but it's 4 a.m.

and my child just won't go to sleep.

What does this have to do with the kingdom of heaven?

Don't you see that that point is where you live.

That's where you live.

So if it doesn't make sense there, then it doesn't make sense anywhere.

It must connect to both.

It must be 100% of both.

The scale of the Lord's blessing is unsearchable.

The object of the Lord's blessing is personal.

Jacob, right there.

So Jacob wakes up from this dream and he makes a vow.

Verses 16 through 17.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.

This is what an encounter with Christ means.

This is what the gospel is.

Okay, surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.

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.

It's the same place.

Do you see that?

This is where he grabbed a rock and laid on it as a pillow because it was too dark to keep walking.

This is the fugitive homeless on a run in absolute desolation.

He's given this vision of what the reality of the Lord is, which is one who connects the particular with the unthinkable.

And he wakes up and he sees this land of desolation, this absolute horror of abandonment, this being a fugitive on the run.

This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate of heaven.

How could I have fallen asleep here, resentful of it?

This is where the miracle takes place.

One of my favorite authors, her name's Marilyn Robinson.

She wrote this great book called Gilead.

It's a slow read, but it's very good.

And her one of her main characters says this great thing in it.

He's an old preacher, which is probably why I like it.

Because I like old guys.

And he I love this line.

He says, with all due respect to heaven, the sight of the miracle is here.

It's a beautiful thing to say.

But he looks around and he says, with all due respect to all those glorious things that we've seen, I think the sight of the miracle, the wonder, the glory, it's here.

It's right here.

In this ordinary, this desolate, this brokenness.

If you don't have a faith that works there, and you don't have a faith that works, where else can you go but the ordinary?

The most extreme people in the world.

What is life?

It's ordinary.

It doesn't matter how extreme.

It's ordinary.

But this is the strangeness of Christianity.

Is it 100% ordinary?

Or is it unthinkably grand and glorious?

And we fight back and forth.

Until the, you know, the wise among us might walk in and say, Don't you see?

It has to be both.

Where else can it take place?

Where else can it take place?

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.

This is what an encounter with Christ means.

Is that you you encounter Christ and then you walk back out into your same life and you see the Lord is actually working here.

The Lord is working in this very place, this place.

This is the gate of heaven.

This job that I've been walking into, it's drudgery and pain.

I think this might be the very gate of heaven.

This could be the house of God.

You know, that phrase gate of heaven, it has a history in Genesis because there was once a time where everyone spoke the same language, and we all got unified and said, let's build a tower up to heaven.

What we'll do is we'll have its base here on the earth, and its top will extend into heaven.

You know.

What does that mean?

That's the definition of a meaningful life.

You can still experience it here, but its top reaches into heaven.

It's the definition of a meaningful life.

And so everybody got together and they said, if we start building enough and if we all get on the same page enough and we all have the same goal enough, then we'll be able to work this together.

And the name that they had named it was the gate of heaven.

But that word was shifted just by a letter, and it turned into the word Babel.

Because humans can't build their way to heaven.

This is the Bible story, the good news, is not the news of humanity coming together to build a tower that stretches into the heavens.

This story that we're looking at is not the story of Jacob figuring out how to build an altar which summons down the peace and the blessing of the Lord.

This is the story of a man who was hopeless and dead on a rock, and God, out of his goodness, his own heart, sought out him.

There can be no tower built from the earth to heaven.

At the end, when the kingdom of God comes, we will see it descending from the heavens.

This is the good news of the Bible.

It is a story of the God who sought us.

While we were yet sinners, God sought us.

This is the story of Scripture.

And so this new Babel is formed.

But it is not the one from man to God, it is the one from God to man.

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.

Bethel means house of God.

Notice that he didn't build the pillar and then summon down the Lord in response to the pillar.

But it is precisely the opposite.

The Lord sought him out of the Lord's own accord, out of the goodness of who God is.

God sought him.

And then in response, he builds a pillar, a memorial.

And it had to be a pillar, right?

Because it's the same image.

And then he pours oil on top of it.

You know why?

Oil is like a liquid light in Scripture.

When you hear oil, think liquid light, which is also a canned water company I'm trying to start.

