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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching with Pastor Skip Heitzig. When I look up, I think vastness.
I think power. But I don't think of intimacy with God because it is so vast. I think if God is doing that to the universe and I'm a speck in it, it gives me a sense of distance. I imagine myself what it would be like if I were strapped to a beam of light traveling at 186,000 miles per second. It would take me 100,000 years to get from one end of the galaxy I'm looking at to the other end. So it's vast and certainly made by an all-powerful God, but I just think God's distant.
It's so remote. It's hard for me to get my mind around being intimate and friendly with a God who does that to the universe, measures it like that. Jacob looks up and all these thoughts are pouring through his mind. And then he dreamed. And behold, a ladder was set up on earth and its top reached to heaven and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, your father. And the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give it to your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west, to the east, to the north, to the south, and in you and in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So there's Jacob looking up at the sky.
It's so big, it's so vast. And as David said, when I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the sun and the moon, which you have ordained, what is man that you're even mindful of him? But what Jacob discovers when he falls asleep in this dream, that God is very mindful of him. Now it's going to shock him, it's going to change him. It's going to change him.
He's going to get more spiritual, thank God, from this episode. Dreams are typical. We're told that people dream every night. You may not remember them, but you have dreams every night. But some dreams are weird. Some dreams are unusual. When my brother Rick was a boy, he used to have all sorts of strange dreams where he would be caught sleepwalking. My dad would find him down the street because he got up out of bed, walked out the front door, and just started walking down the street, sometimes in the middle of the street.
It's dangerous. Chip Lusko's son Levi was with us once in Israel, and he has had episodes of wild dreams and sleepwalking. He got up out of bed in his hotel room in Jerusalem, went into the elevator, went all the way down the elevator to the lobby, walked out of the lobby, and then he woke up. And he was just in his underwear in the hotel lobby. What a shock that would be to wake up.
Where am I? Oh my goodness. Not all dreams are from the Lord, but some can be from the Lord.
This one was. I mean, you can have a late night pizza with onions and get dreams. But this is a dream uniquely from the Lord, and it's interesting. He sees a ladder, a sulam in Hebrew, literally a staircase or a stairway.
This was the original stairway to heaven right here. And he sees angels, and God's angels are both ascending, going up, and descending, coming down. First they're ascending, it says. That means they had been on the earth. And then some are descending, perhaps like they're taking shifts.
And one shift has finished its work, and they're going up, and the other shift is beginning its shift, so it comes down. And the whole point is that God is involved in human affairs. God is involved in what's going on in the earth. Jacob is thinking, I'm in a God-forsaken place. I've run away from home. I've stolen a blessing. I've been a deceiver.
I'm running for my life. Surely God can't be here. And then he gets this wild dream of the angels of God that are ascending and descending. God is involved in human affairs. And God gives him a promise, and we read part of the promise.
Now here's what I love. When God begins to speak to him in the dream and it is the Lord, God doesn't reprimand him. Now what if you were the Lord and you knew Jacob?
What would your first words be to him once in a dream he has your attention? By the way, perhaps he got the dream because he wouldn't listen to God any other way, so you don't think that people are necessarily more spiritual because they get dreams. Sometimes the most ungodly people in the Bible get a dream from the Lord. God can't get through to them any other way in the conscious world, so when they're knocked out and subconscious, God can speak to them. And so if God can't speak to you in a still, small voice, he may need to amp it up and get your attention via a dream. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're more spiritual.
It could mean you're less spiritual and more carnal. There's an old Yiddish proverb that says, if a man calls you a donkey, pay him no heed. If two men call you a donkey, pay them no heed. If three men call you a donkey, buy a saddle. Not listening to God at all up to this point, now listening to God, but the first words God speaks aren't words of reprimand.
I would reprimand him. I'd say, Jacob, you deceitful idiot. Look what you've gotten yourself into. Now here's the road ahead of you and how hard it's going to be. These are words of grace. These are words of promise. And God makes three promises.
The promise of provision, first of all. I'm going to give you the land that you now lie on. Now, my mind immediately went to the fact that he did lie a lot. He was a liar. And God says, the land that you lie on. But that's stretching the point.
I mean, he's lying down on. It was the same promise that God made to Abraham and to Isaac, he now makes to Jacob. This land, the land that we call Israel today, I've given it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So from a biblical viewpoint, not a military viewpoint, not a recently historical viewpoint, not a political viewpoint, but from a biblical viewpoint, it's really easy to say who the land belongs to over there. Who owns the land?
Who has the right to that land? Abraham, Isaac, the twelve tribes of Jacob, the children of Israel. God makes him a promise of provision. Then notice also, God makes him a promise of his presence. He says, verse 15, Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.
And the third is the promise of protection. And I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place.
