Sermon Transcript
Jacob left Beersheba 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 lay 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. 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.
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.
On the way in, I hope you picked up one of these cards. If not, you can on, uh, on your way out in the lobby. But it’s a little visual recap of our year, what, uh, what we’re really thankful has happened in our midst. Uh, you know, we’ve had more baptisms this year than we have in quite some time. We’ve sent a missionary out, missionaries out from our church, something we haven’t done in quite some time.
And so I— we made one of these last year The one from last year is still hanging on my refrigerator, and it just gives me a good reminder of God’s faithfulness. You know, in the Old Testament, a lot of times when something significant happened, they would put some kind of marker to remember what God did here. And so this is our marker for our church of what happened in 2025. Hope you give thanks like I do. Now today we are wrapping up our series really looking at how, um, what the Old Testament says about Jesus, what the Old Testament says that Jesus will do.
Essentially, we’ve been studying how the Old Testament describes this one who will arrive on Christmas. So we titled the series Christmas Prophecies, and one of the observations that we saw early in our study of these prophecies is that Jesus is foretold really all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible. At least Genesis 3 onward, there are descriptions of the one who would come, which means Jesus wasn’t an afterthought. He was a forethought. He wasn’t a reaction.
He was a pre-action. It’s not, you know, when humanity got ourselves in trouble, God didn’t think, oh no, now what do I do? I need to scramble for a new plan. God wasn’t like, I was under the impression that humans were going to live in harmony with each other and with me for all of eternity with zero need for reconciliation. You know, it was nothing like that.
God had the answer to our problem before we had a problem. We, uh, we haven’t studied it in this series, but Revelation 13:8 actually says that the Lamb, meaning Jesus, the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Jesus was always going to be the one to mend everything before there was even anything broken. There was never a way that Jesus wasn’t coming. The Son of God arriving into the world to rescue the world from its darkness, that was scheduled before there was even darkness.
And since Jesus was always the plan and not some kind of patchwork contingency that God hoped he didn’t have to use, you know, like in case of emergency break glass, and behind the glass is Jesus. It was nothing like that. So since it was always going to be Jesus from the very beginning, then as we would expect, we find prophecies about Jesus from the very beginning. And today we’re looking at such a prophecy about Jesus from the way back, from the very first book of the Bible, from one of the very first families that God worked with. It’s the family of of Abraham.
And Abraham, Abraham’s story starts 11 chapters into the Bible. In other words, Abraham is only 11 chapters from the beginning of time. He’s, he’s very early in the story arc of the Bible, and it’s with his family that we find this prophecy about Jesus. Now, if you’re not familiar with the Bible or the first book of the Bible, it’s called Genesis. I’ll give you a short recap of Genesis, uh, starting at the very beginning.
Chapter 1, God created everything perfect. Chapter 3, we messed it up. We walked away from God and the goodness that he made. You know, we broke his perfect world and we broke his heart. We broke God’s heart.
And in another story, in another story, that might have been the final chapter. Humanity could have been over before it even got started. God could have said, well, You’re gonna bail on me, I’m gonna bail on you. But he didn’t. Chapter 4 onward is really the story of how God pursued us even as humanity continued to spiral further and further out of control.
God continued the dialogue with us. I mean, even with Cain, he talks with him. Even, even after Noah. And you know, we really aren’t any better after Noah than we were before Noah. We didn’t learn our lesson.
But even then, God didn’t abandon us in our darkness. It brings us all the way up here to chapter 11 in the story when God jumps into the life of one man named Abraham. It’s like the world was all these shattered pieces of glass everywhere and God chose to pick up one piece of broken glass named Abraham and he said, I’m going to start putting the world back together through you.
Now why God chose Abraham when everyone else was just as broken, we’ll never know. Who knows? But he did. He told Abraham, this is Genesis 12, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. All peoples on earth.
In other words, everyone will have an opportunity to receive God’s goodness through Abraham. Or to say it another way, God promised to address all the chaos in the world through Abraham. God says, Abraham, we’re going to get this thing fixed and I’m going to do it through you.
Imagine God telling you that. All the problems that we see, all the injustice, immorality, scandal, betrayal. God says, Abraham, I’m going to set right what has gone wrong through you.
