What this pursuit of dreams betrays is that we have an ideal of what we think the world should be. We have an idea of our heaven. In fact, often times at funerals, pastors will wrongly take the ideals that the deceased pursued in this life and will make them into a heavenly ideal. “He’s playing a round of golf on the heavenly course.” “She’s sitting over her favorite fishing hole with her savior.” What this tells me is that we think that somehow, we can make heaven and earth meet through the pursuit of our dreams.
Honestly, this is not just an American practice. It’s a desire that is as old as time. What we find from the very beginning of Genesis is that God placed Adam and Eve in an earthly temple called Eden. This Garden Temple was literally a place where heaven and earth met. But, because of their sin, man and woman were cast out of this temple, effectively creating a division between heaven and earth. Though heaven is just as real and immanent as it ever has been, we cannot see it because of our sin. Yet, that has not stopped people from trying to access it by their own means. The pre-flood peoples tried to gain heaven through relationships with demons. The people of Babel tried to gain access by building a temple that would open the door. Every idol that anyone has ever worshipped is a portal of sorts. The ancient Mesopotamians that surrounded Israel didn’t believe the idols were the gods themselves, but rather they were a portal through which the gods could access this world.
Even the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were guilty of trying to gain access to heaven through their own means. Abraham tried to gain God’s promise through Hagar. Isaac tried to manipulate God’s blessing in favor of his beloved son Esau. And, we just saw that Jacob used deceit to try and have heaven his own way. Yet, even with all of this sin, God is still working out his purposes.
We pick up in our text today immediately after Jacob’s deceitful ploy to steal his brother’s blessing. Remember that Esau has threatened to kill Jacob, and both Rebecca and Isaac do not wish for him to make the mistake his brother did by marrying women of Canaan. So, they send him away to Rebecca’s brother, Laban. In our text, Jacob is on his way from Canaan to Haran. He is alone, scared of his brother’s threats, and without any evidence of the birthright or blessing that he has stolen. He comes to what the text calls a “certain place” and beds down for the night, and it is here that God chooses to reveal himself to Jacob in the same way that he had to Abraham and Isaac. This encounter with God will serve as a turning point in the life of Jacob which he will regularly reference back to. To better understand this event, I want to dive deep into understanding what it is that Jacob sees in his vision.
Much has been made of the story of “Jacob’s Ladder”. Many a sermon and life lesson has been formed on the idea of climbing Jacob’s ladder, with the idea being that this ladder is something that we climb to gain heaven. But, I want to suggest that this is not what is going on here at all. To understand what is going on, I want to look at where this pathway is, what this pathway is, and why this pathway is.
First, where is this pathway? As I noted earlier, the text doesn’t really tell us where this is. It says that it is near a city called Luz, and in a certain place, but the text is intentionally vague about where this is. This in itself should tell us something about this pathway. It should tell us that God is present everywhere. Remember, Jacob is leaving the promised land, and like anyone in his day, I’m sure he believed that gods were regional and unable to cross the borders of the lands they inhabited. Yet, God meets him in a nondescript place as he is leaving the promised land. And, in the promise that God gives Jacob, he promises that he will be with him wherever he goes. This simple fact reveals that the God of the universe is present with us everywhere. He is not removed from us, as the deists and the Muslims believe, inaccessible and unapproachable. God is eminent, and his throne room is over all the earth. Psalm 139:8, which we read earlier, says that God is in the very depths of the earth and the highest of heavens, and there is nowhere we can go, either physically or spiritually, to escape his presence.
Second, what is this pathway? Most English translations get this wrong, I think, in translating this as “ladder”. I think a better translation is “stairway”. And, even still, the idea is not of a stairway suspended between earth and the clouds, but rather a stairway that is going up a temple. What Jacob sees in this vision is the heavenly temple of God, transposed over the earth, with a stairway leading up to the throne room of God. I say this because the later prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel would have similar visions which would depict the throne room of God as a great temple with a throne room at its peak.
That leads me to my final question: why is this pathway in this vision? Here, Jacob serves as a “border crosser”. He, in effect, passes through the veil that separates the spiritual realm from the earthly realm, and God’s promise in this vision reveals Jacob to be the person through whom God’s blessing will extend to the whole world. The implication here is that God will somehow use this deceitful, wimpy man to be the bridge between heaven and earth and will somehow restore the relationship between God and man through him.
As the story continues, we get real, physical glimpses of what this might look like, as God literally dwells with the people of Israel, first in the tabernacle in the wilderness, and then in the permanent temple in Jerusalem. Yet, even though God dwelled with his people through these physical temples, the hearts of the people were still far from him. So, while the fire and smoke of God’s presence was visible on Mount Sinai, the people were busy in the basin below making an idol to somehow access heaven by their own means. And, even though, in 2 Chron. 20, God’s presence filled the temple that Solomon built, the people would later set up statues to other gods in and around the temple and on every high place in the land. This idolatry would enrage God so much that he would use the Babylonians to destroy the temple and take his people into exile. And, after the exile, the people would rebuild the temple, but God’s presence was never again seen in it.
Yet, some 400 years later, the Son of God would walk into this vacant temple as a twelve-year-old boy and the greatest teachers of the land would stand in awe of his knowledge. In John 1:14, John introduces this Son of God as the “dwelling place” of God. Jesus would tell his disciples in John 1:51 that they would see heaven and earth opened up and the angels ascending and descending upon the son of man, which is a direct reference to Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28. And, the disciples would see this very thing, as the Spirit of God descended on Jesus at his baptism and later God revealed Jesus’ glorified nature on the mount of Transfiguration.
But, Jesus didn’t just reveal who he was to his disciples. Jesus would tell the religious leaders in John 2:19 that if they were to destroy this temple, God would raise it up in three days. John notes that Jesus was referring to his own body as the temple of God. The religious leaders took this to be a blasphemous statement and would use it as the main charge against him at his trial before the Sanhedrin. In the greatest act of defiance and idolatry, the religious leaders would pledge allegiance to the pagan Roman Caesar so they could tear down the true temple of God using a cruel Roman cross. Yet, God would use this horrific act of idolatry to once and for all break down the veil between God and man. Matthew, Mark and Luke all record that at the death of Christ, the veil in the holy of holies within the temple was torn from top to bottom in a symbolic gesture of what was really happening. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, the relationship between God and man has been restored. And, because of his resurrection and the gift of His Spirit, we now have direct access to the throne room of heaven.
So, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:21 that God is building a temple using human bricks. And, in 1 Cor. 3:16, Paul says that we are all little temples because God’s Spirit reigns in us. This means, among other things, that heaven now dwells with earth because of the presence of God’s people here. We, right now, are in the presence of God, revealing through our obedience what heaven looks like. And, as we go out into the world, we take the temple of God with us. So, when we share the Gospel, when we love our neighbor as ourselves, when we serve the poor and downtrodden, we reveal heaven to a lost world.
Friend, no amount of wishful thinking, no amount of dreaming, can shape this world into the heaven you want it to be. Nothing you can do can cure this world of the curse that sin has placed on it. Your only hope of heaven is found in the true dwelling place of God, the man Jesus Christ. Trust that he is the Son of God and that his death and resurrection will restore you to God, and you will be saved.
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