Genesis 28

Use my whole voice before we even started.

Cupboard is bare.

All right.

I'll try my best not to be long and boring, but I know one thing.

If no one here enjoys

my sermon, I know my mama will.

I could say, amen, and Jesus loves you 10 times and she'd still be proud of me.

I love you, mama.

There's very little about me that would

be worth a man at all without my mom and

my dad may rest in the Lord's arms.

All right, so speaking of sons.

That's what we're going to be back in looking at Isaac and Rebecca's

son's life, the life of Jacob, the little heel

grabber himself.

So, um, we

are going to be in Genesis chapter number 28 today.

Genesis number chapter number 28 and

these are narratives.

And so I'll be reading the whole chapter for

us this morning, but Genesis 28, 1

through 22.

God, George says, So, Isaac, called Jacob,

and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him,

You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,

Arise, go to Pedan Aram, to the house of

Bethul, your mother's father.

And from there, take to yourself a wife, from the

daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

May God Almighty bless you, and make

you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may become

a company of peoples.

May he also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you

and to your descendants with you, that you may possess the land of

your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.

Then Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to

Pedan Aram, to Laban, son of Pethul, our

man, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

Now, Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob,

and sent him away to Badonaram to take to himself away

from there, and that when he blessed him, he charged

him, saying, You shall not take a wife from

the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob had obeyed his

father and his mother, and had gone to Badonaram.

So Esau saw the daughters of Canaan displease his

father Isaac, and Esau went to Ishmael, and

married, besides the wives that he had, Mahaloth,

the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nabaioth.

Then Jacob departed from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

He came to a certain place, and spent the night there, because

the sun had set, and he took one of the stones of the place, and

put it under his head, and lay down in that place.

He had a dream, and, behold, a ladder was

set on the earth, with its top reaching 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 your Father,

Abraham, and the God of Isaac, the land on which you

lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth.

And you will spread out to the west, and to the east,

and to the north, and to the south, and in you, and in your descendants,

shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, I am with you, and we'll

keep you wherever you go, and we'll bring you back to this

land, for I will not leave you until I have done what

I have promised you.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep, and said, Surely the Lord

is in his place, and I did not know it.

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.

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that

he had put under his head, and set it up as a pillar,

and poured oil on its top.

He called the name of the place Bethel.

However, previously, the name of the city had been Luz.

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be

with me, and will keep me on this journey that I take, and

will give me food to eat, and garments to wear, and I

return to my father's house in safety, then the

Lord will be my God.

This stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will

be God's house, and of all that you give me, I

will surely give a 10th to you.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you.

Thank you, Lord, for your mercy that is displayed in all of our lives,

and in Jacob's life that we can read this morning.

I pray you bless the message in spite of the messenger, and that

all your words and your truths will bless our minds and our hearts

for your glory in Christ's name.

Amen.

All right, so this is the 3rd part of

Jacob's life.

And this chapter is actually the beginning of the

third part, which will be spread over the next four chapters after this.

So get ready for when we read that whole passage next time.

But we have taught, we started out talking about

Jacob's birth, and how, from the beginning,

he's a little schemer, that supplanter,

the heel grabber, that he was always out

for himself, and trying to make plans to better

himself by his own way.

And we also talked about Rebecca,

and the prophecy that God had given her, that the two babies

that were in her womb, that the twin brothers, Esau

and Jacob, were the start, the beginning of two

different nations, that the rogue named

Jacob, would be one nation, and the utterly

secular man that was Esau, would be another nation.

And one of the things, when we're dealing with the

sovereignty of God, either in scripture or in our

own lives, one of the main things we ask is

the question, why, God, have you ever tried

to ask God why?

Have you ever heard anyone else ask God why?

We can all relate to that question.

But there's another question that's not asked nearly as

much, but is just as important, and that is how

God, how are you going to fulfill your

promises with the situation as it is?

For example, Abraham.

God made a promise to Abraham that his seed would

fill the earth, that he'd be the father of many nations,

that his seed would be like the sand, the sea, and the

stars in the sky, and that he would be a blessing to the whole world.

And then his next generation, is Isaac.

And we saw how much a mess Isaac was.

