“Bible places: Bethel”
Genesis 28:10-17
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
How would you like to get away? Maybe try something a little different, or find a strange or unusual place to stay?
For starters, there’s the Golden Crown Iglut in Levi, Finland. With its eighteen igloos, full baths, and double beds, not to mention an incredible view of the nighttime sky, it’s the perfect place to go. But I better warn you--the average low is right around 22 degrees, so be sure to bring along a sweater!
Or if you’re one who likes to read, maybe you could try a place called “The Book and Bed” in Tokyo, Japan. It looks a lot like a used bookstore, with shelves filled with three thousand titles in English and Japanese. And it’s cheap--only $35 a night! The downside is, you’ll have to share the bathroom with about thirty of your not-very-close friends!
And if that’s not quite exotic enough for you, there’s always the Hotel Costa Verde in Costa Rica, where their motto is, “Still more monkeys than people!”
And of all places, you can sleep in a remodeled, upscale, 1965 Boeing 727 with a soft bed and beautiful ocean views. You can even eat in a covered patio out on the wing. Just don’t step out too far, because there is a fifty foot drop down to the jungle floor below!
In the book of Genesis, we find yet another unusual place to stay, a place called Bethel. And there you’ll have stars for a roof, a stone for a pillow, and the ground for your bed. I invite you to turn in your Bible to page 29, to see what I mean.
I’ll start where it says, “Jacob’s Dream,” Genesis chapter 28, verse 10: “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.”
If you know the story, and I hope you do, Jacob had just left town, in a hurry, afraid for his very life. Just two days before, with his mother’s help (!), he had tricked his father, Isaac, and his brother, Esau, into giving him the blessing and the birthright. And just as soon as his father found out what he had done, he cried. And Esau promised to murder him. That’s why, as it says in verse 10, he “left Beersheba and went toward Haran.” He was, after all, a two-time double-crosser, a con man on the run!
Even more, he was alone--no family, no friends, no servants, not even a dog to watch over him at night.
Could we stop there for just a moment? It’s my guess that most every one of us knows what it’s like to be Jacob, to live life on the run. Some of us are running from the past, trying to escape guilt or regret. Some are running from fears and failures. There’s a lot of life any of us would rather leave behind.
And not only do we run from our past, we run toward our future--toward a new job or a new experience or a new relationship. And as we run, we can’t help but wonder where we’re going, what our purpose is, and what’s life really all about?
And if that’s not enough, think of the everyday busyness of life, about all the things we want to do and need to do, but often never get done.
And just like Jacob, our “life on the run” eventually takes us to a place we didn’t mean to go, like that place somewhere between Beersheba and Haran. It’s a hard place, a lonely place, a place full of rocks and stones.
And what did Jacob do in his place of rocks and stones? Verse 10, “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.”
Do you think he had a hard time falling asleep that night? I certainly would. Think about what he had just done! He had lied to his father, cheated his brother, and probably would never see his mother again. And don’t forget--Esau had promised to kill him!
Can you notice this for me? Up until now, Jacob had lived life pretty much on his own. He was, after all, little more than a cheat and a liar!
He cheated because he thought God couldn’t care less about him, that He was too big, too vast, and too almighty to ever be concerned about someone like him. That’s why he took life into his own hands. Sure, He was the God of his father Isaac, and the God of his grandfather, Abraham. But He was not yet the God of Jacob too.
Yet it was there at Bethel, in his moment of deepest despair--homeless, penniless, alone and afraid--that God came to him in a dream.
Let’s look again at the text. Verse 12: “And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the 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 and said, ‘I am 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. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’”
Then what did Jacob do just as soon as he dreamed his dream? Verse 16: “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘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.’”
There’s that question--why did God appear to him in a dream? Why not in a vision in the full light of day?
Maybe to show Jacob that he was not the master of his own destiny, that he was not in control. Instead, God was in control, and whatever was about to happen would be a gift of pure grace.
And why a ladder, a stairway, reaching up to heaven?
Maybe to show him that wherever he was, God was. It didn’t matter if he was in a dark, rocky place. It didn’t matter if he was a thief, a cheat, and a liar. There was no place he could go, where God was not already there.
And so would be His blessing. Verse 13: “I will give you this land. Verse 14: “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth.” And verse 15: “I will be with you and will keep you and will not leave you until I have done all that I’ve promised.”
And how good that is for all of us to know! Are you worried about tomorrow? You shouldn’t be. God’s already there. How about next year or about that meeting you dread next week? Don’t be afraid. He’s already there too!
No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you can never be where God is not. And wherever God is, there’s a stairway reaching down from heaven right to where you are.
As C.S. Lewis once put it: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
You’ve heard the phrase, “It’s a small world”? We use it whenever we bump into someone from home in a far-away place, or learn that our dentist was once our father’s childhood friend.
But that’s nothing compared to what happened with two women from Eau Claire, Hillary Harris and Dawn Johnson.
The story began in January of 2017, when Dawn moved from Greenwood to Eau Claire. After months of searching for a house, she made an offer on a small cottage-style “fixer-upper” on the west side. And even though the closing was postponed three times, she wouldn’t give up. She said, “There was just something about this house that I liked.”
Then when the deal was finally done, and the papers were signed, she started to work on her new home. And the neighbors with whom they shared a driveway, Hillary and her husband, Lance, stopped by to say hi. The meeting was polite, but uneventful.
The first hint of anything unusual came when Hillary’s preschool-age daughter kept visiting the new neighbors. She told her to stop. “What if they don’t even like little kids?” she said.
At the same time, she was on a quest to find her birth family. She had been adopted when she was only a month old, and always wondered about her roots. And after her adoption agency sent her a packet of documents, she found that her two half-sisters shared the same father, and one of them, Dawn Johnson, was from Greenwood.
Now she knew her new next-door neighbor’s first name was Dawn, and that she had come from Greenwood, but she had never heard her last name--
--Until that day when Menards delivered a stack of shingles. And printed across the stack, on a big, red banner, was the name “Johnson.”
Hillary couldn’t believe her eyes.
And as they stood face-to-face in their shared driveway, they learned they were half-sisters, both having the same dad.
Who would have thought they would be so close, right next door?
And who would have thought our God would come so close, right next door?
Before we leave this text, there’s something very important you need to know. You know, this isn’t the last time we hear about angels ascending and descending. In fact, we hear about it once more, this time in the New Testament, in the Gospel according to St. John.
And there we find, in the very first chapter, Jesus was calling His first disciples. He had already asked three men to follow Him--Peter, James, and John. Now He would call nine more.
And that’s when He met a man named Philip from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. And just as soon as Jesus called him, Philip went to find his friend named Nathanael. He said: “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
And what did Nathanael say? He said: “Nazareth? Can anything good from there?”
Then when Jesus saw him, He said: “Behold, an Israelite, (a son of Jacob!), in whom there is not deceit!”
“How did you know me?” he asked.
Jesus answered: “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael said: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Then Jesus said: “Because I said, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”
Then He said: “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 understand? Jacob’s ladder isn’t a what. It’s a who! It’s our Savior Jesus Christ.
In the words of a hymn: “This ladder is long, it is strong and well-made, has stood hundreds of years and is not yet decayed; many millions have climbed it and reached Zion’s hill, and thousands by faith are climbing it still. Hallelujah to Jesus, who died on the Tree, and hath rais’d up a ladder of mercy for me, and hath rais’d up a ladder of mercy for me.”
We thank You, dear Father, for Your Word of salvation, the message of the cross. Remind us always that You are strong and You are near, for Jesus’ sake. Amen