Genesis 28

When Isaac blessed Jacob in the previous chapter, Jacob had to deceive his elderly father into thinking that he was his brother Esau. Once Isaac had spoken those important words of covenantal blessing and understood what he had done, he believed that Jacob would actually be blessed. Nonetheless, we cannot help but feel that something was missing in that blessing because of the way that it was obtained. Now as Jacob is sent away from the region of too many Hittite women, his father blesses him with the blessing God gave to Abraham, and this time he knows who Jacob is. Isaac is now knowingly agreeing with the Word of God to Rebekah. It is now a settled fact that Jacob is the child of promise in his generation.

Jacob must go to Aram in order to find a wife. God must be his Help in this endeavor. When Abraham needed to find a wife for Isaac, he would not permit his son to go back to the Arameans. Only his servant could go, and Abraham was confident that God would provide the right woman for Isaac. Rebekah was that woman. Now, because Esau's hatred against Jacob is so intense, Rebekah and Isaac agree that Jacob himself should go.

This ends up being a very costly decision, since Jacob will be gone for many years. In the meantime, Esau will have a chance to make his own decisions without the irritant of the constant presence of his chosen brother. He understands that his parents are not pleased with the women that he has married, so he takes a daughter of Ishmael as an additional wife. Jacob will not have any knowledge of what is happening to his brother, and Esau will have no understanding of what is taking place in Jacob's life. Both men will prosper greatly and will change as men during these years of separation.

Jacob's pathway of change brings him to travel by himself to the place where he will prosper and grow through suffering. On the way there, the Lord meets with him in a dream in a place that Jacob will name Bethel, meaning “house of God.” In this dream angels are ascending and descending on a ladder that stretches between heaven and earth.

Jacob is deeply impressed by this dream, but he could not know what we now know. Jacob could not be aware of what Jesus, his descendant, would say so many centuries later to a man who would be one of his disciples: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” See John 1:51. The Son of Man is the Lord's title for Himself taken from Daniel 7. Jesus is saying to a new follower that He, Jesus, is Jacob's ladder; He is the stairway between heaven and earth. Angels come back and forth on Him, the unique Son of Man, in order to do heaven's work among the sons of men.

In this dream recorded in Genesis 28, God affirmed to Jacob directly what Isaac had pronounced, and what Rebekah understood from the Lord's Word to her before the birth of her two boys: Jacob was the one. The man whose name would one day be “Israel” was the chosen servant of God, just as his father and grandfather were before him. Each man serves for a time, and then faces his own mortality. Jesus, the resurrection Man, the Stairway to heaven, serves as our High Priest forever. He has the power of an indestructible life. All the families of the earth will be blessed through Him. He is God with God from the beginning and forever and ever. Jacob could not know all of what we now know. Yet he knows that something very extraordinary and life-changing has happened to him. He feels the wonder of this place where God met him, and he commits to give God a tenth of all that the Lord blesses him with as he goes forward into a land that he has never seen before. He has spent time at the gate of heaven, and his life will never be the same.

Jacob's solemn promise at Bethel was very significant. It was the first vow in the Bible. To give a tenth of all of our prosperity to God is a symbolic gesture of the Lord's ownership over all of our resources. Through a man's willingness to give a tenth, he testifies to the Lord and to the world that God is the one who will give him anything and everything, and that he will give himself fully to God as the Lord leads. The tenth is only a symbol of the whole. The Lord owns all, since He is the sole giver of life. Any increase that we have experienced is entirely His. We only borrow what God owns. When we give a tenth we are acknowledging this.

It is not much harder to live on nine tenths than it is to live on the full ten tenths. We give one tenth to God, and we can surely continue with what remains. If we can't live on nine tenths, it is only because we are so destitute that the full ten tenths would not be enough for our survival. To give a symbolic tenth to God is not that much to do.

When the Way to heaven came in person as Jesus of Nazareth, God would not be satisfied with a symbol of the full gift of consecrated living. Tithing would not have been enough in order for Jesus to secure our redemption. The full price had to be paid.

Jesus gave the fullness of what Jacob's promise only symbolized. The Son of God was sent forth by the Father into this world of danger. Here He gave it all for our sake, especially including the fullness of what was accomplished on the cross. This is why He always has been and always will be the only Ladder to heaven. He will save His people from their sins. In that effort no half-way measures could have ever been successful. Jesus gave it all.