We come to the second reading for this morning, which is the sermon text. And that is Genesis 28, 10 through 22. Picking up where our first reading left off, Genesis 28, 10 through 22. You'll find that on page 22 of your Pew Bibles. I do invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's inspired word. 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. 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 will 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. 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.' 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. So early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel. And the name of the city was Luz at first. Then Jacob made a vow saying, if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house. And all that you give me, I will give a full tenth to you. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. What does it take to turn a worldly man into a worshiper? What does it take to turn someone who is living for themselves, living in their sin? on the run from God and to turn them completely around so that their hands are lifted in praise, saying, God, I give myself to you. I give my life to you. I live for you now. And we've seen some of these dramatic reversals throughout history. We've seen men like Paul of Tarsus, John Newton go from worldly men serving themselves, running from the consequences of their sin to being in one dramatic moment changed. from worldly man to worshiper. What does it take? Jacob is a classic example. Before the experience here in this passage, Jacob was a fugitive running from the consequences of his sin. He was a troubled son in search of a new direction in life, a con man on the run with his brother's stolen blessing. His sin led him into the wilderness where he found no more comfort than a stone for a pillow. He was alone and running for his life from his bloodthirsty brother who hated him for, let's be honest, good reasons. And his brother was a good hunter. All of this was true of Jacob. worldly man on the run, alone in this life, until one night, one dramatic night, God gave him a glimpse of something that changed everything. And like Paul of Tarsus, like John Newton, like the men who have had these radical conversions before, Jacob was changed forever. What Jacob saw that night transformed him from a worldly man into a worshiper. And the good news is that you and I can see what Jacob saw. We can see it, but even greater, we can see it with eyes of faith. If you and I catch even a glimpse of Jacob's ladder, as it truly is, we will be changed forever. We will be changed from our worldly ways and we will worship God. And so we will answer that question. What does it take to turn a worldly man into a worshiper? But we wanna do this by seeing what Jacob saw that night and then what we can still see today, what we can still grasp with the eyes of faith. What did Jacob see that night? He saw a dream. And again, let's talk about what got him here very briefly. He's on the run, he's running from his brother. He stole the blessing like a coward would. And he is reaping the results of that folly. He is on the run because his brother has become dangerously angry at him. And he's on the run for another reason. He realizes that He needs to find a wife and his parents have given him some direction as to where to go. And so he's running from his home to the home of his ancestors. And somewhere in between there, where Jacob is just kind of this fugitive running for his life, just trying to check off the next box, trying to find direction in life, and yet Think about him. He lays down at night and he can barely sleep because he doesn't know whether he'll wake up to a knife at his throat. And his brother has tracked him down, the skilled hunter that he is. So Jacob goes to sleep in this kind of paranoid state with nothing more than a rock as his pillow. And in a dream, he sees something magnificent. He sees a ladder in the very spot where he was sleeping, the very place where his head is laying. You almost wonder if he has this kind of out of body experience and sees himself lying there. And there's a ladder that is going all the way up into the heavens. Only it's not a normal ladder. It was, in fact, a stairway to heaven. The word that is used here in Genesis points us to not so much rungs of a ladder that you would climb up one by one, so much as steps, a flight of stairs that goes up and up and up and up all the way into the heavens. The clouds opening to receive it. And it was like the Tower of Babel. Remember when we studied the Tower of Babel earlier in Genesis, it was like a ziggurat, a huge temple structure with stairs going up all the way to the sky. Only these steps weren't built by man. Instead, they were God's stairway down to man. That's the first thing he saw. And then he sees something else. There's something moving up and down this ladder structure, this stairway. God's angels, his messengers, with all their glory and all their brightness, ascending and descending the ladder, going up and down this heavenly escalator. And at the very top of it all was the Lord, the Lord himself standing there, directing the traffic flow between heaven and earth. As the angels go up and down, up and down, the Lord stands above them and directs the very commerce of heaven as it reaches down to earth on that very spot which Jacob chose to sleep. What did it all mean? God told Jacob what the stairway meant. He said, behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. There it is in verse 15. The meaning of the ladder, the meaning of the stairway, God saying, I'm here. You didn't know it, but I'm right here, and I'm with you. To bless you, I'm with you to direct the very blessings of heaven up and down to you, to bring them down and to bring you up. Can you imagine more comforting words to a man who is running for his life? a man who is on the run, a man who has not a sense of blessing to find in this world, a man who has nothing more than a rock for a pillow, a man who goes to sleep wondering if he'll wake up with a knife at his