Good morning, Christ the King. My name is Jonathan Dorst. I'm one of the pastors at Your Sister Church in Tulsa, River Oaks, Presbyterian. And I am also the son-in-law of Donald and Deidre Cotton, their favorite son-in-law, also their only son-in-law. This is, I was trying to think, I think this is the fourth time, it might be the fifth time I've preached here at Christ the King, but the first time since Levi has been the pastor, and I've really enjoyed getting to know Levi. So it's good to be with you. Well, in the 2012 movie, The Avengers, something happens in that movie that will impact every Marvel movie and TV show going forward. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. The Battle of New York. And that's, what happens is a portal opens over downtown Manhattan and aliens come down through that portal. And they are trying to take over the world and set up Loki as the ruler. And for most of the world, up to that point before this battle, they had no idea that there was extraterrestrial life outside of this world. And so even though the Avengers win the Battle of New York, there is this collective trauma among the survivors that, yes, there are aliens and they could come back and make war with us at any time. Well, that's just a movie, right? It's a question that we love to ask. Is there life on other planets? Is there extraterrestrial life? And even a deeper question is, is there life in another dimension? Is there such thing as supernatural life? Now for some people, that's, The same question, more or less, and equally improbable. I've listened to a podcast done by an actor named Brett Goldstein, and it's called Films to Be Buried With, and it's all about movies, which I love, but the essence of the podcast is every week, he interviews a different guest, and they talk about movies, and he asks them, ultimately, if you were gonna die and go to heaven, what movies, if you could take your favorite movies with you, what would you take with you? But before he asked that question, he asked the question, do you think that there is an afterlife? Do you believe in heaven? And I haven't listened to all the episodes. It was just a handful. But every single episode I've listened to, the person being interviewed says basically, well, of course we can't know if there is a heaven or supernatural. You know, and then they either give one of two responses. Either, no, I don't think there's an afterlife. Or, well, I sure hope there is a heaven. And that's pretty common thinking in our world, right? Nobody really knows if there's life after death. But it kind of depends on your personality, right? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Whether you think there's a heaven or not. In Genesis chapter 28, We find this scary but intriguing reality that there is supernatural life and that there is a portal between heaven and earth. And this revelation comes in the middle of a story of a man named Jacob who had a dream about God and heaven. And so if you are able, please stand for this reading of God's word. Genesis chapter 28 starting in verse 10. Hear the word of the Lord. Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed. And behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac, the land in 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.' Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place. And I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. And this is the gate of heaven. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. Sometimes dreams tell us about reality. And if you believe the Bible at all, you know that God sometimes uses dreams to communicate truth to people. Now to understand what God is trying to communicate to Jacob, we have to first understand his situation. So Jacob was born a twin, right? He has a brother named Esau. And now I'm actually a twin. And I know what everyone should know, which is that parents should not have favorites among their children, right? But Jacob and Esau's parents most definitely and very obviously have favorites. Jacob is his mother Rebekah's favorite child. Esau is his father Isaac's favorite. And Rebekah wants Jacob to get the family blessing. The family blessing is something, it's kind of an inheritance that was intended for the oldest son. And Jacob is not the oldest son, Esau is. But Jacob, Rebekah wants that for Jacob. And so she encourages him to deceive his father Isaac. into getting the blessing. And Jacob, because that's actually who he is. That's his nature. His very name means usurper or supplanter. He's a deceiver. He deceives his father Isaac and he steals the birthright. And Esau is rightfully angry and vows to kill Jacob. And so what does Jacob do? He goes on the run. He runs away from his brother, from his dysfunctional family, and he finds himself out, we don't know how long, but he's out in the wilderness. And he finds himself alone, estranged from the people that he loved the most. And he lays down to sleep, utterly lost and alone. Now, let me ask you this question, have you ever felt utterly lost and alone. When my children were going into sixth and ninth grade, I