The Ladder

Jacob was a fugitive on the worst night of his life. He had deceived his father and cheated his brother, and now he fled for his life into the wilderness, alone, with nothing, and when the sun set he took a stone for a pillow and lay down in a barren and unremarkable place to sleep. There was nothing holy about the spot, nothing to mark it out, only a hard stone and a hunted man in the dark. And it was there, in that desolation, that God opened heaven. He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, and the LORD himself standing above it.

We should feel the surprise of where this happened. Not in a temple, not on a holy mountain, not after a day of prayer and sacrifice, but in the dirt where a scheming runaway slept on a rock. God did not wait for Jacob to become worthy, nor for the setting to become sacred. He came down the ladder to a man at the very bottom of his life, and gave him, undeserving as he was, a word of pure promise. I am with thee, he said, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest. Heaven opened over the head of a man who had earned only wrath.

GOD AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LADDER

Notice that the ladder was set up on the earth. Its foot rested in the very place where Jacob lay, in the low and barren spot of his exile, and from there it reached to heaven. Heaven touches earth not at its heights but at its lowest places, not where we have climbed but where we have fallen. The gate of heaven, it turned out, was in the last place Jacob would have looked for it, the ground of his own desolation. God comes down to the bottom of the ladder, to the dirt and the stone and the fugitive, and there he opens the way to heaven.

And Jacob woke and said a thing that every soul in its barren place needs to hear. Surely the LORD is in this place, he said, and I knew it not. He had slept in the very presence of God and not known it, had taken for a godforsaken waste the actual gate of heaven. So it is with us. God is far nearer to our desolate places than we know, present in the very spot we have written off as empty and abandoned, and often we discover only afterward, waking from the dark, that the LORD was in this place, and we knew it not.

THE STONE BECOMES BETHEL

In the morning Jacob took the stone that had been his pillow, the hard thing under his head in the worst of his night, and he set it up as a pillar and poured oil on it and called the place Bethel, the house of God. The very stone of his hardship became the monument of his meeting with God. This is none other but the house of God, he said, and this is the gate of heaven. The place of his desolation had become holy ground. The hard stone that had bruised his sleep became the altar of his worship. God has a way of turning the site of our worst nights into Bethel, of making the very stone of our affliction into the pillar that marks where heaven touched down.

So do not despise the hard place, and do not conclude too quickly that God is absent from it. The stone that bruises your sleep tonight may be the pillar of your Bethel tomorrow. The barren spot where you have fled or fallen may prove to be the gate of heaven, the very place where the ladder is set and the angels come and go. God is not far from the man at the bottom. He is standing at the top of the ladder whose foot is in the dust beneath his head.

THE LADDER IS A PERSON

But there is a fullness in this vision that Jacob could not yet have seen, and the Lord himself unveiled it long after. When Nathanael came to him, Jesus said, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. Upon the Son of man. He took Jacob’s ladder and named himself as the reality it had shadowed. He is the ladder, the one joining of heaven and earth, the single stair between the dust and the throne. There is one mediator between God and men, the apostle says, the man Christ Jesus, and he is that mediator, the way up that no sinner could ever have built for himself.

This is why he could say, I am the way, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me. He is not one ladder among several. He is the ladder, and there is no other set between earth and heaven. By him, and by the new and living way he opened through his own body, we have boldness to enter into the holiest, where before there was no way in at all. Jacob dreamed of a stair to heaven and woke and worshipped. We have been shown the stair himself, the Son of man on whom the angels ascend and descend, and we may climb by him to God.

HEAVEN IS OPEN

And see the traffic on the ladder, the angels of God ascending and descending, a two-way commerce between heaven and the barren place. Heaven is not shut. There is a going up and a coming down, prayers ascending and help descending, the throne and the dust joined by a living way with messengers passing on it day and night. The soul that lies alone in its wilderness is not cut off, not sealed under a brass sky, but lying at the very foot of an open ladder, in constant reach of a heaven that has not closed its traffic with the earth.

THE PROMISE AT BETHEL

Hear the word God spoke over the sleeping fugitive, for it is all grace and no condition. I am with thee, he said, 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. There is not a word of demand in it, not a single if, only promise upon promise poured out over a man who had earned nothing but wrath. God did not say, I will be with thee if thou wilt amend thy ways. He said simply, I am with thee, and I will keep thee, and I will not leave thee. Grace speaks so, in unconditional promise, to the undeserving in their darkest hour.

And mark the three great pledges in it, for they are the whole comfort of a soul in its wilderness. I am with thee, the pledge of his presence, that we are never alone even in the barren place. I will keep thee in all places, the pledge of his protection, that his guarding follows us wherever we go. And I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken, the pledge of his perseverance, that he will not abandon the work half finished but will see it through to the end he promised. Presence, protection, perseverance, given to a man at the bottom of the ladder, with a stone for a pillow.

And this same threefold promise is spoken to us in Christ, in words the apostle sets down as the ground of a fearless life. Be content with such things as ye have, he writes, for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Never leave, never forsake. It is Jacob’s Bethel promise carried down the ages and laid upon every soul that is Christ’s, the same unconditional pledge of a God who comes down the ladder to the undeserving and does not go away again. Whatever wilderness you wake in, this word stands over you, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Jacob answered the promise with a vow, taking the God who had met him at his lowest to be his God, and setting up the stone as a monument that he would not forget. This is the right response to grace, not to earn what has been freely promised, which cannot be done, but to give oneself in gratitude to the God who promised it, to bind the heart to him with a vow of glad devotion, and to raise up some Bethel, some remembrance, that we may not forget in the plenty the God who found us in the waste.

So in your own barren place, remember the ladder. The ground where you have fallen is not forsaken; the LORD may be in this place though you know it not. The hard stone under your head may become your Bethel. And the way up is not a stair you must build by your own climbing but a Person given to you, the Son of man on whom heaven opens, by whom you may come to the Father. Even if you make your bed in hell, the psalmist says, behold, thou art there. There is no place so low that the ladder is not set in it, and its top reaches to heaven, and the LORD stands above it, saying, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.