This past Sunday, I preached on the story of Jacob\u2019s Ladder. \u00a0 One thing I\u2019d add to the end, because I think it\u2019s the primary point of John 1:51 (\u201cAnd He says to him, \u2018Amen, amen, I say to you, Henceforth you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.'\u201d): the Lord Himself is the stairway. \u00a0I mention the passage from Arcana Coelestia<\/em> that describes the human race as the link between the most external things of creation and God Himself, but that link takes place to the extent that people are connected to the Divine Humanity in the Lord \u2013 that\u2019s where the connection really is.<\/p>\n Readings:\u00a0Genesis 28:11-22<\/a>; John 1:35-51<\/a>;\u00a0Arcana Coelestia <\/em>3701<\/a><\/p>\n Throughout the Lord\u2019s Word we find stories of competing brothers: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and in the story for today, Esau and Jacob.\u00a0 We did not read the earlier part of this story, but Esau and Jacob were twin brothers.\u00a0 Esau was born first \u2013 but Jacob had sold him a pot of stew for his birthright, and tricked their father Isaac into blessing him rather than Esau.\u00a0 When Jacob left for the land of Haran, he left for two reasons: to find a wife, and to flee from Esau, who had threatened to kill him.<\/p>\n Why are there all these stories of competing brothers in the Word?\u00a0 For the Lord\u2019s Word to truly be His Word, it has to be about spiritual things \u2013 even in those places that seem to simply be literal histories.\u00a0 These competing brothers throughout the Word are a picture of two things that compete in our minds for priority: love and wisdom, charity and faith, good and truth.\u00a0 Which is the most important?\u00a0 In the earliest days of the Christian church, Christians knew the answer; the apostle Paul wrote, \u201cAnd now abide faith, hope, love [or charity], these three; but the greatest of these is love\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:3).\u00a0 The most important thing is love.\u00a0 But it is not always as straightforward as this.\u00a0 The goal<\/em> is that all of us will act from love; but we are not born into acting from love \u2013 first, we have to learn truth, and live by it, and only gradually do we come to love<\/em> doing that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In this story, Esau specifically represents the love side of things on the natural level \u2013 the feelings, the pleasure, we get from love.\u00a0 And Jacob represents the wisdom side of things on that same level \u2013 not the deeper wisdom, but simply knowledge<\/em> of what is true.\u00a0 Esau is born first \u2013 because love is really the more important thing.\u00a0 But early on in a person\u2019s development, that love is unfocused and mixed up with bad loves \u2013 a person can\u2019t act based on his feelings alone.\u00a0 So while a person develops, Jacob has the lead \u2013 that acting according to knowledges.\u00a0 That\u2019s what it means for Jacob to have stolen the birthright.<\/p>\n The story begins in a place called Beersheba. \u00a0The name Beersheba means both \u201cseven wells\u201d and \u201cwell of the promise.\u201d \u00a0The deep wells of water there represent doctrines, the many teachings of the church.\u00a0 Since Jacob represents knowledges, and he lived in Beersheba, he represents part of us that knows the doctrine of the church.\u00a0 But at this point, that knowledge was not married to life.\u00a0 It was simply knowledge.\u00a0 Looked at from this spiritual sense, we can understand what it means that Esau, that love side of things, was getting frustrated with Jacob.\u00a0 The same thing happens when we spend a lot of time learning things but not much time using <\/em>it.\u00a0 The will within us gets frustrated \u2013 we just want to start doing<\/em>, not learning.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good impulse \u2013 but at first we can think it means we should stop learning altogether, that our knowledge is useless.\u00a0 Esau wants to kill Jacob.\u00a0 But rather than get rid of our knowledge, the right course is to see how we can live by it.<\/p>\n And so Jacob leaves his home, and sets out toward the land of Haran.\u00a0 After a day\u2019s journey, Jacob needs to rest, so he piled up rocks for a pillow.\u00a0 This place where Jacob was, with those rocks he used for pillows, a place remote from Beersheba or doctrinal things, represents the Lord\u2019s truth on the most external level.