The Lord Is Near (part 1)

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” —Genesis 28:16

Jacob was on the run, fleeing from Esau’s fury, lonely, desperate, and stripped of everything that gives meaning to human life, so lost that evenGod couldn’t find him—or so he thought.

He came to “no particular place,” as the Hebrew text suggests and, because night was falling, cleared a spot on the rubble-strewn ground, found a flat rock on which to rest his head, and lay down. In misery and exhaustion Jacob soon lapsed into a deep sleep in which he began to dream. In this dream God thrust into Jacob’s life a revelation of His great love, a timely and necessary disclosure for the dejected fugitive.

In his dream Jacob envisioned a stairway, rising from the stone at his head, connecting heaven and earth. The traditional ladder is such a favorite image that it’s a shame to give it up, yet it must be said that the picture of angels in their ungainly apparel scrambling up and down the rungs of a ladder leaves much to be desired. The term usually translated “ladder” actually suggests a stairway or stone ramp like those that led to the top of ziggurats, the terraced pyramids raised to worship the gods of that era.

The ziggurat with its steep stairway was essentially a symbol of man’s efforts to plod his way up to God. One must trudge up a long, steep flight of stairs. It was hard work, but there was no other way to get help when you needed it (see Genesis 11:1–4).

It’s odd how that pagan notion of scrabbling and clawing our way up to God has found its way into our own theology and thinking. Some early Christian writers used the ladder as an analogy for spiritual progress, tracing the steps of Christian faith from one stage to another, rising higher by strong effort and good works, “grunting ourselves to God,” as a friend of mine once put it. Walter Hilton’s classic The Ladder of Perfection is based on that notion. The old camp-meeting song “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” draws on the same association. In each case the emphasis is on the ascent of man.

What caught Jacob’s attention, however, was not the stairway but the fact that God was standing beside or alongside him, for that’s the meaning of the preposition translated “above” in Genesis 28:13. (The same Hebrew word is translated “nearby” in Genesis 18:2 and “before,” in the sense of “in front of,” in Genesis 45:1.) What is important to visualize is that God had come down the ramp. The God of Jacob’s father, Isaac, and grandfather, Abraham, was at his side in this desolate place, contrary to Jacob’s expectations and far from the traditional holy places he normally associated with God’s presence.

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it,” Jacob declared with wide-eyed, childlike astonishment. “This [place] is none other than the house of God; this [stairway] is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16–17).

Jacob got the message in the metaphor, but God was taking no chances. He highlighted the picture with a promise that would sustain Jacob through the weary days of character-building ahead: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:15).

This is our promise as well. “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ ” (Hebrews 13:5). He is present with us whether we know it or not—in our joys but also in our sorrows; in our triumphs as well as in our confusion, disappointments, failures, frustrations, and bad judgments. While God is molding us, His love surrounds us—waiting, longing to make itself known.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.