And then the generation following Isaac, the third generation

after Abraham, is Jacob and Esau, and

what a batch of dysfunction and

mess, where Jacob and Esau,

and Rebecca and Isaac all together.

So how, God, are you going to keep your

promises and make them work out with this material?

Well, part of the reason why Genesis

is written at all is to show his people,

the Hebrew people, and then us, the Christian people,

exactly how God works, and that

helps us, as we live our lives, and we wonder how

is this going to work out for your glory, that we can trust in that?

And that's kind of the message of what we're talking about through all of

Jacob's life, that God weaves his

plan through the tapestry of all of our lives.

He works out.

He works through our lives, and he works through the lives of

sinners and dysfunction and mess,

just like all of us.

And we can see that he does that by looking at the example that

he gave us in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

and so forth, and so on, all the way up until Christ.

Since the two fraternal twins were born, as we saw.

There was this sibling rivalry that was just constant.

They were both working against each other, trying to get ahead, and

then this reached the apex of it in our last message,

where Esau, the favorite son of

Isaac, because remember Isaac liked the food that he cooked.

He was going to receive the blessing of the family as

the eldest of the two brothers.

And this hungry patriarch, Isaac,

was going to give him his blessing for a

meal of game that he cooked.

But Jacob, Rebekah, his

favorite son, stole it through deceit,

that the working of Rebecca and Jacob to deceive

Isaac to seal the blessing.

And this is exactly the material that I'm talking about.

This is what God has to work with.

All four of these are full of dysfunction and sin.

But God can make the pottery

of his plan work out even with lumpy clay.

So today's passage actually begins in the

last chapter, in the last part, as we see

more of this dysfunction laid out with Esau,

Jacob, and Rebecca and Isaac.

So if we go back to verse 41 of chapter

27, it says, So Esau bore a grudge

against Jacob, because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him.

And Esau said to himself, The

days of mourning for my father are near.

Then, I will kill my brother Jacob.

Now, in the words of her elder son, Esau,

were reported to Rebecca, she sent and called her younger

son, Jacob, and said to him, Behold, your brother,

Esau, is consoling himself, concerning you,

by planning to kill you.

Now have you ever comforted yourself by planning on killing someone else?

Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice,

and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban,

stay with him a few days until your brother's

fury subsides, until your brother's anger

against you subsides, and he forgets what you did to him.

Then I will send you and get to you from there.

Why should I be bereaved of both of you in one day?

Now, I want you to remember, that is the purpose that Rebecca wants

Jacob to go to her brother Laban's house, or

land, or farm, is

for him to escape the murder of his brother.

But then, Rebecca goes to Isaac, the patriarch,

laying up in bed in his old age and blindness, if you remember, and

she says, This in verse 46, Rebecca said to Isaac, I am tired of living.

Because of the daughters of Heth, if Jacob takes

a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters

of the land, what good will my life be to me?

Oh.

So she's not telling the whole truth to

her husband, Isaac, is she?

Esau was so mad at Jacob, he threatened to murder him.

Rebecca heard this, and she immediately started

to make plans, and a scheme about what to do.

So she told Jacob her plan, go

leave, and then Esau eventually will forget what happened.

Now, would you forget that

your blessing was stolen by your brother?

Probably not.

But she knew Esau, and she knew that

eventually he would, because his personality,

as soon as his mind went to something else, all that was

gone, all his care for this was gone, and he would just be completely focused

on whatever was in front of him, and the next thing that he wanted.

And she knew this about her son, and she knew that

Jacob would listen to her.

But she did have a problem.

She had to deal with Isaac, the patriarch,

the husband, the one that wore the pants in the family.

But she was a master schemer as well.

She was a master manipulator of her husband,

and so she went in and came up with this complaint

that Esau, you know, he married two local pagan

women, and so she went to Isaac and

put her hand on the back of her head

on her forehead and said, Woe, it's me, husband.

What am I going to do?

And I just picture Scarlet O'Hara, from Gone with the Wind.

And she's going in there, and complaining

to lying to her husband.

But the nagging, complaining works.

And Isaac complies, as

we'll see when we get into our passage.

So I want you to keep in mind, as we go through the

story, this narrative, this account, that the

big picture is that God is weaving

and working through all this, that he is using these

sinners and their actions, their sins,

to fulfill his ultimate will, and

he does that every single time.

