God Is Near to Us - Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Trinity

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
October 6^th, A+D 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
God Is Near to Us – Genesis 28:10-17 and Matthew 9:1-8

Audio of Readings and Sermon available HERE

   Nearer, my God to Thee.  Our Lutheran Service Book is a tremendous resource for Christian faith and life, and for the adoration of the One True God.  But it is not perfect.  One weak spot that I have noticed over the years is a lack of hymns that relate Old Testament stories.  Like today’s reading from Genesis 28, Jacob’s Ladder, which is foundational for understanding of how God relates to us.  Also, because of its importance, this is also one of the Biblical accounts most attacked and twisted by Satan, who always seeks to confuse and confound our faith.  Nothing in LSB directly references, let alone tells the whole story of Jacob’s dream.  Nor did I know of any hymn in any other Lutheran Hymnal that interprets Jacob’s excellent night. 

   There are plenty of songs, way too many really, that teach Jacob’s Ladder completely wrong.  “We are climb, climbing, climbing Jacob’s ladder, making our way to heaven, step by step.”  This is the basic misinterpretation you will find.  Jacob’s dream fits perfectly well with the Good News that, because we cannot climb our way to Him, God in Christ descends to us, and not to punish us, nor to exhort us to climb better.  No, God’s eternal Son descends to us, not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.   Jacob’s dream is prelude and foreshadowing of this main event of the whole Bible.  But as far as I knew, we have not had a decent hymn to help us get the story right.    

    Then Elma DuChateu asked that “Nearer, My God to Thee” be sung at her funeral.  I know it well.  I grew up singing it out of The Lutheran Hymnal, old red reliable.  But either I forgot, or maybe never noticed that this hymn is about Jacob and the Ladder from Heaven.  Not until I was preparing Elma’s service, and read the words closely did the lightbulb go on. 

 1. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.  E’en though it be a cross, That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God to Thee…

   Jacob and the Ladder really are not mentioned in this first stanza, which simply proclaims a pious and faithful Christian desire to be near to God.  And what a nice touch: “Even though it be a cross, that raiseth me.”  Is the hymnwriter referring to the Cross of Christ, or the crosses that Christians bear in this life?  Both, I think, for the Crucified one brings us through cross and trial to Himself in heaven, in His perfect grace and timing.  We don’t climb to Him, but rather, through His Cross, Jesus raises us to Himself.  Even when struggles and trials come into our lives, as they will, the Spirit of Christ carries us through, by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, who reigns on high, his nail-scarred hands and feet testifying to our acceptance by His Father.  

 Jacob’s story appears in stanza two: 

2. Tho' like the wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I’d be, Nearer, my God, to Thee.

   It’s helpful to remember the background of the LORD’s appearance in Jacob’s dream.  Things were dark for Jacob, a self-imposed darkness caused by his sinful swindle of his brother.  He was sleeping out in the open countryside, by himself, because he was fleeing the wrath of his twin brother, Esau.  And Esau had reason to be angry.  You remember, don’t you, how Jacob, with their mother Rebekah’s devious assistance, stole the blessing his blind father Isaac had intended for Esau?  Esau was waiting for their father to die.  Then he planned to kill Jacob. 

    So, the remarkable revelation God gave Jacob, and His appearance by his side, and the repetition to Jacob of the promises God had made to his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, all these amazing things did not happen because Jacob was so faithful and righteous.  The LORD appeared to Jacob in spite of who Jacob was and how he behaved towards his family.  The LORD had chosen Jacob and promised to work through him, and so He would, despite Jacob’s sinful character.   

3. There let the way appear, Steps unto heav’n; All that Thou sendest me, In mercy giv'n;
Angels to beckon me, Nearer, my God, to Thee…

   O.k., that’s a little weak.  This stanza may well be the reason “Nearer, My God to Thee” has dropped out of our hymnals.  To sing that the “way” is “steps unto heav’n” leans heavily in the direction of the lie that “I can, and I must climb my way into heaven.” 

