Genesis 28:10-17 10Jacob set out from Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. 11He came to a certain place and decided to spend the night there, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones from that place, put it under his head, and lay down to sleep in that place. 12He had a dream in which he saw a stairway set up on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. There were angels of God ascending and 13 descending on it. There at the top stood the LORD, who said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land on which you are lying, I give to you and to your descendants. 14Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed. 15Now, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back again into this land. Indeed, I will not leave you, until I have done what I have promised to you.” 16Jacob woke 17 up from his sleep, and he said, “Certainly the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and he said, “How awe-inspiring is this place! This is nothing other than the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven.” There is a song that I think eventually every aspiring guitarist learns eventually, but they aren’t allowed to play it in most music stores. It’s a song that was released all the way back in 1971. It’s “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. There are some who thought its lyrics were Satanic because their guitarist had an interest in the occult at the time. It certainly was written with the help of some recreational pharmaceuticals but there’s nothing really occult about it. Guitarists love to learn it because it just sounds cool and is instantly recognizable by just about everyone. It shows that you’ve at least become somewhat proficient with the instrument. The reason why you can’t play it in so many music stores is because it is so popular that the staff at the store is sick of hearing people butcher it all day. They’ll often put up signs by the guitars that say in big letters, “NO STAIRWAY!” I think of that song every time I read this text because in Jacob’s dream he sees a stairway to heaven. When Jesus called the Apostle Nathanael to follow him, he showed that that stairway is a picture of him, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” So Jesus Is the Stairway to Heaven that we do not deserve that gives access to God and that inspires humble awe. Moses sets the scene for us in the first verse, “10Jacob set out from Beersheba and traveled toward Haran.” It’s easy to pass by those words and say, “Yeah, sure, let’s get to the point.” But it’s not every day that someone leaves their father, mother, and brother behind to travel to his mother’s relatives 500 miles away. Today a trip of that length could easily be done in a day by car. It’s much longer if you are going alone on foot. Why was he leaving home? It’s because his twin brother, Esau, was plotting to kill him. Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright and tricked his blind father, Isaac, into giving him the blessing normally given to the firstborn. God did say that Jacob should be the one to get those things, but rather than reminding his father and brother of God’s words, he and his mother, Rebekah, decided to be sneaky about it. See how bad things happen when you don’t follow God’s will for your life? At this point Jacob had traveled about 70 miles. He was a long way from home, but he had a much longer road ahead of him. He couldn’t possibly have known that it would be another two decades before he would return home. So he’s out in the middle of nowhere, alone. There was no McDonald’s like there is across the street to get a bite to eat. There was no Motel 6 where he could get a decent night’s sleep. He grabbed a rock to use as a pillow and tried to get some shut eye. We can only wonder what was going through Jacob’s head. I’m sure he had a guilty conscience. He was a mama’s boy so I’m sure he was missing his parents. He probably thought that he was getting exactly what he deserved for being so deceitful. You have to think that he could have started to wonder if God was just going to take his promises away from him because he clearly didn’t deserve them. Even though none of us have ever been in a situation just like this, I’m sure that we can all relate. We’ve all done things that have hurt other people. I still remember a time when I was in eighth grade that I shot off my mouth and ended up getting one of my best friends in trouble. We used to do all kinds of things together. Our relationship was never quite the same after that. I’ve seen that in families. Husbands and wives ruin their relationship with each other, start fighting, and the kids are caught somewhere in the middle. Old uncle Fred said something to uncle Bob sixty years ago and the two of them have not spoken to each other since then. Somewhere off in the distance Satan laughs and laughs as even people who call themselves Christian start to tear each other apart. We even see that during the Lenten season, don’t we? On Maundy Thursday Jesus wanted to get together with his disciples to eat the Passover meal for the last time. He had so many things he wanted to teach them because he knew he wasn’t going to be with them much longer. What did the disciples do? They got into a big, drawn-out argument over which one of them was the greatest. And we know that that was not the first time that they had that particular argument. When God’s Law leads us to understand the gravity of our sin, that’s when Satan will change his game plan. Then he will try to use our guilty consciences to crush us. He will tempt us to look at every single problem in our lives as proof that God must have gotten fed up with us. He must have abandoned us. We start to feel every bit as alone as Jacob did, lying out in the open country with only a rock to sleep on. Jesus Is the Stairway to Heaven that we do not deserve and that also gives access to God. God didn’t want to give Satan an opportunity. So he gave Jacob a very special dream. This is what he saw, “12He had a dream in which he saw a stairway set up on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. 