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July 20, 2008
The Gate of Heaven
a sermon on Genesis 28.10-19a
by David C.
Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
Life is so unfair! I
have known people to wonder and doubt and struggle for years to find their
purpose in life. Some sacrifice a life of comfort for the sake of a spiritual
quest. Some lack faith but attend church regularly and read the scriptures in
the hope that God will communicate with them in a way they can understand. Does
my life have meaning? Why am I here? Am I alone? Does God exist? If so, what
does he want with me, if anything? What can I expect from God on my journey
through life—what will he do for me, if anything? These are the big questions. I
have known people who sought answers all their lives. Of course, some people
give up finding answers. They decide the questions are too hard and without
obvious answers, so they quit trying. I think that is where our culture is as a
whole. We live in a culture that no longer believes in truth. Without truth or
answers, how do people go on living? Easily enough. You just go about the
business of being yourself as best you can and don’t worry too much about the
profound questions. It works. If no great tragedy comes along to force the
questions on you, you can get along well enough. But the questions never really
go away. They haunt us. Humans will always come back to these questions. We have
to. It’s who we are. Here is why I protest life is unfair: Some people look and
look for answers, and find only scraps. Yet here we have Jacob handed all the
answers at once! Based on what Genesis has said about him so far, I suspect he
was one of those people who bounce along without bothering to reflect on the big
questions of life. Then, the first time he gets himself into a tight place, with
just the first hint of tragedy to make him stop and think, God hands him the
whole package, neatly wrapped with a bow. I ask you: Is that fair? No! … But, if
it is any consolation to you, Jacob did have a lot of living and suffering to go
through before God was through with him. Having the answers didn’t exempt him
from the trials of the journey. Still, what a difference those answers make!
What about you? Have you found your answers? Are you still looking? Or do you
not bother? Maybe Jacob’s story can help you on your journey, wherever you
happen to be.
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Who is Jacob, and what’s going on here? Jacob is the patriarch. The Old
Testament talks about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s that Jacob.
Later God would change his name to Israel. You may recall Jacob cheated his
brother Esau out of his birthright and stole their father’s blessing. His name
means “cheater,” and Jacob was a smooth operator. What’s going on in this story
is, their father has died and Esau wants to kill Jacob, so their mother has sent
him to stay for a long time with her brother Laban. Jacob is on the run. He’s
left home for the first time. He’s alone. The journey is a long one. He’s
camping out in the open. One night he arrives in a certain place and uses a
stone for a pillow. That night he has a bizarre dream. In it he sees a ladder
going up from earth into heaven. Scholars suggest we do better to picture a
stairway or ramp. Temples in the ancient near east often had stairs going up on
the outside; these were called ziggurats. In his dream, Jacob sees angels—God’s
messengers—ascending and descending the ladder. Picture it in your mind however
you want to. The important thing is not the image but the truth it represents.
It represents the most significant truth about our world. Earth and heaven are
connected. God is there. God is here. God has something to say. God is busy in
our world. Some people can’t believe in the ladder because they don’t believe in
God. No God, no heaven. No heaven, no ladder. This world is the total of all
reality. Others can’t believe in the ladder because they believe God is just a
spiritual force that pervades the material world. They think God is found down
inside us, not above us. Still others can’t believe in the ladder because to
them God seems so far above us no ladder would ever reach. What about you? Jacob
believed in what the ladder represents. He called the place he slept “the gate
of heaven.” Do you believe in that gate? A gate in heaven means there is a
transcendent God who is above us but also with us. The image is important, but
more important still is what God had to say to Jacob. The God of the Bible, of
Christianity, is a God who speaks, who makes himself known. That’s the
characteristic trait of the living God: he makes himself known to us. And that
is what happens in our text. God makes himself known to Jacob. First, God
promises to Jacob what he already promised to Abraham and Isaac. Then, God gives
Jacob a special promise of his own. Let’s look at each because they will help us
when we try to figure out what all this means for us. First come the promises
already given. God chose Jacob to bear these promises. Jacob was not the sort of
person you or I might choose, but he was God’s choice. So God reiterated the
promises about the land, descendants too numerous to count, and a blessing for
all the earth. These are the same promises Abraham believed. Scripture
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says Abraham believed God’s promises and therefore God considered him righteous.
It also says that we come to God in the same way, by trusting his promises.
