Stairway to Heaven

(soft music) Genesis 28 verses 10 through 22. Jacob left Bershiva and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and laid down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. They're above it, stood the Lord. And he said, "I'm the Lord, the God of your Father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are laying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and you will spend spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All people's on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. And I will bring you back to this land. And I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it." He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place?" This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. Though Jacob made a vow saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey, I'm taking and I will give and will give me food to eat and close to wear. So that I return safely to my father's household, then the Lord will be my God." And this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will give you a tent. This is the word of the Lord. - Thanks be to God. I have heard it said, "If you want to know God, a culture worships, just look at its steeples, the tallest buildings on its skyline." A few years ago, the privilege of traveling to Istanbul accompanied by a team from this church community, we were on the first of what would become many trips with an organization as now one of our global justice partners, ELA Ministries. In fact, we had seen just return in the last week from that city with that organization. And after a week of service, we spent our last 24 hours just living as tourists, like Turkish Delight, Kababs for dinner, knock off soccer jerseys for my kids, I didn't tell them we're knock offs, that, all that stuff. But our number one destination, the place everyone wanted to visit was the Hagia Sophia, which is among the largest and certainly the most well-known Islamic mosque in the world. Interestingly though, it was built first by the Emperor Constantine as a Christian church to honor Jesus Christ. But then in the late 14th century, with the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual conquest of Constantinople, it was converted into a mosque to honor Allah. Inside, you will see many kneeling on Islamic prayer rugs chanting to Allah. But if you look up at the ceiling, you can still make out the old ruins of Mosaic's painted to honor Christ. This temple has changed hands between worshipers, but since the fourth century, it has always symbolized the religious devotion of the Turkish people. And if you want to know what God, a culture worships, just look at its steeples, the tallest buildings on any given city skyline. So by that metric, what is our city? What is Portland devoted to? What God do we worship? Well, the peaks on our skyline, our church steeples, our temple spires, our stairways to heaven, our gargantuan office buildings devoted to individual achievement and personal acquisition. We worship the self. And if you want to know what God, a culture worships, all you got to do is look at its steeples. We are picking our way through Genesis at the moment. And today we are coming to Jacob's dream forever seared into the imagination of every member of the boomer generation by the theological brilliance of Led Zeppelin. Thus far in the life of Jacob, he has been to find two ways as blessed by God. There it is. And grasping for what he has been promised from the womb. He is named and identified by the blessing of the maker. But of course, he also has a propensity for the way of the deceiver. And that should probably sound familiar. It should make Jacob among the most relatable characters on the pages of Scripture, because you and I carry that identical tension within us. We all live stories that are being authored by the blessing of God. And those stories are constantly being interrupted by the deceptions of the serpent. In Jacob's story, the serpent's curse is expressed in two ways through his life by these patterns of control and manipulation. He's taking the abundant life that God has already promised to give him in the forms of his brothers, birthright and his father's blessing, all of which has now culminated in a 20-year exile from his home and his family. And the passage that we just read a moment to go is seen one from those 20 wandering wilderness years. Jacob has made an absolute mess of things back home. So he's run from his family alone into the wilderness where he eventually collapses and shame drenched exhaustion, dozes off, and his snooze is then illuminated by an iconic, God-given dream, a stairway to heaven. We'll break down that dream this way, the place, the dream, and then the negotiation. So look back here, Bobby. With me now, Genesis, chapter 28, I'm going to start reading from verse 10. Jacob left Bershiba and set off for her ram. When he reached a certain place, now he should know a more literal translation of the Hebrew reads, and he encountered the place. And that name, the place, is actually repeated by the author three times at the beginning of this story, and then three times again at the end of the very same story, and a direct translation of the Hebrew, the first couple of