"THE SON OF MAN FORMS AN ABIDING LINK BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN"

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 34:3
Psalm 103:4
Psalm 91:3,4
Psalm 46:3,5
Psalm 115:7; Hymn 55:1,2,3

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We live in real houses, in real towns – Kelmscott, Roleystone, Westfield. We have real names that you can trace in the phonebook: Kleyn, Byl, Wieringa. We do things in real time: Sunday, February 1, 11:20. All of that serves to underline that we breath the air of real life – with all its troubles and joys.

John tells us of equally real people who lived long ago. They have real names like John, Andrew, Nathanael. They lived in real towns like Jerusalem and Bethabara-beyond-the-Jordan. These people lived in real houses where they could receive guests, had real trees in their backyard under which they could sit. They lived in real time; three times we read of what happened "the next day", and once that it was "about the tenth hour". Such details point up that the people of John 1 breathed the same sort of air we breathe – and so struggled with the same sort of challenges life throws at us.

Why John tells us such details? That, beloved, is because John wants us to understand well the identity of the Man who stepped into the real life of these real people. It’s John’s point in the verses we read together: the Man who came to them is from heaven, indeed, forms the link that reunites heaven and earth. Our text is the climax relating who Jesus is: the ladder upon whom angels travel from real people living in real houses on this earth to holy God heaven above, and back again. John would impress upon real people –you and me- that heaven and earth are truly linked again in Jesus Christ. As we live our real lives, or return to work and school, here’s a reality we need to remember. Life is more than this earth, its dollars and pleasures and demands. Critical is the abiding link with heaven – and therefore with God.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

Jesus’ words in our text this morning recall Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28. Jacob, we are aware, had fled from his parental home after he deceived brother Esau. On his way to Padam-Aram, Jacob lay down to sleep. As he slept, "he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it" (Gen 28:12). On top of the ladder was God, who reassured Jacob that he would truly receive this land where he was sleeping, would also receive many descendents; indeed, God Himself would go with Jacob day by day. We realize: here was material most comforting and encouraging for Jacob. But: what Jacob saw was only a dream…. Sure, through the dream the Lord stressed to him an indisputable reality. But a dream by its definition is short-lived; Jacob awoke from the dream, the dream was no more, Jacob could only reflect on a memory – be it a wonderful memory.

In His conversation with Nathanael, Jesus refers to this dream of Genesis 28, tells Nathanael that he’ll "see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." The Greek makes it clear that the heavens would not be opened once only and then shut again, but be opened once to stay open. More, the angels would ascend and descend not for the short duration of a dream, but would be travelling between heaven and earth continuously, non-stop. What Jesus is speaking about, then, is richer by far than what Jacob saw as he fled his angry brother.

As it is, Jesus added much force to what He told Nathanael. His words in our text begin with an oath. "Most assuredly, I say to you," says our translation. Literally: "Truly, truly, I say to you." It’s a formula Jesus used repeatedly, always to impress upon His hearers that what He was saying was beyond dispute. In fact, the formula had the weight of an oath. When Jesus uses this formula in connection with His words about the permanent activity of the angels, Jesus’ listeners (of long ago and of today) may not doubt the validity of what He says. Jesus is adamant to Nathanael: earth is not remote from heaven, nor heaven from earth, but between the two is a heavily-travelled link; angels are continuously ascending from earth to heaven and descending from heaven to earth. Space travel is nothing new!

Now the question is: why does Jesus say this to Nathanael? Why must Nathanael know about a link between heaven and earth?

The necessity of the link between heaven and earth, brothers and sisters, reaches back to the opening words of the Bible. The Lord God, says Genesis 1:1, made a world consisting of two parts, heaven and earth. The one part He gave to man as a habitation (cf Ps 115:16), while the other part (heaven) forms His own dwelling place. Yet that does not mean that the Lord wished a separation between the two. The Lord’s practice in the beginning was that He came to visit Adam and Eve regularly in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8). That is: the Lord left heaven to visit people on earth – contact! For the Lord God had established a bond of love –His covenant- with people, and that bond of love required contact, space travel.

The fall into sin put a bitter end to that bond of love, and hence the contact; in His justice God drove Adam and Eve out of His presence, out of the Garden. But at the same time God in mercy announced that He would send a Saviour who would restore what was broken. That includes, then, the broken relation between God and man, and therefore between heaven and earth!

