02/08/2026 - Genesis 28:10-22

Scripture: Genesis 28:10-22

 Jacob left Beer-sheba and set out for Haran. He reached a certain place and spent the night there. When the sun had set, he took one of the stones at that place and put it near his head. Then he lay down there. He dreamed and saw a raised staircase, its foundation on earth and its top touching the sky, and God’s messengers were ascending and descending on it. Suddenly the Lord was standing on it and saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will become like the dust of the earth; you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.”

When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought to himself, The Lord is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. He was terrified and thought, This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven.

Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

~

So when I was little, I had this book that taught different string tricks and games. I have no idea where it came from, but for a while whenever I would find myself with a long enough piece of string, I would play with it. At least, until my teachers took it from me for not paying attention in class.

And while I caught on to most of the tricks fairly easily, there was always one that eluded me. It was the most complicated one that the book taught, a diamond pattern called Jacob’s Ladder. I still remember how happy I was the first time I managed to do it correctly.

And I knew the name for it has something to do with Jacob from the Bible. I knew that Jacob was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham and Sarah - the son that Sarah laughed that she would ever get, which we talked about last week.

But our text today is where this little string trick gets its name from, and the first time that God speaks directly to Jacob.

And Jacob is on the run when God first speaks to him. And it’s pretty much entirely his fault.

Jacob is one of the tricksters in Scripture; a figure who outwits and outsmarts his father and his brother in order to get what he wants. And he’s coached and assisted by one of the other tricksters in Scripture; his mother Rebecca. His first trick occurs in Genesis 25, where he withholds a bowl of stew from a starving Esau until Esau sells him all of his birthright, which means getting a double portion of the inheritance and being considered the head of the family. This trick doesn’t have a ton of finesse, or even really any subterfuge, but it shows that Jacob is willing to take advantage of a situation to get ahead. But even though Esau loses his birthright, he is still set to be blessed by his father, which will essentially serve as Isaac’s “last will and testament.” In this case, this is the continuation of the blessing that God gave to Abraham, that God will be with Abraham’s family and make them into a great nation.

But Jacob steals that too! This time it requires quite a bit of help from his mother, who favors him over Esau. She actually tells him what to do and how to do it, and he just goes along with what she’s saying. And, ultimately, he receives the blessing meant for Esau, meaning he will not only inherit most of his father’s wealth and his status as head of the family, but his family line will also now carry the blessing that God gave to Abraham.

Esau, understandably, gets mad at this and swears to kill Jacob, which would then make him his father’s only heir.

So Jacob heads out, alone. Before this point he’s been a mama’s boy, mainly staying in camp to help his mother cook while Esau was the one out hunting and camping. But now he’s the one out in the wilderness, with nothing to protect him except for a rock that he finds and places near his head in case he needs to throw it at someone or something.

He’s more vulnerable in this moment than he’s ever been in his entire life. And it’s in this moment of vulnerability that God comes to talk to him for the first time. Unlike with Abraham and Isaac, in which God spoke to them when they were awake, God comes to Jacob in a dream. And in this dream, messengers are climbing either a ladder or a staircase, up and down from heaven. They aren’t mentioned as doing anything besides walking up and down. Maybe they have scrolls in their arms, scribbling messages on quills that they’re meant to deliver either to the heavens or to the earth.

Or, maybe this is just to catch Jacob’s attention, to make it clear that he’s dreaming.

Then God appears on the ladder, maybe at the top or maybe somewhere in the middle where the messengers have to duck around him. And God introduces themself as “the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.”

God is not yet Jacob’s God, but God is making it clear that God is the God of Jacob’s family. And since Jacob is part of that family, God is extending the promise to Jacob as well.

And not Esau, who should have been the one to get it as the oldest son.

But Jacob stole that blessing from him, and God essentially honors his and his mother’s trickery in this moment, confirming that the promise will be passed through Jacob’s line. And Jacob doesn’t have to re-swear the covenant, the blessing is already his. More than that, God promises to protect Jacob and see him safely home in Genesis 28:15. God says, “I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.”

This is a beautiful promise, and it comes with no strings attached. God offers God’s love and protection freely.

When Jacob wakes up he seems overwhelmed by this promise. He takes the stone he meant to use to protect himself and instead built a pillar, anointed it, and called the area Bethel, which can translate to “God is here.” He doesn’t need to hold on to stones in order to protect himself anymore. God is here, and God will protect him, and he celebrates that.

But at some point as he’s building the pillar, as he’s anointing it with oil, doubt starts to creep into his mind. Because Jacob has never offered something to someone else without strings attached. So he cannot imagine a God who would do such a thing. As the dream fades and reality sets in, Jacob’s encounter with God starts to lose the truth of what it was, and instead Jacob starts to cast God in his own image.

Jacob just can’t imagine a God who would offer something for nothing, because Jacob would absolutely never do that. He’s ever the trickster, ever the schemer. So instead of taking the promise God has given him and hurrying on his merry way, he attaches strings to it in verses 20-22:

“If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

Maybe he’s more comfortable with this. Maybe making the promises conditional gives Jacob more a sense of control over the situation. If Jacob can control when and how he receives the promises, then God can’t just yank them away from him.

But God didn’t ask for any of this, and God doesn’t respond to Jacob after he makes this promise. Instead, Jacob continues on his journey, fully protected by God through no actions of his own, but instead fully through the grace and promise of God.

And, eventually, Jacob will get it. Because when he returns to his family’s lands twenty years later, the prayer that he prays in Genesis 32 doesn’t have any of the bargaining and deal making that is in the prayer we read today. Instead, he calls back to the promises God made here, especially the one where God promises to protect Jacob.

And from this point on, God will self-identify as “the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Jacob didn’t need to put any strings, any conditions on the promises that God had made. But he couldn’t imagine a God that wouldn’t. So when they weren’t there, he couldn’t help himself and created conditions for him to receive God’s love, grace, and protection.

And we can do this too. We can feel like we’re not worthy of God’s unconditional love and grace, so we attach strings to it that we have to pull in certain ways in order to get God’s love. We have to pray a certain way or a certain amount, we have to believe a certain thing, or even look or present a certain way in order for us to be accepted by God.

So what strings have you knowingly or unknowingly attached to God?

What practices or beliefs are you holding on to because you think that it’ll ensure that you get God’s love and grace?

I invite you to begin to drop those strings that are tangling you up rather than setting you free.

It could take a while, and that’s okay. It can be really difficult to start trusting that God’s love and grace will be there, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. But just like Jacob, God has given us God’s love and grace while asking for nothing in return. Sure, we’ve been told to love God and love our neighbor, but that’s meant to be an overflow of the love we’ve been shown by God. And when we fail to do that - because we’re imperfect humans - that does not mean we’ve lost God’s love.

Instead, it just means we have the opportunity to pick ourselves up and return to it - no strings attached.