Avengers. Something happened in that movie that would have ripple effects for every Marvel movie and TV show moving forward right afterwards that and most of you know what this I'm talking about right the Battle of New York oh we're good Battle of New York was when what happened the skies opened up over downtown Manhattan and aliens came down to try to take over the earth and make Loki the ruler of the world. Now up to that point the people in the world that did not know that there was life outside of the planet earth right didn't know there were aliens and so even though the Avengers win the Battle of New York there's this collective trauma among the survivors not only what happened that day and the damage that was done but also with this new knowledge that indeed there is life out there that aliens are real that a portal from heaven had been opened once and could be opened again and there's a lot of plotlines and movies and TV shows that go into how do we stop that right now we keep that from happening again now of course that's just a movie but we're all fascinated with the question of is their life out there extraterrestrial life alien life on other planets right we're also fascinated with this question of the supernatural is the supernatural real are there such things as angels and demons can they come to earth in the first book of the Bible and Genesis we find out the scary but intriguing news that yes the supernatural is real that there is actually a portal from heaven to earth the angels maybe even demons can come up and down through this revelation comes in the middle of the story of a man named Jacob and so we're gonna read just a part of his story in Genesis chapter 28 and so if you're able please stand for this reading of God's word Genesis 28 starting verse 10 Jacob left beer Shiba and went toward Haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set taking one of the stones of the place he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep and he dreamed and behold there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached the heaven and behold the angels of God were ascending and descending on it and behold the Lord stood above and said I am the Lord the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac the land and which you lie I will give to you into your offspring your offspring should be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it and he was framed and said how awesome is this place this is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven so early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it he called the name of that place Bethel but the name of the city was lose at the first then Jacob made a vowel saying if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat clothing to wear so I come again to my father's house in peace then the Lord shall be my God and this stone which I set up for a pillar shall be God's house and if all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you this is God's word for God's people and for the good of the world please be seated sometimes dreams are just dreams but sometimes dreams communicate reality and if you believe in the Bible at all you know that God sometimes uses dreams with people to communicate truth now to understand why God gave Jacob this particular dream we have to sort of understand a little bit of Jacob's background in his story what he's doing here Jacob is from a he's on the run right he's he's taken flight and he is he's on the run from a very dysfunctional family his might he is his mother's favorite but his father who's blind has his favorite his older twin brother Esau and Jacob's mother Rebecca convinces Jacob to steal the family blessing from his older brother Esau because she doesn't think he's worthy of the family's blessing for various reasons and Jacob does that which is right in line with his character Jacob is a deceiver is very name means a usurper or supplanter and so he usurps this blessing and when Esau finds out he is livid that his rightful place blessing has been taken away from him and he vows to kill Jacob and so Jacob runs right his his only recourse to get away from his brother and from his dysfunctional family so he finds himself out in the wilderness on the run completely estranged from those he loves the most and he lies down to sleep pretty lost and alone now have you ever been that alone more of my favorite movies is Joe versus volcano yeah some of you just said oh some of you said yes very polarizing movie either love it or hate it I love it there's a scene in the movie where Joe is preparing to leave home and then he's going to make his way down the island in the south Pacific to jump in a volcano yeah that's the I can't defend the premise the plot but it's a great movie okay so he's is his last night in New York and he's staying at this fancy hotel he just bought all these fancy clothes and luggage and his last night and so he wants to go out on the town but he's doesn't know anybody so he asks his driver Marshall if he'll have dinner with him well Marshall has a family he has to get home he says I can't do that and Marshall says how much you got anybody and Joe says no but there's certain times in your life when I guess you're not supposed to have anybody you know certain doors you have to go through alone I think Joe is actually pretty wise here right now now sometimes loneliness happens because we have made a mess of relationships or maybe sometimes because somebody has made a mess of us and excluded us from community but sometimes loneliness happens because you have to be alone sometimes you're not supposed to have anybody as Joe says and I think I believe these are the times that God uses to teach us about ourselves and to draw us into community or into deeper relationship with him and I think Jacob's loneliness was a combination of both right his relationships were a complete mess but God was also using this lonely time to teach Jacob