Jacob’s Ladder

Trinity 19| Genesis 28:10-17| Pastor James Preus| October 11, 2026

Our Lord Jesus Himself tells us that all of Scripture is about Him (John 5:39). The historical accounts of the Old Testament are more than just interesting stories or moral lessons, but they help proclaim Christ Jesus our Savior. And that is no different for this story of Jacob in Genesis 28. We meet Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac as he flees his brother Esau whom he has deprived of both his birthright and his blessing and as he travels to Mesopotamia to find a wife among his mother’s relatives. He’s alone in the wilderness, using a rock for a pillow when God appeared to him in a dream upon a ladder, which descended to earth from heaven upon which angels ascended and descended. And God promised Jacob that He would bless him and his offspring and that He would not leave him until He had accomplished what He had promised. This is great news for Jacob in his precarious state. He may now depend on the protection of God’s angels until he returns home safely. Yet, this story has significance far beyond Jacob’s journey, yes to many generations and nations to come.

God made a promise not only concerning Jacob, but also concerning Jacob’s offspring. Now, Jacob’s offspring can be considered in two ways: according to the flesh and according to the spirit. According to the flesh, God fulfilled His promise to Jacob’s offspring by raising up from him a great nation to which He gave the land upon which Jacob then lied. Jacob’s name, as you know, God changed to Israel, because He strove with God and won. Israel had twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel. This is the nation of Israel which God led out of slavery in Egypt and gave the land of Caanan by displacing the nations which had been living there. This is the nation of Israel, which God led through the judges and prophets and later through King David and the kings who followed after him. God fulfilled His earthly promise to them by giving them the land He promised and defeating their enemies before them. And God would have established them forever, had they remained faithful, but they did not. God persistently chastised them for their idolatry, even sending them captive to Babylon, but bringing them back by grace to Israel seventy years later. Yet again, the people of Israel rebelled against God, even crucifying His Son, and so God took the land away from them again and scattered them among the nations as they are this day. The current state of Israel is not a fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob.

Yet, according to the spirit, God also fulfilled His promise to Jacob, and we are still benefiting from this fulfillment today. For Jacob has offspring not merely according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. This is why St. Paul writes in Romans 9, “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,” (vs. 6) and earlier in Romans 2, Paul writes, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.” (vs. 28-29) This is why Jesus says in Matthew 8 after hearing the confession of the Gentile Centurion, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israelhave I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven,while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.” (vss. 10-12) Jacob’s offspring who will spread west, east, north, and south are not simply the descendants of Jacob according to the flesh, but those of faith who recline at Jacob’s table.

This is why in John chapter one, Jesus says to Nathanael, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” (John 1:47) Jesus does not call Nathanael an Israelite indeed, because of his physical birth, but because of the faith in his heart, which does not lie, but trusts in the promises of Scripture, which is why he followed his friend Philip when He said they had found Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote. And so, you, if you have faith in Christ and believe what you have heard and read from Holy Scripture, you too are an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.

Nathanael, whose name means gift of God, was startled at Jesus’ assertion and asked, “How do you know me? To which Jesus responded, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” At news of this miracle that Jesus saw Nathanael from an impossible distance, Nathanael confessed to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” to which Jesus responded, “You will see greater things than these. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:50-51) Now, this is a direct correlation to Genesis 28, where Moses records Jacob seeing in his dream, a ladder set up from earth to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it (vs. 12).

Here Jesus tells us what the ladder is in Jacob’s dream. In Jacob’s dream, angels of God ascended and descended upon a ladder which reached up to heaven. Jesus tells Nathanael that angels will ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. Jesus makes a direct connection between the ladder and the Son of Man. The Son of Man is Christ Jesus, who is also the Son of God from eternity, who descended from heaven, became flesh and was made man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who as the Son of God, suffered here on earth, died and was buried, and then rose from the dead and ascended back to the right hand of God the Father, with all things placed under His feet.