verses of the chapter read. And he encountered the place, and he stayed the night there for the sun had gone down. He took the stones from the place, and he set his head to rest down in that place. The place is the first obvious emphasis being made by the author. He is really drilling down on this setting, so let's make sure that we see it. Jacob fell asleep alone, exhausted, and ashamed. But when he awoke from the dream, he says this in verse 16, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." And because of that, the manifest presence of God found in an otherwise ordinary place, Jacob then renames his campsite to Bethel, which means House of God. Hang on a second. We're told that Jacob is on his way to her ram. Remember? That's where his mom told him to go crash, while Esau cools off from the bounty that he's just put on his head. Go stay at my brother Levant's place in Haren, until all of this blows over, and then I'll send word, and you can come back home. That's the plan. Well, earlier in Genesis, Jacob's grandfather, Abraham, also happened to be on his way from Haren, in search of the land God promised him, when the narrator told us, Genesis 12 verse 8, "From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west, and I on the east, there he built an altar to the Lord, and called on the name of the Lord." So let's put the pieces together. Abraham was coming from Haren, carrying nothing but the promised blessing of God, when he encountered God along the way in such a profound way, he stopped his journey to build an altar of remembrance there, and the name of that place was Bethel. And now, his grandson Jacob, literally the embodiment of God's promised blessing to Abraham, is journeying to Haren, carrying nothing but the promised blessing of God, and he encounters God in such a profound way, he stops his journey to build an altar of remembrance there, and the name of that place was Bethel. This is the author's way of telling us, it's the same place. Jacob has no power. a possible way of knowing this, but he's just laid down his head on the very ground of his grandfather's faith, and it's there that he meets his grandfather's God. And how did God introduce himself to Jacob after all? I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac. And the message God delivers to Jacob is a repetition of the exact same promise blessing that he gave to Abraham. It's the same blessing in the same place. In that place, Jacob discovers or decides that he is covered enough ground for one day, so he lays down his head, and he sleeps for the night on a pillow. I mean, a stone. Which makes me so grateful that I live at this time in history. Doesn't it-- you've come a long way in headrest technology. Have we not? Eventually, he does as often as a vivid dream, verse 12. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching up to heaven. And the angels of God were sending and descending on it. Now, many English Bible say stairway, others say lad, or stairway is definitely a lot closer to the technical Hebrew. But if we want to get really specific about it, the best translation is probably ramp or even stepped ramp. Now, that might seem really picky and technical, but it's actually pretty important. Because seeing Jacob's dream as Jacob saw it in his imagination is absolutely critical for understanding exactly what God is saying through Jacob's dream. And this bit is honestly just so, so fascinating. So this word stairway is the Hebrew term su-long. And it appears only here, not just in the Bible, but in all of ancient Hebrew literature. But we do know that it is very closely related to the word simil-tu in akadian and ancient Semitic language, which is related to Hebrew. And simil-tu means stepped ramp, like a stairway. In fact, simil-tu is the word that is used to describe the stairway that was found on ancient Ziggurat temples. A Ziggurat is a house of worship to the pagan gods of ancient Babylon, like the one you're seeing in this image, which is the great Ataminaki Ziggurat in Babylon. Ataminaki is Sumerian for Tower of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. And the origins of this very temple are mentioned in the Babylonian divine origin, Matthew, Enuma Elish, which is Babylon's equivalent to the biblical book of Genesis. So check this out. Early in Genesis, you may recall that there was a story about human beings trying to build a tower up to heaven, trying to become the gods of their own lives, to get gods blessing their way. And that story was called the Tower of Babylon, Genesis chapter 11. It's the Genesis picture of the serpent's deception when it runs rampant throughout a society. And in ancient Mesopotamian, Babylon means gate of the gods. So the Tower of Babylon, Genesis 11, is a story, but it's also a temple housing worship to a false god that is set apart and distinguished from all of their houses of worship in that it contains a very prominent stairway that reaches up to the gate of the gods. A stairway to heaven. If you want to know what God of culture worships, just look at its steeples, the tallest buildings on its skyline. So when Joseph rubbed his eyes in a woke for following morning, if you or I happen to be in the campsite next to him, I imagine he would have come