[Text: Gen. 28) “Is It Going Up or Coming Down?”

Scripture Intro: This passage contains a moment that has captured the imagination of the people of God for thousands of years – a ladder (actually, it was more likely a staircase) connecting heaven and earth. What people have differed on, however, is what we’re supposed to do with it.

[Read and pray]

As we think about this text, I want us to first look backward to the beginning of the Story and to the severing that occurred so early in our existence. In the beginning, when the LORD looked at the sum total of creation he said it was “very good” and we call the-earth-that-was “Paradise.” But Paradise was not just a place, although the physical beauty and perfection we see in Genesis 1-2 must have been awe inspiring. Paradise was truly paradise because it was founded on beautiful relationships - God and man living in close relationship, deep intimacy, Humans living together in peace without shame, and even humanity’s relationship with the physical creation being whole and fruitful and fulfilling.

But then Adam severed all of that through his disobedience and hiding from the LORD. Sin and shame and death began to twist humanity and sever the intimacy once enjoyed with God and each other. And so a great distance opened up between God and man. Heaven and earth, which once were one as God dwelled with us, were separated. And in that severing a sense of profound loss came into human hearts as our true home with God was lost.

Have you felt that sense of loss, the feeling that things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be? This passage tells us how God intends to deal with that loss. But how do people deal with it?

People deal with that loss in a number of ways. Some try to recover Paradise in ways that only lead to deeper loss as they worship the gifts of God but not the Lord Himself. Marriage, sex, productivity, intelligence, and even food become gods as we bow down to them and make life revolve around them. They are things that humans look to for restoration of Paradise thinking, “If only I could _____, then life will be right and whole again.” But those gods only demand life from us. They cannot give it. If food is your god, either in eating too much or too little, then in due time you will find that your god has killed you.

Other people deal with that loss in a way that seems better on the surface. We call it “religion” and humans across this globe have their own systems of “be this not that” or “do’s and don’ts” or “duty and karma” or “how-to-be-free-from-desire” as human efforts to bridge that chasm between the human and the Divine so that life can be lived in Paradise once again. That kind of religion is humanity trying to ascend to God.

But that is not the Gospel. Edmond Clowney wrote, "Most people think of religion as man's quest for God. The God of the Bible, however, is the God who seeks us."[1] And through Jacob’s eyes in this passage we see a glimpse of reality and the promise of a fuller reality as God comes down to us because we cannot go up to Him.

The passage opens with Isaac living in light of his transformation in the last chapter, but having to do so in light of Rebekah’s and Jacob’s deception that now threatened Jacob’s life. Once again in the story of Genesis we see human sin separating instead of making life whole like we desire.

Even though Rebekah requests for Jacob to be sent away to find a wife from their own people, Isaac is actually acting in line with the will of God that he first heard and saw from his father, Abraham. Abraham knew that the LORD had rejected the families of Canaan because they had rejected the LORD. So it wouldn’t be right to join the two families – the people of God and the people in rebellion! So, Isaac wants what is good and right for Jacob.

But sin has complicated the whole thing. When looking for a wife for Isaac, Abraham had sent a servant to the distant family so that Isaac could remain in the land God had promised to the offspring of Abraham. But because of Rebekah’s and Jacob’s sinful deception (which lay at the root of Esau’s desire to kill Jacob that we learned about at the end of the last chapter) Jacob has to leave the Land in a disguised exile. His sin would mean he would be outside of the land of his fathers and his future offspring for the next two decades…which probably made the blessing he received from his father kind of awkward and strange.

Isaac blessed Jacob and said (in v. 3-4), “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!”

That blessing is in the form of a prayer as Isaac is asking that God come and act in Jacob’s life. But it also acts like a gentle correction for Jacob as he hears that deception and manipulation are not the way life can be made right or the blessings of God can come. True blessing only comes when God comes to us and gives us life from His hand.

