Word of Salvation – Vol.38 No.28 – July 1993

 

Sinners In Heaven

 

Sermon by Rev. John Rogers on Gen.27:41 – 28:22

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

What’s it all about?  That’s the age old question, isn’t it?  What are we?  Who are we?  Why are we here?  And the problem is a whole lot worse today because we’re not so sure how we got here in the first place.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism handles those questions with its first answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

When you’re talking about enjoying somebody, you’re talking about having communion with them, having fellowship, being involved with one another.  A husband and wife can’t enjoy one another if they have nothing to do with each other.  So, if we’re going to speak about the purpose of man, the purpose of man we’re going to have to go back to the beginning.

Where was man at the beginning?  He was in Eden and in Eden God used to come down and walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day.  That was fellowship.  That was involvement with one another.  That was what God made us for.

And we will never understand ourselves or find happiness until we come to see our ‘why’.  It’s to be found in fellowship with God and our fellows.

And that, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, is the point of the whole Bible.  That is why God made that great covenant of grace with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But here is Jacob, in our chapter this morning, being cast away from the covenant land and the covenant family; all on his own in the world.  True, God assured him (v.15).
‘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…!’

But how is it that Jacob, is here all alone, without hope and without God in the wide world?

In a way, it’s a re-run of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve tried to get wisdom via the fast-track legislation of the devil.  Jacob tried to get the Covenant blessing via the fast-track of human scheming and manipulation.  He had trodden very squarely on Esau’s toes.  So Esau was determined to kill him.

Well, Rebekah hears about this and she knows Jacob’s must flee – but leave home as a fugitive?!

So she comes up with a real masterpiece – in two ways.  First of all, part of the art of management is to get people to come up with the ideas you want them to come up with, but all the while thinking they are their own.  So Rebekah gets Isaac to send Jacob away to Haran to get a wife just by reminding him of how these terrible Hittite wives of Esau bug her.

That raises the other way in which her suggestion was a masterpiece.  When she spoke that way, she appealed to Isaac’s self-interest.  After all, who would want another Hittite daughter in law and an even more distracted wife?

But she also appealed to his principles; she seems to have awakened his faith in the future through the covenant.  When his favourite son was to receive and continue the Covenant, any wife would do!  But apparently not now.  Maybe Isaac has finally woken up to his responsibilities.  Now that’s a useful combination.  If you can get a person’s principles to work together with their own self-interest, you have got a powerful motivation.  You’ve got to give it to Rebekah – she really knew her stuff!

At any rate, Isaac blesses Jacob again, much more fully this time.  And he remembers how fussy Abraham was about finding a wife for him many years ago.  He remembers that the only proper wife to bear Covenant children must also have a like Covenant faith.  And the upshot of it all is that instead of leaving home a fugitive, Jacob leaves with a high and honourable purpose before him – to find a wife by which to continue the Covenant line.

Esau tries to curry his parent’s favour in a typically humanistic fashion.  It’s as if Esau said, ‘Jacob is to marry a cousin on his mother’s side.  Well, I’ll go one better than that; I’ll marry a cousin on my father’s side.’ He forgets Ishmael has been rejected by God because he also despised the covenant.

Brothers and sisters, friends and visitors here this morning, there is only one way back into favour with God, and that is by repentance.  It’s no good turning over a new leaf and trying to do the right thing without putting right the wrongs of the past.

If only Esau had backed off and repented – like the prodigal son.  If only he had said, ‘I’ve been a fool.  I’ve thrown the covenant away myself.  I’ve sinned and I’m no longer worthy to be the first-born.  But could I possibly be a doorkeeper in the house of my brother’s God?’

Well, that would be better than living in tents of wickedness forever, wouldn’t it?  But Esau didn’t do that.

So Jacob sets off and one night he lies down with a stone for a pillow.  And while he’s asleep, he has a dream.  He dreams about a stairway bridging heaven and earth.  And there are angels going up and down and God was standing at the top and He said to Jacob, (READ Gen.28:13- 15)

So Jacob now had God’s divine confirmation of his father’s blessing.  God had now said, ‘You shall have the land.  Your descendants will be like dust and cover the earth.  All peoples will be blessed through you.’