And I did not know it. So now we are told what he thought when he came there. God isn't in this place. I'm in a God forsaken place. I don't know where God is. And he wakes up and goes, Wow, God is in this place.
And I knew it not. I mentioned that we have a hard time with grace. Some of us, to be quite honest, in reading this story, though we love this about God, we have a hard time that God is promising a blessing to somebody this disobedient, this carnal, this nascent in his own spiritual growth, such outpouring of God's grace.
I brought with me something tonight that I wanted to share with you. It came to my mind and I thought, I got to pull it off the shelf. It's a book really that changed my life. It's simply a verse by verse commentary on the book of Romans. I got it when I was like 19 years old.
I still have it. And I read it. But it's by William R. Newell. And right in the midst of him talking about the commentary on Romans, chapter six, right in the middle of the book, he has this little section. It's simply called A Few Words About Grace. And when I used to meditate on this, it so blew my mind. As I said, it changed my whole perspective.
I'm going to give you just a snippet, just a sampling. First of all, the nature of grace. Listen up. Grace is God acting freely, according to his own nature, as love with no promises, no obligations to fulfill, and acting, of course, righteously in view of the cross. Grace, therefore, is uncaused in the recipient. Its cause lies wholly in the giver that is God. Grace is always sovereign, not having debts to pay or fulfilled conditions on man's part to wait for.
It can act toward whom and how it pleases. It can and often does place the worst deservers in the highest of favors. Grace cannot act where there is ability. Grace does not help. It is absolute.
It does all. There being no cause in the creature why grace should be shown, the creature must be brought off from trying to give cause to God for his grace. Next little section, and I skipped a lot, is just the place of man under grace.
Newell writes this. He has been accepted in Christ, who is his standing. He is not on probation. As to his life past, it does not exist before God. He died at the cross, and Christ is his life.
Grace once bestowed is not withdrawn. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you've ever wondered what the Bible has to say about some of our culture's big issues, we have a great resource for you. When you give a gift of $50 or more this month to support the ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks, Biblical Answers for Today's Issues. This special resource bundle contains six of Pastor Skip's booklets that address topics like suicide, why the truth matters, heaven and hell, and the church's response to racism.
You'll gain valuable insight into what God's Word says about the big questions in our culture and get equipped to stand for the timeless truth of Scripture. Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give $50 or more. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. Now, here's the proper attitude of the man under grace. Here it is. To believe and to consent to be loved while unworthy is the great secret. Did you get that? To consent to be loved by God while unworthy. So few people get that.
Here's another one. To refuse to make resolutions and vows, for that is to trust in the flesh. And finally, to expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more lack of worth.
When is the last time you lived that way? I expect to be blessed. That's just who God is. Here's a couple more things and I'll quit.
Things which gracious souls discover. To hope to be better is to fail to see yourself in Christ only. How many times have you said, I'm going to do better.
Oh, Lord, I'll do better. That's to fail to see yourself in Christ only. To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself. So real devotion to God arises not from man's will to show it, but from the discovery that blessing has been received from God while we were yet unworthy and undevoted. Here's the final sentence, and we'll close with this.
Not close the night with this, but close the book with this. To preach devotion first and blessing second is to reverse God's order. It's to preach law and not grace. The law made blessing dependent on devotion, grace confers undeserved, unconditional blessing. Our devotion may follow, but does not always do so in proper measure. As I said, when I read this and it goes so much in line with what we're reading about Jacob, it was a life changer for me.
I remember that night I just went, oh, it was like such a sigh where I could say, Lord, go for it. You'll bless me not because who I am, but because of who you are. So Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.
Notice the wording. Not the Lord was in this place, last night when I had this dream, God was here. The Lord is right now presently in this place and I did not know it.
I know it now, I didn't know it then. Last night I came here thinking, God is in this place. I wake up this morning, God is in this place.
I knew it not, but I know it now. And he was afraid and he said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Jacob arose early in the morning and took the stone that he put on his head and set it up as a pillar.
And he poured oil on it, on top of it. This is a commemoration stone. He's worshipping by commemorating something.
It was very typical. Now do you remember that it was at this spot, back in chapter 12, that Abraham built an altar to the Lord? And then he went down to Egypt and when he came back after the period of disobedience, he comes back to Bethel and he worships God again.
It's a stone of commemoration. And he called the name of that place Bethel, or the house of God, but the name of that city had been Luz previously. Then Jacob made a vow saying, if God will be with me and keep me in this way that I am going and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. Now it sounds like he's bargaining with God, doesn't it?
Well, you know, if God does this for me, then I'll do that for him. It sounds like he's bargaining. And to be quite frank, it could be that he was bargaining. After all, that was his M.O. That's what he always did. He bargained with his brother.