over to us and unzipped our tent and said, "You're never going to believe this. I had the craziest dream last night. It was the Tower of Babylon. It was the Babylonian cigarette. Only it wasn't a stairway where people were trying to reach up to heaven. It was a stairway where God was reaching down to earth." And you would say, "Wow, that is wild Jake. Why don't you lay your head back down in that rock and try to get a bit more sleep?" Look, friends, what I'm trying to get you to see, what Jacob saw, was a picture that was blending together both pagan houses of worship and human attempts at greatness. And God is using that picture to say to Jacob, "I want to give you all of this. All that people are seeking in these false ways. I want to bless you with it. I am what all of the other nations are pursuing and trying to build, trying to reach their way to. It is me they're actually searching for in all the wrong places. And I want to entrust all of myself to you. Will you entrust all of yourself to me?" Now, super important note we need to make here. God is re-upping on His promise to bless Jacob, but that blessing is not a dismissal of Jacob's wrong. God's faithfulness to Jacob is not at the expense of Jacob's father or his brother. It's not at the expense of anyone who has been victimized by Jacob's sin and there are victims in Jacob's wake. There are real life-felt consequences for Jacob's grasping after God's blessing, his stubborn insistence on taking what God has promised to give him. And those consequences include, "You're going to be alone and far from home, and I'm still going to bless you beyond what you can imagine, but my blessing will not erase the consequences for your choices. What my blessing will do though with time is so redeemed the collateral that you have left behind that I will even bring you back to the home that you've run away from." Jacob's dream means God is so good that there is absolutely nothing that you are I can do to escape His desire to bless us and His determination to clean up every mess we make and that God is so empowering that He actually has vested your life in mind with consequential meaning in the world. The choices that you and I make are in concert with the renewal of all creation or the deceiver and destroyer of all creation and there is no end between. As Jesus would later say, "Whoever is not for me is against me." All of that can a picture of a stairway to heaven. A stairway, functionally speaking, is a connection between two distinct places, upstairs and downstairs. I give you what to leave and go check into a hotel tonight and you got a room on the first floor. There would be someone sleeping in the room directly above you on the second floor. But thankfully, you wouldn't be sharing a space with that stranger. Why not? Because there's a barrier that has been created between the two of you. There is, though, a way that you could access their realm, that you could enter their room. You might take the stairs, right? So in this story, Jacob sees heaven and earth, which have been created as one, but driven apart by the serpents deception and humanity's cooperation. Reconnected now by a stairway upon which the messengers of God, angels, are coming and going between heaven and earth. That's the picture. Verse 13, "There above it stood the Lord," and he said, "I am the Lord, the God of your Father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the east and the west and the north and the south. All people's on earth will be blessed through you and your off-spring. I am with you." Now, this is the very first time that Jacob has ever had a personal encounter with God. It is the first time that he has personally heard God speak to him. And what does God want to say? "I am with you." This is now the third generation in a row to whom God has made that promise. A promise that God kept to Abraham despite the fact that Abraham couldn't resist trying to take matters into his own hands, lying about his wife's identity, leaving the land of promise when times got economically tough, even trying to fulfill God's promises for him through a surrogate. And God kept that promise to Isaac despite the fact that Isaac tried to take matters into his own hands, making and he saw the carrier of the blessing rather than Jacob. And now God is keeping that promise to Jacob, despite the fact that Jacob keeps trying to take matters and to his own hands, trying to bless himself by taking from others instead of receive the blessing that God has promised to give him. In fact, Jacob later wakes up and builds an altar and we're given a little bit more geographical detail about the place, discovering that it's got a tree right at the center. So Jacob has a dream about a place on the earth where heaven is overlapping, a place where heaven and earth are being connected as one and it's got a tree right in the middle of it. If you've been reading the Genesis story up to this point, what is supposed to be leaping to your mind? Eat and write? We do this every week and still you never answer me. It's always the garden of Eden. Next week, Gavin's preaching, he's probably going to do this whole spiel. It's going to be Eden. But it's also a picture of revelation of the garden city after Christ returned in