But what does that dream mean?  Jacob explains it for us himself.  Look at vs.16.  What then does the dream mean?

First of all, Jacob says, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place … This is none other than the house of God.’  That’s really the idea behind the stairway.  It represents the place where God reveals Himself and His Word to His people.  That’s why he called it ‘Beth-el’, the House of God.  He could even say, “The Lord is in this place.’

And this place becomes very special to Jacob.  In the morning he sets up a stone to mark it and remember it.  When he came back from Paddan-Aram years later, he returned to this place and God spoke to him again.  Later Bethel became the Tabernacle and that, in turn, became the Temple.  That was the permanent place in old Israel where God lived with His people and spoke His Word to them.

But the greatest revelation of God to man is when He came as man to tabernacle, to tent, among us.  John 1-14 says (in the old translation) “The Word became flesh and tabernacled, tented, among us.’  Ultimately, it is Jesus in whom God lives with His people.  He is the great Immanuel, the great God-with-us.  It is in Jesus, who is a man, that God reaches down from heaven to man in his distress, to restore communion, to be with us.  And it is only in Jesus Christ, who is God, that man is able to reach up into heaven.  Did not Jesus say, ‘I am the way, the Truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but by Me.”?

The second thing Jacob says about his dream is this, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it… this is the gate of heaven.’

Brothers and sisters, God is with us by pure grace, sheer undeserved favour.  We must never think we have any claim on God.  We must never think that if God deals in such and such a way with him, then he should also deal so with me.  He shouldn’t deal with any one of us!

God makes His Covenant with His people by pure, unmerited grace.  Yes, even where we are not aware of it.

That’s true, isn’t it?  Why do we love God?  ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ Why did Christ die? – because we figured out we were lost and cried for help.  Not on your life!  ‘While we were yet sinners; while we were still His enemies!, Christ died for the ungodly.’

See, Jacob is no pilgrim here, seeking after God like a Muslim on Haj to Mecca, or a Jew weeping at the Wailing Wall, or a Roman Catholic at the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre.

Nor was he a prodigal with his heart full of repentance, coming home!  He was no more repentant that Esau.

Oh sure, he was going to Paddan-Aram to look for a wife to carry on the Covenant family.  But at the bottom he was just a fugitive pure and simple, running away from the consequences of his sin, trying to save his skin.

And what does God do?  ‘Buck up Jacob; you’re not coming to Me with the right attitude and the right motives!”?  God does that sometimes, but He doesn’t do it here.  The fact is, Jacob is not really coming to God at all!

So what does God do?  ‘It’s hard to kick against the pricks, isn’t it Jacob!”?  God does that too; He did it to Paul.  But He doesn’t do it to Jacob here.

Does He bang his head on the stone pillow and say, “The way of the transgressor is hard, isn’t’ it Jacob?”  Well, God does that too sometimes, but He doesn’t do that to Jacob here either.

What does He do?  Well, He outdoes the father in the parable of the prodigal son by a mile.  There the father stands at the end of the road waiting for his son to come home.  Here God races along the road chasing the prodigal son!  And when He gets hold of Jacob, He just pours out this stream of promises!  Most of all, He promises to be with this schemer and twister and supplanter.

Any of you kids ever left home?  Ever packed your little bag and stomped out the door and off down the street muttering away to yourself, “I can’t stand it here anymore and I’m not coming back, so there!”?  Some of you have, haven’t you?

And I bet your mum or dad did just what God did to Jacob.  They took off down that street after you and caught you.  And you tried to keep up the show that you didn’t love them and tried to wriggle out of their arms and take off again.  But they got you and took you home and sat you down on their knee and said something like, ‘Now listen Billy, we really do love you and we will always be with you whenever you need us and we only spank you because we love you and want you only to do the things that please God.  We really want the best for you.

Jacob is 80 years old here, but he’s really only a little kid.  So God tears off down the Paddan-Aram Road after Jacob and pours out all these promises to be with this schemer and twister and supplanter!  And He drops this stairway that reaches from inside heaven and rests firmly on the earth.