To which Abraham— I would have wondered, you know, how could that happen? How could I possibly do that? I can’t reach everyone in the entire world. He didn’t have social media back then. I mean, let alone be a blessing to everyone in the whole world.
Right? That’s a fair question. So God later further explained. He said, well, it won’t be you alone, Abraham, but it’s your offspring. The generations that come from you will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
And from this very extended family, your family, Abraham, the world will be taught about me. The world will know about my goodness. That’s in Genesis 22. God clarifies to Abraham, all nations will be blessed by your offspring. So originally God said everyone, everyone will— the blessing will come through you, Abraham.
And now then Genesis 22, God gets more specific. He says the way that it’s going to happen through you is through your offspring. So it’s not Abraham himself that’s going to put the world back together, it’s who comes after him. And offspring here is a curious word. Which we’ll dive much more in today, but for now the idea is again it won’t be Abraham directly blessing the whole world, it will be offspring in his family line, a future generation who will bring light to the darkness, who will bring salvation.
That’s God’s promise to Abraham. And then after Abraham God keeps repeating that same promise about this future offspring who is the hope of the world. God repeats that promise to Abraham’s son Isaac and then to Abraham’s grandson Jacob, and Jacob is the person at the center center of the text that we read for today. Jacob has this vision of angels ascending and descending on some kind of staircase or ladder. You might have heard it called a ladder before, Jacob’s ladder.
But Jacob has this vision. God breaks through to Jacob in a very tumultuous time in his life. Jacob is actually on the run. That detail will become important later. Previous to having this vision, Jacob needed to leave home because of his own poor decisions.
He had broken a lot of trust. He’d been deceitful. So, in order to stay safe, Jacob fled. He left his comfort, his familiar— everything familiar, his family, and he ventured off not knowing if he would ever be able to return. He’s on the lam.
Jacob’s— he’s in exile essentially, exiled from his own home, his own family, and that’s when he has this vision. Kind of a window into heaven where God speaks with him. And God says, okay, first of all, Jacob, I’m going to return you home eventually. You won’t be in exile forever. So God addresses his immediate concern.
I will bring you back to the land of your father. But then God promises him much more than that. God repeats to Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, the same promise that he had promised Abraham from our verses today. 28:14, he says, Jacob, all peoples on earth will be blessed through your offspring. So, you know, salvation will come through your line.
The light of the world will be descended from you. All peoples will be blessed by your offspring. The same promise that God made to Abraham. So we’re going to take a look at this promise about offspring. That God made to various Old Testament figures going back all the way to the very origins of human history.
And as we look at this Scripture, we will see who is the offspring, sometimes translated as seed instead of offspring, what will he do, how will he do it. Who is the offspring, what will he do, how will he do it. So first, who is the offspring or seed? It’s Jesus, Okay, of course the series is titled Christmas Prophecies, so obviously the answer is Jesus. The seed is Jesus.
But let’s investigate how we know this offspring is Jesus. The word offspring or seed is a bit peculiar because there is a sense in which it is both singular and plural. Think of it this way: how many seeds are in a seed?
You have one seed. How many seeds are in that seed? So, in some ways it’s one seed, so it’s singular, right? But also, if you plant that seed and then the seed makes a tree and then the tree makes more seeds and then those seeds make more trees, which then make more seeds, you go on and on forever like that, right? So, within one seed there could be an endless number of seeds.
It’s kind of singular and plural. It’s the same idea with children or offspring, which is why it’s translated both ways. Within one there can be many, and that is the promise originally made to Abraham and then repeated to Jacob. From you will come one seed. There will be one person, but in that one seed there will be multitudes.
To Abraham, God says those multitudes will, you know, be as many as the stars in the sky. But those multitudes aren’t exactly in Abraham. They are in the seed that comes from Abraham. Which is to say that Abraham is not the person. He’s not the seed through whom the whole earth will be blessed.
He’s not the one through whom salvation will come. He’s not the one through whom light will break through in the darkness.
But a seed from him will be that one. Um, but Abraham’s not the seed, so we can cross him off the list if we’re investigating who is the offspring. Um, but maybe it’s his son. Maybe the seed is Isaac. Maybe that’s who, you know, this is his promised one to come, which is probably what Abraham would have thought.