And if Isaac was in doubt that the first blessing he had obtained through a lie wouldn’t “stick,” then this blessing would have been a real encouragement to him. It’s as if Isaac says to him, “I know the first blessing I gave you might leave doubt in your mind because it was meant for Esau and became yours by your lie. But listen to me now, Jacob. The blessing of YHWH is upon you and even though you are leaving the Land, the LORD will be faithful to do what He said to me and to my father, Abraham. May the LORD come to you with blessing in all things and, in you and your offspring, cause you to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.” So Jacob is sent away from home and away from the Land. He is alone. He is vulnerable. We don’t even know what he is thinking about his past sin and this blessing that is set on him. But a blessing has come to him.

The scene shifts to Esau and we see how he deals with the loss of his birthright and blessing. Esau saw he had lost the blessing and the favor of his father and he figures to himself that he knows the reason now. He thinks, “If Dad doesn’t want his boys to marry a Canaanite girl, then I’ll find a wife from our family like Dad wants Jacob to do. Then I’ll be doing what he wants and then I’ll be back in his good graces and maybe then a blessing like Jacob’s could rest on me, too!” But Esau’s story continues to be a tragedy. Think about how he’s trying to bridge the chasm his sin has opened up.

In v. 9, Esau goes to the family of Ishmael and takes a wife, “besides the wives he had,” who were Canaanite women that were thorns and bitterness to his father and mother as we learned in chapters 26 and 27. There are three problems we see right off the bat. First, having three wives was not at all a part of God’s design for marriage. Polygamy in the Scriptures is always presented as a problem. Second, Esau fails to put away the Canaanite wives as Israel would later be instructed to do in Nehemiah’s time as a way to lead the people out of idolatry. But even if we say that he shouldn’t have put them away since he had already married them, just consider the third problem: the family from whom his third wife came. He compounds his sinful choice by taking another wife from Ishmael’s family, a family related to Abraham, yes, but a family rejected by God and outside of His covenant! Esau’s attempt to bridge the chasm between himself and his father (and, ultimately, the LORD) only results in further alienation and separation as his efforts lead him astray.

So if undeserving Esau can’t work his way up toward grace and favor, what hope is there for undeserving Jacob?

Jacob is probably around 50 miles away from home and the setting sun forces him to stop for the night. He’s alone, vulnerable and a stranger in a strange place with only a rock for a pillow. And the LORD comes to him in a dream.

Jacob sees a flight of steps with its base on the earth and “the top of it reached to heaven” with “the angels of God…ascending and descending on it” and the LORD himself standing at the top of it in a position of power and authority.

The expression “the top of it reached to heaven” should call to mind another staircase earlier in the Story. In Genesis 11, humanity came together to make a name for themselves apart from God by building a tower “with its top in the heavens.” But here, rather than a man-made ascent to the Divine leading to confusion and frustration like at Babel, we see the heart of God who still desires to be with His people. Although the LORD stands at the top of it in transcendent sovereignty, the staircase tells us that the LORD loves and longs to dwell with the humble and the lowly and is making a way for God and man to be together again. And since we cannot go up to Him, He will come down to us.

And he sends blessing down to Jacob, even Jacob, confirming the promises to him that God made to Jacob’s fathers. He says, “I and the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac.” The word of God comes to Jacob as if to say, “I am their God and I’m the God of you, too.”

The LORD goes on to add His promises to Jacob in answer to Isaac’s prayer for Jacob. The LORD confirms that all the promises made to Abraham, even the promise to bless all the families of the earth, will come down from God to Jacob and his offspring.

And then God draws near to Jacob, this quiet, lonely man – who loves living in tents but is now sleeping under stars with a rock for a pillow and is leaving his home for the first time – and God tells him, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” The transcendent and powerful God Almighty has come down and drawn near to this sinful broken man, bringing blessing and comfort with him.

Grace can’t be worked up. It comes down freely with God.

Jacob’s response to grace coming down is viewed by some as the best possible response. Calvin sees in it the precursor to the peace offerings that would come later in Israel’s history. Others see it as evidence that although grace has come down to him, he still doesn’t “get it” and tries to bargain with God. I think the reality lies somewhere in between.

We can see some beauty in his response as he encounters the transcendent and yet intimately close God and doesn’t take the meeting lightly. That’s more than I can say for myself sometimes as I encounter the Living God in His Word and walk away no different than before the meeting. Jacob is in awe of such a God. He builds a monument as a remembrance of this moment, recognizing it as the day he was in God’s house.