about himself and also to draw him closer to himself so there he is he's alone tonight sweeping out in the wilderness and he has this vivid dream now what is this dream what is Jacob's dream about it's a ladder dreams about a ladder right stretching from earth to heaven angels going up and down on the ladder and and God is standing at the top of the ladder and he's speaking to Jacob and he tells Jacob that even though Jacob thinks he's alone that he is not alone that God is with him not only is with him now but he's promised is that he will continue to be with him right and just as God told Abraham he tells Jacob that you're going to have a family this point he's not married yet right you're going to have a family and your descendants descendants are going to be as numerous as the dust of the earth and just like he told Abraham all the families of the earth are going to be blessed through you quite a promise and now for a lot of us we wake up we wake up from a dream we think you know that's just a dream shake it off forget about it go about real life but when Jacob wakes he realizes this is real life right God was with me and speaking to me in the verse 17 he says how awesome is this place this is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven then he sets up an altar makes a vow to follow God and to give him a tenth of everything he owns so we see God revealing himself to Jacob and as he does that he is starting to change Jacob right he's changing him from someone who is a deceiver someone who just takes who steals to someone who now begins to give someone who begins to be able to worship to to live for God's glory rather than just his own glory well people have been dreaming about spiritual things probably for as long as people have walked the earth right John Lennon had a dream but he wrote into a song called imagine these are the words probably a lot of you're going to have the tune in your head it says imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try no hell below us above us only sky imagine all the people living for today imagine there's no countries it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for no religion to imagine all the people living life in peace you may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us in the world will be as one a lot to unpack there and first I want to say is we are certainly sympathetic to the idea that no one ought to be killed for their beliefs certainly something that John Lennon got right people ought to be free to be able to believe and be able to change their beliefs but the core of Lennon's beliefs here are that believing in God believing in an afterlife is what makes people dangerous right and in his mind believing that this world is all there is is what makes peace possible and the logic is here if we would just see that life is just about people and loving people right rather than pleasing some demanding raffle God then we would have a chance at peace now the problem with that is actual experience right the scoreboard of history tells us that people who don't believe in God who don't believe in an afterlife have been some of the people who have been the least interested in peace and most interested in power right now right people like Joseph Stalin who was credited with killing maybe 20 million people or Mao Zedong who killed maybe 70 million people both atheists who didn't believe God then believe in an afterlife and we're not interested in peace now it is true the Christians have not always been peaceful the Crusades are a particularly troubling part of our history and it is also true the Christian theology says that there is sometimes time for a just war right that begins with the premise of self-defense but the core of the Christian faith is the belief that God desires peace on earth and that we as Christians ought to work for peace in fact right that's part of what the angels told the shepherds in the Christmas story glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to among those with whom he is pleased peace is important but there are two kinds of peace that we need the first is between people between between people groups but the second maybe comes first is a need for peace between heaven and earth between God and humanity and the reality of Jacob's latter is that this peace is possible because there is a connection between heaven and earth a ladder that can be climbed the problem though that we learn from the rest of the bible is that we can't do it we can't climb the ladder we're not strong enough we're not good enough our hearts are inclined towards ourselves towards earth towards violence towards making war whether physically or in our hearts we cannot make our way up the stairway to heaven we can't buy the stairway to heaven and there's no way to get up by ourselves all have sinned fall short of the glory of God so that the latter the reality of this Jacob's latter is that we need God to come down the ladder to us we need him to come down to rescue us to bring us back up that's exactly what he did in in John chapter 1 a man named Philip meets Jesus and becomes one of his disciples and the first things he does is he goes and he finds his friend Nathaniel and he says Nathaniel we found the one that Moses and the prophets talked about Jesus of Nazareth and Nathaniel skeptical Nazareth come back what's down can anything good come out of Nazareth they'll say they just gotta trust me so they go to find Jesus and when Jesus sees Philip and Nathaniel coming he greets Nathaniel by saying this he says behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit that's a funny thing to say to someone you've never met before he holds an Israelite in whom there is no deceit and Nathaniel is like you don't you don't know me but Jesus does know him and he knows that Nathaniel is a student of the Old Testament and so he drops this reference that he knows Nathaniel will know right and Israelite in whom there's no