Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #32 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we are continuing to read Genesis 28:17-19:

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

I will stop reading there.  Once again, we will take another look at these verses.  Last time, we were discussing the gate, as Jacob said in verse 17: “…this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

We saw that the gate is the “door,” and the door is Christ.  He is the portal or entryway into the kingdom of God.  God controls the gate, and He tells us that the way to heaven is narrow.  We also read in Matthew 7 a statement concerning the gate, in Matthew 7:13-14:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

The “few” would be the chosen: “For many are called, but few are chosen.”  God’s elect enter in through the strait gate, the way defined by God Himself.  It is the Gospel that is laid out on the pages of the Bible.  It is the authority of the Bible alone, and all the things the Bible teaches – the doctrines of Christ.  That is the way, and God brings His people through that narrow way.  It is impossible with men.  No man could enter in, any more than a camel could go through the eye of a needle.  But God made it possible through the work that He performed.  Salvation is of the Lord.  It is the work of Christ that “ye believe,” so the reference to the “gate” ties into the fact that Jesus is the only way into eternal life.

Then it says in Genesis 28:18:

And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

Jacob got up after he awaked, and we have already seen that being “awaked” spiritually identifies with the time of the end, and the spiritual understanding that God gave His people at the time of the end as we “awakened,” and began to discern “time and judgment.”  Now we are told it was early in the morning and he “took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.”  We are going to look at some of the words used in this verse.

We will start with the word translated as “pillar,” which is Strong’s #4676, and it is translated as “pillar” twelve times and as “image” nineteen times.  We find it in Genesis 31:13:

I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred.

That was when Jacob was in Haran, and God said He had been there long enough, and it was time to go back.  Then it says in Genesis 35:1:

And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.

And, again, this was forty years later, and Jacob was 100 years old, and it was time for him to go.  Then it says in Genesis 35:3:

And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.

And the statement about it being “the day of my distress” about his coming out of Canaan, in Genesis 28, ties in with the end of the church age and the beginning of Great Tribulation.  So the Great Tribulation was like a “day of distress.” 

Then it says in Genesis 35:9-15:

And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padanaram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Bethel.

Again, this is 40 years later.  Jacob then had his name changed to “Israel.”  He was 100 years old, so it was the year 1907 B. C., as he and Esau were born in 2007 B. C., and he has come back to the same location.  And he is re-enacting, as he sets up a pillar and poured a drink offering thereon.  And he poured oil therein, just as he had done in the passage that we are reading in Genesis 28.  And it was at Bethel, the house of God.

So these are a couple of places this word is also translated as “pillar.”  This particular Hebrew word was translated consistently as “pillar” throughout the book of Genesis.  But when we find other Scripture outside of the book of Genesis, it is often translated as “image.”  Let us go to Deuteronomy 7:5:

But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

What God is telling His people to do here was regarding when they would go into the land of Canaan and find all the idolatry, high places and false gods of the people there.  They were to destroy their altars and their images or pillars.  They were to burn their graven images.

A little later on, it says in Deuteronomy 12:1-3:

These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which JEHOVAH God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

Very clearly, God is speaking of their “false gospels,” as we could understand them to represent.  But after saying all that, He concludes by saying, in Deuteronomy 12:4:

Ye shall not do so unto JEHOVAH your God.

That is, if there was a pillar set up to JEHOVAH, and is a right “pillar” that identifies with the true God of the Bible, then they were not to break it.  They were not to break the pillar of God, but to break the pillars of the nations and the worship they were involved with because they were false gods.

How are we to understand the word “pillar” and what it represents spiritually?  I think we are helped if we go to a familiar verse in the New Testament, in 1Timothy 3:15:

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

And, again, this Scripture is one of the “testing grounds” whereby God tested the churches and congregations regarding who is the “pillar and ground of the truth.”   Is it the “house of God,” which were the churches, or is it God Himself?  Grammatically, it could be either one, but when we also look at the rest of the Bible and we see that Christ is the “foundation” and that there can be no other foundation than He, the whole of the Bible will not allow for the churches, which are a corporate entity and external representation of the kingdom of God, to be the pillar and ground of the truth.  It must be the living God.  And, of course, God is the Lord Jesus, who is that one foundation.  He is the one upon which everything is built, and it is His Word.  Literally, everything in the Bible would support the living God as the “pillar and ground of the truth,” and, therefore, testify against the idea of the corporate church being the pillar and ground of the truth. 

