Clough Genesis Lesson 62
A bride for Isaac; divine guidance – Genesis 24:1-27
Genesis 24, this section of Genesis is the
area of Isaac. We studied how the great
pioneer of
In Genesis 24 we have a classic passage on the finding of a bride. Abraham is going to pass off the scene shortly and he must leave his son with a bribe. Now for those who have been upset in the last few weeks by our assertions that the father/son relationship is the strong one of the two, husband/wife, and it’s for this reason that the father/son relationship is elevated to explain metaphorically what it means to have at least two persons in the Godhead, God the Father and God the Son, that that relationship is explained to us in terms of a father/son relationship. And some have been upset that this seems to undermine, at first glance, the husband/wife relationship and make that less. But this passage is one that will help you see they both work together because the father loves the son, and in Genesis 24 the father therefore provides the son with his wife. And so it’s the father’s love for his son that secures the husband/wife relationship, not the other way around. It’s not the husband/wife relationship that itself is threatened by the father/son imagery and again if we’re going to take our imagery correctly let’s take all of it correctly and Genesis 24 cannot be ignored.
Genesis 24 is a classic in another respect. Not only is it one of the key romantic passages of the Scriptures, but it’s also one of the key divine guidance passages of the Scripture, and what Christian is there who doesn’t have a problem at least once a week in divine guidance in his life. So Genesis 24 gives us plenty of principles that we can bring into our lives to, in a practical way, on a daily basis, define God’s will.
Genesis 24 begins with a circumstantial clause; Genesis 24:1 explains the action of verse 2. “Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. [2] And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh; [3] And I will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell. [4] But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. [5] And the servant said unto hem, Suppose the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again into the land from where you came? [6] And Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou not bring my old sin nature here again.”
So we have a strong passage of definition;
we want to watch as this unfolds, and out of it today before we’re finished we
ought to have a good review of how to find God’s will in our lives. Verse 1, as I said, was circumstantial. Let’s look at those circumstances because
they explain why it is that in verse 2 Abraham commissions a bride-searching
party. “Abraham was old, and he was well
stricken in age,” actually Abraham is 140 years old and Isaac is 40; we know
this from data in Genesis 25:20. At 40
years, so some of you single people that think you are 21 and life is all
behind you and you haven’t met Mr. or Mrs. Right yet, just relax; Isaac was 40
when he finally married. “Abraham was
old and well stricken in age” means that Abraham will no longer rule the house
of the family of
Again, going back to the position of the woman in Scripture, you have the man; the man is defined by his calling. Remember, God told Adam what he wanted to do; He wanted him to take care of the Garden and only after that role was defined toward Adam along came Isha, and Isha was a helper, but you see, she can’t be a helper if she doesn’t know in what area she’s supposed to help, and she can’t tell what area she’s supposed to help if he doesn’t know area he’s supposed to be doing things in. So it is all heavy in the responsibility of the man to decide before God what it is he is supposed to be doing. No other way can the woman’s role be defined in any helping sense. And so it is here, and I’ll show you that almost every other verse in Genesis 24 has a key word in it that points to the Abrahamic Covenant, over and over and over and over again. Now why the Abrahamic Covenant? It’s simple; the Abrahamic Covenant defines the calling of Isaac. And it’s against the backdrop of the calling of Isaac that the bride is chosen. She’s chosen with the full knowledge of what that boy is supposed to do with the rest of his life. And only against that backdrop of the knowledge of what God is supposed to do is she meaningful. So the first circumstance is that Isaac must shortly take over and to have a helper is the reason for the bride.
The second circumstance in verse 1 is that the Lord blessed Abraham in all things. That’s talking about riches; the blessing means giving material wealth. Abraham, by this time, is a wealthy man; don’t think of him as some sort of hot-rod camel driver bouncing around the dunes. Abraham is a very wealthy person and he has a large, large business. And to turn this business over to his son and to his son’s direction is going to require a stable life for his son and a stable life for his son means a stable wife for his son. So the circumstances in verse 1 are imminently crucial to what we’re getting to in the selection of a bride.
It’s also interesting that if we were to summarize these conditions we would add one third condition; besides the fact that Isaac is shortly going to reign over the family, making the decisions and needs a helper for that reason, not only is he going to manage great wealth and needs a helper for that reason, but obviously, if we look at the motif of Genesis he’s going to have to raise the promised seed, the progeny, and he needs a wife for that reason. So there are at least three good reasons why this is a critical point in his life.
