Sleeping on a Rock

 Read Genesis 28

We shortchanged Esau a little in last week’s message but will do a short catch-up now. So Jacob has his father’s blessing and Esau is really ticked about it.

Esau asked his father if he didn’t have another blessing.  He did, but it didn’t quite live up to the first.

His father Isaac answered him,

“Your dwelling will be

    away from the earth’s richness,

    away from the dew of heaven above.

You will live by the sword

    and you will serve your brother.

But when you grow restless,

    you will throw his yoke

    from off your neck.”

This whole the older will serve the younger and selling his birthright thing was being manifested right before Esau.  Esau was not a happy camper.

Mom overheard Esau ranting that he would kill his brother.  Rebekah told Jacob to flee to the East and to her brother Laban.  Before he left, his father blessed him again.

Isaac also admonished Jacob not to take a wife from the Canaanite women.  My dad wouldn’t approve.  I don’t approve.  Your mother can’t stand the women from this land, and you shouldn’t want anything to do with them.

Take this time while you are laying low to find a wife from the house of Bethuel and the daughters of Laban.  It will be for the best.

Isaac also included in his blessing something that would pass on this Father of Many Nations mantel to Jacob.  He would be a community of many peoples.  That’s a step up from the father of twins, one of whom wants to kill the other.

Look at a community of many peoples as a stepping stone to many nations.  The story continues.

Somehow, Esau learned what Isaac had told Jacob about the local women.  Did he also know his mother’s thoughts?  Possibly.

He might have heard it from Jacob himself.  They were brothers and they probably still talked even though Esau wanted to kill Jacob, but he wouldn’t do anything until after Dad died.

We don’t know how Esau knew what and when he knew it, but he knew that his two local wives were a sore spot with his father.  Considering the disgust that Rebekah expressed to Isaac over Esau’s wives and what she would do if Jacob took a wife from them, I doubt she could have kept that sort of contempt to herself.

Give Esau credit for one thing.  He was a man of action.

Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.

These were children of Abraham’s line.  It was a step up, right?  I’m not sure what the first two wives thought when Esau claimed what he thought would be his trophy wife.  There’s got to be a soap opera in there somewhere.

Now the story shifts back to Jacob.  He is heading east.  This Father of Many Nations thing that his grandfather was picked for is about to get very real.

Yes, he is staying out of his brother’s crosshairs because he knows that the only thing restraining Esau’s killing rage is that Isaac is still alive.  But he also knows that if he is going to find a wife that Mom and Dad would approve of, living or not, she will have to come from the area of in which his mother had come.

Previously, we had to wonder if Abraham’s servant went directly to Paddan Aram, meaning some tough desert travel, or if he went via the Fertile Crescent.

This time we don’t have to guess.  We are told that Jacob went towards Harran.  That means he went north following the Fertile Crescent.  Harran is where Abraham’s father stopped and the place from which God called Abram into what would be the Promised Land.

For now, just know that Jacob is taking the longer, but the more judicious route to Paddan Aram.  He has to stop along the way.  It is near a city called Luz.

This is the place in the scripture that touches a crusty old Marines's heart.  Jacob took a stone to rest his head upon.  Despite all the deception up to his point—all of which kept him on track with God's plan, but being known as a deceiver just wasn’t too cool—in spite of all that, using a stone as a pillow makes Jacob my kind of people.

You have seen all of these ads for beds with different settings—sleep numbers is the term, I think.

There is a picture of a Marine sleeping on a rock on a mountainside titled:  Sleep Setting Marine.

Jacob is my kind of people

As you might expect sleeping with a rock as a pillow, Jacob had himself one doozy of a dream.

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. 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 west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples 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. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

This whole Father of Many Nations thing, this Promised Land thing, and this universal blessing thing were not just stories that were handed down.  These were from God himself.

Now God had come to visit Abraham but this might be the first time anyone got a glimpse of heaven, albeit from the bottom of a ladder.

When Jacob awoke, he knew that the dream was not a result of the Canaanite street tacos he ate from the roadside stand the day before.  The Lord was in this place.  How awesome is that!

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.”

Jacob took the stone that was his pillow and made a pillar of it.  I don’t know if that means he stood it with the long part of the rock vertically or put it atop others, but he poured oil on it and named the place Bethel which means House of God.

Then we see a vow from Jacob.  It might sound conditional, but I think it’s more of an affirmation from Jacob to himself on the order of, If I really am a part of this incredible plan—and it seems that I am—I will give a tenth of everything I have to God.

We saw the tithe with Abram and Melchizedek and now we see it with Jacob at Bethel.

The main thing that I want you to see is Jacob’s epiphany that he is part of God’s plan.

Now I want you to realize that you are a part of God’s plan.  We talk a lot about God’s plan but sometimes we make it sound like some government program that we don’t qualify for.

God’s plan is really personal.  It was personal for the Father of Many Nations.  It was personal for Isaac.  It was personal for Jacob.

It is personal for you.  You have a part to play.  Your part is not to build an Ark.  That one was taken.

Your part is not to be the Father of Many Nations.  That part was already taken.

Your part is not going to be to go to the top of Mount Sinai and get God’s law in writing.  That one is taken as well.

Your part might be to talk to that person in line in front of you who is upset with life. 

Your part might be to start a home Bible study.  It might be to manage our food supply that we help so many with.  It might be to help in the nursery.