But there are also some problems. In v. 20 he says, “If God will be with me….” “If God (does this), then (I will do this).” That’s hardly a whole-hearted and full faith being expressed. In that age, a covenant between two parties, like between God and Abraham and now God and Jacob, was an agreement between a greater party and a lesser party. The greater party is the one who set all the terms of the relationship: the responsibilities of both, the conditions of the contract, so the speak, with the consequences for faithfulness or disobedience. But here we see the lesser party, Jacob, trying to set the terms.

Jacob also focuses merely on himself in the vow rather than on his responsibility to his offspring and to the whole world. Listen to God’s blessing versus Jacob’s vow:[2]

- “God says, ‘Myself…the Land…the descendants…the Messiah.’

- Jacob says, ‘Me…safety…food…clothing.’ His thoughts are entirely on his own needs.”

But isn’t that me again? The Lord’s Prayer teaches me to pray for God’s Kingdom and for “our daily bread,” but so many of my prayers are about my kingdom , my bread, my blessings.

But we can take comfort that Jacob’s and our weakness doesn’t stop the blessing and grace of God from coming down. In fact, it is the weakness of humanity - even yours and mine - that stirred the heart of God to come down in an act of grace that would open the way for heaven and earth to be one once again.

It’s what we see anticipated by the prophets who said:

“… the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14 ESV)

Or again,

“For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6 ESV)

It’s what we celebrate at Christmas, but will fill us with awe for eternity, as we remember the night our Savior was born and heaven came down to earth in the form of an infant King whom they called Jesus, “the LORD saves,” and Immanuel, “God with us.”

In Jesus, the LORD came down to raise sinners up.

Jesus himself affirmed that reality as he said while calling Nathaniel as his follower, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51 ESV) Jesus declared that the staircase connecting God to man again was nothing less than him!

In Jesus we again see the same heart of God that we saw in Genesis 28 as God bridges the chasm created by sin in the body of God’s own Son, so that by his death our relationship with God (and with each other and even with creation) can be restored now and fully in the age to come. In Jesus, YHWH came down bringing forgiveness and grace and promises of His presence and a future hope for people like us, like Jacob, who more often than not, just don’t get it. And just when we think we do, we blow it again.

Jesus is, indeed, God coming down in grace and favor, but Jesus is also, by His Spirit, lifting us up, lifting us up even into the heavenly places. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:

“…even when we were dead in our trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

For Paul, the bridge between heaven and earth that is the body of Christ is not one-way. The glory of Christ raises us up now by the Spirit into the very presence of God so that we are with Him, united to Him even now in every way: in joy, in pain, in comfort and in suffering, in deep darkness and in radiant peace, in temptation and in quietness, in obedience and in failure.

And Paul also understood that while Jesus came once to redeem us by his blood, Jesus will come once again to make His home with us. Before he left this earth Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14:18-20)

If it is true that God comes down to us in Jesus because we cannot go up to Him, then it changes everything.

- First, it opens us up to experience something that the world cannot. We experience rest from our efforts to ascend to God! Jesus has done it all and said, “It has been accomplished!” What would you add? When we received Jesus by faith, then your labor to save yourself is finished. By believing in him alone, which itself is a gift from above that comes down to us, then you have done the work God asks of us.

- Second, as God gave grace to Jacob that was to bless all the families of the earth, so God gives us grace in Christ that blesses us and is to bless others, too. The grace of God in Christ frees us and draws our focus away from self. Like Paul went on to write in Ephesians 2, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” The redemption accomplished by Christ and the promise of His presence with us enables us to live outward-faced in love for others.

The joy of the Gospel is that, in Jesus, God has come to us to draw us to Him. He promises that is a reality now by faith – believers are one with Him again - but he also promises that one day faith will give way to sight and touch as God declares that once was will be again. Then we will see our God who has come to us and hear Him say, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) It is a return to our home that was lost because of our sin. It is the return to God our Father and it is made possible by Jesus, the Way.

[1] Edmond Clowney, Preaching Christ in all of Scripture, 80.

[2] From James Boice’s commentary, Genesis, vol. 2, 775.