In the course of the Old Testament, the Lord God repeatedly alluded to the restoring work of the coming Saviour. The Lord gave instruction to Israel to build a tabernacle, complete with sacrifices of blood to atone for sin. But you know, congregation, that God Himself was pleased to dwell in the Holy of Holies; that Most Holy Place was a little piece of heaven. It was separated from the rest of the tabernacle –from this earth!– by a veil. And do you know what was on that veil? Said the Lord to Moses at Mt Sinai: the veil "shall be woven with an artistic design of cherubim" (Ex 26:31). Cherubim, angels: between God in that little-piece-of-heaven in the Holy of Holies and the people on this earth on the other side of that veil were angels. What Jacob saw in his short-lived dream was given long-term permanency in the tabernacle: now that sin puts distance between holy God and sinful man, God sends His angels to maintain the contact, to travel between heaven and earth.

In line with that reality, we read on various instances in the Old Testament of angels appearing on earth. Abraham spoke with two who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Manoah spoke with an angel, who promised the birth of Samson. Job 1 relates how "the sons of God" –that’s the angels– "came to present themselves before the Lord" (Job 1:6). David is very aware of the presence of angels in the lives of God’s children-by-covenant, for he says in Ps 34 that "the angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them" (vs 7). More, in Ps 91 the Holy Spirit relates that God gives "His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone" (vss 11f). Here was a reality true for all the saints of the Old Testament: God Himself no longer travelled to earth to meet with men, but He sent His angels, His messengers in His place. Sin meant distance between holy God and fallen man, but the God of the covenant remained most interested in His people – and therefore sends His messengers, His servants the angels.

See here, brothers and sisters, something of the mercy of our God, and the gospel of salvation! This God has heart for the people He created, and is not content to shut Himself up in heaven and leave men to their lot on earth! He wants reconciliation, He wants relations restored to the way they were in Paradise! Hence His promise of a Saviour, and His instructions to His holy angels to keep travelling between heaven and earth – despite our sins there must be contact!

We come to our second point:

Jesus, then, speaks of angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth – and so builds on Old Testament material. But notice, congregation, what Jesus says at the end of our text. He speaks of "the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." What, brothers and sisters, are we to understand by the phrase "ascending and descending upon the Son of Man?" Are we to image the Son of Man as the launching pad from which the angels ascend to heaven? Or as the pad upon which the angels land? As it turns out, it’s neither. Instead, the point is that the Son of Man is the ladder upon which the angels travel. No one can come to the Father except through Me, Jesus said at another time to His disciples, and that’s true also with respect to all contact between heaven and earth. For only Jesus can restore the contact God established in the beginning, the contact we broke through our fall, between those two parts of God’s creation: heaven and earth.

But why is is, congregation, that Jesus can be the ladder, the link, between heaven and earth? That’s because of who this "Son of Man" is. His unique identity is the point of the verses we read from John 1. These 30 odd verses contain no less than a dozen different descriptions and names for Jesus! It begins in vs 19, with the testimony of John the Baptist concerning Jesus. He’s emphatic: he is "the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’" (vs 23, quoting Is 40:3). His point: he’s a herald for somebody, and no herald draws attention to himself but instead to another. Who the other is in this instance? "The Lord." Notice the capital letters: the One who is coming is the God-of-the-covenant Himself, the I-am-who-I-am! That’s John’s testimony; Jesus is the God of the covenant, the I-am-who-I-am! That is why John can add in vs 27 "He who is coming after me" is "preferred before me", or, better translated, "existed before me" – for He’s eternal.

The next day John gives Jesus another name. Vs 29: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" The concept of a lamb that takes away sin was so very well known in Israel because of the sacrifices of the temple. But this lamb is different, is special; this lamb is ‘of God’, is a Lamb given by God and therefore guaranteed to be effective in taking away the sin that stands between God and man, between heaven and earth. More still: this "Lamb of God" will take away more than the sin of an individual, more than the sin of Israel; He’ll take away "the sin of the world." His scope is bigger than the sacrifices of the Old Testament, because God’s eye is bigger than one nation, one people; God wishes to reconcile to Himself people from every tribe and tongue and race! It’s what God had said to Abram at Israel’s cradle: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen 12:3). Because of the enormity of that task, this Lamb of God was endowed with the Holy Spirit; indeed, says John, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained on Him" (vs 32), that is, stayed on Him. So John can be emphatic: "I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God" (vs 34).

The names continue to pile up. Two of John’s disciples left off following John the Baptist and followed Jesus instead. They talked with Jesus, and as a result Andrew went to fetch his brother with this captivating word: "We have found the Messiah" (vs 41), the Christ, the anointed One – there’s another name that reveals His identity. Andrew knew: the Holy Spirit has come upon Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord God in heaven has anointed Him, here’s one with a very special link to heaven. Nathanael in due time can sum it up: "You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (vs 49).