   As Christians, as forgiven sinners, we are placed on Christ’s Way and called to walk it, to live the life of faith and love to which He calls us.  And a future in heav’n, living in the visible presence of God forever, is our goal.  But we cannot and do not have to climb our way up by our efforts.  Life forever with Jesus is a free gift, given to us unworthy sinners through the shed blood of Jesus.  Stanza three does not quite proclaim that we must save ourselves.  Bit it misses the directional purpose of the ladder, that God comes down it, to save us. 

    The hymnwriter does preach faith in God’s mercy in this stanza: All that Thou sendest me, in mercy giv’n.   Again, this is a true and right Christian understanding that everything we receive, the good and the bad, is a gift of God’s mercy.  God is always merciful with His People, even when life is hard.  It does not seem Jacob understood this, at this moment in his faith life.  Ultimately, Jacob would trust in the LORD for everything, and most especially for the promise of eternal life.  But it is not clear from Genesis 28 that Jacob in that moment understood.  Indeed, after our reading, Jacob goes on to make a conditional promise to God.  The LORD put no conditions on His promises to Jacob.  But Jacob says: LORD, if you will take care of me and bless me, and bring me back home, if all this comes to pass, then you’ll be my God, and I’ll even give you tenth of all I have. 

    Think of it:  God visits Jacob, gives him a vision of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, and stands beside him.  Then He repeats tremendous promises to Jacob:  "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. ^[14] 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. ^[15] 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."  God promises all this to Jacob, freely, without conditions.  Jacob responds with a conditional promise to make the LORD His God, and even to give Him a tenth of everything he has, if the LORD first takes care of Jacob. 

     This is not how it works between us and the LORD.  We sinners are in no position to bargain.  Jacob does not express true faith, for true faith trusts and rejoices in the promises of God, even when they are not fully apparent in this life.   

   The LORD does not give Jacob all the details of His Salvation Plan.  He does not explicitly tell of God’s Son becoming a human, living the perfect life in our place, and dying the sacrificial death that reconciles us sinners to God.  He does not quite speak of the resurrected Jesus sending the Eleven out to build His Church by preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  But He does promise to be with and protect Jacob, and all his descendants, forever.  This sounds just like the way the resurrected Jesus would commit Himself to be with His people, His Church, always, to the end of the age.  All the details of the Gospel are not present at Jacob’s Ladder, but the essential Promises are there.   

4. Then with my waking thoughts, Bright with Thy praise, Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise, So by my woes to be, Nearer, my God, to Thee.

   Our assigned reading today stops before Jacob’s disappointing conditional promises to God, and also before his better moment, when he responded to God’s presence by establishing a place of worship: Bethel, the House of God.  Jacob realizes that God had come to him, that God had been in that place, where he was sleeping.  Immanuel, God with us!  So, Jacob takes his stone pillow and builds a pillar, a shrine to commemorate the event and give focus to his thankful praise.  When God comes to you bearing gifts and making promises, the right reaction is awe, followed by praise and adoration. 

   Which is what those scribes, experts in the Jewish law, should have done when they heard Jesus declare the paralytic’s sins were forgiven.  Instead, they take offense that a mere man was forgiving sins.  They really misunderstand the Hebrew Bible.  God had been forgiving Israel for centuries.  The entire sacrificial system was given to create and strengthen Israel’s confidence that the Lord was loving and gracious, quick to forgive, by His nature.  But when the miracle worker Jesus forgives the paralytic, brought to Jesus by his faithful friends, the scribes think He is blaspheming.  “Who can forgive sins, except God alone?” 

   Well, God can forgive, and so can and so should anyone who knows and trusts in the forgiving LORD God.  Each of us, within our vocations, within the relationships and responsibilities the LORD has called us to, should be forgiving others.  Jacob would eventually be forgiven by his brother Esau.  Jacob’s son Joseph would forgive his 10 brothers, for selling him into slavery.  Speaking for the LORD, the prophet Nathan forgave King David after his horrible sin with Bathsheba, his murder of her husband, Uriah, and his deception and selfishness against the entire nation of Israel.     

