Awesome

Gen 28:16,17 "Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.' And he was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven.'"

I woke up this morning and I thought of a word…the word was "awesome". I thought of the word and then I thought about the opportunity that I have in a few weeks to preach at church. I was searching for a sermon title and I had originally thought it would be: "Unbelievable but True" but I really was not satisfied with this title. I didn't like the word "unbelievable". I thought of other words like "incomprehendable" but this did not seem to fit either…and then the thought this morning: "Awesome". The subtitle is "Grasping the Greatness of God". I got up and immediately came to the computer and changed the slide on my powerpoint. Then I read Genesis 28 and guess what word came up? "Awesome". Weird, huh?

Isaac called Jacob to himself and blessed him. He charged him with the responsibility to not get a wife from the land of Canaan (Sound familiar? It was the same charge that Abraham gave to Isaac in 24:3,4.) Instead Jacob was charged to get a wife from one of the daughters of Laban. If he did this then the same promise that was given to Abraham and Isaac was given to Jacob: That he would multiply and inherit the land that God gave to Abraham. So Jacob took off and traveled from Beersheba to his destination. As he traveled he got tired and grabbed a rock for a pillow. (No memory foam was available.) As he slept, he had a dream. His dream was about a ladder that reached to heaven with God at the top. And God made him a familiar promise: "I will give you the land and multiply you. I am with you and will keep you wherever you go." Amazing. The same thing that Isaac said to him, he saw in his dream, only this time the promise came from the voice of God. Isaac woke up and realized something…that he had been in the presence of God! His response was to take the rock he used as a pillow and create an altar which he called "Bethel" or "The house of God". The place where God lived.

"The Lord is in this place…how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God." Now was the place awesome because of its location? Was it awesome because it was beautiful? Was it awesome because it had comfortable rocks? No. It was awesome because the Lord was there. The Lord made the place awesome because He alone is awesome.

Back to my sermon. What do I want to get across? That God alone is awesome. If anything else is awesome, if any other place is awesome, if any other people are awesome it is only because of God. If He dwells there, if He is in a life, if he inhabits a church then we can say that it is awesome because it is a place where God lives. May God live through me, my family and Lake Ridge so people only see one thing…our Awesome God.