Notice again, before we go further, the axiom, and all I can say, it’s just an axiom of progress that in divine guidance in relation to man and woman it is against the backdrop of the destiny of that man before God. You see it in the Song of Songs; remember the girl in the Song of Songs, the key romantic book of all the Bible; even in that book of all books what is the woman obsessed with; particularly in the first 3 chapters of the Song of Songs? Whether she will function as a queen or non, whether she has it in her character to be that kind of a woman for her kingly husband. And so since we see this reflected, even in the most romantic of all the books, we have to obviously assert that its an axiom that’s repeated inevitably in Scripture.
Genesis 24:2, “Abraham said to his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh.” Notice in verse 2 that it’s not Isaac that’s doing the managing of the family estate and family business. In verse 2 it’s somebody else; it’s the manager operating directly under Abraham that manages the property. This shows you at Isaac at this point, even though he’s 40 years old, has not taken over the family’s business.
Now comes a very strange thing, this peculiar form of oath. This oath only occurs, unfortunately, one other place in the Bible, with Jacob, so it’s hard to pin down exactly the nature of the oath, but the old Jewish commentators on this passage said for many, many centuries, and I haven’t found anything to refute what they’ve said and it seems to fit in the context, that this is basically a euphemism, “I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh” refers to the fact that he is actually touching the male organ at this point, and this has to do with circumcision, and circumcision is a sign of the Abraham, and so what it is is again evidence that the Abrahamic Covenant provides the legal motif behind the search for the bride. Remember, what does circumcision say? It says that we must produce a clean seed and the clean seed is the seed that will lead ultimately to the sinless Christ.
So we find the oath and the oath is given, the content of the oath, Genesis 24:3-4, with a discussion in verse 5. In verse 3, “And I will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth,” notice how God is called. When you read Scripture, particularly an Old Testament story, I urge you to pay careful attention to how God is described. It will tip you off every time as to what the main motif is in the vicinity of the context. And when you see the word, “the God of heaven, and the God of the earth,” those terms for universality, you obviously must have something in the context that’s talking about the God of all history, the God of all creation, for the words “heaven” and “earth” an antonymic word pair; they are a word pair that translates best in our language as the God of the universe. Well, if he’s using that title for God in this oath it must mean big things are expected.
The God of the universe, may He do it for you. Why? Because this prayer is going to be answered a thousand miles away from the Promised Land. This answer is going to take place in a geographical area remote to where the Word of God is central, and the author, to get across the point that we don’t have a little tribal god here, this is where the critics of the Scripture always err, they always want to make the God of the Scriptures a tribal deity, he only reigns within some small area and he’s not sovereign outside of that area. This disproves that. He’s the God of all history. But then He’s called LORD, and if you have a King James translation you’ll see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, which means that is the word Jehovah for the covenant name of God; again the word covenant, the relationship particularly is based part and parcel on this. [3] “You shall not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell.” Now at this point we begin to watch the principles of divine guidance. So let’s take this as an occasion to review some principles of diving guidance so we can all have a common mind as we approach the text and watch these principles reappear in the text; at the same time gain some practical applications for ourselves.
Turn to John 7. One of the first principles of divine guidance is the principle of dedication. And this is one that’s often overlooked; I believe that this is a principle that explains why it is that so many of us at times cannot discern God’s will, groping around in the dark, trying to figure something out and we never seem to be able to get it together. This principle of dedication points to something interesting. John 7:17, here’s the principle of dedication put as simply as it can be put. “If any man will to do His will, He will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” The principle in verse 17 is you’ve got to be willing to do His will. And if you are not wiling to do His will then certain things will not be clear to you. It’s that simple, it’s just axiomatic. We have to be willing to do His will when as yet we don’t know what His will is, we still have to be willing to do it. Only then will we know it.
Turn to Romans 12:1, the same principle, the principle of dedication, willing to do God’s will before we actually know what God’s will is. “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” The word “present your bodies a living sacrifice” means the future of your life. It’s talking about saying I want God’s will for my life, honestly now, I want God’s will for my life before I know what God’s will for my life is. Now this decision is one of the toughest decisions you can ever make; believe me, because if you really present your bodies a living sacrifice, this is addressed to believers, incidentally. Notice “brethren,” verse 1, “I beseech you, therefore, brothers in the faith,” this is an act, it can be apparently repeated and obviously ought to be typical of our daily attitude, but yet at times there will come those points when God will work with you to the point where you have to pause a moment and say okay, right here, right now, this is when I dedicate my future life to Christ. And it might become a momentous point in your life, it might not be, but there has to come those times if the Spirit really is working with you, that when dedication occurs.
