Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #20 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we will read Genesis 28:12-15:
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, JEHOVAH stood above it, and said, I am JEHOVAH God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
We have taken a long look at verse 12. We know the “ladder” is the Son of man. We know it is really a wonderful illustration of God’s salvation program, and how it is possible for men on the earth to enter into heaven. It is through Jesus Christ and His atonement and saving work performed on behalf of His chosen people, and Jacob is used by God in the Bible to represent those chosen ones, the elect of God.
Let us go on to Genesis 28:13-14:
And, behold, JEHOVAH stood above it, and said, I am JEHOVAH God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Before we begin discussing the “seed,” we have already seen several references to the seed, which was God’s promise to Abraham and his seed. We will look at that again because God is bringing it up again, so we want to follow His direction. But, before that, the first thing we are told in verse 13 is, “And, behold, JEHOVAH stood above it…” Actually, the word “above” is not in the Hebrew. It simply says, “JEHOVAH stood, and said, I am JEHOVAH God of Abraham.” But I think the idea is correct that the translators tried to convey, which is that the ladder went from earth to heaven, and there stood JEHOVAH. That is His dwelling place, and being in heaven, He would have been above the “ladder,” this way of access through the Son of man, Jesus Himself. And the word “stood” is used many, many times in the Old Testament, but one interesting place is in Psalm 119, where it is not translated as “stood,” but as “settled.” It says in Psalm 119:89:
For ever, O JEHOVAH, thy word is settled in heaven.
Of course, we can understand that. The Word of the Lord endures forever. God’s Word is as God. You cannot separate the Word from God. Jesus is the Word made flesh, so JEHOVAH’S Word is eternal. It is forever, settled in heaven, or forever it stands. Let us just keep in mind that the idea of “standing” has to do with enduring, abiding and continuing, and being “settled.” This is the nature of God Himself and the nature of His Word. And, therefore, JEHOVAH stood or was settled in heaven above and said, “I am JEHOVAH God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.” We are not surprised that God is bringing up the land and the fact that He will give it to Jacob and his seed, because He had said the same thing in the past to Abraham and to Isaac. Abraham, at this point, was dead, but Isaac was still alive. He would have been about 120 years old, and Jacob was 60, and the Lord is once more reiterating the promise, confirming the promise to one of the patriarchs. We know it began with Abraham, and one place we can look at is where God laid it out very directly, so it is one of the better places to go to in order to see what is in view regarding the comments about the land of Canaan. We read in Genesis 17:3-8:
And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
We see the land of Canaan is referred to as the land that would be given for an everlasting possession. And this is a historical parable. God is using the land of Canaan as a type and figure of the new heaven and new earth, the new creation that will come on the last day, and that He will give to the “seed.” And we will look at who the seed are a little bit later. But, here, the promise was given to Abraham, and we read of the promise given to Isaac in Genesis 26:2-4:
And JEHOVAH appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
It is the same promise, but now it is delivered to Isaac and to his seed that God will give all these nations within the land of Canaan. And, again, that represents the new heaven and new earth that God will create.
In the New Testament, God explains what He had in mind regarding the promise to the seed. It says in Galatians 3:16:
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Christ was the promised seed. That is why all the “nations of them which are saved” are blessed. All of God’s elect would be blessed through the “seed,” who is Jesus Christ. But, more than that, if we go further on in Galatians 3, it says in Galatians 3:26-29:
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Christ is the seed, but if we are His, we are counted for the seed in Him and, therefore, the promise to the seed is to us – we are heirs according to the promise. We are in line to inherit the earth, in other words. We will receive the inheritance that God spoke about to Abraham and Isaac, and now in Genesis 26, to Jacob. Jacob is the rightful heir in the line, as he received the birthright and blessing of the firstborn. And now he is receiving the promise directly from God, as did his forefathers.