God absolutely, through all of this,

invades Jacob's life with

grace, in spite of who he is, and

what he's done, and who Jacob is, and what Jacob has done.

So let's start at the beginning of our chapter and see

how this all works out, as Jacob is sent

to search for a wife in the first nine verses.

First verses, so Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him,

and said to him, You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.

Arise, go to Padanaram, to the house of Bethul,

your mother's father, and from there, take to yourself a

wife, from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

And listen to the blessing he gives him.

May God, Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful and

multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples,

may also give you the blessing of Abraham,

to you, and to your descendants, with you, that

you may possess the land of your sore journings,

which God gave to Abraham.

This scene really cracks me up.

I find it hilarious, because we know what just happened in

the last chapter.

Rebecca went in and she put that bug in

Isaac's ear, but he's sitting in his bed, blind and laid up, and

he's telling Jacob, like, it's his idea, like, this is what you need to do, son.

You need to go get you a wife from our family.

So Isaac calls Jacob

and tells him that he must go away to find a

wife from his native land, like it was his idea.

And on top of that, Jacob already

knew what he was going to ask him, because it

was him and Rebecca's plan.

And the reason that all of this is in there.

is to show that this is just one big circle of

dysfunction and manipulation going on,

again, just like we talked about last time.

And there's some other stuff that's coming that will continue to show you the same thing.

So, maybe you can relate with this,

but hopefully, only in a very small way in

your families.

But Isaac goes along with Rebecca's plan and her manipulation

of him, and he blesses Jacob.

He basically blesses Jacob with the

same promises that the covenant that

Yahweh made with Father Abraham down

to him, to Isaac, and passes that blessing

on noun to Jacob.

So you remember how unlikely that

this was to happen last time, because

in Isaac's mind, he was going to bless Esau

with these covenant promises, but God saw

to it that he would end up blessing Jacob

with these covenant promises dead, because

Esau have I hated, and Jacob have

I loved.

So then, the author gives

us Esau's reaction to what has just happened in

verses 6 through 9.

He says, Now, Esau, Saul, that Isaac had blessed

Jacob, and sent him away to Badan Haram to

take to himself a wife from there, and that when he

blessed him, he charged him, saying, You shall not take

a wife from the daughters of Canaan.

and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother, and

had gone to put on her arm.

So, Esau, Saul, that the daughters of Canaan displeased his father Isaac.

So what does Esau do?

So Esau went to Ishmael, and

married, besides the wives that he had, Mahalov,

the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the

sister of Nabarov.

Esau saw that Jacob had got another blessing from

Isaac.

And Esau wanted one of those things for himself.

He just wanted some kind of blessing.

So in his fleshly and secular mind,

he saw what happened, and he tried to

do his own thing, and go his own way, and follow

his own instructions, according to

the way that his mind worked.

So he went and married another woman,

who wasn't a daughter of Heth, who

wasn't a Canaanite, she was the daughter of

Isaac's half brother, Ishmael.

And so, if you remember the story of Abraham

and Sarah, their first child, their

first son, was Ishmael that they had with Sarah's

maid, Hagar, right?

And this was their way of trying

to get what they wanted their own way, instead of God's way.

So Esau is following in his grandfather's

footsteps, by doing it his own way, and finding someone

that's in the family, like Jacob

was going to do, but not exactly what

God was talking about.

Ishmael was over here, and Isaac was over here,

and now he's going his own way, and doing his own thing,

another mess, and just another reiteration

of the problems of not trusting in God.

But that everyone involved here is

a mess, but the difference is the hand of God.

Jacob is a mess.

But God's hand was on him, and

we'll see that in the next part, as Jacob

leaves his family and his land, and heads to

his uncle's place in Padanaram to find a wife.

But something happens along the way to

Padan Aram, as it usually does.

Jacob sleeps on the way, and

he dreams a dream, verse number 10.

Then Jacob departed from Beersheba,

and went toward Haran.

He came to a certain place, and

spent the night there because the sun had set, and

he took one of the stones of the place, and put

it under his head, and laid down in that place.