Now the reason this is so slippery and so difficult for us is you know as well as I do what goes on in our mind. What we would like to know is for God to come up with a blueprint and say hey, there’s your life, do you like it? And we want to be in the position of finally vetoing His plan. We want to know all the cards in the hand before we’ll play the game. That isn’t the way God works, unfortunately. What He wants us to do is be willing to trust Him with all the cards and you don’t see the hands, for all you fundamentalists who don’t play cards. In this situation God wants to know whether we mean business, or whether we want the contingent veto. The moment you get to the point in your life where you’re willing to give up the contingent veto, the thoughts run through your mind, well God really isn’t trustable because look, if you give your life to God He’s going to have you out in the jungles peeling bark, or He’s going to have you doing some ridiculous thing with your life. Don’t do that; don’t make that decision, to trust God with your entire life because something bad is going to happen if you do that. Now since when is the God of the Bible a bad God? That reaction you are getting is satanic reaction. You want proof that Satan exists; you work in this struggle over whether your life is in God’s hands or not and you get that negative feedback, that is where Satan is influencing, right at that critical point. So the principle of dedication, most of the time, in certain kinds of problems, we don’t know God’s will because we have failed to really want it and he doesn’t promiscuously give revelation of His will to us. So much for that.
Now let’s go to the second area, the second principle is the sources of guidance. Where do you go to get divine guidance? We will see sources occur in our lives, we see them operate in Scripture. I suggest three sources. Obviously the first source is the inerrant Scripture. Obviously the first source is the commands, the direct commands of Scripture or the deduced commands of Scripture. Clearly, if the Bible tells you to do something you don’t pray about it, you do it. There’s no need to pray about divine guidance in that situation. For example, young people who date unbelievers, 2 Corinthians 6 says you have no business doing so because you’re getting involved with a non-Christian, you have Satan for your father-in-law. And in this situation the Scriptures are so clear you don’t have to sit around and pray about it. That’s sin, to pray about it in that situation. You know very well what the Scriptures are and we would love to cloak it in a cloak of piety, oh, I must pray about this deep spiritual decision. No, it isn’t at all; it’s just a farce. Those prayers are fig leaves that are covering a rebellious will for what is obviously and very clearly the will of God. So that’s one area, the direct and the deduced commands of the Scripture, and many there be, many, many areas of Scripture.
A second source; turn to Romans 14. A second source is your conscience, on the negative side only. Romans 14:23, in the context it’s talking about eating, and God’s Word has principles that control eating and one of these in Corinth was that the best steaks were being sold by the pagan temple and new Christians would go over to the temple to buy their steak and kind of get uneasy about all the other stuff that was going on in the temple and they’d look around and they’d say gee, I wonder, you know, this steak has been dedicated to those gods over there and they’re making money on it and all the rest of it and gee, I wonder whether it’s right for a Christian to eat the meat that comes out of that place. And a lot of them had hang-ups in their conscience. And so the principle in verse 23 sounds startling at first, but observe: “He that doubts is condemned,” or “damned if he eats,” why? “because he eats not of faith, and whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
Now I said conscience operates on the negative side only; I said that very carefully, you cannot obtain divine guidance by your conscience alone. That’s why God has given us Scripture. Conscience by itself can’t guide you, but it can guide you on the negative side and that’s evident here in verse 23 because Paul clearly teaches that it’s okay scripturally to eat that meat; no problem. The Bible doesn’t give you one command not to eat that meat, yet the conscience says no, no, no, no, no. Now in that situation which do you follow? The Scripture or the conscience. And the startling answer is the conscience. You say why, isn’t the Scripture the final norm and standard of the Christian life? Yes, but at this particular point the Scriptures are not being perceived by the new Christian to be authoritative; his faith hasn’t grown that much and so since his faith is still small he’s relying upon what he thinks is the will of God and so therefore his conscience goes on the red light, it says no, no, no, no, no, no, no, he doesn’t know enough doctrine to correct it here at this point. So Paul says rather than try to fake it if you conscience says no, don’t. The conscience, if you were to visualize things in terms of electrical circuitry, is like a switch; visualize the electricity as faith. When your conscience is signaling no you’ve got an open circuit; the electricity will not flow and faith will not operate, it won’t function. It’s simple, you cannot believe while your conscience says no.