Because when God first made his promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his seed, I mean, he got— Abraham was 75 years old when God first said that. Sarah, his wife, 65. It’s not the time to start having kids. They didn’t have any kids at that time. And then by the time their son Isaac was born, Abraham was 100, Sarah was 90.
So, Isaac was this miraculous baby. And probably because he was so miraculous, Abraham probably thought, this has got to be the seed. Isaac must be the offspring in whom there will be multitudes and the nations will be blessed because he came from such divine intervention. Isaac must be the seed. But he wasn’t.
Isaac was only one step closer to the real seed. We know that for sure because God repeats the same promise to Isaac. This is Genesis 26. He says, through your offspring all nations will be blessed. Not you, through your offspring.
So once again it’s someone yet to come, not Isaac himself. Then Isaac has Jacob and God repeats the same promise to Jacob which is what we read today. God tells Jacob, Through you will come one who will bless all nations. So Jacob isn’t the guy. He’s only one step closer to the guy.
The world would need to wait a little longer after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the seed of ages to arrive. In fact, the world would need to wait nearly 2,000 years, 40 generations after Abraham. But finally, in a manger in Bethlehem, the seed is born. Paul explains it this way in Galatians 3, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person, who is Christ. So Christ is the seed of ages promised to Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob. In him, in Jesus, there will be countless multitudes, and Jesus will be the one to bless all nations. He is this promised seed. Now, second, let’s take a look at what he will do.
As we said, he will bless all nations.
But one way that he will bless all nations, which is foreshadowed in this text, is that he will bring the nations home. He’ll bring them into the land. As God brought Jacob back from exile into the land of his father, so God will bring back the vast numbers of multitudes who are in Christ home from exile. We’ll start with Jacob because what God tells Jacob leads to what God does for all nations. But as we said, Jacob hears this promise when he’s on the run.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever go home. But then sure enough, years later he does return, and he returns with a growing family. Jacob’s got a bunch of kids who then have a bunch of kids. They all end up living in the land as the Lord said. I mean, verse 13, God said, I will Jacob, I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.
God promises, Jacob, I know you’re on the run right now, but you’re actually going to come back here. You’re going to come home, and when you do, you won’t be home alone. You will be surrounded by your family, generations of descendants. And that, that really happens. Jacob has 12 sons.
They have children, so many children in fact that according to Genesis 46, Jacob has 70 people in his family. And there’s many times where they are all together. So he did get to go home. It happened. He got back what was lost and so much more.
Jacob is pictured as this beloved patriarch of his family. His kids seem to want to honor him, or at least they regret it when they don’t. We assume he died with his heart full. Everyone all together. So that promise to him was fulfilled in his lifetime.
He goes back to the land with some of his descendants. Okay, but as we know, the promise God made to Jacob was much larger than 70 biological children and grandchildren. Instead, Jacob was supposed to have enough descendants to cover the whole earth. I mean, from our passage, north to south, east to west, they’re going to be everywhere. That’s way more than 70 people.
Can’t fill the whole earth with 70 people. Even though I’m sure, you know, when Grandpa Jacob had to attend 70 birthday parties every year, it probably felt like an endless multitude of descendants. But it wasn’t, right? I mean, 70 is a far cry from God’s promise that his descendants would be so numerous that they’d be like the dust of the earth. So, this total promise was not fulfilled in Jacob’s lifetime.
The promise about descendants, and really not even the promise about the land was fulfilled in his lifetime. Because, I mean, for one reason, Jacob ended up dying in Egypt. He didn’t die in the territory that would become Israel. We can’t get into reasons, all the reasons why he had to go down to Egypt today, but the point is Jacob only experienced a temporary fulfillment of these promises. He didn’t experience the ultimate fulfillment.