Because oil reflects perfectly.

You know, oil reflects the light, so it's shiny.

So he's saying there's like this light here that I never want to forget.

This memorial to God seeking me.

And then Jacob makes this vow and he says, 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.

He enters the covenant.

And he says, The Lord, if you are as trustworthy as you say you are, I'm going to act as though you will deliver on these promises.

And what will you be to me?

What is his other side of the vow?

The Lord will be his God.

This is the heart of the covenant.

This is the ultimate promise of Scripture that I will be your God, you will be my people.

That is what our hearts long for.

This is the deepest desire that we have.

That we would be called his people.

And that he would be our God.

And we would be together in this way.

You know what this is?

What this pattern is of Jacob's vow here?

We see heaven and earth connected with the Lord there.

And picture this, picture that, right?

The latter, you know, the whole first half of the sermon.

As the background to this prayer.

It's as though we might say, we might begin this with like, it is it is on earth as it is in heaven.

And then what does Jacob pray?

Lord, if you if you'll be be with me and you'll give me my daily bread, you'll take care of, you'll take care of me so that I'm able to go into my Father's house in peace.

Lord, you will be, you will be the God of me.

One day, we'll get to pray things because of Christ.

Christ will teach us to pray, how to pray in response to his good news, and he'll say, pray like this, pray our Father.

You know, he even elevates it.

You'll be able to call him God.

You'll be able to say this absurd thing.

You'll be able to call him our Father.

That's how intimate you will be connected to God.

You'll pray something like, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread.

Do you see?

This is the pattern of reality.

This is the intimacy of all relationships.

This is what a meaningful life is.

Is finding God's care and protection in the particulars towards his glorious future that you get to somehow participate in, hope in, take comfort in, promise, hold his promise together in.

He continues on, 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.

His response is to begin to participate in his life as though all that is in it is from the Lord.

This is what tithing is.

Tithing is participating in your life as though all that is in it is from the Lord.

That's what it means to give to the church.

Because what what he doesn't say is, and of all that I have, I will give a full tenth to you.

It's as though God has exploded that category of things that Jacob has.

There's no more category to Jacob of these ordinary little things that I have.

You know, he had a stick with a handkerchief tied with all those things in it.

And he no longer has that category.

Instead, he says, All that there is is just what the Lord has given to me.

What does it mean to where you look at your life?

And you would say, all that there is here is just what the Lord has given to me.

There's nothing ordinary about it.

It's called a changeover.

The movie goes on and nobody knows the difference.

In John 1, verse 48.

John 1:48

Excuse me, I'll start earlier.

Jesus is calling Philip.

And he's calling some other disciples as well.

And Jesus goes and he calls this one man named Philip.

And Philip is like, I gotta tell my buddy Nathaniel about this.

And so Philip runs to Nathaniel and he says in verse 45, 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?

Nazareth is a backwater, you know.

And so you hear that, you hear that uh uh contradiction.

It's the same one, right?

The one of whom Moses and the prophets wrote glory, absolute glory of personhood.

It's Jesus.

From Nazareth.

Okay.

Is there a middle ground here?

Maybe from Jerusalem.

You know, maybe you got Shiloh.

There was a king there for a while.

No, no, no.

It's Jesus from Nazareth.

That's the glorious one.

So Jesus saw, so Philip says, Come and see.

It's good evangelism.

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.

That's a nice compliment.

Nathanael said to Jesus, How do you know me?

Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Do you know what was happening under the fig tree?

What Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Scripture doesn't tell us.

It's just between Jesus and Nathaniel, forever.

It's crazy particular.

Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God.

You are the king of Israel.

Man, makes you wonder what he was doing under the fig tree.

I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.

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.

Do you remember that image?

Heaven opened, and there's a ladder that connects from the earth to the heavens.

And the angels of God are ascending and descending on it.

What is Jesus saying here?

I'm the ladder.

The one that connects heaven and earth is me.

I am the way.

What could Nathaniel have said at that moment?

Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it.

You would never think of Nazareth the same.

This is what it means to encounter Jesus.

Has it ever seemed arbitrary to you?

You know, you're in on the God conversation.