He had a dream, and, behold, a ladder

was set on the earth, with its top reaching

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 your Father, Abraham, and

the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I

will give it to you, and to your descendants.

Your descendants will also be like the

dust of the earth, and you will spread out

to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to

the south, and in you, and in your descendants, shall all the families

of the earth be blessed.

Behold, 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.

So, on the road to Haran,

Jacob comes to a certain place.

And the Bible makes certain, the author of

Genesis, through the Holy Spirit, makes certain that we know

that this is a place.

It's that place.

It's a certain place, that

Jacob finds a place to rest.

Verse 11.

He came to a certain place, and spent the night

there because the sun had set, and he took one of the

stones of the place, and put it under

his head, and lay down in that place.

That certain place where he found a

stone to make a pillow, he would later call

Bethel, and it would become a major part

of the Hebrew geography

in cities, as we'll see later.

But Jacob must have been extremely

tired from his journey.

This is about 55 miles away from

where he started in Beersheba, and so this

is probably three days journey, walking around 55

miles to where he's ended up.

So how do we know that he was probably tired?

Because when he went to lay down, he used a stone

as a pillow.

Now, I'm an old man now, 45 years

old, and I don't need an alarm clock to wake up because

when I wake up, I wake up because my back hurts, right?

I cannot imagine laying down and

using a stone for a pillow, and how

he must have woke up.

But he must have slept really well.

Because as he was sleeping, God

caused him to have a dream.

And in this dream, he

sees a strange, very strange thing.

But the NASB here calls a ladder.

The word means more like a staircase,

or a stairway, up to heaven, no

pun intended with Led Zeppelin.

And so going up and down this staircase to

heaven are angels going

to heaven and coming from heaven and going to earth.

And so just like Esau marrying his

half sister, or half brothers,

however that worked out, was doing it in his own

way, kind of was a call back to

Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael.

This is kind of a callback earlier to Genesis,

to the Tower of Babel, because you

remember why they were building the Tower of Babel,

they weren't able to complete it?

because they were trying to build a building themselves to

reach heaven for themselves.

So here we have a call back to it, but

God's counter to it.

Jacob wasn't trying to reach heaven.

He was just trying to get as good a night of sleep as he could on a stone.

God built the staircase down to

Earth so that we could go up to heaven.

That is the picture that is going on here.

The Tower of Babel was man's way to try to make it

to heaven and to God.

And the Jacob's ladder, or Jacob's

staircase, is God's way of combing down to us.

And so this is ultimately a picture of the incarnation

of our Lord Savior, Jesus Christ.

So, Yahweh made this staircase that came

down to earth.

He built it for us.

And he stood above the ladder, and he called down

to Jacob, and he repeated the same promises

that he made to Abraham, and to Isaac,

and that Isaac that had just blessed Jacob with,

he told him the promise that he

would give him in verse number 15, behold, I am with you,

and we'll keep you wherever you go, and we'll bring you back to

this land, for I will not leave you until I have

done what I have promised you.

Now, can you imagine, this promise

being made to you, by Yahweh

himself, standing in the clouds on this staircase,

this ladder that went up to heaven, and just

imagine the booming voice that he must have heard in

this dream, saying that I'm going to keep you, that

I'm going to bring you back to this land?

Remember, he's leaving the land running for his life.

That was supposed to be his inheritance and all that he had.

Isaac just promised him that land,

but he doesn't know if he's ever going to be able to go back here, but God is

promising that he will be.

But lastly, he promises, I will not

leave you until I have done what

I have promised you.

I'm going to be with you the entire way until

every single one of these promises will

be kept for you, which means God will never

leave him nor forsake him.

What sounds like the same promise that God made

to Moses, that the author of Hebrews quoted

in chapter number 13, being content with what

you have, for he himself has said, I

will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

So that is the promise that he made to Jacob.

That's the promise that he made to Moses, and that

is the promise that he made to us, that

we can live our lives knowing that he will never, ever desert

us, and he'll never, ever forsake us.

And that is a promise worth living your

life anchored to.

But wait, there's a little bit of an issue.

See, Grace can be offensive

to us.

Can it not be?

If you don't know, think about it.

Jacob was a rascal, a rogue,

a mess, a great sinner, a liar,

a schemer, a heel grabber, all these things, and

he did nothing to this point, that could

be ever looked at or perceived as

something that was good.