He wouldn’t see endless multitudes of descendants. He wouldn’t see the seed that came after him, and he certainly didn’t see endless multitudes live on the piece of real estate where he had the vision. When God said, your descendants will return to the land you’re lying, he didn’t see endless multitudes there. Not only because he wasn’t there at the end of his life, but also because endless multitudes can’t fit on that small piece of real estate. I mean, if his descendants are really as numerous as the dust of the earth, if there are enough of them to fill the whole world north to south, east to west, there is not enough space for them on the little plot of land on the east of the Mediterranean that is so hotly contested today who it belongs to.
There’s not enough space there. Even at Israel’s peak, it’s only 30,000 square miles. You can’t have endless multitudes in like geopolitical Israel today. So God must be talking about something else when He says, these descendants of yours who are as numerous as the stars of the sky are going to return to the land. It’s something else.
The complete ultimate fulfillment of Jacob, his descendants, more precisely the promise to the multitudes that are within the seed, the promise of that land that they will get is actually pointing to the very end of the biblical story. It’s pointing forward to new heavens and new earth, to the place where there is no more mourning or tears or death or pain because the former order of things have passed away. That’s the real land. That’s the real country. And we can all fit there no matter how many of us are in Christ, no matter how many are in the seed of Jacob.
There will be plenty of room for all of us in the remade future world when God restores all things. And there in that redeemed earth all the nations will be represented. It won’t just be Jacob’s biological descendants. That’s not really who God’s people are, though some of them are included in God’s people. But every other nation is also included in God’s people.
Remember, it’s all nations will be blessed by this seed. Every nation, tribe, and tongue will be there. You know, which is language many of us are familiar with from the book of Revelation, but that language is also in the Old Testament too. This is from Isaiah 60. Nations, plural, will come to your light, kings to your shining brightness.
Raise your eyes and look around. They all gather and come to you. Your sons will come from far away, your daughters on hips of nursing mothers. Violence will never be heard in your land. Devastation and destruction will be gone from your borders.
The sun will no longer be your light by day. Brightness of moon will not shine on you. Instead, the Lord will be your everlasting light. Your God will be your splendor. Your sorrow will be over.
All your people will be righteous, and they will possess the land. The land, the land. They will possess the land forever. Forever. That’s the real country.
That’s the forever country, all nations filling the whole earth without end. That’s the land that’s ultimately promised to Jacob. It must be that. It must be new heavens and new earth when God speaks of the land. It cannot be current geopolitical Israel where they would be returning because God says we will be there forever.
Just as we read. And no piece of land on this earth is forever. If for no other reason, you know, that we know this earth isn’t forever, eventually the sun is going to go nova or burn out, become a black hole. And when it does, that’s game over for this world. There will be no land here.
Any acreage on this earth is not forever. It is— so this is not the ultimate homecoming that we are promised anywhere on this planet. The ultimate homecoming we are promised is a land that never ends where Isaiah 60 says there is no sun, so we don’t have to worry about it going nova. Instead, the world is illuminated by the splendor of His glory, the splendor of the Lord. That is the land where we will live forever, and it will exist way past, you know, the heat death of the universe.
And that is the land That land is ours by being in Christ. Paul explains it this way again, Galatians 3, so in Christ you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female, all the nations, right? All of you are one in Christ Jesus.
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. The idea is if you are in the seed who is Christ, then you get all the promises that are promised to the seed. So you get to go home. Everyone in Christ from all the ages gets to go home into the forever country. That’s how Jacob’s descendants end up being as many as the stars in the sky.
As many as the grains of sand on the seashore, like the dust of all the earth. That’s how he gets that many descendants. No one could have that many biological descendants. You know, no one could have enough kids and grandkids to rival the number of stars in the universe simply through biological reproduction, no matter how many generations you tracked it forward. If you’re going to end up with that many people, the stars in the sky, It has to be through adopting more and more other, other people from other nations into your family, which is what happens in Christ.
We are included in him through faith. People from every nation, tribe, and tongue get to be part of Abraham’s seed and go home. All nations are blessed. That’s what Christ provides. Now lastly, how does he make that possible for us?
How do we end up included? How do we receive the blessing that is promised to all nations? How do we get to go home? How does he do that for us? He does it because he comes to us.
The Lord comes to us. It’s his intervention on our behalf. In other words, okay, we don’t get to go home because we have successfully completed some kind of spiritual quest. We don’t get to go home because we have good enough morality to gain us entry into the forever country, like there is some kind of bouncer at the gates checking our, you know, ethical record. That’s not how we go there.