Those who have faith like Abraham’s are the spiritual descendants and heirs of
Abraham. These promises were fulfilled when Israel became a nation and God
settled them in the Promised Land. And yet, there is a hint in the last promise
about the whole world. Ultimately these promises led to other promises, ones
meant for you and me. Second, God gives a special promise to Jacob: “Know that 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.” “I
am with you.” It’s a promise God gave to Moses, Jeremiah, and all of Israel at
the time of the exile. It is the name given to Jesus. The angel told Joseph,
also in a dream: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name
him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us” [Mt 1.23]. Jesus gave his followers
the same promise before returning to the Father: “I am with you always, even to
the end of the age.” “I am with you” stands among the most powerful of God’s
promises. Jacob surely felt alone, torn from his family and everything familiar.
On his way to a place he didn’t know. His future entirely uncertain. Do you know
how he felt? Alienation—that feeling of being alone in the world—is a terrible
reality for so many, especially in the modern world. We have become so mobile,
so autonomous, so individualistic, that we float free from the things that
rooted our ancestors. Land, family, social institutions—these still help us hold
together an identity, but they do not rescue us entirely from isolation. You can
feel alone in the largest crowd. The loneliest I have ever felt in my life was
in the middle of a bustling city. I was in Damascus, Syria. I separated from the
group to travel on my own. I was clearly out of my element. Everything was
foreign, and I felt displaced and alone. But that may be a bad example. You can
feel alone among your friends … or at a family gathering. The truth is, we don’t
want to be alone, but we fear we are. Whatever Jacob’s anxieties on that score
might have been, God gave him a comforting promise: “I am with you.” You are not
alone. You are not a mere grain of sand on the infinite beach of the universe.
The transcendent God is with you. That was God’s promise to Jacob. “I will keep
you.” This biblical idea of keeping fascinates me. I believe in God. I believe
God is with me. I believe God has his hand on my life. Yet I know I am not
exempted from suffering. Car wrecks, cancer, and a whole host of other
undesirable happenings remain live possibilities. I don’t know what might happen
to me. Where is God? Why does he let his servants suffer? What is his protection
worth if he doesn’t head these things off? But note: God does not promise to
protect Jacob, especially not from all harm. He promises to keep him. That means
something different from having a bodyguard in the sky. God’s keeping means we
will not ultimately be lost. Alzheimer’s may take our minds. Another disease may
take our bodies. But God keeps
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us. This promise reminds me of Martin Luther’s favorite verse, Colossians 3.3:
“You life is hid with Christ in God.” Luther, remember, had a price on his head.
He lived in constant jeopardy. No wonder he found that verse so meaningful. For
Jacob the promise was more specific. God promised to bring him back to the land
of Canaan. “I will not leave you,” God again assured him, “until I have done
what I have promised you.” Elizabeth Achtemeier was a Presbyterian New Testament
scholar and a remarkable woman. Some of you who have been involved with the
women’s circles may remember hearing her name. She wrote an autobiography and
used part of this verse for her title, “Not til I Have Done.” She claimed it as
a promise for her own life, and she reflected on how God had worked out a
purpose for her and her family. This line speaks of purpose. Jacob, of course,
had a specific place in God’s plan. Jacob became Israel, the father of the
chosen people, from whom the Messiah came. He didn’t know all that. God didn’t
give him a blueprint. Instead, God gave him as much as he needed. God promised
to be with him, to keep him, and to fulfill a purpose through him. Jacob still
had no idea all that God would do or how he would do it, but he knew enough. God
handed him the answers in a neat little package. Whatever God had in mind, Jacob
knew his life had purpose. Before we move away from Jacob and start talking
about us, one more thought. Do you see how all of this is God’s grace? Jacob
wasn’t looking for God. He was just doing what he had to do to get by. Out of
nowhere—in the middle of nowhere—God gave Jacob the answers he needed, even
before he asked the questions. This is grace, from top to bottom. Jacob had done
nothing to prove worthy of the promises, in fact just the opposite. God chose
him anyway, just because that’s what God wanted to do. Jacob was overwhelmed by
grace. No wonder he woke to remark, “How awesome is this place! This is none
other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Now we move to the
final part of the sermon, the payoff. What does all this mean for us, if
anything? Even supposing we take this text at face value and believe it to be
true, what does it have to do with us? Do we have any legitimate right to claim
God’s promises to Jacob as our own? Once again, I’m going to use a two-fisted
approach to this passage. I have preached before about how we find the meaning
of a biblical passage by looking at its place in the grand story of the Bible