But God came to him out of nowhere and

made these promises to him.

Grace can be very offensive to

our sensibilities.

But if you don't think so, I

read the story studying for this message, and

it was about Henry Gorecki, any World War

II historians here that recognize that name.

There's not many of us that Christian

historians of World War II.

He was a Lutheran minister from St.

Louis, and originally, he was

from Germany, so he spoke German.

And so when he joined the army, he became a

chaplain for the army.

And his post was

to the German prisoners that

were facing the Nuremberg trials.

These were the worst of the Nazis, who oversaw the slaughter

of thousands of Jews, and committed

heinous war crimes against the Allied

forces, and they were going to be condemned to death

or to be marooned and left in prison

for the rest of their lives.

He was the chaplain for

these men facing these charges and what they had done.

So he questioned them.

He was a minister, that he counseled with

them, he prayed to them, and he witnessed to them the

glory of the gospel.

Not all of them, but several of those Nazis

seemed to be genuinely repentant to him.

He was no softy.

His previous ministry experience was with criminals themselves.

Some of those he examined, he even admitted to the Lord's Supper.

And so near Christmas, of

1945, he wrote in his diary, and

I'm not going to read the names, I can't pronounce German names, but many of them were

some of the worst heinous Nazi criminals, there,

that they seem to have a genuine change,

and repentance seemed to come over their lives.

And all of this continued until

his career as an army chaplain ended in 1950.

He came back to the States and was a Lutheran

minister until he died in 1961.

After he died, his oldest son was going

through his things, and he found a secret compartment in

his desk, and in that compartment, was a thick

stack of letters that hundreds of

people had written to Henry Corecki, calling

him a Jew hater, and a Nazi lover, and

calling for him to be hanged, just like the Nazis

at Nuremberg.

They were all written in the most hateful

language management.

Why?

because grace can be offensive.

Because we don't understand the amount

of grace that we need for salvation.

We think we need less grace than

those evil Nazis needed.

But the fact is, we all

need all of the grace that God has given,

and by the way, he has an overflowing amount

of grace to all of us who have been saved.

And so if we ever get offended by

the grace God chose to our enemies, to the most hateful

people, they deserve to their punishment and the hanging,

but Christ can save any of

us, and if he can save us, he can even save Nazis

that are on their way to capital punishment.

We are all Jacobs in a way, if that makes sense.

Jacob had done nothing, in himself,

to build this ladder, this staircase, to

heaven.

Yahweh built it all for him.

Jacob wasn't worthy of God's promises that he made.

We aren't worthy of the promises of Yahweh either.

God made him out of his own grace, and

his own love, and out of his own will for

him and for us.

But Jacob received that grace,

and this became the pivotal moment

in Jacob's life.

This is where everything changed.

He woke up a new man.

And we can tell because of the way that

he responded to Yahweh's

grace, verse 16.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep, and said, Surely the

Lord is in his place, and I did not know it.

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.

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took

the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up as

a pillar, and poured oil on its top.

He called the name of this place Bethel.

However, previously, the name of the city had been lus.

Then Jacob made a vow saying, If God will be with me, and

we'll keep me on this journey that I take.

And I will give

me food to eat, and garments to wear, and I

return to my father's house in safety, then the Lord will be my God.

This stone, which I have set up as a pillar,

will be God's house, and of all that you give me,

I will surely give a tenth to you.

I was asked recently by someone.

What would I say to Jesus Christ when

I see him face to face?

What questions would I ask of

Christ, and what would I like to know?

I told him that my first response would

not be any questions, or anything, but

to put my face on the ground and worship him for

all that he's done for me.

And that's kind of what Jacob does here.

There's a holy fear that comes over him.

When he wakes up from the stream, that Yahweh caused him to have.

And he's utterly amazed at what he saw,

not just at what he saw, but at

what God had told him and promised him.

Wouldn't all of us be waking up from that dream.

When he went to bed on that rock pillow,

he had zero idea, or intentions

of having a meeting with Yahweh, the creator of

the universe, that night.

Grace came to him as

a complete surprise.