the renewal of all of creation. Jacob's encounter with God is God's way of keeping his first and greatest promise and it's being revealed uniquely and personally in the unique and personal mess that Jacob has made today and that's what every encounter with God is. It is God keeping his first and greatest promise uniquely and personally to you and the unique and personal mess that you have made today. It's God keeping his first and greatest promise to renew all of creation and that includes all of you. In spite of the mess you've made as a mother or a father, the way that you find that you have accidentally become the spitting image of exactly who you promised you'd never be. In spite of the moral lapse that you have somehow let grow into an immoral pattern, the lust or the anger or the materialism or the greed or the pride that seems to color every day of your life no matter what promises you make to yourself. In spite of the secret that you've managed to keep out of plain view of everyone except God, every encounter with God is his coming right into the mess that we make of our lives and saying very personally to us there is no part of you that I will leave unhealed and unredeemed. And do not dismiss that as a blessing of your righteousness because God did not bless Jacob because of his righteousness. If anything it's the opposite of that. This is a promise of mercy in spite of Jacob's rebellion and that mercy is not unique to Jacob. It is for all who will come into the family of God that Jacob will father. In fact, the original benediction which is given later to Aaron and to all of the Levi priests in the book of numbers to speak over all of God's people to all of the children of Jacob at Bethel is this number six. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. This promise is for you and me and for everyone who comes into the family that God has shown mercy to. But maybe at least a few of you are wondering, why dreams? I mean, why is the Bible? And especially the Old Testament makes such a big deal about dreams and what am I supposed to make of my own dreams? Dream interpretation leaves a ton of questions open to us and certainly not every dream you've ever had came from God. But at the same time, we just cannot read the Bible without taking seriously the God thinks our dreams are at least one of the channels through which he speaks to us. I mean, after all, almost every major character in the Bible received significant dreams or visions from God. Oh, we've got Jacob here at the beginning of the story, but then he'll have more dreams from God later when he returns to this very same spot and wrestles with God. Jacob's son, Joseph, then has dreams fulfilled by his influential position in Egypt. If you're following along with us in our bread reading plan, this last week you read about Gideon's victory over the Midianites, which was foreshadowed by a dream from God. Solomon famously asked for wisdom from God in a dream. Daniel gets thrown in a lion's den after interpreting dreams from Nebuchadnezzar and others. The prophet Joel predicted the Holy Spirit would bring dreams and visions to men, women, old and young, a prophecy that was then fulfilled on the day of Pentecost with the gift of the Holy Spirit. And Peter, who preached the Pentecost sermon, had a dream that the gospel would transcend the nation of Israel and reach the Gentile nations. It goes on and on and on. So what's the deal with dreams? Well, I think we could all agree on at least this much that neurobiologically speaking, dreams represent an altered state of consciousness for human beings when a whole lot of the guards that we live with held up when we're awake are no longer filtering our thoughts, imagination, and perceptions. Like when you are in a dream state, your ego, that the center of your pride and plans and self-consciousness is silenced. And your mind is free or it's uninhibited or at the very least much less inhibited by those factors. So your mind is a little bit more of a free agent when you're dreaming than when you're awake. Your consciousness is less deterred by your ego. And if God wanted to say something to you that cut right past your insecurity and bias and family trauma and distraction and own future casting, well, then dreams would be a pretty good opportunity for him to do that, right? Are all dreams from God? Of course not. I mean, some are just like the last conversation you had before you fell asleep or the particularly funky cheese you tried from that Sharku to report or some are just the brain's way of resting while your body does, but some just might be God speaking because dreams are a unique state of psychological consciousness that many of us would probably do well to pay a little bit more attention to. Now, unfortunately, Jacob woke up from his dream and all of the ego and self-consciousness cut through in his dream state just rushes right back to the surface clouding his interpretation of his own encounter with God. And that brings us to the negotiation. Let's pick up from there in verse 20. Then Jacob made a vow saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I'm taking, now wait a second." If, I mean, God just promised that very thing. God just finished saying to Jacob, "I will be with