(on one hand) and by placing ourselves in the text (on the other). I did this
with the story of Gideon recently. To get the right meaning from the Jacob
story, we must first consider where it fits in the one story of the Bible. Then
we consider how it might speak directly to us. In a nutshell, here is what you
need to remember: Jacob is your ancestor … and, you are like Jacob. “Jacob is
your ancestor” is a good way to remember how this story fits into the Bible’s
epic story of God’s love affair with creation. According to the Bible, the world
is
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broken; we are broken. All the problems you see and experience—that’s not what
God wants. God wants something better for us. So God set out to fix things. His
plan began by creating for himself a special people. God started by making a
covenant (a covenant is a relationship of promise) with Abraham. Then God passed
those covenant promises to Abraham’s son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Today’s
passage is very foundational for the whole Old Testament. It is the moment God
reveals himself to Jacob and gives him those promises. From Jacob would come the
twelve tribes of Israel. Israel was supposed to show the rest of the world who
God is, but their record on that score was spotty. Even with the Law of Moses,
the Temple, the kings, and the prophets, they got it wrong more than they got it
right. So did God’s plan fail? Not at all. All along God planned to send a
Messiah to save Israel, and not only Israel but also the whole world. That
little promise about a blessing for all the nations of the world pointed toward
Jesus. Of course it’s easier to see that with hindsight, but it was God’s
purpose all along. God established a covenant with Abraham. Abraham believed
God’s promises, and God considered him righteous because of it. Through Jesus,
the Messiah, God has given promises to all who believe. He has promised eternal
life. He has promised to be with us forever. When we believe these promises, we
come to God the same way Abraham did: by grace, through faith. It’s that simple.
Having faith like Abraham’s makes us Abraham’s descendants—and Jacob’s too.
That’s why I say we are Jacob’s descendants. God’s promises to Jacob led
eventually to Jesus, and now through Jesus we too can become part of God’s
people. We can become heirs to the promises. We can enjoy that same covenant
relationship. Jacob is our spiritual ancestor. That’s what the story means when
we put it in the context of the whole Bible. What about when we try to put
ourselves in the story? When we look at it this way, we find that we are like
Jacob. We have the same questions. The promises God gives him answer our deepest
questions and longings. But is it legitimate to say, “God promised this to
Jacob, so God must promise me the same thing”? It sounds fishy, especially since
Jacob had such a distinct role in history that neither you nor I could have.
However … we have just seen that through Jesus, the covenant promises are ours
too. So although we cannot count on having descendants as numerous as the stars
or God bringing us back to the land of Canaan, the promises God made to Jacob
are essentially the same as the ones he makes to all believers. He promises to
be with us. He promises to keep us. He gives us a purpose and an identity. We
know there is a transcendent God who cares for us. All those questions have
answers. And in our case too it is grace from top to bottom.
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We are like Jacob because God deals with us the same way he dealt with Jacob. He
chooses us. He calls us. Some of us search; some get caught unaware like Jacob.
We find meaning for this life and hope beyond it. Let me close by saying just a
brief word about how we live under God’s promises. I hear people wondering how
specific God’s plan for their life is. Does he have one person designated ahead
of time to be your spouse? Does he have one career selected for you or a
specific job? We are like Jacob. God gives us answers to the big questions, but
not a blueprint. Maybe God’s will for you is very specific. Maybe it is not
specific at all—what he wants is for you to trust him and live for him each day,
wherever you happen to be, and use your gifts to serve others in his name. I’m
not sure we can know how specific God’s will is. But, you see, what matters is:
you live with purpose. And once you are a Christian, your life has purpose and
meaning no matter how specific God’s will is or whether you figure it out or
not. You know that you are a child of God; your destiny is eternal life with
God; in the meantime you love and enjoy God; you reflect his glory into the
world by loving others and sharing the Good News. Also, God keeps you. I’ve
already talked about what this means and what it doesn’t. I confess I do not
understand why some things happen. Only God can give the answers, and I believe
he will someday. Yet I am convinced that if you are a Christian, your life is
hid with Christ in God. The next verse in Colossians says, “When Christ who is
your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” No
matter what happens, God will keep you. All of this is possible—for Jacob and
for us—because Christ died for us and rose again. He is the gate of heaven. In
him, we find not just our answers, we find life. Amen. rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
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