But the churches have failed the test, and they have assumed they are the ones in view.  So we see things like popes who think they speak inerrantly and infallibly, and so forth.  And the churches believe that their councils, confessions and creeds carry the weight of the “pillar and ground of the truth.”  And if a church has written in its confession that a certain teaching (doctrine) is so, and they will not change it.  And, really, it is the misunderstanding of verses like this (1Timothy 3:15) that play into the idea that what the Reformers taught several hundred years ago cannot be touched:  “We cannot change our denominational statement.  We cannot change something that we have ‘cemented’ into place for many centuries, as our church as in its wisdom come to this conclusion.”  They would think it was heresy, but it is not heresy, because those confessions and creeds and writings of men (even if they were faithful men) are not “the pillar and ground of the truth.”  They are not that which cannot be questioned.  They are not things that must be adhered to and submitted to, because that is reserved for God and His Word.  Only God is to be revered in that way and respected to that degree – and not men and the writings of men. 

So God’s people, the elect, clearly know this because God gives us the ability to discern the voice of Christ and to hear His voice and to know that Jesus is “the pillar and ground of the truth.”  He is the way, the truth and the life.

Also, we see in the book of Revelation, in Revelation 3:12:

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.

“Him that overcometh” must be Jesus.  It is not saying, “They that overcometh,” but it says, “Him that overcometh,” and the Lord Jesus is the only One who qualifies to be that “overcomer.”  So He is the pillar and ground of the truth. 

If we go back to Genesis 28, we read in Genesis 28:18:

And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows…

So the “pillar,” as we have just seen in 1Timothy 3:15. is a proof text that the living God is “the pillar and ground of the truth.”  The pillar is God.  The pillar is Christ.  Confirmation of this is that Jacob took the “stone” that he had put for his pillows, and he set it up for a “pillar.”  The stone is the pillar, and the stone points to Christ, if we go to Psalm 118, where we find one of several places in the Bible where similar statements are made.  It says in Psalm 118:22:

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

By the way, in Genesis 28:18 it says, “…and poured oil upon the top of it,” the word “top” is the Hebrew word that is most often translated as “head.”  For example, when we read that Moses anointed Aaron with oil, he anointed Aaron’s head, as it says in Leviticus 8.  That is the same word translated here as “top.”  So he poured oil on Aaron’s “top,” and, of course, the top of a human being is the head, and this particular word is translated more often as “head” than as “top.”

So, again, it says in Psalm 118:22:

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

It has become the head or the top of the corner.  It is the identical word.  And this Scripture is quoted at least a couple of times in the New Testament.  For example, it says in Matthew 21:42-44:

Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

Whoever falls on the stone, and the stone is Christ.  And that is also stated in Romans 9:32:

Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;

The translation of “stumblingstone” is from the same word translated as “stone” in Matthew 21.  The translators added the word “stumbling” because they stumbled at that stone, so it was a “stumblingstone.”  But it is just the word “stone.”  Then it says in Romans 9:33:

As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

And, again, it is just the word for “stone.”  You see, the masculine pronoun is referring back to the “stumblingstone.”  It is Him.  It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just about everything we are reading here in Genesis 28 points to Christ.  The “ladder” was set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven, in Genesis 28:12, and that word “top” is the same word I was just talking about.  The “head” of it reached to heaven.  Then we saw that the “house of God” and the “gate” of heaven in verse 17.  And now Jacob rose up early in the morning and he took  the “stone” he had took for his pillows and set it up for a “pillar.”  That is verification that our understanding of “pillar” to be the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is correct because the “stone” is the “pillar” and Jesus is also the “stone.”  And he poured oil on the “top” of it.

I think we will have to come back in a future study to discuss pouring the oil on top of it.  We have already discussed the pillar and the stone.  I know we are very limited in our ability to “take in” a lot of information at once.  At the moment we are hearing it, we understand it, but I am speaking of retaining it, so I just do not want to go over too many things at once.  Our goal is to study, learn and retain as much as we can, by God’s grace, as we study this Holy Book.

So we will stop here for now.  Lord willing, in our next Bible study, we will look at this act of pouring oil on the “top” of the pillar or the “top” of the rock, and the purpose for it.  Why do that?  What does it signify?  What does it represent?  Again, we will discuss that in our next Bible study.