This week’s devotions are based on this week’s message: Shadows: A Glimpse of a Stairway! (WATCH HERE)
A stairway spans a gap between two places. It can be two floors of a building or the distance between the floor and a shelf out of reach. It allows someone to go where they wouldn’t have been able to without the assistance of the ladder or stairway.
The dream that God gave Jacob had the ladder that extended from the throne of God to earth. The stairway is what connected the two places.
So why is that significant?
First the two places are heaven, where God is, and earth, where sinful mankind dwells. The conscience God put inside each one of us has a natural tendency to want to “be right with God.” It leads us to try to construct ways or ladders to get from where we are to the presence of a holy God.
The reality is that what man has come up with is a flimsy ladder at best or a ladder that is insufficient to span the gap. Some try to make ladders out of their own performance thinking that if one does more good than bad, eventually there will be a rung that reaches to the dwelling of God. Some try to compare their ladders with others and conclude that as long as their ladder built on their performance is longer than 50% of others, they are good. The problem with man-made ladders is they all “fall short” of the presence of God. The standard of the ladder that spans earth to heaven is perfection. God said the only ladder that will gain access is one that is unblemished by sin. God said the only ladder that will gain access is one on which perfect people walk.
We meet neither of these criteria.
Romans 3:22,23 There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
So without a pathway to heaven we can build on our own, we are helpless without God sending a stairway on which we can walk.
The amazing thing about the dream given to Jacob is a glimpse of the stairway that God made which extends from heaven to earth.
So what is this a glimpse of? The saving life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He is the one who came from heaven to bring us to heaven.
As Jesus was interacting with his disciples on the night before he went to the cross he told them he was going to heaven and would then take them to heaven. Unsure, Thomas asks the following and Jesus’ response identifies for us who was the stairway pictured in Jacob’s dream.
John 14:1-6 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The only stairway that gives complete confidence to a sinful soul is the perfect stairway Jesus made to bring us from this earth to the throne of God forever!
Apply: What insight into Jesus do you have when you consider him as the stairway from you to God?
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for making it possible for me to come to you through the perfect life, innocent death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. AMEN.