throat. This is the best possible news that Jacob could receive, and it comes totally out of the blue, totally unexpected. I want you to notice two surprising but beautiful truths from Jacob's ladder. Here's the first. God surprised a sinner with his glorious presence. You see, Jacob thought he was alone. Here's this. I'm gonna call Jacob a mama's boy, because that's what he is, right? He was the favorite of Rebecca. And here he is, and for the first time in his life, he doesn't have his mommy looking over his shoulder. For the first time in his life, he's all alone. And in fact, he'll never see his mom for the rest of his life because of the foolishness of his sins and her sins that had him on the run, headed to Haran. And for the first time in his life, he's alone, and he doesn't have her to vouch for him, to look over his shoulder, and yet, surprise, God says, I'm here. I'm here working behind the scenes to protect you. The very rock in which your head lays is no rock, it is the base of a stairway. from which God himself descends to do what? To guard the very hairs on Jacob's head. God says, the very place in which you sleep is a portal to heaven where I am looking out for you. I'm here to protect you. You didn't know it, did you? But I'm here. And I wonder how often we forget God's protective presence in our lives. I wonder how often we forget that the very places in which we sleep and eat and drink, the very places where we feel we are most in danger and alone. We are not alone after all. If we belong to God through Christ Jesus, we have his protective presence with us. And if we could see the very curtains of the of the spiritual world pulled back, we would see the angels ascending and descending to protect us, to guard us, to keep us. How would we live differently if we knew that was the case? How would you live differently to know that this is the case, that God's protective presence is with you to keep you, to guard you, even when you least feel like he's there? And so God surprised the sinner with his presence. There's another beautiful surprise here. God surprised a sinner with his pursuit. You see, Jacob wasn't seeking God. He was running for his life. Just like all sinners do, Romans 3, no one seeks God. No, not one. All of us, just like Jacob, on the run, trying to outrun, outpace the consequences of the sin that we've left in our own lives and the sins that follow us from our forefather, Adam. We think we can outrun it. We think we can somehow get past these things. And yet, what does God do? He shows up at the very moment when Jacob is tired and can run no more, and he has to sleep, and he says, You're not seeking me, but guess what? Surprise sinner, I'm seeking you. And God, as it were, came down from heaven's ladder to meet this undeserving sinner and to give him blessings. The very blessings which He stole and didn't deserve. He deserved to have them ripped out of his hands and handed to another. Those very blessings, God comes down from heaven and meets this running fugitive and says, here they are, this time given to you the right way. All you had to do was wait and I would have given you all of this. I wonder if we realize what good news this is for us today, for us right now. It means that we can give up all of our ridiculous attempts to run from our sins. We think we can somehow outrun it. We think we can just leave it behind and run and run and run and busy ourselves with life. And then somehow, if we run fast enough, if we don't look back, It'll all be behind us, and yet it just keeps catching up to us, doesn't it? And we lay down on our rock pillow at night, and we can find little comfort, why? Because our sins keep following us. Because we're haunted by our past, we're haunted by the wrath of God, which comes against our sins and says, sinner, you repent or it will catch you in the end. And so we run and we run and we run until we can run no more and we fall asleep as it were. And God in this passage says, sinner, run no more. You can't outrun your sin, but I'm here to bless you with my grace. Repent, turn from your sin. Look it full in the eyes, all of its nasty ugliness, all the consequences it's bringing upon you, and then look up to the ladder and see that I see it all, I see you, and I will come down to bless you by my grace. Isn't that beautiful? Surprise sinner, you can stop running. God is here to bless you. There's something else that God says here in this passage. Surprise sinner, you can stop climbing. God has come down to bless you. Aren't we so often like the men of the Tower of Babel who tried to build Stare after stare after step, brick after brick, trying to make something of our lives, we realize we can't outrun our sin anymore. And so we say, well, maybe I'll make something that matters. Maybe if I can climb my way up to heaven, my sin won't matter and God will bless me then and there. And so what do we do? We just check off the next big thing. We try to make impressive motions out of our lives. We say, maybe if I can just be good enough Maybe if I can stack good work after good work, maybe I'll ascend high enough. It's a tower of Babel effort. Man in his pride, us in our pride, trying to climb our way up to God. If I'm earnest enough, if I try hard enough, if God notices me enough. If I'm a good enough father, if I'm a good enough mother, if I'm a good enough husband, if I'm a good enough wife, if I'm a good enough child, if I'm good enough in my job, then maybe I'll make something of myself so that heaven itself will see me and usher me up into its blessings. How many of us live our life this way? Just brick after brick saying, have I earned it? Have I done it? Have I done enough? See, this is the state of every religion apart from the gospel and the good news of Christianity. Every religion apart from Christianity preaches what? Preaches a tower of Babel method of salvation, where brick by brick, step by step, we attempt to climb to heaven and hope that we've made it far enough. or hope that if we make it at least halfway there, that's good enough. And it's not, and it won't do. Because remember