you." And then Jacob wakes up from a dream and says, "Well, look, if you're always the kind of God who keeps the promises he makes, then if God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I'm taking and will give me food to eat and close to where?" So that returns safely to my father's household. Then the Lord will be my God. And this stone that I've set up as a pillar will be God's house. And all that you give me, I'll give you a tenth. Jacob takes what God made unconditional and immediately makes it conditional. If you prove yourself trustworthy to me, God, if you meet my expectations on my timeline, if you turn out to be both good and predictable, if you're willing to cooperate with my way to your blessing, then I'll worship you. God took, I'm sorry, Jacob took what God made unconditional and made it conditional. And don't you and I do the same thing? Jesus promises unconditional grace and unimaginable blessing, but you and I also have an uncontrollable itch and constiparensity to deal with God by a conditional merit and give and take sort of system of economic exchange. We take God's promises and we turn them into conditional negotiation. Right, God is surely nearer to me when life is going generally according to plan and my moral scorecard is squeaky clean, right? God is surely most interested in what I have to give him that seems productive for his kingdom like my resources and talents and gifts I mean doesn't God want like a cosmic pyramid schemer to sign me up for his thing and then me to get three of my friends minimum Son up under me And If I play God's game he's gonna play mine The family that I want career. I want future. I want The healing I want absolutely and I want freedom I want We find a thousand ways to tell ourselves a story that's helped together by some economy other than grace Jacob is essentially saying to God right here if you give me what I want I'll give you what you want my devotion Jacob is trying to use the very same methods on God that he's used on everybody else This is the same manipulative scheming that he used to take the birthright from his brother and take the blessing from his father Surely the way I get to abundance is to use that same system on God right? You see when when he was asleep when he was entirely passive God was able to cut right past all of the serpent's lies and speak to Jacob's true self And then when he woke up all those lies woke up with him and all the sudden he starts relating back to God through his false self Jacob interacts with everyone even with God Through his false self He has had a very real encounter with grace But that encounter didn't just heal his core deception all at once Right, this is the perfectionist encountering the love of God in their imperfection and Then vowing to perfectly live that moment and do perfect practice in flawless formation It is the control freak encountering God in the very situation where they lost control and it was a total mess and then trying to control how and when God will meet me from this day forth It is the people pleaser encountering God in a relational mess they were a part of And then thanking God while also re-upping on their commitment to never let anyone else down again The life of faith can be walked in a way that awakens and nurtures the true self and the life of faith can be walked in a way that does nothing but feed the false self We are ever susceptible To downgrade God's promises Imagining and reimagining all the ways that he'll get his will done my way Dreaming is the easy part Right having a dream a passive glimpse of the divine when my all my guards are down There is very little participation required for that Right whether you are awake or asleep all of us get a few mountain top moments of divine encounter with God as we Trot along the narrow way behind Jesus dreaming is the easy part vision though Vision is another story Dreaming is a divine glimpse while you're snoozing vision is a life Inparticipation with that glimpse after you're awake When all those filters that God cut past all the sin all my ego my insecurity fear compulsions control all of those are suddenly Firing on all cylinders again when I'm awake In the Bible people don't tend to just dismiss their dreams as nothing But neither do people wake up from their dreams and start paging through a dream dictionary like God has spoken to them And some sort of Morse code can sort of way that they need to decode and translate Biblically dreams are much more akin to prophetic words They are revelations Requiring accurate interpretation and then incarnated application Revelation is what I saw in my dream interpretation is what it means what is God saying to me through that dream and Application is a life of vision in step with my dreaming after I'm awake Dreams are meant to be converted into visions They are meant to be incarnated lived so that they become real in the world They might first be interpreted in words sure but every dream's fullest interpretation is always in flesh This dream of Jacobs it is a mountain top moment of encounter with God God himself went and found Jacob when he was totally lost to remind Jacob who God is Remind Jacob who Jacob is and remind Jacob the true story he's living in today Right he goes and