Spiritual Archeology
Genesis 28:10-19a
by Jim Westmoreland
This morning, I want us to do some spiritual archeology. Archeology is the
study of human history from the physical evidence left behind--pottery, buildings, coins
writings, inscriptions and monuments. So, spiritual archeology might be the study of our
history from the spiritual evidence or signs that we have left behind.
I want us to stop outside the gates of an ancient city called Luz in central Palestine.
Outside the gates of the city was a sacred place that had been built to be close to God.
Now, the people of Luz were not the descendants of Abraham, and they probably had pagan
ideas about God. At this sacred place they probably had built a small, stair-stepped
pyramid, called a ziggurat. Ziggurats are found throughout the world--in Egypt, the
ancient Mesopotamian Valley, the Incas of Peru and the Mayans of Mexico.
What makes this site special is that Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, stayed there one
night and had a very vivid dream about God. When he woke up, he was so moved, he said,
"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." And he was afraid and
said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this
is the gate of heaven." He even named this place Beth-el, which means house of God.
Jacob was so moved that he set up a stone as a monument to remember his experience of God
there.
Have you known people that seemed to have a bad twist to the way they thought and acted?
We have all known people who were cheats, thieves, adulterers and maybe even worse. One
thing is for sure. You cannot know what is going to come next from the people you have
known. Neither can you pin down just where God is and what He is about.
I want you to hold onto that thought for a while. I want you to hold onto it when you meet
people that strike you as evil, and I want you to hold onto it when you feel that you
yourselves have gone your own way and paid lip-service to God. I want you to hold onto it
when you watch the evening news and when you walk into a court room to face a judge. I
want you to hold onto it when you hear about a town gossip making his/her rounds. And, I
want you to hold onto it the next time you encounter a salesperson who oversells,
misrepresents and holds back the truth.
We do not know what is going to come next, and we sure can't pin down just where God is
and what He is about.
This is the message of Jacob's story, the Jacob who cheated his brother, Esau, and stole
his birthright, the Jacob who fled Esau's anger under the pretense of seeking a wife. God
has a way of shaping the lives of His children even before they have entered into a
relationship with Him. Jacob, though a grandson of Abraham, didn't start out with
Abraham's faith. It is hard to see any evidence of Jacob's faith in God before Genesis 28.
In 27:20 as Jacob was deceiving his father, Isaac, he referred to the God of Abraham and
of Isaac as your God. Through Jacob's experience in ch. 28,
Jacob is moved to affirm "The Lord will be my God (v.21).
Like Jacob, it is usually when we are "on the road to somewhere else" that God
reveals Himself to us in a special way.
Jacob's story might as well have been a plot from a modern soap opera. His mother,
Rebecca, had twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was the firstborn, but she favored Jacob. Esau
was a daddy's boy; Jacob was a momma's boy, and Rebecca wanted her Jacob to get the sacred
blessing, which was given to the firstborn son. So, she plotted with Jacob for him to
impersonate Esau and have Esau give him the blessing, which could not be taken back!
Rebekah was a schemer and she taught Jacob to do the same, but neither Rebekah nor Jacob
had weighed the cost of success.
Isaac had been deceived and mocked (27:12). Esau was deeply resentful, looking forward to
an opportunity when he could kill his brother (27:41). What do you think Rebekah's
deception did for her relationship with her husband, Isaac? Do you think she realized that
home life would become like an earthquake rumbling to erupt? Instead of Jacob being there
to bask in the blessing and victory, he had to flee Esau's wrath and never returned before
his mother died. Rebecah and Jacob were short-sighted. So are we whenever we rebel against
God and go our own way!
Now, before Jacob gets to the city of Luz, there is one more deception. Rebekah realizes
that Jacob needs to get away, but she wants Isaac to think it is his idea for Jacob to
leave. So, she starts complaining to Isaac about how "trashy" the Canaanite
wives are that Esau has chosen. He responds by calling in Jacob and blessing him and
charging him, "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise and go
to Paddan-aram, called Haran, to the house of Beth-uel, your mother's father; and from
there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. Now, we
wouldn't send our child off to marry their first cousin, but that's how this story goes.
