Jacob’s Ladder

by

Loved this week study through The Gospel Project Chronological.

In this session we see that God renews his promise to be with Abraham’s offspring and to bless the world through them despite their sinful and unworthy ways.

Notes from this week’s study:

  1. This family displays that the message of the Old Testament is not portraying good people but a good God who keeps his promises to an unworthy people.
  2. God’s unmerited love is given to unworthy people.
  3. God continues to test this family to make them a people of faith (Gen. 25:21).
  4. Yahweh is making this family depend upon him for miraculous births (Gen. 25:21).
  5. Unlikely births in the Bible include Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Samuel, Samson, and Jesus.
  6. God has the right to work contrary to my expectations (Gen. 25:23).
  7. Don’t forsake a heavenly blessing for an earthly convenience (Gen. 26:2).
  8. Remaining a foreigner reminds us that our present environment is not our home (Gen. 26:3; cf. 1 Pet. 2:11).
  9. Human disobedience (Gen. 26:7) and natural disasters (Gen. 26:1) cannot keep God from fulfilling his promises.
  10. “…because Abraham obeyed my voice” (Gen. 26:5).  God has such a gracious selective memory.
  11. God restates his promises regardless of our performance (Gen. 26:3-5).
  12. God was unsought yet he was unhindered.  He initiates (Gen. 28:13)!
  13. Our only hope is not in exalting ourselves to reach God, but God humbling himself to reach us.
  14. Babel’s tower could never reach the height from which God came down.
  15. Having God is better than having his stuff (Gen. 28:15).
  16. The LORD is the God of the past (“your father”) and the future (“your offspring”), here (“which you lie”) and there (“spread abroad”), Jacob (“in you”) and all the world (“all the families of the earth be blessed”) [Gen. 28:13-15].
  17. Reconciliation will never happen through towers built by our hands, but by ladders graced by his feet.
  18. “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it” – Oh, may that never be said of me (Gen. 28:16)!
  19. The rock that once was Jacob’s pillow soon became his altar (Gen. 28:18).  What once served as comfort can now be offered as worship.
  20. After all God does for Jacob and all the promises he makes, Jacob still provides a conditional cause (Gen. 28:20) as if God still has to prove himself.
  21. Jacob’s ladder (Gen. 28:12) is a vision of the coming of the Messiah (John 1:51) – look at the language used.