finds Jacob to remind Jacob who who he is I'm the one who is always with you who you can never outrun whose grace will keep pace with you wherever you wander who will never ever give up on you And to remind Jacob who Jacob is You are the one carrying the promise You are the one I will never leave the blessed one who will bless the whole world the one who's in mistakes matter because they hurt But do not disqualify that to you are to meet Jacob I will never forget who I knit together in your mother's womb and I will never give up on you becoming that person in your waking days Oh and to remind Jacob of the story Jacobs living in and it is not a story of a Functional broken family that is splintered apart because of a manipulative greedy younger brother who messed everything up It is a story of a abundant blessing and life to the full God himself comes and finds Jacob when he's lost Speak to him in a dream to say all of that but as Jacob shows us Dreaming is the easy part It's waking up It's living that dream into a vision That's the hard part Jacob wakes up and so do his egos insecurity fear control compulsions And so he redefines everything God just said Who is God God is the one who I barter with like everyone else and I am the one who is lost and alone and the story I'm living in it's a story where I've got to take everything that I get Is he Jacob is showing us what we all already know way too well and that is that mountain top moments of divine encounter with God are easy to receive but man Man they are hard to convert into everyday life are they not Jacob's dream is an absolutely brilliant story With a brutal tragic ending Unless Unless this isn't the end Unless God keeps on riding the story that he introduced in this dream long after Jacob's woke up And there is another occasion. It's much much much later in the Bible When Jacob's dream gets interpreted And John chapter one a Man named Philip meets Jesus and then immediately goes to find his buddy Nathaniel to say John 145 We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about him the prophets also wrote Jesus and Nazareth the son of Joseph Now for a little bit of context on this moment a guy named Philip has met Jesus and immediately goes to find his buddy and the thing He once says hey, we found the Messiah He's in Nazareth and Nathaniel Mox the potential of God himself Inflashed in the unimpressive ordinary of a Nazarene peasant Nazareth Can anything good come from Nazareth to which Philip simply responds come and see verse 47 When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching he said to him here truly is in Israel I don't know there is no deceit. How do you know me Nathaniel asked Jesus answered I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you then Nathaniel declared rabbi you are the son of God You are the king of Israel And when Jesus sees that Nathaniel such an easy sell He just raises the bar referencing Jacob's dream to tell him he's not seen anything yet That who he's really looking at when he's looking at Jesus is Jacob's stairway wrapped up in human flesh You believe because I told you I saw you under a fig tree. You'll see greater things than that Jesus than added Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God, ascending and descending on the Son of man. Jesus is speaking in a language very, very plain to a first century Jew to say, "I am Jacob's stairway. I am the direct connection between heaven and earth, because dreams are meant to be converted into visions, aren't they? They're meant to be incarnated, lived, to become real in the world. That's why God speaks to us in a way that cuts past everything that would prevent that from happening. A dream might first be interpreted in Word, but its ultimate interpretation is in a life. In flesh, Jesus picks up Jacob's dream and becomes its interpretation so that Jacob's dreaming and the Old Testament becomes Nathaniel's awakening in the New Testament. His awakening to God, his awakening to who he really is, his true self, and his awakening to the story that he's actually living in. He is saying, "Who is God? God is the one in flesh right in front of you. Heaven and earth is overlapping in the ordinary complexion of this Nazarene peasant. I have been blessed by God to become a blessing to the whole world." And who are you Nathaniel? We come to just glossed over the way that Jesus renames Nathaniel, didn't we? Back to verse 47. When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said to him, "Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit." So Jesus calls Nathaniel an Israelite. Israel. That's the name that God will change Jacob's name to when he encounters him again at Bethel in another dream. Here truly is a son of Jacob in whom there is no deceit. What is that core pattern that Jacob cannot seem to overcome? That false lie, the way that the serpent has defined him, that God is working against it's that he can't stop manipulating, lying, scheming, he can't stop deceit. Here truly is a son of Jacob who is not defined by the lies of Jacob. That is your true self, Nathaniel. I am the God who promised to bless Jacob in spite of everything and you are the son that I am pouring out that blessing on today. That is who I am and that is who you are