Now let me give you a common every day illustration to show this. You may know a promise in the Word of God that applies to the situation. “Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” okay, common every day promise that you ought to know, 1 Peter 5:7. Well, you’ve memorized that promise and you’ve applied it a thousand times if you’ve applied it one time. But then there comes a time when you may be out of fellowship and you sit there and all of a sudden, out of fellowship, you get hit with this problem of worry, doubt. Then your mind thinks of 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” and you find yourself paralyzed and you can’t apply the promise. Now why is this? Is it because you don’t know the promise? No, you know it very well; the reason you can’t apply it is because you know basically God’s angry at you, and you’ve got to get right with Him first, then we’ll talk about applying the other promises. There’s a case where you follow the conscience, because the conscience says no and you’ve got to deal with it. So the second source is when the conscience goes negative then watch it; you’ve got one source of guidance there.
A third source of guidance, more complicated, Genesis 2:19. And this has to be used many times when you don’t have a command of God, your conscience doesn’t give you any negative flack, well then what do you do? How do you function in those times when you can’t find a particular Scripture to help you? Obviously we don’t walk around saying let’s see, this is verse 24, now what do I do and this kind of thing. We don’t operate that way; God doesn’t make us operate as computers. So there’s a third source of doctrine which I call the solution approximation method. We saw this operate in the book of Ruth; we see it operate in many places but Genesis 2:19 is the model location for it. “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Now God did not tell Adam every single name; hey Adam, you see that four-legged thing, that’s a gazelle. No, Adam looked at it and he named the animal. Now this is a peculiar area of divine guidance.
I demonstrated this during the book of Ruth with kind of a tic tac toe diagram and what I said was that in this area of your life if you’re looking around, trying to find… puzzling God’s will, you can narrow the area of possibility down by getting rid of large areas of territory with the Scripture. So you have one principle of Scripture, and that cuts out all of the territory up here, you know that isn’t God’s will. Like Naomi pointed out she wanted to get back in the land, she knew the laws of inheritance of the land, she knew the problem of welfare in the Jewish state and so on. So principle number one excludes everything here; principle two excludes everything here. You can have principle three, that excludes everything here; principle four, that excludes everything here. Well, now you’ve cut down a lot of possibility. And you’ve got it down to a small set of probabilities and possibilities. Now the question is, what do you do now because this is as far as you know Scripture, you don’t have any other guidance in there.
Well, what does Adam do in verse 19? He’s been told to name the animals, only a certain number of animals come in front of him. How does he name them? He names them by studying general revelation; general revelation is the structure of nature and the structure of man. Adam looks at them and he studies. We have common sense. We have exposure and experience wisdom based on general revelation; creativity, all these things. Those are the things you use in that situation. You are not going to get any more divine guidance than that. Adam didn’t in verse 19; you aren’t in those same situations in your life. We’ve got to go on the basis of common sense.
This explains something. This explains why it is you can see somebody that’s come out of a very poor, unstable home situation, never has learned common sense, and then they become Christians and they sit and they very carefully take in the Scriptures, they take in every doctrine, every passage, they study their systematic theology, and they still don’t know how to come in out of the rain. Hey, Lord, what’s the deal, how can these people sit here and no chapter after chapter of Scripture, be exposed to all the theology and still wind up nitwits? What’s the trouble? The trouble is they don’t have any common sense and they don’t get common sense because they’re not exposed to general revelation. General revelation would include divine institution number three, the family; they haven’t been exposed to a stable home and therefore they haven’t benefited from a stable home and so they are idiots in their soul and it takes a long time besides Bible doctrine, it takes a long time of just living before they make up for the first 21 years of their life that was spent all screwed up. It takes them a long time to regain lessons they could have learned very quickly at, say age 10, age 12, age 15, now take years to learn, say between 25 and 35, between 30 and 40, we have to regroup all this territory we’ve lost because we don’t have common sense borne of general revelation. And so this is a third source of divine guidance and one that is needed.
So those are the sources to go to: the Scripture, the conscience, and the structure of general revelation, know what it is we’re trying to do.