did the unimaginable thing and moved them. I moved them from, not very far, from Stillwater, Oklahoma to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's about an hour and a half. But for all that it meant to them, it might as well have been from Stillwater to China. because it totally upset their world. They had to start sixth and ninth grade in totally new schools. And I knew that first year was going to be hard on them. But I didn't really realize how hard, especially on my oldest, who's an introvert, that it was until years later. And she confided in me how lonely she felt and how she cried herself to sleep some nights. But she also told me that it was an unexpected blessing because it was the first time in her life when she really learned how to pray. Now, Jacob finds himself alone. And sometimes loneliness happens because we've made a mess of our relationships or somebody's hurt us and we have intentionally isolated ourselves. But sometimes we're just alone because that's how life is. And these are the times that God uses loneliness to teach us about ourselves and draw us to him. And for Jacob, I think his loneliness was a combination of both. His relationships were a mess, but God was also using his loneliness to show him his lost, deceitful nature and to draw him to himself. And so Jacob there, he's alone, he's sleeping, and he has a very vivid dream. Now what is the dream? Well, he dreams about a ladder stretching from earth to heaven. And it says, the text says, behold, angels of God were ascending and descending on the ladder. In fact, in that verse, there's an exclamation mark at the end. Angels were going up and down, can you believe it? And God is standing at the top of the ladder and he speaks to Jacob. And he tells Jacob that even though Jacob thinks he's alone, that he's not alone. That God is with him. And God says, not only am I with you now, but I'm going to be with you in the future. And You're not going to be alone for long because just like your father, your forefather Abraham, I'm going to make you a father with a multitude of children and grandchildren. And your children are going to bless the nations of the world. And he tells Jacob all of that. Let me ask you this, do you guys ever have recurring dreams? I have two recurring dreams. One is I'm back in college and I have a final for a class that I haven't been to all semester. And I'm running around campus, I can't even remember where the class is. That's my first recurring dream. Second is, I dream that I'm in this enclosed space that I can't get out of. And I'm kind of claustrophobic and I start to panic. Both times when I have these dreams, I wake up so relieved that they're not real, right? They're just imagination. But when Jacob wakes up from this dream, he realizes that this is reality. that this actually happened. And what does he say? Verse 17, he says, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven. And he sets up an altar and he makes a vow to follow God and give a 10th of everything he owns to God's house. And we see here that God, when God reveals himself to Jacob, Jacob begins to change. And his life is completely different from here on out. He goes from someone who takes and steals from others to being someone who begins to give. And someone who begins to give glory to God with his life. Now, people have been dreaming about spiritual things for as long as humans have walked the earth, haven't they? John Lennon had a dream that he wrote down as the song, Imagine. These are the words, I'm sure most of you heard this song. These are the words, imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Now, it's an interesting proposition, right? An interesting dream. And we can certainly identify with and sympathize with the idea of no one ever being hurt for their beliefs. But at the core of Lennon's beliefs here are that believing in God and in afterlife those beliefs are what make people dangerous. And in his mind, believing that the world is all that there is, is what makes peace possible in the world, right? The logic is here is that if we would just see that life is about loving people rather than pleasing some demanding wrathful God, we could live in peace, right? Just live for today. The problem is that the evidence would tell us just the opposite. Right from the scoreboard of history, it tells us that it's people who don't truly believe in an afterlife that are the ones that are least interested in peace and the most interested in power. Which makes sense, right? If this is all there is, get everything you can out of it. And so people like Joseph Stalin killed 20 million people. to get power. Mao Zedong killed up to 70 million people, both of them atheists who did not believe in God or an afterlife. Now, it's true, and we need to be honest, that Christians haven't always been completely peaceful people, right? The Crusades are a particularly troubling part of our church history, and Christian theology says that there is a time for a just war The core of Christian doctrine, the core of the faith is that God desires peace on earth. That Christians ought