The Stairway to Heaven

Right now in our 2026 bible reading plan, we’re going through selected readings from the book of Genesis. The stories are all amazing. But they are also difficult. When we’re reading Genesis, we have to remember that we are reading literature from thousands of years ago from a totally different culture, worldview, language, and society – and – it’s literature that is written to be heard and pondered over repeatedly over the course of a lifetime. Just like following Jesus,

It is not easy – and shouldn’t be!

After all, it’s about the beginnings (genesis) of God’s ordering and encounter with this world. Anything truly worth doing, and anything deep truly worth understanding, is going to be difficult. And that’s a good thing.  So it’s no wonder that we struggle to “get it” sometimes, and there’s always more to chew on, think on, and understand.

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite moments from this week’s reading (today’s reading, in fact, from Genesis 28). It’s a famous story, to be sure – about Jacob’s dream of a ‘stairway to heaven’ (I think there’s a famous song that has something to do with it…). Older translations use ‘ladder’ more than ‘stairway’, but ‘stairway’ is probably a better conception because it was most likely something more like a stepped temple structure called a ‘ziggurat’. Regardless, the point is that it’s the connection point between heaven and earth: the way up or down.

In his dream, Jacob sees the stairway with its top in the heavens,

“and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”

In the dream, God makes promises to Jacob about the land he’s on, and how his uncountable offspring will inherit it and along with it, God’s blessing. Jacob wakes from his dream and declares that “the Lord is in this place,” and it is “none other than the house of God, and … the gate of heaven.”

The amazing thing about this passage, from our perspective, is how Jesus refers to it. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, after Nathanael (of ‘come & see’ fame!) is amazed at Jesus’ knowledge of him, Jesus says to him in John 1:51,

“Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Notice the language?

Angels of God, ascending and descending.

It’s the same ‘angels of God, ascending and descending’ as on Jacob’s ladder. And Jesus is saying it about himself (the Son of Man).

What is Jesus really saying here?

I think it’s pretty obvious:
Jesus is the ladder to and from heaven.
Jesus is the way to God.
Jesus is the connection point of heaven and earth.
Jesus is the gate of heaven.
Jesus is ‘none other than the house of God’.
Jesus is where God is.
Jesus is ‘the Lord in this place.’

It makes sense why, later in John’s Gospel (14:6), Jesus will say that,

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The seeds of this are planted all the way back in Genesis 28, so that the fruit is available to us today.

As we heard on Sunday, following Jesus is taking the ‘narrow gate’ and the ‘hard road’ (Matthew 7:13-14), but it is the road that leads to life, the road that is the truth, the road that is the only way to God the Father.

Following Jesus is the journey of a lifetime, and the only journey that is truly worth it.

My hope for you is that you’ll follow Jesus on his road today.