\u00a0 This is the Lord\u2019s truth as it exists in the stories of the Lord\u2019s Word, such as this story itself of Jacob\u2019s ladder.\u00a0 When we are beginning the process of regeneration, even though we might have a lot of doctrinal knowledge, when we\u2019re starting to look at how we ought to live<\/em>, we have to start with the basics \u2013 the essential, literal teachings of the Word.<\/p>\n And Jacob lay down there and slept. \u00a0As he slept, he dreamed, and he saw a stairway stretched out before him, from the ground up to heaven.\u00a0 And on that stairway he saw angels ascending going up to God and returning back down to earth.\u00a0 The way this is described is a little unusual \u2013 we might expect the angels first<\/em> to be described as coming down from God, then returning to Him.\u00a0 But this vision is a vision of the process of regeneration, and it does<\/em> take place in this way \u2013 first as an ascent, and then as a return.\u00a0 It\u2019s a process that takes place on a larger scale over the course of a person\u2019s life, but it\u2019s also a process that occurs again and again on a smaller scale throughout a person\u2019s life to eternity.<\/p>\n Remember, that ground where Jacob lay represented the literal stories from the Lord\u2019s Word \u2013 it represented the most external level of truth as it exists with a person, in those basic knowledges.\u00a0 But from these knowledges, there is an ascent to God.\u00a0 Arcana Coelestia<\/em> gives an example (from AC 3690<\/a>): the first thing a person learns about the Ten Commandments from the Word is the story of how they were given \u2013 how the Lord descended on Mount Sinai in smoke and fire, how Moses climbed up the mountain, how he returned to deliver them to the children of Israel at the bottom.\u00a0 That story forms a foundation. \u00a0As a person grows older, he begins to see that those commandments were not just part of a story, that they were not just for the children of Israel, but that they are necessary for all<\/em> society.\u00a0 He begins to intentionally try to live by them; for example, he begins by honouring and obeying his parents in accordance with that law of the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 But as he gets older, his understanding deepens \u2013 he realizes that truly<\/em> following this commandment does not mean literally agreeing with everything his parents say, but honouring what is good in them.\u00a0 As he goes further, he realizes that honouring this commandment means loving good and truth itself, and above all, loving the Lord as His father.\u00a0 That is the ascent up that staircase, to the Lord at the top.<\/p>\n But all this progress is made when a person lives<\/em> by what he knows, forcing himself to act according to his understanding of what is right.\u00a0 And something else happens as he does this.\u00a0 More and more, he starts to love<\/em> following these commandments.\u00a0 At some point there is a switch \u2013 instead doing good because he knows it\u2019s right, he starts doing what is right because he feels the love and goodness in it.\u00a0 This is the angels\u2019 return back down to earth \u2013 when a person acts primarily from love, rather than truth, and brings love down to earth, putting it in practice.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s important that the Lord is at the top there.\u00a0 That is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Divinely Human God.\u00a0 All of this stems from His<\/em> love, as all the angels acknowledge.\u00a0 From Him, a person goes through this process, in different areas of his life.\u00a0 It is the Lord who changes our hearts, and gives us the love to do what is right.<\/p>\n We see the same process on a much smaller and more natural scale in the way we form habits, or break habits.\u00a0 When we\u2019re first trying to form a habit \u2013 say turning off the lights when we leave a room \u2013 it can be hard to do.\u00a0 We forget, or we\u2019re in a hurry, and we have to force ourselves to do it.\u00a0 But gradually we do it enough that it becomes second nature.<\/p>\n Now picture the same thing on a more spiritual scale.\u00a0 What if the habit you want to form is not tearing people down.\u00a0 If you\u2019re in that habit, it takes work at first.\u00a0 It feels artificial because it IS artificial.\u00a0 You have to make yourself do it.\u00a0 But gradually, over time, the Lord changes that habit.