He deceived his father. But often, and modern translations will sometimes correct it, very often the word if is translated since. And that's how I prefer to see it. And many modern translations will say, since God is going to do this, therefore I will do that. So it was a response to God's favor, not a condition.
God, if you do this, then I'll really get really religious, I promise. But it's since God has made these promises. Since God will do that, therefore I will keep it. And this stone, which I have set as of pillars, shall be God's house, and of all that you give me I will surely give a tenth to you. So he worshiped by commemorating, he worshiped by committing, and now he's worshiping by contributing. Here's what's fascinating to me. He's promising a tithe, a tenth of his income. And I say it's fascinating because this is years before the law was ever developed, the law of Moses, which required the children of Israel to give a tenth.
There's no requirement here. He freely, voluntarily gave of his substance financially to the Lord as a way of thanking God. I realize that God is the source from whom all blessings flow. I give him this token because it was his anyway, he gave it to me, so I'll give the tenth back to him.
All voluntary, all before the law. Now before we jump into the next chapter, we have to tie two things together. Because Jesus refers to this in John chapter 1.
Remember the instance? When Nathanael is told about Jesus of Nazareth, and Nathanael says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And then Jesus shows up. As he sees Nathanael he says, oh look, check it out, here comes an Israelite in whom is no deceit whatsoever. And Nathanael goes, like how do you know me? And Jesus said, you know, before Philip called you, when you were in that quiet spot under the fig tree where you thought nobody was seeing you, I saw and heard everything that was going on. And Nathanael said, wow.
Now that's not in my text, but he was blown away. He said, you are the Messiah, you are the one we've been waiting for. And Jesus said, just because I said I saw you under the fig tree you believe, stick around, you'll see greater things than this, buddy. You will see, Jesus said, the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
Remember that? What is he referring to? The 20th chapter of Genesis. Jacob in the dream sees a ladder. Here is heaven very involved in the affairs of earth.
The angels of God up and down in shifts and the Lord speaking from heaven. Now here's Jesus saying basically, I am the ladder, I am the link, I am the mediator. If you want to know God in any capacity at all, you must come through me.
I'll take you to him. Now chapter 29. Chapter 29 is where the con artist gets conned. The deceiver gets deceived. Jacob, though he was very crafty, is about to meet the master schemer. He had a PhD in deception and that's Uncle Laban.
That's the brother of his mother. And so if he thought he was clever, he ain't seen nothing yet. So Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the east. And he looked and he saw a well in the field and behold there were three flocks of sheep lying by it.
For out of that well they watered the flocks, a large stone was on the well's mouth. Let your mind go back a few chapters. When Abraham wanted to get a wife for his son Isaac.
There are similarities, but there are some pretty hefty differences. When Abraham wanted to get a wife for his son, he sent his eldest servant Eliezer. Remember Eliezer? And he was going to find a wife for his son. So Isaac didn't get to pick his wife, didn't get to see his wife till after they were engaged.
Now I know a lot of you are thinking, dude, never would I ever let that happen. However Eliezer did it carefully and prayerfully. Jacob goes out, he's not praying at all in this, and he will choose his own wife. Here's the question you might ask, who was better off? So you got to get to the end of the story because he chose the right gal but he gets, well a double portion you might say. It's not what he wanted.
It didn't turn out the way he expected it. It says in verse 3, now all the flocks would be gathered there. They would roll the stone from the well's mouth, water the sheep, put the stone back in its place on the well's mouth. And Jacob said to them, my brethren, where are you from? And they said, we are from Haran.
And he's going, awesome, bingo, that's the place I'm going. And so he said to them, do you know Laban, the son of Nahor? And they said, we know him. And so he said to them, is he well?
They said, he is well. And look, his daughter Rachel is coming with the sheep. Now the world would see this as just a coincidence. We see this as providence.
God arranged this thing very naturally but it was supernatural. Now watch what Jacob says. Then he said, look, it is still high day. It is not time for cattle to be gathered together. Water the sheep and go and feed them. That they said, we cannot until all the flocks be gathered together. And they have rolled the stone from the well's mouth, then we water the sheep. Now why would he say this? Was he saying this because he was some conscientious person who felt really sorry for sheep and he wanted them to be fed? Because basically what he is saying is, look, water the sheep and then let them go feed again. And they are saying, well we cannot until they all get gathered together so we can do the watering of all the flocks at once. Why is he bringing this up? What he is saying is this, I see Rachel is coming. You guys water the sheep and get out of here. Because he wants some alone time with the girl that he sees out of the corner of his eye and now in full view coming toward him.
Because she is, as we will be told, very beautiful. And he is hoping this is the one and it will turn out to be the one. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks biblical answers for today's issues, which contains six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism, the importance of truth, suicide, and heaven and hell. To request your copy of God Speaks biblical answers for today's issues, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast your burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