Yes, let's talk about God.

We needed a first mover.

You know, otherwise, where would movement come from?

The world seems so fine-tuned that if it were even just a little bit off, then existence wouldn't have taken place.

And so the fact of existence seems to point towards some grand designer.

It seems like there's some sense of morality that we receive from above that can't necessarily be explained in evolutionary terms, not without doing some like Simone Biles level mental gymnastics.

And so you're comfortable with the God conversation.

Yeah, you know what?

I I think I'm comfortable with the conversation around God.

But Jesus?

One guy from Nazareth two thousand years ago?

You're telling me if I don't believe in this one guy, then I don't go to heaven.

It had to be one guy.

How else do you know things?

What can you know?

What is a withness to a person?

A person other than another person.

What is a sacrifice for the sins of man other than the sacrifice of a man?

We are not dealing with a theoretical God.

We are not dealing with a theoretical existence.

If God were to be meaningful to us in the ways that He has demonstrated and has promised to be meaningful with us, then you are having a conversation about nothing unless you are talking about Jesus.

Jesus.

As the way.

Glory, wonder, the kingdom of heaven folding into creation on earth as it is in heaven, seeking this highest, this utmost highest thing with your life, and then praying something in the next breath.

Give me my daily bread.

Do you see how that encapsulates this glory of Christianity?

Why it is that you can hope for your friends, your individuals that you know, with a transcendent hope.

This is the glory of Christ.

He came to us to be with us.

That's the good news.

It's the hope of the kingdom.

It moves forward in such ordinary ways you might miss it.

But the rise and fall of empires are they're merely the setting for the glorious story of his kingdom takes place.

Okay, are there any questions, Tim?

How do we sit and wait whilst at the same time seek him?

I have like a waiting analogy that I like to use.

You know, in Braveheart, it was like how waiting is active.

Although we think of it as passive, waiting is actually a very active thing that we do towards the Lord.

Um, so the horses are running towards them, remember?

And they've sharpened like that whole forest of spears.

This doesn't work.

You don't get to know this if you haven't seen Braveheart.

Uh okay, so they're they're in a line, soldiers, and they've sharpened these trees as spears, and the uh um enemy horses are running towards them to attack them, and they don't know that they have these spears, so that they're gonna lift up at the last second.

And William Wallace is at the front, blue face paint, and shouting, hold, hold.

Why is he shouting hold?

Because you can't if you lift him up early, then the horses stop too soon.

You don't get to stab any horses.

Which is like, why did we sharpen all these trees?

But if you if you hold and you wait, you say, I'm not gonna take this into my own hands yet.

I'm gonna leave it out of my hands, literally.

I'm going to leave it out of my hands and trust the Lord with this.

You see, that's not a passive thing that you're doing.

It is a very active work of faith.

So, I don't know, maybe that helps give a new category for that question.

We live by a faith like that, which says, I can't make the kingdom come.

Lord, I will pray that you hasten it.

Ultimately, the kingdom becomes in our midst when Christ comes and he comes and he finishes his story of his earthly ministry in death.

And he finishes it with a meal, a particular meal with his particular disciples.

He dies for very real sins, not just sin, but for the sins that we've committed.

And in this meal, we proclaim Christ's death for the forgiveness of our sins until he comes again.

And the kingdom is not something that we just hope for, but something that we experience.

And so that glorious future stretches back into an ordinary moment like this.

And it tastes just like the bread and wine here.

If you're a Christian, we ask that you would participate in this with us.

If you're not, we ask that you would wait, because this is a proclamation of Christ's death and glory.

Paul says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, we praise you for being the God who comes into our world to bring us back to you.

That the good news of the gospel is something that you have accomplished on our behalf.

We pray that you would teach us to be a people that learns how to receive it.

How to receive the goodness that you have done for us.

Lord, I pray for those in here that are in desolate and ordinary places, that you might meet them, and that they might say that in their very lives, surely the Lord was in this place, and I did not know it.

Teach them to pray the way that you've taught us to pray, with glory in our minds and the tangible realities of our lives right in front of us.

Let us pray and hope that you will not leave us until you have accomplished your promises.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.