to work for peace. In the Christmas story, what do the angels tell the shepherds when they appear? What do they say? Glory to God in the highest and on earth Peace among men on whom his favor rests. Jesus came to be the Prince of what? Peace, the Prince of Peace. And there are two kinds of peace that we need. We need peace between people and people groups, and we also need peace between earth and heaven, between humanity and God. And the reality of Jacob's dream is that there is a connection between earth and heaven. There is a ladder that can be climbed to get to heaven. And everyone in their own way is trying to climb that ladder. Let me ask you the question. How are you trying to climb that ladder into heaven? By being a good person? By raising perfect children? by going to church, by praying, reading your Bible, supporting gospel ministries, feeding the poor. Each one of those things we imagine as a step, climbing a rung, a step closer to heaven. But the problem is that a ladder from earth to heaven has gotta be really, really high and really, really long. and would only support the best climbers. And if you were trying to climb that ladder, you probably want to do what mountain climbers do, right? By studying the people who've gone before them, right? If you want to climb Mount Everest, go study Sir Edmund Hillary or anybody else who's climbed Everest. If you want to free solo El Capitan, you study what Alex Honnold did. Climbing that with no ropes, incredibly. Here's the problem. One of the best spiritual climbers ever, Moses, who gave us the first five books of the Bible, Moses wasn't even good enough to get into the promised land. The apostle Paul, probably the greatest pastor and church planter in the world, admitted that he wasn't good enough to work his way to heaven. In fact, in his letter to the church in Rome, he says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We all fall short. We are not strong enough to make our way to God. We're not good enough. Our sin, our selfishness, keep us grounded on earth. What do we need? Well, We need God to come down and to make peace with us. We need God to come down the ladder to rescue us and then to bring us up the ladder. And the good news is that is exactly what he did. There's this fascinating story in John chapter one about a man named Philip who meets Jesus and he becomes one of his disciples. And Philip has a friend named Nathaniel. And so Philip goes and he grabs Nathaniel and he's like, hey man, you gotta meet this man that I met. Jesus from Nazareth. And he's the one that Moses and all the prophets talked about. And Nathanael says, wait, Nazareth? Can anything good come from Nazareth? Phil's like, no, just, you gotta meet him, right? And so he comes and he brings him to Jesus. And before they're even introduced, Jesus says to Nathanael, he says, behold, an Israelite in whom, indeed, in whom there is no deceit, Now that's a weird, that's an odd thing to say to someone that you've never met before. An Israelite in whom there's no deceit. But Jesus, what's he doing? He's making it clear to Nathaniel that he knows him. He has some supernatural knowledge about him. He knows that he's a student of the Old Testament. And so he drops this reference. Right? An Israelite in whom there is no deceit. Who is the Israelite in whom there was deceit? Jacob. Right? Jacob the deceiver. And then Jesus says to Nathanael, You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Again, Jesus references Jacob and his ladder, and Jesus says, this ladder, it's not made from wood or steel. It is made of what? Of flesh. The angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Son of Man is a title that Jesus uses for himself over 80 times in the Gospels. What's Jesus saying? He's claiming to be Jacob's ladder. He's saying that he is the stairway to heaven. That he is the only one who can unite earth and heaven. The only mediator between God and man. You might ask, well how? How can he unite heaven and earth? And the answer is because he's the only one who descended from heaven and ascended back. And being both God and man, He's the only one who can make peace between the two. This is the ultimate meaning of Christmas. Of the incarnation. That God descended to us, became a man. To us who are unable to ascend to Him. Jonathan and Emily Martin, they're Christian singers. And he wrote an original Christmas album. One of the songs on the album conveys the truth of Jacob's letter. It says, it's called, God Came Down to Us. Again, listen to the words. We'd have no power, we'd have no strength to ever reach Him. We'd never reach Him. We'd have no hope if left on our own to ever find him. All of our will, all our might could never reach his holy height. We could build a tower up to the sky, waste our lives trying to climb, or look with faith to the one who's called Emmanuel, coming down to raise us with him, Emmanuel. Can you believe it? God came down to us. Here's the thing. Every other religion teaches some form of this truth, that you have to work your way to God. That you have to, we have to climb the ladder to heaven