\u00a0 When that switch happens, when you reach the point where you no longer WANT to tear people down, where that feels unpleasant \u2013 that\u2019s that point where those angels are coming back down the stairway.\u00a0 It is summed up this way in Arcana Coelestia<\/em>: \u201cAct precedes; willing follows\u201d (AC 4353<\/a>).<\/p>\n But this is a gradual process.\u00a0 We don\u2019t climb up that stairway very quickly \u2013 we take one step at a time.\u00a0 In our reading from the Writings this morning, we found an example of the very gradual steps the Lord leads us on, so gentle that we don\u2019t even realize we\u2019re ascending until we look back.\u00a0 At first, early in our process of regeneration, we act mostly from love of self.\u00a0 The Lord doesn\u2019t destroy this love, but He gently modifies it.\u00a0 We learn truths that don\u2019t directly contradict that love, but that also lead us forward.\u00a0 We learn that we do<\/em> need to take care of ourselves \u2013 but that we also need to take care of others.\u00a0 From these truths we gradually progress, until we get to the point where those truths about taking care of ourselves cease to be the highest truths, but instead become the lowest truths, with the love of the neighbour and love of the Lord as higher.\u00a0 There is an inversion, that is, it is flipped around \u2013 the love of self is still there, but in the last place rather than the first.\u00a0 The angels come down the stairway after ascending.<\/p>\n Another way to think about this is in terms of families.\u00a0 Within our families, we have tendencies toward selfishness; but at the same time, we do want our siblings, and especially our kids and grandkids, to have the things they need to make them happy.\u00a0 Even people who are mostly selfish tend to want good things for their kids.\u00a0 And even that \u2013 wanting something for their kids \u2013 is a step up from only loving themselves.\u00a0 From that step, a person can take the next step up \u2013 what will really<\/em> make my kids happy?\u00a0 It isn\u2019t to give them everything they want, it\u2019s to give them the things that will help them live fulfilling lives.\u00a0 The next step up is a love for their use in society, and so on, until what we are really loving in our children is the Lord\u2019s love for others in them.\u00a0 Step by step, the Lord lifts us up the ladder in that particular area of our lives.\u00a0 We reach the top and begin to come back down when our interactions with our families stem from this love for what is good for them and what is good in them.<\/p>\n When those new loves have been formed in us, we start to see even the lower things in the world and the Word in a new way.\u00a0 We start to see things in the world in terms of the use <\/em>they serve.\u00a0 Those simple stories from the Lord\u2019s Word touch us in ways they never had before, because we\u2019ve experienced the depth within them.\u00a0 They have life in them.\u00a0 When we\u2019re acting from love, we can see the way that the Lord is everywhere, even in the most external things, even in the everyday interactions we have with the people around us.\u00a0 Everything is full of the Lord.<\/p>\n When Jacob wakes up, the Lord promises him that He will protect him and be with him and return him to this land, and would make him fruitful and multiply him.\u00a0 In the internal sense, it\u2019s a promise that when we have been regenerated, we see countless new truths in the Word and in the world around us, and begin to feel countless new affections even on that outermost level.\u00a0 This is what is represented by that rock that Jacob set up and anointed with oil.\u00a0 That rock represents those outermost truths, the truths in the literal sense of the Word, and the natural world.\u00a0 And the oil on top represents the way that these become holy when we see them again from love.<\/p>\n Jacob calls that rock the house of God.\u00a0 When we are able to see the world and the Word from love, we see it as the dwelling place of God.\u00a0 When the people of the Most Ancient Church, who loved the Lord above all else, looked around them, they saw everything in creation as a representation of God.\u00a0 Everything was alive to them. We can see this even now in the way a young child sees the world as alive, and in the delight a child takes in reading the Lord\u2019s Word, which the Writings tell us gives the angels the greatest delight.<\/p>\n