In the aftermath of his great deception of his father and stealing his brother's blessing,
Jacob, now fleeing for his life, must have finally begun to think about the consequences
of his actions. It wasn't exactly as he had planned. Now, maybe he wasn't so proud of
deceiving his father. Now, maybe he felt guilt at what he had done to his brother. Now, he
grieved at having to leave his mother. What kind of reception was he going to get from
Laban? He didn't even have a dowry to offer for a wife.
Whatever his thoughts might have been, Jacob must have begun to realize that he was not as
cunning as he thought. His life had been uprooted. He was having to start over, and I
believe he came to realize that he would never prosper on the basis of his schemes and
struggles. His self assurance was probably at an all-time low. This was the ideal time for
God to break into his life. Now, Jacob knew how much he needed God in order to be blessed
as his father and been.
And, as he came to a certain place, he stayed there for the night. He took a stone and
propped himself on it and he slept, and dreamed, and, in that dream, God became real to
him.
God came to this one who was tired and fearful, to him who was alone and thought that he
was loved by none, except his mother. God came to this one who was a cheat, a rascal and
goodness knows what else, and God gave him a vision of a staircase reaching into heaven,
of a ladder upon which the angels ascended and descended to do God's bidding. As Jacob
looked upon this scene God gave him a promise. It was the promise given to his
grandfather, Abraham and to his father Isaac saying, (v.15) "And behold, I am with
you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land: for I will
not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
When Jacob woke up, he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not
know it." Hasn't that happened for us? We suddenly realize that God has been
with us long before we knew he was there! We were in a kind of exile, cut off from others
or maybe trapped by our fears only to discover that God was with us, and our lives were
changed because of it!
Look what Jacob did. He set up a stone and anointed it so that he would remember. When
Israel fled the pursuing Egyptian soldiers and crossed the Jordan on dry land, the priests
carried 12 stones from the river bed and set them up as a monument at Gilgal to remember.
It is a good thing to set up a stone, to make a marker to help us remember. About the only
real stones we set up anymore is the gravestone when someone dies!
Like Jacob and like Israel, I think we need to find some ways to erect some markers to
serve as reminders of our experience with God. Our markers don't have to be a stone or a
monument. Some of them may be physical though. I've seen people keep their parent's
eyeglasses or their old, well-used Bible, not the decorator kind. It is their reminder and
connection to their spiritual heritage, of how they came to know God--through the faithful
witness of their parents. I have seen framed cross-stiches on walls. Some are decorations,
but some are there for a reason, to remind them of a story of how God made a difference in
their lives. We may accumulate a lot of nice things, but what will we leave behind
that will remind someone else of our relationship with God?
There are other kinds of markers and "stones" that we might leave behind. Some
are symbollic. They are stories and pictures of God making a difference for us. Our
baptism is a spiritual marker like that. It is our own personal reminder of when we gave
our life to Christ, when we publicly said to the world, "I follow Jesus."
Has anything significant happened to us since our baptism? I hope so! Hopefully, there
have been awarenesses and insights we have had along the way that moved us to a different
level in our relationship with God. We should remember those times so that we can reflect
on them for ourselves as formative events in our lives, and we can point to them like a
stone that we have erected to say, "God was here and he made a
difference!"
I think maturity and growth comes in stages and steps. We often have to overcome some
things in our own lives. We often experience suffering, anger and many unanswered
questions. Then, God comes to us when we least expect it, like He did with Jacob, and He
blesses us. Not because we deserved it or because we came to all the right beliefs
and attitudes.
God will surprise us when we feel dirty and unclean. God will surprise us by turning our
greatest afflictions into sources of strength and healing. God will surprise us by
converting moments of pain into stripes that heal. He will surprise us by changing a time
of death into an eternity of glorious life. And, we will say with Jacob, "Surely the
Lord is in this place, and I did not know it."
Now, those experiences can be powerful for us and life-changing, and we need to set up a
spiritual stone and anoint it so that we can look back, revisit that experience and
remember. We need to go back to those experiences. We need to do some spiritual
archeology, and God will use the stones and markers we have left through the years to
reassure us and to strengthen us.