Genesis 28:10-17
Dear Friends in Christ,
What is the name of the church where you were baptized? I hope you also know the date so you can remind yourself and your children every year of that birthday into God’s kingdom. I was baptized May 2 in Bethel Lutheran Church in Toledo, Ohio. That congregation shares the name of this place where Jacob had his dream.
Wherever your pastor baptized you that is where God the Holy Spirit opened the “gate of heaven” for you. In Hebrew Jacob called it shaarhashamayim. He also called it “the house of God.” Here God opened heaven and with a ladder or stairway showed that in the Promise fellowship existed between God and men. The LORD also promised Jacob “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”
All of our lessons remind us that because Jesus died for us on cross, and as we deny ourselves and follow him God Is Always With Us As We Travel Through Life. His presence gladdens our hearts along the way. His present guiding hand directs us along the way.
Jacob was on a journey roughly from Carmel to Atlanta. Better to think in terms not of miles but weeks for travel at that time. Jacob had fled from home because he had deceived his father, Isaac, and took the blessing intended for Esau, his twin. Moses adds, “Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.”
Jacob stopped to rest at the place his grandfather Abraham had built an altar years before. It was in this place the LORD had given Abraham the promise that he would be a great nations and the Savior would come from his family. We were reminded of that promise last week as the angel of the LORD had repeated it to Abraham at Moriah.
Stressed out and exhausted from guilt and travel, Jacob laid his head down on a rock for a pillow and went to sleep. In his dream Jacob saw what has come to be called “Jacob’s ladder.” The LORD made some of his angels visible and he became visible in what is called a theophany. The LORD repeated the Abrahamitic Covenant with the third generation.
Jacob would know that God is always with us as we travel through life. The journey can be lonely and long and difficult. It can be a journey we take with deep guilt and regret and uncertainty about the future. God is always with us because he is with us in Jesus Christ the One who opened heaven again for us. We sing in the Christmas hymn, “Today he opens heaven again and give us his own Son. And gives us his own Son.”CW 41.Jesus supports this truth as we heard him say to Nathaniel some weeks ago, “I tell you the truth, you will see heaven open and he angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Jacob saw in the ladder into heaven his privilege of constant open communication with the LORD. He saw the LORD’s constant vision and care for him. Jacob saw as we see in the visible sacraments our access to God in Christ following the LORD’s deliverance of us from our sins by Christ.
These gifts and blessings gladden our hearts as we travel through life. We have access to the Father through our Savior his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus promised that he always is with us; not only in his Word but in his filling everything as the exalted Ruler of heaven and earth.
Paul’s heart was gladdened and his words gladden us. In Romans 5 the apostle collectively labels our difficulties as “our sufferings.”Life’s journey often is hard because of the consequences of either our own sins or others sins we must face. It is a struggle under the crosses we must bear on account of our connection to Christ.
But God is always present as we travel through life. Here in the house of God, the gate of heaven, we have the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We receive the cup that is the blood of the new covenant. Actually, anytime we heard or read the gospel we are at Bethel as we see heaven opened in Christ. We are another next generation to receive this repeated promise. We daily remember the promise the pastor spoke over many of us at baptism from Psalm 121, “The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
God is not only always with us as we travel through life. His present guiding hand directs us along the way.
There were many unanswered questions rattling around Jacob’s mind as he traveled from Beersheba to Haran. I can relate to that. How about you? What great words in verse 15 where God says, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.”
It is most encouraging to know that the LORD does not leave me to my own devices to determine where I go or what the outcome of my life will be. I feel sad for people who wrongly conclude that they are in charge. How arrogant to believe that I can determine how my life will end up. I wonder how often someone despairs to the point of taking his or her own life because life turned out just exactly as they had determined it would.
Surely we make preparations and decisions in life. We are not robots. We are not helpless pawns in God’s hands, or Satan’s hands for that matter, pieces in some great celestial chess game. Who gave us a mind and body and opportunities? Who directs us toward what is pleasing and beneficial and away from what is sin and harmful? It is the LORD’s guiding hand through the law and through the circumstances of life that points us and gently nudges us in the right directions. Sometimes, I dare say, he might even give us a good push.
We pray in Dr. Luther’s morning and evening prayers that the LORD would send his holy angel to watch over me so the wicked foe has no power over me. We do not accidently stumble into the goals of our lives. Nor do the vagaries of luck or fortune bounce us around like pinballs.
Ultimately and most beneficially God’s present hand guides us to the end of our earthly journey so we can enter heaven. God told Jacob that he would come back to this land on which he was lying because it belonged to him and to his family. God tells us that one day we will go to the land that belongs to us and our brothers and sisters in Christ, the land of eternal milk and honey where no evil or result of evil can exist.
Twenty years passed before Jacob came home with the new name, Israel. Not a single day of those 7300 went by without the LORD’s present hand guiding Jacob along the way. With a gentle nudge, a little pull and at times even a two handed shove the LORD guides us along the way until we reach our home in heaven; in twenty years or maybe one year or maybe 50 years.
Jacob named this place Beth El, house of God, the name of the church where I was baptized. Think of the name of the church where you were baptized and how the name fits God’s plan: Bethlehem, Divine Savior, Grace, Faith, Calvary, Peace, or whatever it may be. Those names mean an open heaven and Jesus Christ the Stairway we use to be there. Amen. <SDG>