Do things ever come to you in dreams? Do you ever discover new insights during the night, while you are asleep?
The Danish theoretical physicist Niels Bohr often spoke about a dream he had that led to his discovery of the structure of the atom. In his dream, he saw horses racing around a track marked with racing lanes, where each horse was required to keep to its own lane. Others had suggested that electrons circle an atom’s nucleus like planets orbiting the Sun, but this dream inspired Bohr to propose that electrons keep to fixed orbits or “quantised stationary states”, which was a significant scientific advancement. Bohr’s dream led to him being awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics and many consider him to be “the father of quantum mechanics”.
The Bible is somewhat ambivalent about the value of dreams and dream interpretation. It warns particularly about trusting the dreams of people who are not obedient to the Lord (see Jeremiah 29:8). Nevertheless, it depicts sleep, when we are still and free from external distractions, as a time when things can be revealed that are not apparent to our natural senses. Scripture includes a huge number of stories about God and angels speaking in dreams to worldly rulers and those whom God has chosen, guiding them and revealing how God is at work in the world. This Sunday’s passage from the book of Genesis is one of them.
In this passage (Genesis 28:10-19a), Jacob is fleeing his homeland to escape the wrath of his brother Esau. Esau is murderously angry because Jacob has used trickery to usurp Esau’s rights as their father’s firstborn son (see Genesis 25:29-34 and Genesis 27). At sunset, Jacob stops his journey for the night and rests his head on a large rock. Falling asleep, he dreams of a ladder or stairway stretching between earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending on it. The dream depicts in a symbolic way God’s government over the world: angels are God’s agents and messengers who descend to earth to announce or carry out God’s decrees and reascend to heaven to bring back reports.
The most important figure in Jacob’s dream, however, is the LORD himself, who stands nearby and repeats the promises he made to Jacob’s forefathers, Abraham and Isaac. He promises to be with Jacob and to bless him with a multitude of descendants who will be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. He also promises to bring Jacob back to the land he is fleeing, which he pledged to Jacob’s forefathers. Jacob is thus revealed to be the inheritor of God’s promises, even though he was not Isaac’s firstborn. God would bring about his plan of salvation through Jacob’s offspring, culminating with Jesus Christ.
These two aspects of Jacob’s dream are, of course, deeply connected: the LORD’s sovereign rule over the world and its history is what enables him to make his promises to Jacob. He can make promises about Jacob’s future because he has the power to bring them about.
To Jacob, who was fleeing from home to an unknown land and future, this vision must have been a great comfort. He learned that, despite his tumultuous circumstances, the LORD was with him. His life and posterity were secure in God’s plan. This story offers us great comfort too. While our lives may seem chaotic, our futures uncertain, we can rest assured that they remain under God’s sovereign rule. We may not have dreams in which the LORD speaks to us personally about our futures, but Jacob’s dream teaches us that our loving and faithful God is firmly in control. We may not perceive it, but heaven is always at work to bring God’s promises to their fulfilment.
This Sunday at St Mary’s we will hear more about angels and more about God’s plan for all our futures as we look into an important parable Jesus taught in the Gospel of Matthew. I hope you will join us.
Matthew Briggs
Ministry Team Member