13 There were angels of God ascending and descending on it. There at the top stood the LORD.” That picture reminded him that even though he was alone, he really wasn’t alone. God was very near with his power, love, protection, and blessings. The angels ascending on that stairway picture the angels carrying the prayers of God’s people to him. Those who are descending on that stairway are bringing God’s many blessings to his people. To me, the angels have always been a great example of God’s overflowing love. Strictly speaking he does not need anyone to inform him of our situation. He knows everything. He doesn’t need any help taking care of us. He is almighty. The angels just give us further confidence of God’s personal care and concern for us all. Jacob wasn’t alone. Neither are we. I mentioned in the introduction to this sermon how Jesus showed that he is that stairway that leads to heaven. On our own, we can’t have access to heaven. Only perfect people can get in! On our own, we have no right to ask God for anything. He only listens to his children. On our own, if angels come to us that should be completely and utterly terrifying, not comforting. Jesus changed all that. Our sins had separated us from God. Jesus bridged that gap. He did that by making himself the target of God’s anger. On the cross we see how serious God is about sin. He cried out those unfathomable words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His Father gave him no answer, but we know what it is. We are the reason he was forsaken. God forsook his only Son so that he wouldn’t have to forsake us. Because of Jesus we now have access to heaven. The stairway to heaven is not something we build through our own good works or our own efforts. The stairway to heaven is Jesus himself. Through him and through faith in him we know that heaven is already ours. It has been since the Holy Spirit brought us to faith. We know that when our lives come to a close, that we won’t be lost or hopeless. We will be in eternal glory with him. Because of Jesus we now have access to God’s throne room in prayer. Think about that. God puts his almighty power at our beck and call. So many situations in life seem difficult if not impossible. It’s trivial to the God who made the earth and heavens! God not only invites us, but he urges us to come to him in prayer. He’s our Father! He wants nothing but the best for us! Bring all your cares and concerns to him. God’s message to Jacob didn’t end there. He said, “15Now, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back again into this land. Indeed, I will not leave you, until I have done what I have promised to you.” He wouldn’t have a dream like this every night, but every moment of every day he could be confident that God was watching over him in his power and in his love. We have that same confidence today because God made the exact same promise to us. The writer to the Hebrew Christians said, “I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you.” In last week’s second lesson Paul assured the Romans and all of us that not even the very worst things in life can separate us from God’s love. If that is true, and it is, then what are we worried about? Jesus Is the Stairway to Heaven that gives access to God and that finally inspires humble awe. Moses tells us how Jacob responded to his dream, “16Jacob woke up from his sleep, and he said, 17 ‘Certainly the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid.” Jacob certainly understood the nature of God. He knew that God is omnipresent, that is, that he is everywhere at once. What he had forgotten, though, is just how close God always is. But why was he afraid? That is the only logical response that a human being can have when he realizes that he is in the presence of the holy God, even if it was just in a dream. After the miraculous catch of fish, Peter said to Jesus, “Go away from me, because I am a sinful man, Lord.” If God himself appeared right now in the middle of this church right now in his full glory, we wouldn’t all shout, “Hooray!” We would all be looking for a convenient place to hide. But Jacob didn’t succumb to his fear. Instead he said, “How awe-inspiring is this place! This is nothing other than the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven.” I’m glad the Evangelical Heritage Version translated that word as “awe-inspiring” instead of “awesome.” That word gets so misused. Anything can be “awesome” from a sports car to an attractive person to even 50 cents off on a Happy Meal. God is the only one who is truly awe-inspiring. Look around at creation. The sun shining in the blue skies, the trees that soon will be having all of their leaves back, the massive and majestic great lakes, all of them are proof of God’s power, wisdom, and love. Even the design of this church building from its size to the focus on font, altar, and pulpit, to the powerful pipe organ, are all intended to be a reflection of God’s glory. That’s why we feature a cross so prominently. You can’t miss it when you come in here, that’s for sure. It reminds us that this almighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, is also the God who was willing to humble himself and sacrifice himself for you, for me, for the whole world. No god in any other religion does something like that. The true God is completely unique. He is the only God who does everything to save his people. When Jacob heard that message from God, when he revealed himself as “the LORD,” the Savior-God who makes promises and keeps those promises, when he repeated the promises he had made to his grandfather Abraham and to his father Isaac, when he got a picture of his Savior as the stairway to heaven, Jacob’s faith was strengthened. I’d imagine that the last 430 miles of that trip were considerably easier than the first 70. When we read the rest of the Bible we see that all of those promises came true. I’m guessing that none of us have had a dream like this sent by God himself, but we really don’t need one. We are so much more fortunate than Jacob was! We have God’s completed revelation to the world! We don’t just have to rely on the promises of the Savior, we can see the fulfillment! Through the Gospels we have seen Jesus’ perfect life and death for us. We know he is all we need. Because that’s true, we can continue our journey through this life with confidence. Many times the Bible and hymn writers compare the life of a believer to a traveler on his way home. We know that this world is not our real home. Heaven is. Jesus is the stairway to get there. So with every day we can continue our walk with God in confidence. At the end of the day we know that we are a day’s march nearer home. Jesus Is the Stairway to Heaven that we do not deserve that gives access to God and that inspires humble awe. I’m guessing that if I went to the closest music store and started playing “Stairway to Heaven,” I would at least get dirty looks if not also be told to cut it out. Thankfully all of us can spend our lives pointing people to the Savior who is the only way there.