through good works and righteous living. The problem, though, is that we're never told how much we have to do. How high is the ladder? How many rungs? And how many good works do I have to do to get up that ladder? And if I do something really bad, do I have to start all the way over? Or do I just get knocked down a few rungs? We're never told. In all of works-based religion, you just do your best. And when you die, you hope that's enough to get to heaven. Only Christianity gives real certainty. It gives us certainty that number one, yeah, you can't make it up that ladder by yourself. But number two, that God came down to live, to die for you, and that when you put your faith in him, you get to go up that ladder to heaven. You are taken there by faith. Do you wanna go to heaven? You have to respond to the call of Christ to make him Lord and Savior. There's no other way to heaven. There's no other ladder. It's the only way. And if you reject Christ, you're left with one of two outcomes. Either number one, you can reject the ladder, right? Just reject the whole idea of God or heaven like John Lennon does. And just take your chances that being a good person on earth is what life's about, if it's about anything. Or, number two, you could, again, try to climb the ladder by yourself, which no one has been able to do except Jesus Christ. But if you trust in Him and follow Him, then you, all of heaven and eternity is opened up to you. And if you've never committed your life to Christ, Today you stand at the gate of heaven, as Jacob did. Will you choose eternal life or eternal death? Now, coming to Christ doesn't just change the future. It also changes our present. Because in Christ we are right now made citizens of heaven by faith. You're already at the top of the ladder, the Bible says. And you can go up the ladder through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And practically, it sounds like this. How is your prayer life? If I'm honest, I have to say that sometimes my prayer life gets stale. Sometimes I'm praying and I wonder, is anybody hearing these words, are they doing any good? I don't know if you've ever thought that before. Maybe you're not as unspiritual as me, I don't know. But the next time you are tempted to think that way, think, have this image of your head, of Jacob's ladder, and God at the top of the ladder, listening, speaking to you through his word, and your prayers going directly to God, because God does hear every word. Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, every word is heard. Your prayers are They matter in heaven. Another thing that changes now is that you, once you have found your way to the top of the ladder, you are now responsible to tell other people about it. We need to tell people that yes, heaven is real. That there is a man who came from heaven to tell us about us and to take us there. And there's only one way there, through relationship with Jesus Christ. Penn Jillette, who is one of the magicians in the duo, famous magical duo Penn and Teller, he's an atheist. But he said something really interesting one time, talking about a Christian who had tried to share his faith with him. And he says this, he says, if you believe that there's a heaven and a hell, people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life and you think it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward? How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them? How interesting. And he's right, love means we have to try to overcome the awkwardness, the fear, and the fear to tell people the good news. Now the ultimate gospel hope that starts here in Genesis, first book of the Bible, and goes all the way to Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is that eventually, not only will we all, will we get to ascend the ladder to go to heaven through Christ, but the ladder eventually will come down and join us here on earth. And that Jesus' work as the bridge between the two will be done, for heaven and earth will become one when Christ comes again. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that once we were dead in our trespasses and sins, following the ways of this world, lost and without hope, But you, Lord God, being rich in mercy, have saved us by sending your only Son to live the life that we could not live, to die the death that we deserved, and so to become the bridge, the ladder between heaven and earth. And you now offer a passageway to you, a right relationship with you through the mediation of your Son, Jesus. And so we want to respond by doing that, by going to heaven, by being citizens of heaven, by living as though we are already citizens of heaven, and to tell others about it. Father, may that inform our celebration of Christmas, that Christmas is not just a time to feel good about the world and about our the family that we like, it is a time to proclaim the good news. The bad news being we needed a Savior, because we couldn't work our way up the ladder, but the good news, that Savior has come to bring peace on earth. We're grateful for it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.