God gives pivot places

Genesis 28:10-17

Listening guide

Discussion questions

Sermon

In 2006, I was riding the train from Beijing XiZhan to Wuhan. I was reading Mark Paustian’s Prepared to Answer.  

In 2009, I was standing in the northeast corner of Messiah Lutheran Church in Green Bay, WI. I wasn’t far from the baptismal font.  

In 2012, I was riding in the car from Denver airport to Fort Collins, CO. 

In 2017, I was getting installed here at Peace. I was sitting right in that chair.  

I remember pretty clearly all the physical locations where I have had significant conversion experiences in my life. Each one of those has been a huge shift, a huge turn. And after each one of them, I’ve received some incredible blessings in my life.  

I’ve marked each of those locations, at least in my mind.  

Adventure  

That’s what God wants for you and me today.  

One of the words used all the time in 2020, and I’m so tired of it, was pivot. But there is truth to it. There are so many times when what we’re doing just doesn’t cut it. Where we are heading in the wrong direction – even if we think it is the right direction – and if someone doesn’t intervene, we won’t be okay. 

Let’s give you a pivot  

Development 

In Genesis 28. We’re a couple hundred years after last week’s lesson. Isaac’s son, Abraham’s grandson. Jacob. The story starts like this... 

11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 

Jacob is in polite exile. He has cheated his brother out of both the birthright and the blessing. He deceived his father. His dad has actually sent him away to work and get married.  

I think that Jacob is quite relatable. He has a lot of the same hurts and frustrations that many of us feel. He felt a lack of fatherly affection. He had a significant sibling rivalry. At this point, he has no money. He basically has no home – he is not welcome back in his home. He has no meaningful claim to a family. What I mean is, he can claim to be Isaac’s son, but that doesn’t bring him a sense of belonging.  

And honestly, I don’t think he was a very religious person. For example, when he talked with his mom about deceiving his father, he basically said, “Won’t my father figure it out and I’ll bring down a curse rather than a blessing?” People notice, he didn’t say, I’d lie to God and he didn’t say, God would curse him. He said, I’ll bring down a curse. Almost like a superstition. I think it is fair to say that Jacob didn’t want religion or church or God.  

At this point he was lonely, frustrated, and in despair. And I bet all he wanted was a little bit of success, acceptance, and belonging.  

Some people would expect me to say, what Jacob needs to do he needs to get religion. I don’t think that is the point because Jacob grew up in a religious home.  

Jacob did not have this irreligious, godless upbringing. Jacob did not grow up in an alphabet soup house – a house full of acronyms to try to figure you out. His family did not only go to church on Christmas or Easter. There wasn’t a vague spirituality in the house.  

His grandfather was one of the most famous converts from paganism in the whole world. His grandfather was the founder of the Hebrew nation, the Jewish peoples and the Islamic peoples as well.  

He needs more than religion. Whatever has driven his life to this point, it’s not working. He is sleeping in the middle of nowhere on a rock. We often think the ancient people weren’t fancy. Sleeping on a rock is as low as it gets.  

12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you 

Look again at verse 13. So Genesis 28: 13, is what I'm looking at. Here's the catch that word above it in almost every modern English translation, so the nitv, the nasb, the ESV, the NLT and so on and so forth. almost invariably there will be a an asterisk by that word.  

The reason for that is because what you have here in Hebrew is a preposition, all which is typically translated above or upon or beside, and then you have a third masculine singular suffix as an object which their masculine singular subject, I'm sorry, object is essentially him or it so you can translate this This tiny little word a bunch of different ways you could say above it. Or you could say, beside it, or you could say, above him or beside him. And I think it's that I think it's above or beside him, which changes the meaning of the lesson. 

The meaning of the text is that Gods standing above the stairway. You could say they're above Jacob stood the Lord. Why would I go with that interpretation? Well, because look, here's what I think happened. I think Jacob saw stairway he saw angels going up and down on it. And then the Lord came down. In other words, I don't think God is yelling to Jacob from heaven. I think God came down the stairway, to be close to Jacob, to have an intimate relationship with Jacob to be near to Jacob.  

And I believe that because I think that's the main message of the Bible. There is not primarily a stairway that goes from earth to heaven, which is the basic understanding of every man made religion. But it said the gospel really says there's a stairway from heaven to earth. And God the Savior comes down that stairway.  

It's really interesting when you evaluate the religions of world history, including the worship structures of the ancient civilization. So for instance, in the ancient Near East, the primary worship structure was something called a ziggurat, and you have not exactly the same but similar structures amongst the ancients in South America, and Africa and Asia. And you have these pyramid like structures that are terrorists, like a staircase. You see them all around the world in ancient times. Many commentators will say this is what we see in Genesis chapter 11 with a tower of Babel. They were trying to create a staircase to God, that was certainly the spirit of the people at the Tower of Babel.  