deceit referring to an Israelite in whom there was deceit who's that Jacob right and when Nathaniel realizes that Jesus knows him with some kind of supernatural knowledge he begins to worship him that's you're the son of God and then Jesus says you think that's great you will see greater things then he says this he says you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man again Jesus references Jacob and Jacob's ladder but this time he says that this ladder is not made of wood it's made of flesh son who it's the son of God it is the ladder son of God is a title that Jesus gives to himself over 80 times in the gospels what's he saying he's saying that he is Jacob's ladder he's saying I am the stairway to heaven I am the only way to have and I am the mediator between heaven and earth the only one who can make peace between God and humanity as he says elsewhere I'm the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but through me but you ask how could Jesus do that how can he night heaven and earth well the answer is because he's the only one who came down the ladder from heaven descended and then ascended back up right that's that is the meaning of Christmas that God came down the ladder descended to us who were unable to ascend to him Jonathan Emily Martin they're a musical duo in Nashville they wrote and released an original Christmas album and one of the songs on it struck me as illustrating this truth so well it's called God came down to us we'd have no power we'd have no strength to ever reach him we'd never reach him we'd have no hope if left on our own to ever find him all of our will all of our might could never reach his holy height we could build a tower up to this guy waste our lives trying to climb or look with faith to the one who's called Emmanuel coming down to raise us up with him Emmanuel can you believe it God came down to us
as Jesus is Jacob's ladder and if you put your trust in him you will have heaven open to you see every other religion teaches that we have to basically work our way up the ladder to get to God to get to heaven now the problem with that is that we're never really told how much we have to do right like how tall is the ladder how many rungs is it how many good works do I have to do and and when I do bad really bad things how far down the ladder do I go I have to start all over again it's never clear it's always some version of keep working do the good things and you will eventually work your way and hopefully when you die of that heaven see only Christianity has certainties the first certainty is that you if you try to climb it yourself you'll never make it but the second certainty is that if you put your faith in Jesus he will bring you up and you will ascend based on his perfect work it's a simple message for a new year do you want to go to heaven you have to respond to the call of Christ and make him your Lord and Savior that's the gospel right now if you reject the call of Christ you need to realize what you are rejecting not primarily rejecting the church and the hypocrites of Christianity right we are a fine lot of hypocrites by do say something myself but you are not primarily rejecting that there are a lot of excuses people give for not submitting their lives to Christ but when you reject the call of Christ what you're rejecting is a person you're rejecting Christ himself the king of kings the Lord of lords you're rejecting a Savior who's given himself for you as someone who can save you and love you in a way that no one else can but if you accept him and follow him all of heaven all of eternity is opened to you see if if you never committed your life to Christ today you stand at the gate of heaven as Jacob did and the question is will you choose eternal life or eternal death it is an eternal choice but it also has consequences for now right because coming to Christ changes how we live now because in Christ we have access to God and in the dream he is up there but in Christ he is with us so one application of that is prayer how is how is your prayer life I know mine can get pretty stale sometimes I'm thinking I'm we just saying words are they going anywhere doing anything so I want you to imagine this the next time you pray I want you to imagine your prayer in the power of the Holy Spirit going straight up the ladder to God and God standing at the top of the ladder ready to answer and always offer you his presence you were prayers matter in heaven and another thing that changes now is that you are now responsible for having this knowledge about this pathway to heaven right and so we are tasked with telling people that there is a heaven yes the thing that they have wondered about there is an afterlife and the only way to get there is through a relationship with Jesus we don't do it we don't tell people out of duty but out of joy and out of genuine concern for their eternal state the ultimate gospel hope though as we think about Jacob's ladder then we learn about a revelation 21 though is the end of the story is that eventually not only will we get to ascend the ladder to heaven but that heaven will actually come down and join us and at the end of time the Jesus's work as the bridge between heaven and earth will be done for heaven and earth will be one let's pray father we thank you that you have not left us on our own to wonder about these spiritual things to wonder if you're real or wonder if there is a heaven in the hell but you sent your only son to come to be one of us to live under the curse of the law and to die to take the curse away from us and away from all creation
and we await the day creation waits with groaning until the day when the sons of God will be revealed and we look forward to the time when we will be with you in the new heavens in the new earth father we pray that you would show us your glory and lead us to sharing that good news with others as we share the hope of heaven and the name of Christ our Savior we pray amen