Unshackled? Living in outrageous grace

Bethel

An abbreviated chapter from the Keswick Year Book 2007.

Has anyone come here to escape their past? Perhaps, underneath it all, you’re trying to get away from God. Perhaps you think people can hide from him. If that’s so, I have bad news for you, and the story of Jacob underlines it. There is no-where: no depths so low, no height so high, no place so distant and secluded, that you can escape God.

Jacob conned his brother out of his birthright, deceived his way into his father’s affections to receive the blessing, and now Esau is out to kill him. There are indications later that Jacob had begun to realise that he was in this mess because what he had done to his brother was not a nice thing to do. So he is far from home (and) far from God. But it’s while he’s far from God — this is where the grace of God kicks in — that God steps into his life. The grace of God always takes the initiative.

Jacob sees a portal into the spiritual dimension, the world of reality all around us that we can’t see. He sees this enormous stairway, as thousands of angels move up and down from where God is to where he is. God interferes with the affairs of this world, as he takes an interest in the lives of his people. Jacob begins to understand this.

Double discovery

Jacob discovers two things through this vision: the ministry of angels and the closeness of God.

The Bible is full of the ministry of angels: when we get to heaven, we’ll discover so many things in our lives are due to the ministry of angels. Jacob also learnt that he had never been out of the sight of God. Somehow or other, without him realising it, God had always been there: always aware, always conscious, always seeing, always knowing every last bit of his life.

In our daily work, we need to know that God is there. If the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us that there is no place in all creation that is not a holy place, because God is there, in his fullness. And that means that when you’re at work, he’s there, no less than when you’re at church.

God may be worshipped in any and every place. There is no place and no moment that is more holy than another place and another moment. We are no more in a more holy place after we have sung six songs in a row, than we were before we entered the building. We may be in a better state of mind but we are not in a more holy place because, wherever we are, we are in the presence of God and we are meant to live lives of worship to God.

The way to God

Jacob’s vision was also of the way to God. His vision is about a ladder, set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven. This was a familiar image. Many of the nations round about had buildings built in such a way that they looked like a giant circular staircase that moved upwards to where the god was worshipped. But here he has been given a vision of something God has initiated, moving down to this man.

It made Jacob seem insignificant before this God. It left him feeling distant from God, because sin keeps people at an infinite moral distance from God. Is there anything to bridge the gulf between God and man? What is the stairway? We need the New Testament to explain the Old Testament. 2,000 years later, an incident took place that is recorded in John 1.45-51:

'Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.” He then added, “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”’

Jesus is quoting this very passage of the Bible. He is saying: ‘There is a staircase to heaven’. In Jesus’s teaching in John’s Gospel, he repeats this. ‘I am the gate ... I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father, except by me.’

The Word of God

In a sense, the voice (Jacob heard) is the most important part of the story because it explains what is going on. The word of God to this man is vital. Jacob had wanted the birthright and the blessing and he’d plotted to ensure he got both of them, alienating his family in the process. But now God gives him a real blessing, this great word: ‘The Lord ... said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 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”.’

The punch line

These great and precious promises belong to those whom God calls by his grace. There were the same gospel promises that God had given to Abraham: the affirmation of God’s name, ‘I am the God of Abraham and Isaac’. What Jacob didn’t know was that God’s great way of describing himself, from this point on, was going to be ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’.

This conniving, scheming, rather unsavoury character is going to be caught up in the purposes of God. The stage is being set for the great promise at the end of the book of Genesis. Why is God calling Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, giving them promises that, through them, the whole world will be blessed and then shepherding them, even when there’s famine in the land, and providing a saviour in Egypt? The punch line is at the very end where the promise is given of the King who would come, the One from the line of Judah who had the right to reign. These are promises of the Messiah, of Jesus.

The fear of God

The vision and the voice had a monumental impact upon Jacob. Verse 16, ‘Surely the LORD’ — that is Yahweh, God’s personal name — ‘is in this place and I did not know it’. It was a spiritual experience. Jacob had a spiritual experience to end all spiritual experiences, yet he was terrified, because real spiritual experience fills us with godly fear. God is to be feared: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Sometimes God has to do things in our lives that takes the lid off the sin that is laden within us.

Most of us could not bear to see the full range of corruption that lies within our hearts. It’s helpful to remember that the Christian life, for an Old Testament saint or a New Testament believer, is a school. We never root out indwelling sin all at once.

Long-term change

When I was a boy, I used to go to conventions here, there and everywhere. In those days, it was the custom that people would press you to make an act of commitment or recommitment or rededication or be filled with the Spirit. Every time they gave those invitations, I would stand because, whatever it was they were offering, I passionately wanted to have it. But what many people of my generation learned is that you don’t get it all at once. Some left the faith because of the emphasis of those meetings, because they were led to expect something that never happened. But I learned that the Bible teaches a long-term movement in a direction towards God, in which the changes in our lives are most often incremental changes. We are constantly adjusting our lives.

God who tracks us down

Things weren’t going to go perfectly well for this man after this moment. He was going to be thrown into confusion for years and years, and he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. His family life was going to be an absolute shambles. But one day he was going to emerge from it all as Israel, a prince with God, just for a little while, before he went home to heaven.

Bethel was a stop along the way of his journey, a key location in the route to becoming the person God was going to make him. For Jacob, this was the first indication to him that God had been chasing him all along. And my prayer for you is that the God who is tracking you down will find you today or in the days to come, and that you will surrender, in full and glad surrender, to his Name.

This edited extract of the chapter called 'Bethel' by Liam Goligher from Unshackled? Living in outrageous grace, the Keswick Year Book 2007. edited by Alison Hull, published by Authentic Media, ISBN 978-1-85078-755-6, is printed with permission.