   Forgiveness is what God has been aiming at, ever since sin came into the world.  So, when we are united to God by faith in His forgiving love, it is our great privilege, and responsibility, to forgive others.  Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

   Jesus went on to make it very clear that He was God, by healing the paralytic, in an instant:  But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he then said to the paralytic—"Rise, pick up your bed and go home." ^[7] And he rose and went home.  Everyone was amazed, and marveled that God had given such authority to men.  They were so close!  They should have built a stone pillar and worshiped Jesus, right there, like Jacob did when he awoke.  For truly, God was in that place.  That house in Capernaum truly was Bethel, the House of God.  God had once and for all climbed down the ladder, and joined us in our struggle against sin and death, by becoming a man, the Christ, the Savior. 

   God is in this place!  I don’t know if Reverend Uecker and friends had Jacob’s cairn of stones in mind when they built this altar and pulpit and baptismal font.  But these beautiful chancel furnishings remind us that the same LORD who came down to Jacob is still coming to us.  Whenever and wherever Christians gather in the Name of Jesus, He, as He promised, is present, invisibly, but truly present, to bless and forgive.  Christian worship is the way it is because of this most wonderful truth.  We gather around Jesus, with reverence, and with joy and thanksgiving and a sense of comfort and peace.  Because we are still sinners, meeting the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, there is still a measure of fear.  But God is quick to dispel our repentant fear with forgiveness.  And so Christian faith trusts that our meeting with God is going to turn out well, because Jesus has risen from the dead, with forgiveness and new life for all who believe.  We are reverent, and we also rejoice!      

   Jacob took a lot of convincing, before his words and actions began to show forth his trust in God’s forgiving love.  So, God kept after him.  God blessed Jacob through cross and trials, as he labored for his uncle Laban, in order to win his beloved, Rachel.  God came and met Jacob again, years later, when he was headed back to the promised land, back to reconcile with his brother Esau.  On the way, an all-night-long wrestling match with the pre-Incarnate Christ helps Jacob finally believe that the LORD would never leave him or forsake him. 

   The Lord God Almighty is still coming to us, to convince us of His love and forgiveness.  Some days we get it, we feel it.  We embrace a godly fear, and we can also rest and rejoice in the Gospel.  Other days we are drawn to gaudy things of this world, and our faith grows dull.  Still other days we do something terrible, and we are convinced the LORD could never forgive us.   Our confidence in the forgiveness of Jesus waxes and wains.  But God is a rock of faithfulness.  He has promised to be with us, to come to us, with just the Word we need, a word of correction and conviction, and a word of grace and mercy.  The Holy Spirit moves us to gather together around the Word of the Cross, around the gifts delivered through Water, Wheat and Wine.  Jacob’s ladder truly touches the earth, everywhere baptized believers meet. 

   Our understanding and confidence in God’s mercy waxes and wains, and most of us have been receiving His gifts our whole lives.  Whether people fully understand or not, it is the reality of God’s presence in the midst of His people that makes coming to church so hard for so many.  Whether a person is a wandering sheep, who has stopped coming to Church, a baptized child of God with just a smoldering wick of faith, or whether a person has never known and believed in the forgiveness Christ comes to deliver to repentant sinners, all of our excuses for not coming to Church mask a fear of being exposed to Almighty God. 

   Does this mean we should downplay the awesome reality that God Himself in present, that this is Bethel, the House of God?  No, not at all, may it never be!  Jesus says He is with us, and that each believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Why would we lie to ourselves and the world, when God Himself desires to meet and bless sinners in this place?  Why would we ignore the wonderful news that the Holy Son of God comes to us, not in the anger we deserve, but rather in mercy?  Truly, we cannot change the reality of what God is doing.  Faithful Christian worship will always include godly fearfulness, along with relief, and joy, and exultant thanksgiving. 

   And so, knowing how fearful and marvelous it is to meet Jesus, we can show mercy and patience and give a clear explanation of God’s plan to those who are staying away, for whatever reason.  We can speak of the joy that comes with the dawn of forgiveness, delivered to sinners, in this place, by the LORD Jesus Himself.  And in this reverent joy, the peace of God finds us, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, and will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, unto life everlasting, Amen.