and that is the story that you are living in. In Genesis, God went and found Jacob to remind Jacob who God is, remind Jacob who Jacob is and remind Jacob of the story he is living in. In Jesus, God went and found Nathaniel to remind Nathaniel who God is, remind Nathaniel who Nathaniel is and remind Nathaniel of the story he is really living in. I am Jacob's stairway. You are the one who receives everything that I have to give you and you are living in a story of abundant blessing and unconditional grace. Wow! Wow! But as we all know too well, dreaming is the easy part, isn't it? It is the waking up. It is the living that dream into a life. Man, that is the hard part. And we don't hear another word about Nathaniel from John's first chapter all the way to his last one. When Nathaniel is named as one of the disciples who happens to be in the boat when Peter is out fishing again in Jesus in resurrected form is calling him from the beach to restore him. And in between John's first and last chapter a whole lot happens, like heart-rending miracles sure but also a whole lot of heart-rending disappointment and disillusionment. There is a lot of insightful teaching but man there is some really confusing bits too. Oh, and there is a cross before there is a resurrection. There is plenty of space between John's first and last chapter to doubt that God really has come as close as Jesus. That this rabbi actually is, the stairway between heaven and earth, that he really is with me to the same unconditional degree that he promised to be with Jacob. There is plenty of space to start doubting that the mountaintop encounter I had back then was real and trustworthy and true enough to hold the weight of my actual life that I am living here today. There is plenty of space to leave a dream, a dream. And there always is. Jacob woke up from a dream of unconditional grace and immediately started negotiating and the disciples as a whole, kind of do the exact same thing Jacob did. Not a cross in the tomb rabbi? No, you are here to reign by a sword and a throne and we are going to sit beside you. Yes, you are exactly right. You will occupy the thrones beside me. You will reign with me in glory but the cross in the tomb are the way there. The disciples see Jacob's dream awake with their eyes open, personified right in front of them in Jesus but then when it is time for his kingdom to come they still imagine that God is going to get his will done their way. That is why Peter is cutting the guy's ear off and all the rest of them are scattering with their tails tucked because they still filtered all of God's promises through their grid. They still imagine that God was going to get his will my way, the way of violence, the way of immediacy, the peaceful path or the painless path without suffering or the peaceful path without fear, we are ever prone to like Jacob and all of Israel who will come from him and all the nations that are blessed through him. Imagine that God's blessing is going to come to me my way without waiting, without anxiety, without pain, without humility or misunderstanding or broken relationships that need restoring. But if Jesus is the way then I can expect that blessing from God is going to be as big as resurrection and as slow as 30 years before we even hear our peep and include long sleepless nights of prayer like us in the knee and the humility of false accusation and the misunderstanding even of those closest to me and broken relationships like my own brothers thinking I'm a quack and Judas selling me out behind my back and across to carry just like his that is the way to resurrection. Dreaming is the easy part. It's the converting of a dream into a vision and encounter with God formed into a life that's the challenge because what lies between every dream and vision? Well for Jesus it was a long slog in the wilderness for a showdown with the serpent and for James and John it was the loss of a thrones that you ride and left when you push Caesar off his seat plan for their futures and for Mary and Martha it was the loss of their brother and then the loss of the one who raised their brother and for Peter it was the loss of himself for who he'd imagined himself to be the loss of the story he thought he was living in so you could come awake to the story that God was actually riding and for you it might be the loss of a job or an identity, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a planned future but one thing for sure no dream becomes a vision without a loss. For resurrection to happen something's got to die. The question every dream, every divine moment of clarity, every mountaintop encounter with the living God leaves us with when we rub our eyes awake is which one is going to die. Dream or God because I can only live one of the other. Thanks for joining the Bridgetown family as we engage in this teaching series. To learn more about the life of our church and how you can get involved visit Bridgetown.Church/Welcome. If you're interested in contributing financially to Bridgetown Church and to our ministry you can do that at Bridgetown.Church/giving. Wherever you're joining us from we hope this resource blesses you and encourages you to be with Jesus, become like Jesus and do what Jesus did. [BLANK_AUDIO]