Or to say it another way, we don’t climb up to heaven to get home. Instead, heaven climbs down to us. The part— this, this is a part of the imagery of Jacob’s stairway or ladder. The imagery is heaven comes to him, and heaven comes to him at a time that he had not earned it morally. He was not some saint whose piety impressed God and God said, okay, well, now you can see into heaven.
It was the exact opposite. I mean, when God showed up in his life, he was on the run. Told you that detail is going to be important. God shows up when Jacob— at the precise moment when Jacob had made a total mess out of everything. He’s just lying on the ground.
That’s when heaven broke through to him. Heaven came to him. It’s not like the angels that he saw ascending and descending on the staircase. They didn’t say, hey Jacob, God wants to have a word with you, so climb up these stairs with me. No, it’s the other way around.
The Lord comes to him. It was the Lord who opened the window between heaven and earth in the first place. Which came as a surprise. Jacob’s amazed by it. But then it was also the Lord who just jumped in and said, Jacob, one of your descendants will be the seed.
And God did that really before Jacob had ever done anything good in his entire life. Heaven came to him. That’s how we’re included. It’s by grace. It’s not by works.
It’s not by being good enough. Jesus actually later picks up the same image and uses it to refer to himself. We’ll see. He uses the same image of angels ascending and descending. Jesus uses that image when he meets Nathanael for the first time.
This is John chapter 1. You may remember the story of Nathanael. Another disciple, Philip, had already met Jesus, and then Philip runs and tells Nathanael, and Philip says, we found the one. Who Moses and the prophets wrote about. He’s Jesus of Nazareth.
And then Nathanael questions, like, Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? And Philip responds, well, just come and see, Nathanael. Check it out. So the two of them go to see Jesus.
And then when Jesus first sees Nathanael, Jesus compliments him. He says, Nathanael, you’re a good guy. There’s no deceit in you. And Nathanael says, how would you know that? We’ve never met each other.
Why would you comment on my character like that? And Jesus said, I know exactly who you are, Nathanael. I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. Which shocked Nathanael because he didn’t think anyone knew whatever it was that happened under the fig tree. And we certainly don’t know what happened under the fig tree.
But whatever it was that happened under that tree that Jesus knew about And said, I know about that. Nathanael— it caused Nathanael to explain, you’re the Son of God! You’re the King of Israel! If you know about the thing that happened under that tree, which no one could know about, then you must be the real deal. I believe in you.
It’s Nathanael’s, you know, conversion story. But then Jesus responded, you believe because I told you that I saw you under the tree, but you will see greater things than that. And then Jesus said to him— this is the connection to the staircase. This is John 1:51. Jesus said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
It’s the exact same image as Genesis 28 from Jacob’s ladder, except for one detail changed. Did you catch that? The change that Jesus made? Remind you of Jacob and his vision. Jacob had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with the top reaching up to Heaven.
Angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
See it now? Okay, let’s put them up both up here together so you see them side by side. Jesus says, you will see Heaven opened, angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Jacob said, angels and are ascending and descending on this staircase.
So, in Jacob’s vision, it’s this ladder going up to heaven. The staircase was the bridge between heaven and earth. In Jesus’ description, the staircase is gone, but it is replaced by Jesus Himself. Angels are ascending and descending on Jesus. No longer a staircase.
In other words, Jesus is saying, I’m the staircase.
Jesus says, I’m the bridge between heaven and earth. I am how you get to God, and I am how God gets to you. I am the path. I am the means by which you get home. You put your faith in me.
Believe I am the seed that was promised from ages past. That’s who he is, reconciling us to God, reconciling heaven and earth. He was exiled so we could go to the forever country. He was banished from God’s people so we could be included in God’s people. He is the one.
He is the seed. He is the staircase. He is the bridge. He is the ladder. He is the way.
Put your faith in him.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for Jesus who makes everything possible. Thank you that he was promised from ages past.
Thank you that that promise was fulfilled and that he came here. He is how we will have life and have it to the full. I pray that we find him this Christmas and always. It’s in his name we pray, amen.