What is that stairway again?  The tabernacle or the temple?  No.  In ultimate reality, that stairway to heaven is Jesus Christ.

‘He came unto His own – the Jewish people,’ we read, ‘but His own received Him not.’

And He knew they would not receive Him, but He still came!

And the Gentiles didn’t receive Him either.  It was Romans who actually crucified Him.  And He knew that too, but still he came!  Surely the Lord is in this place and we were not aware of it!

Sinful human beings always think they can reach up to heaven by themselves.  Not so, congregation.  We can only ever get into God’s favour when He, out of pure sovereign grace, reaches down to us.

And so, since we’re talking about the Covenant, why should people object to infant baptism by saying the child has no idea of what is going on?  Hallelujah!  That’s part of what grace is about!

We all believe God speaks first in our hearts.  He chooses us.  Then He causes us to be born again.  Then He calls us by the preaching of the Gospel and then, and only then, are we able to respond to that message in repentance and faith.  Of course, not all Christians believe that’s what the Bible teaches.  Well, that’s another argument.  But at the moment, let’s assume that we all believe, that when it comes to the ultimate spiritual realities of salvation, God speaks and acts before man.  And we only respond.

Well, then, if God speaks and acts first when it comes to the ultimate spiritual realities of the Covenant of Grace, why should God not speak and act first in the external administration of the Covenant of Grace?  Let me repeat that.  If God speaks and acts first when it comes to the ultimate spiritual realities of the Covenant of Grace, why should God not speak and act first in the external administration of the Covenant of Grace?  That’s only being consistent, isn’t it?

He died for us, and claims us and marks us for his own even when we are not aware of it.  Yes, when we are but little babies who don’t, as yet, understand a thing.  Hallelujah!  While we’re running away, God grabs hold of us and He says, ‘You’re mine; walk before Me and be blameless.’

Well, here you are this morning, brothers and sisters.  And maybe you’re not aware of it, but you’re having a confrontation with God – much like Jacob that day so may years ago.

Perhaps you don’t know for what reason you’re here this morning.  Maybe, even though you had absolutely nothing to do with it, you were not aware of it at all, but you were born into a Covenant household.  And so that’s why you are here this morning.

Maybe you’re a visitor here and all this is very strange talk.  You simply thought to yourself this morning, ‘Let’s go to church.’  Maybe that’s all this is to you this morning.  You just thought, ‘I think I’ll check out the Reformed Church this morning.  I’ll check out the preacher down there.  I’ll see how well they sing.’  But, lo and behold, the whole affair turns out to be a lot more than you bargained for.  Without you being aware of it, you find yourself in the House of God, the very gateway to heaven.  Because that’s what this place is – well, not so much the place, but the people gathered together.  Because these people are members of a spiritual body whose head is Christ.  And in the Bible, Christ and His people together are sometimes called the temple of the living God.

Since the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, God’s people no longer worship at Bethel or Jerusalem or anywhere else in particular.  Now they worship anywhere at all in Spirit and in Truth.  God now lives on this earth by His Spirit in His Church.  We can even say that the Church is now the gateway to heaven.

So here you are this morning in the gateway of heaven, and Christ, who is the ladder from heaven to earth, reaches down to you and He says to you, ‘Come to Me, you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’

Are you on the run like Jacob, trying to save your skin, trying to get away from the consequences of your sin?  And are you tired?  Have you had no success in your search for an answer to your ‘Why”?  What am I living for?  Well, then, stop right here.  This is the gate to heaven.  This is the way back to Eden.  This is the way back to fellowship with God.

You were made to be friends with God.  That is the answer to those questions.  But you can only be a friend of God again if you give up on yourself and accept God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

How can you beat grace like that?  When you were on the run, God just hauled you here into heaven’s gate, the house of God.

What can we do, congregation, but bow our hearts and praise Him for His grace and favour to our fathers in distress (that’s Jacob back then).  Praise Him, still the same as ever (that’s us now in 1993), slow to chide, and swift to bless.

AMEN