Of all the names ascribed to Jesus in the verses we read from John 1, there’s one that Jesus ascribed to Himself – and that’s the phrase "Son of Man" in our text. It’s a name Jesus’ initial hearers will certainly have recognized, for it’s drawn directly from the Old Testament. Daniel writes that he saw the Ancient of Days seated upon His throne – that’s God in heaven (7:9). Then he writes: "I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days…" (7:13). The "Son of Man": the phrase describes a true human, a mortal like you and me, flesh (cf Ezekiel). But this "Son of Man" from earth came to the Ancient of Days in heaven, and that’s to say that He opened the road between heaven and earth. This is the title Jesus ascribes to Himself, and it describes what He came to do; He’s the Way and the Truth and the Life.

You see, beloved: here are so many names –and I haven’t touched on them all– that describe who Jesus really is. He is from heaven, and was sent to earth to perform a most unique task, and that is to reconcile sinners to God, re-establish contact between heaven and earth. That is why He can say to Nathanael in our text that people will see Him as the ladder upon whom the angels of God ascend and descend. The Son of Man is the real and true man who by His coming sacrifice (He’s Lamb of God!) would form the abiding link between heaven and earth. On Him as ladder, so to speak, the messengers of God would continually travel from earth to beyond the moon, and beyond Mars, to the habitation of holy God, carrying reports about earth and the covenant people of God on the earth. And on Him as ladder, the servants of God would continually travel from heaven on high to the habitation of God’s covenant people on the earth beneath, ministering spirits sent forth from God to minister for those on earth who will inherit salvation – as the apostle writes to the Hebrews (1:14).

In due time this God-of-the-covenant, this Lamb of God, this Son of God, this Messiah, this King of Israel, this Son of Man was stretched upon the cross of Calvary to atone for sin. Through His perfect sacrifice, He took away the veil between the Holy of Holies and sinful people, opened the way between holy God and sinful man. He took away the veil, redeemed sinners to God, and so in principle made it possible again for holy God to visit with people on earth in the cool of the day.

But God does not yet come to visit with us as He did in Paradise, and that brings us to our third point:

We remain a sinful people, daily guilty of so many more iniquities than we realize. While we wait for the day of full restoration with our God, the angels portrayed on the Old Testament veil continue to play such a fundamental role on the contact between heaven and earth, God and man. What David sang in Ps 91 remains a reality today: today God our Father in Christ sends His angels to guard us, today we are surrounded by heavenly servants lest we get hurt in the battles of life.

No, the naked eye does not commonly see angels today, and that gives sceptics reason to mock. But we don’t see air either, yet no one disputes the presence of air; we’re all well aware we need air to live. So it is with the angels. They are as real and pervasive around the people of God as the air we breathe. And what do they do? Thanks to the triumphant work of the Lamb of God, that Son of Man who opened the way to the Father, these angels are servants sent from heaven to provide us with the care of our Almighty Father in Christ.

Our Post-modern world has more time for angels and spirits than used to be the case. That is a good thing. Angels are very real (as are demons!), and we do well to be very aware that Cosmic Highway No. 1 is today a very busy road. On Christ as the ladder, as the Way to the Father, heavenly messengers continually travel between Creator/Redeemer and the very real people He made – people like you and me, with real names, living in real towns and going to real schools. Those messengers are real, because God in heaven is so very interested in the weal and woe of His children-by-covenant.

But the travel of the angels will one day end. Revelation 21 relates that God Himself will one day travel that Cosmic Highway, following the path of the angels. The New Jerusalem, the dwelling of God, will not stay in heaven at a distance from man, but God will come – not to visit us in the cool of the day, but to live with us on earth! On that day the task of the angels as messengers between heaven and earth will end, for God shall come to us, and we shall dwell with Him. Our togetherness with God shall be eternally on this earth; here is where the future is! But it’s not a future of our making; it’s a future of God’s giving! For that day we long, with eager expectation. May the end of space travel come soon!

Yes, we are real people, as real as the folk of John 1. Our holidays are over, the struggles of life are real – as real as the concerns of the folk of John 1. But God gives to us a real gospel, beloved, as real as the gospel that came to the folk of John 1. Here is good news: The Lord Himself, the Lamb of God, the Messiah, the Son of God, the King of Israel, the Son of Man has really come to real people, and He’s opened up the highway to our God. This God sends messengers to us in the midst of the tears and strive of this life, because He is so very interested in us, instructs His angels to serve us, to protect us in 2004.

So we, with eyes of faith, we look and we see –because we believe it!- we see angels, servants of our God, ministering to us this year for Jesus’ sake. At home, at school, in the factory and on the road. And therein we see the care and love of our God for us.

That is enough. Amen.