It might be to answer God’s call to ordained ministry.  He doesn’t just call high school and college kids; I know from my personal experience and from 9 years on the Presbytery Committee on Preparation for Ministry.  God calls people from all walks of life, including some old-timers.

It might be for you to minister to children as a teacher in a public school.

It might be that you are the one who is going to introduce your neighbors to each other and see who can help whom.

It might be to take one of these lost children who have no godly direction at home and invest in them more than the hour or so a week that we see them.

It might be to be here at 5:00 pm every Wednesday to welcome kids to the basketball court and gaga pit instead of it just being a dumping ground for parents who zoom away.

Do some of the parents of this community need Tom to take them out behind the barn?  Probably so, but that’s not the part of the plan we have been given.

When God tugs at your heart—we don’t see too many cases of sleeping on rocks and having visions in our dreams these days—but when God’s Spirit tugs at your heart, don’t think if I don’t do this, God will just get someone else.

Think instead, God could choose anyone he wants to but he chose me.  He chose me.

Don’t think your part is too big or too small.

Like it or not, we are part of God’s plan.  Don’t fight it.  Enjoy it.

Let me put it this way.  Who do you think has come up with a better plan for your life, you or God?

For the person who is still leaning on their own understanding, the answer is our own plan.  We understand it.

For the person who has learned to trust in the Lord with all of their heart, the answer is unequivocally God’s plan.

It’s not what Tom is telling you is God’s plan for your life, though you might get an affirmation from me.

It’s not what the elders of the church are telling you is God’s plan for your life, but they might have a conversation or two with you that strikes a chord.

It is the Spirit of God that is within you leading you—making your path straight—to whom you should give your full attention. The body of Christ might just affirm that calling—that part of God’s plan.

Yes, it’s happened again.  Proverbs 3:5-6 jumped into the sermon.

Trust in the Lord.  Trust that you are part of God’s plan and that your part of his plan us exactly what it should be.  It’s not up to you to decide if your part is big or small.

OK, so Tom wants me to redirect my life based on what God is telling me through his Spirit.  I’m not convinced that some of these odds and ends sort of things are part of God’s plan. 

God picks big things for big people.  This little stuff that I am called to do can’t be from God, can it?

Let’s leave Genesis for the moment but we will stay in the Old Testament, specifically 2 Kings 5.

This will be the short, it’s time to wrap up this message version.  Naaman was the very successful commander of the army of Aram, but he had leprosy. The VA in his country couldn’t do anything for him, but Naaman’s wife had a slave girl that had been captured in a raid into Israel.

She told her master who told her husband that there was a prophet in Samaria who could cure him.  He wanted to go but couldn’t just take a week’s leave and hear to Samaria in Israel.  Aram and Israel were frequently at war, even if it was just a raid or a skirmish here and there.

If he went by himself, he could be captured and ransomed.  If he took protection, it could be deemed an invasion and an act or war.  He had to go to his king.

His king said to go to Samaria.  He would clear it with the king of Israel.  So Naaman loaded up some animals with plenty of valuables, ready to pay whatever it cost to get him well.

There’s more to this story, but I cut to the chase.  Elisha the prophet knew that Naaman was coming.  Naaman pulled up in his chariot with all of his treasure ladened animals in trace.  He went to the door.

So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

Naaman stormed away from the door and he was ticked.  The prophet couldn’t even come out to see him.  Was there no red carpet?  Couldn’t they sit down for tea?  No!  A servant came and said go wash in the Jordan 7 times and your flesh will be restored.

Could this prophet have not at least come out and called on the name of his God and waved his hands a couple times?  C’mon, I’m the commander of the army of Aram and he sends a servant.

Besides, the Jordan is a dirty river.  We have clean rivers closer to home.  Naaman was steaming.

Do you know what Naaman had other than Leprosy?  He had good and faithful servants.  They had the backbone to talk to him while he was still steaming.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

If the prophet had come to the door and told him to run 100 miles with 100 pounds on his back, Naaman would have done it.  But such a simple thing as washing 7 times in a dirty river didn’t seem like it came from anybody’s God much less this prophet who was supposed to be a prophet of the one true God.

And yet when Naaman did what the Lord commanded through his prophet, his skin was as clean as that of a young boy.

What a crazy thing to tell this man to do, but it was God’s plan and it worked out great for this commander who thought himself above receiving a message from a servant and was blessed that he heard messages from many servants.

Back to Genesis.

Jacob renamed the place Bethel because the Lord was in that place.  Today I remind you that the Lord is in you.  Learn to hear him speak through the Spirit of God.

We don’t need a dream or a vision.  We don’t need the prophet to come to the door. We don’t need a burning bush.

We need to listen to the quiet voice of the Spirit of God that lives within us. Sometimes it may just be a whisper, but if we are in constant communication with our God, we will know his voice.

We don’t need to see our part as grandiose to consider it a part of God’s plan.  We don’t need to see our part as so unique that no others are called to do the same thing.  We don’t need to see our part of the plan delivered on stone tablets to know it’s our part.

We need to trust that God has good plans for us and he knows exactly what he wants us to do.

Trust your part of his plan is exactly what is best for you.  You are part of God’s plan. 

Don’t run from it.  Don’t hide from it. 

Embrace it.  Enjoy it.

Amen.