The Promise
There are two passages of Scripture we should read at this point. They are Genesis chapter 28 and Revelation chapter 21. We shall look at the first of these now.
There we see a man called Jacob running away from home full of fright and fear. He had been told that Esau, his elder brother, might kill him any day, and when he heard that, he was greatly afraid. ‘Who knows when Esau will meet me in some quiet place and kill me!’ he thought. His mother came to him, and told him: ‘My son, I am so afraid that Esau will kill you one day. Please go away from here to the house of your uncle and remain there for some time, till Esau's anger has cooled down.’ So Jacob obeyed his mother, and full of fear, ran away from his home.
But God was with him, though neither he, nor his mother could see God; nor could they see how, in all these things, God was working. At last, feeling very tired and worn out, Jacob lay down, without pillow or bedsheet or bedding to lie on. He saw a stone nearby, and took it, put his head upon it, and went to sleep. There are some people who cannot go to sleep even if they have soft silken pillows, but Jacob slept easily and well, and while he was lying there sleeping, he had a dream. In his dream he saw the heavens opened, and behold, a ladder going from earth to heaven! Then he saw angels ascending and descending upon the ladder, and God Himself at its head. And he heard God speaking from above the ladder, saying wonderful things to him, which he could not understand (Gen. 28.13 and 14).
We see here how much blessing God promised to Jacob. He said: ‘The whole land on which you are lying I will give you. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Your seed shall spread North, South, East and West, and in you I am going to fulfil all My promises.’ God could not give any greater good to Jacob.
Yet see the Smallness of Jacob's faith in verses 20-22. After God’s great promises to him, he says, ‘If God will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, and will protect and bring me home again in peace, I will give Him one tenth of all He gives to me.’ Yes! That is how much he believed the promises of God! He had seen heaven opened, he had seen a ladder from earth to heaven, he had seen angels ascending and descending upon it, and God above, saying, ‘I will give you all. Like the dust of the earth, your seed shall be multiplied. 1 will not leave you until I have fulfilled all My promises to you.’ What is Jacob's reply? ‘O God, only give me bread to eat, and one shirt, and I will be so thankful.’ Jacob's faith could not rise above eight ounces of rice per day (or whatever it was he ate). That is as far as he could believe at that time, in spite of the wonderful things God was saying.
Jacob was blind; he could not understand what he saw, and what he heard; but even though he failed completely to comprehend the purposes of God, that did not change them. Some of you may be like Jacob to-day. You may say: ‘O God, only heal me; only get me a job, even if just a small job’, or, ‘Get me a good house, and I will give Thee much more.’ It was because of fear that Jacob could not understand. His heart was full of fear, and even when he was asleep, it was still full of fear, perhaps imagining Esau to be coming after him, though he had walked very fast, and covered many miles that day. He was so full of fear, that he could not understand what God was saying. So God had to begin working in Jacob's life till he did comprehend what He had said. As long as there is fear in our hearts, we will never understand what God is saying. The devil will bring all kinds of fear into our hearts at all times, and through this fear we are kept from understanding God’s purposes and plans. Jacob had to learn many very hard lessons before he knew what God meant. It took over 20 years for him to be delivered from fear. But do not let us say because of this: ‘It took Jacob 20 years, so let me also wait 20 years to learn that lesson.’ We have the love of Christ shed abroad in our hearts and the Holy Ghost to teach us all things, so we can be entirely and immediately free from fear.
Though it was un-comprehended by Jacob, we to-day can see how God was making known His divine plan very clearly to him that night. God said to Jacob: ‘Look into My heart and see My great purposes for you’; and when Jacob overcame his sleep, he uttered some words the meaning of which he probably did not fully understand. He said: ‘This is ... the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’! (Gen. 28.17). It was the Holy Ghost who drew forth those words from the mouth of Jacob, words which meant that he saw something which could not be described except by the expression ‘the House of God’. There was no building there, but God was saying to Jacob, ‘Jacob, I am going to give you much blessing, but you will only know it when you understand what my House is, and how to build it. Only then will you know what it is I am giving you.’
So it is only by the divine understanding of God’s House that we can know how much blessing is ours to receive from the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Those words would never be forgotten by Jacob: “the House of God, the House of God”; and that is why he called the place “Bethel”. They meant not only a place which God promised to give to him. They included all the fullness of His promise and blessing; “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 28.14).
What a promise! “In thee... shall all the families of the earth be blessed,” as though God was saying to Jacob: ‘From this day on I will not give blessing to anybody else, except through you.’ That was the statement of God: ‘Jacob, it is only through you, and by your Seed, that all the families of the earth can receive blessing from Me.’ Sometimes in the bazaar, you find a shop stocking a certain article, and the shopkeeper tells you: ‘Sir, I am the sole dealer in this article for the whole of the State.’ In the same way God was saying to Jacob: ‘Now Jacob, I will give you such a blessing that all the other families of the earth will be able to receive My blessing only through you.’
Did God mean what He said? All the words of the Bible are spoken with the full authority of God. You never come across any idle word in the Bible. What God says, He means. It was indeed God's plan that real blessing, given by God to any man anywhere, would be given only through Jacob. That did not refer to food, raiment, money and other earthly things. It was eternal blessing of which God was speaking, and this is His heavenly plan for the Church today.
For in Christ there has come into being a new, spiritual seed of Jacob. When we truly understand our heavenly vocation in Him we will realise that it is only of His Church, the true House of God—it is only through His Church and in His Church that God can give blessing to others. This was His plan from the very beginning, and when we come to the end (see Revelation chapter 21) this is what we see.