He wasn't seeking grace, he

wasn't looking for it, he wasn't following some

set of steps in order to find the grace

of God or to get saved.

He wasn't following pillars of religion

or sacraments to get to his grace.

His eyes were open to it, and he believed.

And how do we know that he believed at this point?

Verse 20, Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with

me, and will keep me on this journey that I take,

and will give me food and eat and garments to wear, and

I return to my father's house in safety, then the Lord will

be my God.

Now, he's not saying that he's

not negotiating with God here and saying, if you give me all these things,

then I'll make you my God.

What he's saying is, wow, if he's

going to do all that for me, then he's going to be my God.

Does that make sense?

That's the difference.

And he's only saying that.

Think of Jacob Pre, this experience,

what God had done had completely changed him and

his outlook on life.

He stopped following his own schemes.

This no longer became a way to get away from his murderous brother.

This became part of God's plan.

And so he was going to go on to the next step in a different light.

Now, obviously, as

we go on to the next part, there is still

some scheming going on.

This is a planting going on with Jacob and

with his uncle, Laban.

He doesn't become a perfect man, but the direction

of his life changes.

The orientation of his life becomes

reoriented towards Yahweh instead

of his own benefit, if that makes any sense.

He would take the stone that he made a pillow,

anoint it with oil, and make a pillar out of it.

He wasn't making an idol of the stone.

It was a memorial that what had happened

to him would be remembered, and it

would be remembered for a very long time.

Verse 19, he called the name of that place Bethel.

However, previously, the name of that city had been

Lus.

So Jacob called where he was Bethel, right?

Bethel means house of God.

This is where he went, and met with God.

And so, before this time, this city was

called Luz, and probably, the

other people in the area still called the

place Luz.

But Jacob knew it wouldn't be long, because God

had promised him this land, and that he

had rights to name

Even if they have, the other people haven't realized that yet.

So this place, that God had

promised Jacob, would become extremely significant

in the future of the Hebrew people.

It would become the future home of

the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle before

it was moved to Jerusalem.

And this place here had made an indelible mark

on Jacob's life, and his mind, and his heart.

He would never forget what had happened here

in Bethel.

And that is exactly what saving grace does

for each of us who are saved.

We are changed by the reality that

God is working in us, that God has promised us

salvation in the end.

Sometimes that change, that

outward change is absolutely revolutionary.

But no matter how drastic the outward

change is, every single person that faces

Christ and saving grace is changed

to the core, and everything that God

does for us, is done out of

overflowing grace that He has for us.

This journey started out, like we said,

as another scheme for his own good and his

own self protection.

But it would end up by God's grace and in his

sovereignty, being the most important journey of

Jacob's life.

He wasn't on a religious pilgrimage

to find God, but in God's

timing, and in God's way, God found Jacob,

instead of Jacob finding God.

The main thing about this is

that as we go through life, and we have loved ones,

that we pray for, as we have those

around us, that haven't been found by the grace

of God yet, we can remember that

God's grace comes sometimes in the most surprising,

unexpected ways, how

many of us were expecting to find God's grace

when it found us, right?

Not many, or not any, really.

Jacob responded to the promises of God, by faith.

When he started this trip, he had zero ideas that

God was going to meet with him like this.

You never know, how God is working in

the lives of those around you, those that don't know him, what's

going on with the trials and tribulations in their lives, in

our lives, and how God is going to use that, in

order to pour his grace on us, to

change our lives, and to make us more like Christ either way.

So make sure the next time you

have a loved one who needs Christ and that you're

praying for, the next time that life takes you on

a trip that you weren't expecting to have, remember

Jacob's ladder, or Jacob's staircase, and

remember this story, and ply that to your life, and

have faith in God, that he will keep every promise that

he's made to us in every single day.

And most importantly, in the end,

He will always keep his promise until all his promises are kept.

Let's pray.

Happy Father, we love you, Lord, and thank you for your mercy,

your word that you've given us here in the Old Testament, what a blessing.

It is.

I thank you for writing down Jacob's life and not cleaning

it up for us, but it's given us all the details, even

as bad as they are.

I pray that we'd all be able to apply this to

our Christian lives, and we'd grow closer to you, and whatever

happens, you would use it in our lives for your glory, and

for your son's name, in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.