Jacob’s ladder is Christ Jesus, the Son of Man, with His incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension. Our Lord Jesus Christ descended from heaven down to earth and ascended back up again. St. Paul speaks of this ladder in Ephesians 4 when he explains Psalm 68:18, “Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, He led a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.’ (In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that He had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?  He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)” (vss. 8-10)

Through this ladder of Jacob, heaven is now opened to us. The angels of God now ascend and descend upon us the true spiritual Israelites of faith, and even more, we have access to that open heaven. We climb Jacob’s ladder through faith in Christ Jesus, so that we may enter that heaven opened to us by the incarnation, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus is the offspring of Jacob of whom God said, “in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” God promised Christ Jesus to come from the body of Jacob, so that He might be the ladder that brings heaven to us and us to heaven, so that true sons of Israel may be born without deceit through Baptism and faith in Christ Jesus. So that we may say with our father Jacob, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

Jacob saw the heavens opened and the ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending. Jesus told Nathanael that He would see the heavens opened and the angels ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. Where do we see this? It is clear that we do not see this with our natural eyes, at least, not in this life. Rather, we see this with the eyes of faith. Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed.” (John 20:29) We believe the heavens are opened to us and the angels of God ascend and descend upon the Son of Man before us, because Jesus promises us such. So, where does Jesus promise us this? In the words proclaiming the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus said to Peter, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19) He gave these same keys to all the disciples when He spoke the same words to them in Matthew 18:18. This binding and loosing means to withhold forgiveness and to forgive sins, as Jesus makes clear in John 20, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (vss. 22-23) Where this forgiveness of sins is proclaimed, Christ the Son of Man is in our midst (Matthew 18:20). Where this forgiveness is proclaimed, the angels of God rejoice as they ascend and descend upon us (Luke 15:10). Where this forgiveness of sins is proclaimed, the gates of heaven stand open for true Israelites to come in.

Obviously, we recognize that this forgiveness is given in the absolution, where the pastor in the stead and by the command of his Lord Jesus Christ forgives sins. Yet, this forgiveness is promised in all the means of grace for the sake of Christ, the Son of Man and Jacob’s Ladder, who won for us forgiveness by His death on the cross. And so, Baptism opens the kingdom of heaven before us, reveals to us Jacob’s Ladder, who is Christ, and bestows on us the help of the holy angels. The preaching of the Gospel places the ladder to heaven in your ears and in your heart, so that angels walk with you as you ascend its rungs through faith. Angels and archangels and all the company of heaven magnify God’s holy name as we eat the body and drink the blood of the Son of Man, who is our ladder to heaven.

Yet, this marvelous vision can only be seen through faith in Christ. Flesh and blood cannot see this. Unbelief blinds a person from seeing this ladder or the heavens opened above it. Unbelief blocks the angels from coming to assist you in your pilgrimage. Worst of all, unbelief blocks you from ascending that ladder at all, but rather closes the gates of heaven and binds them shut before you.

And so, we not only need to be baptized, to hear the absolution, to eat Christ’s body and blood, to hear the promise of forgiveness again and again, but we must believe these promises in our heart! My heart’s desire for my son Nathanael is not merely that he be baptized and brought to God’s house throughout his life, but that he be a true Israelite indeed in whose heart is no deceit, that is, that he believe the promise given in his Baptism, that he believe that God’s angels are descending to him to protect him from Satan, that he believe that Christ has opened heaven before him, so that he continue to worship Christ and hear His Word and declare in his heart, “This is none other than the house of God, the gate of heaven!”

And this is my desire for you all. The promised Offspring of Jacob has come to earth to rescue us from Satan’s kingdom and from our sins which put us to shame and to be to us a holy ladder, so that we may ascend through Him to the gates of heaven with the protection of the holy angels. Satan is real and his anger is fierce. Our sins are real, and they threaten our salvation. Yet, God has placed Jacob’s ladder before us. Those who trust in Christ not only see it, but by God’s grace shall ascend it. Amen.