what happened to the Tower of Babel. God saw it for the prideful arrogance it was and brought it crashing down, stopped it in its tracks. And yet the good news is that Jacob learns here and you learn too. You're not at Babel anymore, you're at Bethel. Not Babel, but Bethel at the very house of God, the very gate. You're there. You're at the pearly gate. You're there. You're where God dwells. You don't have to climb there. You don't have to find it. He's come to give it to you. He's brought heaven to your doorstep as a free gift. You don't have to climb your way up to heaven. God brings his grace down to you. Surprise, sinner. All of this swirling around Jacob's dreaming mind until he wakes up. What does he do? Immediately he worships. He's amazed, he's astounded. He said, I didn't know. All of this was right here, right at my doorstep, right at the pillow on which I was sleeping. It's all here for me. I don't have to run for it. I don't have to climb for it. It's here. And he says, praise God. He, from this day forward, is a changed man. Now he has one more major lesson to learn. He'll have one more experience, dream-like experience in the night, in which he'll wrestle with God at Penuel. But here, this is the first step of Jacob going from a worldly man who we've never heard of worshiping God to now being a man who says, I worship you. I give my life to you. What does it take to turn a worldly man into a worshiper? It takes an experience of God's surprising grace. Have you encountered God's surprising grace? You can today. Because you and I can experience the grace of Jacob. Because we now see something even more clearly than Jacob could have ever dreamed about. We now see what the ladder symbolized. We now see in beautiful clarity what this dream was all about. Jesus Christ is Jacob's ladder. He is the only stairway to heaven. And it's a stairway down to us. Listen to John 1, 51, and Jesus says this. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. There it is. What's he talking about? He's talking about Jacob's ladder. He is quoting from Genesis 28, and yet he's not talking about a ladder upon which angels are ascending and descending. He's talking about a person, a person. And that person is who? Who is the son of man? It's Jesus. He identifies himself as the son of man. from the book of Daniel over and over and over again. It is his favorite title for himself in the gospels. Jesus himself is Jacob's ladder. How can this be? It can be because of this. In Jesus Christ, God came to seek out sinners and to surprise us with his incredible grace. He came down from heaven when we were alone in this world and running scared from the eternal consequences of our sin. Running from the wrath of God, which was haunting and hunting us. Following us wherever we went. A reminder, it's coming for you. Justice must be served. You can run, but you can't hide. Just like Jacob, we were running from our sin, running from what we justly deserved. And yet, when we were doing our best attempts to outrun our sin or to build a stairway up to heaven, at that very point, Jesus brought heaven down to us by becoming man and dying on the cross for our sins. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And I want you to remember what Jesus said of himself. He said, there is no other way. I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He is the only stairway to salvation. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2.5, there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. No other stairway, no other ladder, Christ alone. Bethel, not Babel. The very house of God come and the gate opened for us. Now Jesus makes God's presence real in our lives. He says in Hebrews 1 verse 14 that he sends his angels as ministering spirits to protect us, to guard us, He directs the commerce of heaven down so that the blessings of heaven come to you. He promises to never leave us or forsake us. He says, Lo, I will be with you until the very end of the age, until I've done what I have intended to accomplish with you. He brings to us the same blessing that he brought to Jacob, only clearer, only better, only more beautiful. Have you placed your feet upon the stairway of salvation? Have you grabbed ahold of its golden rungs by faith? There's a song, we are climbing Jacob's ladder. We are climbing Jacob's ladder. Are you climbing Jacob's ladder by faith? Are you ascending the son of man? Here's what John Calvin says. It's a beautiful quote. Christ is the medium through which the fullness of all the celestial blessings flow down to us and through which we in turn ascend to God. Can you say that of yourselves this morning? Have you tasted? Have you seen? Have you experienced his grace such that you say, I too have seen the latter? I've seen it in Jesus. And then how do you respond to these surprising glimpses of grace? How do you respond when you've seen sinner running from your sin, sinner climbing to try to earn a place in God's favor? When you've seen that you cannot do these things, but yet that God brings his grace freely to you and opens the gate of his house right where you are. How do you respond? Like Jacob, we respond by waking up and worshiping. Let's go to him now and worship, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jacob's ladder, this beautiful vision in the night, which now, in the clarity of the daylight of Christ's revelation, we see that this ladder was but a symbol of a person, and that person is Christ, fully God, fully man, bringing together in one person heaven and earth bridging the gulf and the separation that existed between us and you. He's reconciled us by the blood of his cross. He suffered and died for our sins in order to bring us near, in order to bring your house here to where we live. the very place where we tried to run from you and the very place where we tried in our pride to climb up to you and to pull heaven down to us, in that very place, you surprised sinners by your grace. Would you continue to do this so much that the result is heartfelt worship? We pray all this in the name of Christ Jesus, our Savior, amen.