They were people who said we can make a way for ourselves to heaven. We do it through our own efforts through our own goodness, through our own ingenuity we can get to God we can get to heaven we can attain salvation, if we just offer the right sacrifices in the right prayers and do the right deeds and are comparatively better see it's it's step upon step upon step. And consequently every world religion throughout history has had a series of steps a staircase, a stairway, from Earth to heaven.  

It doesn't matter which religion you're looking at, whether it's Buddhism and an Eightfold Path of enlightenment, or Judaism, and 10 commandments, or Hinduism and Four aims, or goals, or Islam and five pillars, these are stairways to heaven, not stairways from heaven, which is what Jacob sees.  

Furthermore, notice who this staircase is coming down to, it's not coming down to a highly motivated, self empowered, comparatively righteous man. No, no, the stairway comes down to an utterly broken man. Jacob has deceived his father, he's stolen from his brother. He has disappointed really everybody in his life, that means anything to him. In other words, this is a non deserved stairway from heaven. This is a stairway of grace by which God comes down and he meets you, in your messed up lost broken, worst moment.  

Now bring this home. The work of Jesus. Jesus has one of his early followers is named Philip. And Philip is excited that he's met the Messiah, he's met God's Son, and he's ready to tell everybody about that. And he goes to his friend, Nathaniel, and he says, You got to come meet Jesus. He is the Promised Messiah that we've been waiting for this. It's Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathaniel was quite skeptical at that moment, his first gut reaction is Nazareth, what good can possibly come from Nazareth. And again, the basic idea is God shows up not where the world would expect him because he doesn't operate by the instincts in the values of the world. He shows up where we least expect them. 

 And Philip keeps encouraging Nathaniel and Nathaniel goes to meet Jesus. And as Nathaniel is approaching Jesus, Jesus starts telling him everything about himself. Everything about Nathaniel In fact, he starts talking about what Nathaniel was doing when he was sitting under the fig tree where Philip first approached him. Now, we don't know what Nathaniel was doing under that fig tree. But apparently, whatever he was doing whatever he was thinking, it was so private, that he's convinced the only person who could possibly know what he was doing at that point must be God. And so at that moment, the light goes on, Nathaniel realizes Jesus must be God. And Jesus says, You know what, if you think if you're impressed by that, you haven't seen anything yet.  

And in john 1:51, Jesus says, Nathaniel, very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  

Now, every Bible scholar will tell you that phrase, as an overt call back to Genesis 28. Jesus is saying, this story of Jacob in the staircase are pointing directly to him. And the gospel of this lesson, of course, that is what Jesus essentially is saying, you cannot build a stairway to money, health, blessing, and the good life, I came to be your stairway. I didn't come to give you steps to a better life, I came to take care of the steps for you.  

On the cross, he says, I paid for each and everything you did wrong. I also paid for all the things you didn’t do. I also paid for all these things all the other people did and did not do. On top of that, in my resurrection I accomplished all the things that you should accomplish with your life. I also accomplished everything that everyone else should do. I did not leave anything undone that should be done.  

He is the staircase. He is the path. He have brought you the good life, all the blessing that you could ever want. Now just walk in it.  

And the remarkable thing, for Jacob, as for you and me, is that Jacob experiences such a good life after this point that it is hard to imagine. When Jacob gets to Laban’s house, he has nothing. 20 years later when he leaves he has at least 13 children and thousands of flocks and herds.  

This point in his life is a true pivot place of grace.  

The world's solution to the good life is that we fall down but we pick ourselves back up and we keep going. The Bible says no, no, you're not capable of doing that. And very often you will wreck more with your work than you actually fix.  

What you need is a pivot. The Gospel says we fall down. So God comes down with his grace.  

Action  

I know a whole lot of you out there need this pivot place of grace. And I have to admit, honestly, that I can’t tell you how to get it into your life. Look at this story. What does Jacob do? Nothing. This is the thing.  

God is absolutely drawn to your brokenness, not to your bravery. Did you notice in this account, Jacob was not asking for anything? He was not praying to God. He was not worshiping God. He is completely isolated because he has spent his whole life pretending that he is someone that he isn’t.  

That probably describes more of us than we care to admit.  

When you've done your absolute worst then you are at your absolute worst. And at the end, despite all of that, you still hear God standing over you, not scolding you, but speaking words of unconditional love, speaking unbreakable promises of blessing for your future, that you don't deserve it. With God saying, it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter who hates you, it doesn't matter who approves of you, or who's rejected you, how much you have or how little you have. He says, I love you. And here's what I have in store for you.  

You see what Jacob does with that moment. “Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.” (verse 18)  

What stone marks your pivot place?  

I’ve got a board out there full of memorial stones, marker stones. I want to invite you all to  

And if you haven’t that pivot place, I want to invite you to consider your own brokenness, your own lostness. Maybe today is your pivot place. Because God wants nothing more than to say to you, here I am with you.   

God gives pivot places.