And it did not end with Jacob. That promised is handed down to all the saints, as we just read in Galatians 3:29 that we are “heirs according to the promise.” This promise actually predates the promise given to Abraham, according to what we read in Titus 1:1-3:
Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour;
The promise that God gave was before the world began, and here is the added tremendous fact that God cannot lie. It is concerning “eternal life.” God has given the promise, and God cannot lie. And that is also the point God makes and brings to our attention in Hebrews 6:11-12:
And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
It is interesting, by the way, that God ties faith and patience together with the language of inheriting the promises, and we will come back to that, but let me finish reading in Hebrews 6:13-20:
For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
(The word “immutable” means it cannot change.) There are “two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie,” and the second thing is God’s own characteristics and attributes, His very Being and Person. These things cannot change – He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He cannot lie, and according to Titus, God spoke of these things before the world began. And God gave the promise in time to Abraham, and He followed up by giving the promise to Isaac, and then Jacob. These are the three patriarchs we typically find listed with the declaration, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He could have continued in every generation to find a particular Biblical calendar patriarch and highlighted this truth once again, but that was sufficient. These three men were God’s confirmation of the fact that He knows He has made a promise. He is very much aware of it. He remembers the promise. He will keep the promise and bring it to fulfillment, and that is why He made these statement in the book of Hebrews in the 1st Century A. D.
The Lord first spoke to Abraham when he was about 75, I think, in the year 2092 B. C., and then He spoke to Isaac (I cannot remember exactly when.) We know that Isaac was born in 2067 B. C., and God spoke to him when he was around age 40, or so, so it was over two thousand years before the 1st Century A. D. Then He came to Jacob in our current chapter in Genesis 28, and we know that Jacob was 60, so it was the year 1947 B. C. And again, it was almost two thousand years before the completion of the Bible when the Lord moved the Apostle Paul to write the book of Hebrews. (We are not sure, but it was probably the Apostle Paul.) Once again, God is bringing up the promises He made. It is not as though He has to be reminded. Nobody forced God to bring up these historical references in Hebrews and to speak of the promises and to indicate that His people are the heirs of that promise and we are counted for the seed and, therefore, these are promises to us. It is not as though God is “hiding” and trying to cause everyone to forget He had made these promises. That is what men would do, is it not? Sometimes we say things, but we do not mean them, or we have no way of fulfilling them, so we just hope everyone forgets: “Oh, I hope no one remembers what I said back then because I cannot do it.” Yes – that is characteristic of men, but it is not characteristic of God. God is not downplaying these things or hiding from them. He is the One who is bringing them to the forefront: “Remember that I said this.” And that is because He is going to bring it to pass.
And we are privileged – those of us that are living now in the Day of Judgment. We are not living on the earth during the New Testament church age. You know, many saints of old would have thought it was a wondrous blessing. No – the church age is over. And we are not even living on the earth in the day of the judgment on the churches during the Great Tribulation. No – that, too, has passed. We are living on the earth in the Day of Judgment, the final judgment of mankind, and we have progressed several years into that judgment, and we are quickly approaching the end and the last day. And the last day will come at the end of this prolonged judgment, as God does not execute His judgment speedily, as Ecclesiastes tells us. He carries it out in due time in the process that is according to His wisdom and His timetable. So it is currently being executed or carried out, and it will come. It will come, but until then, we were told in Hebrews 6:12:
That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
And that has not changed. It is still the same two things. It is also what we are told in Revelation 14, is it not? In Revelation 14, in the context of Judgment Day and the cup of the wrath of God, it says in Revelation 14:10-12:
The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints…
This is one of the things we saw in Hebrews 6:12. The context is unmistakable. It is Judgment Day, as we see in verses 10 and 11, and that is why it is mindboggling that God uses the word “here” in this kind of context. Again, it says in Revelation 14:12:
Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.
(And keeping the commandments of God has to do with love.) There it is: patience and faith, and it is to those that are by God’s grace involved in “patience.” And, ultimately, “patience” is Jesus Himself, and it is also the “faith of Jesus.” Faith is Jesus Himself. If we have God’s patience and God’s faith, then we will inherit the promises shortly.
It is also what the Lord told us and stressed back in Hebrews 10 in the context of judgment, concerning, “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,” and that only has application to the time of the end. (And we will not get into that here.) But it goes on to say in Hebrews 10:30-31-39:
For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; Partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
(The word “afflictions” is the same word translated as “tribulations.”) Again, we see “patience” and “faith” together, concerning waiting on the Lord in relationship to the reward of receiving the promise. We wait on God, and God is the One who has designed our present circumstances. He knows all about it, and it is a severe testing time. He does not hide that from us. It is a grievous time period for many reasons, but we must have “faith.” And, of course, it is the “faith of Christ,” in the first instance, but also the faith that comes through the Spirit. And also, we must have “patience,” and “in patience possess ye your souls.” And in faith and patience, we will soon inherit the everlasting possession of the land of Canaan or the new heaven and new earth.