Genesis 28:10-14 Jacob’s Dream at Bethel
10 Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. 11 At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. 12 As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.
13 At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants. 14 Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will spread out in all directions—to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. 15 What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”
Jacob was many things; a son, a mama’s boy, a liar, a cheater, cheated himself, a hard worker, a man in desperate love with his wife Rachel, a father, but most of all, he was redeemed. To be redeemed means that your old life and bad decisions have been traded for something great by God. You can’t buy your redemption, it is an unexpected gift from God. Although he made some terrible choices, God would use Jacob, this man of many mistakes, to be the father of twelve sons whose families would grow into a great nation. He would become known as Israel, and his sons would each become the leader of one of twelve tribes of the nation of Israel.
Although he was at some times a rascal and other times a sorrowful, begging brother, God saw a spark in Jacob, a tenaciousness (never give up-ness) that he would need to be the father of a nation. Jacob shows us that life is a journey, and at different points in our life, we are different people. Sometimes we are sinful and sometimes we are sorrowful. Sometimes we are surprised by God and blessed without even coming close to deserving it! God uses all of our life, not just the good parts to bless us. He takes the good and the bad of who we are, mixes them together and uses us to do amazing things!
In this story, Jacob is running away from his home and family because he has stolen something that no amount of money can buy from his brother. He was a sneaky, snit of a son, and yet God had a plan for him. In the midst of his sin and guilt, God had a blessing for Jacob.
What can we learn from Jacob? From Jacob we learn not that God blesses the wicked, but that God sees past the wickedness of our actions to the person he created us to be. He blesses the person he knows that is to come, who will learn from mistakes and be better because of it. He blesses the beautiful possibility of who we are to become. We can’t be good enough to earn God’s blessing or bad enough to lose it, we must simply be His child, His beautiful mess.
Family Activity: Tonight, as a family, even if you are mad or aggravated with one another, try to see one another through God’s eyes of love and forgiveness. Go around the room and tell each other what you think God sees that is good or beautiful when he looks at each of you.
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Prayer for the World: Pray that “Mr. Williams,” his wife and 8-year old daughter would receive the Father’s grace. We spent five nights in their home in early 2012 and visit them routinely.
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