Now a third principle. The third principle is application or approaches to applying this. I’ve given you the sources but oftentimes that’s not enough. Oftentimes you get stalled, you think about it so much until your mind hurts and so you have to come back around and try different approaches. What are some approaches you can use? One is called what I call the norm approach, or the norm and standard approach and that is you’re simply asking the question, what does the Bible say? What are the principles here, boom, boom, boom, straightforward, clear. But oftentimes this really doesn’t help you and you have to go to another approach; the approach which I call, and you’ll see it here in Genesis 24, the continuity approach. It’s given in principle in 1 Corinthians 7:20, “Abide in the calling wherein you are called,” the principle there is here’s the Christian, he’s a slave; Paul comes to Corinth, this Christian says hey, I’m a Christian, now God’s going to lead me out of slavery. And Paul says maybe He will and maybe He won’t. “Abide in the calling wherein you are called,” namely, if you were called as a Christian as a slave you remain as a slave unless you get very clear indicators to go some other way. In other words, what we’re saying is God doesn’t lead you like this, zigzag, zigzag, zigzag, zigzag. He leads you with a curve.
Now how do you, in practice, operate and apply this approach? You do it by looking at how God has led you in the past. Here’s 1978 going on 1979 and here’s your life. To do this you may want to keep a diary, just a short notebook of prayer requests, prayer answers that you’ve had. But you observe to watch how God works; you see yourself heading down and you’ve got two options: option A and option B. And you look at option B and you say oh-oh, I see some things in option B that are going to give me a hard time and I know they’re going to give me a hard time because over here I had a hard time with it, over here I had a hard time with it. Now the question is, does God want me to go on option B and get clobbered again, am I strong enough spiritually to take this or not. When you start thinking in terms of God’s guidance this way you’re using the continuity principle; what was God doing with you life before the present moment? So that’s the second approach that you can try.
But there’s a third approach that you can also try. A third approach is what we call the help or hinder approach and the approach is very simple, maybe not as objective as the other approaches but nevertheless helpful. Here’s the approach; you come along in life, a fork in the road: option A, option B, which way do you go? Ask yourself if I go option A does this help my spiritual life or does it detract from it. If I go option B does this help or does it detract. So you can try the help or hinder approach. These are some common practical approaches to finding God’s will for your life. Don’t overlook, however, the first one, dedication.
Now Genesis 24 and why no Canaanite girls qualify for Isaac. Keep in mind Abraham has no crystal ball, he has no prophetic word in Genesis 24; he doesn’t have a hotline to God to call him up and find out exactly the girl’s name, rank and serial number. He has only the same principles of divine guidance that you have and I have. Well now how can he find this wife for his son. Well, notice the statement he makes. The first one he makes in verse 3 is I do not want a Canaanite girl for a daughter-in-law. You can say the old man is prejudice and so forth. No he isn’t. What he has observed, here is where common sense comes in, remember, the third source, common sense. Maybe Abraham can argue this way, he can have the first principle that says I don’t want an unbeliever for my son; my son is a believer and therefore I don’t want a non-believer so I can get rid of all the non-believing girls. But maybe one or two Canaanite girls are believers. Why does Abraham still exclude the believers who might exist among the Canaanites? Because maybe he’s observed some of them and he’s noticed that the Canaanite culture takes a generation or two to get out of the soul, and so therefore, since his son, Isaac, immediately is going to be charged with great things for God, he cannot afford to have a girl who, even though she’s a believer, simply doesn’t have the long-term built-in common sense and doctrinal maturity to be a wife for him. So categorically at verse 3 he eliminates, on the basis of that information, all Canaanite girls.
Next statement, Genesis 24:4, he boxes it
in now, the next statement he says I want you to “go to my country, and to my
kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.”
So he makes a second statement, I want a girl out of my blood line. Now is this racial prejudice? No.
It’s a principle that this girl must have character compatible with the
calling of his son, once again. And
apparently, though the Bible doesn’t tell us this, we can infer from it, it was
in Abraham’s blood line that the Scriptural record was being handed down. Think for example, where did Abraham get
Genesis 1-11 from? It came from
somewhere didn’t it? Conceivably it came
from father to son, father to son, father to son, father to son. So what I’m saying is that my kindred back in
my country at least have more revelation than these people in the land. So the second principle he deploys is I want
to go where the highest probability is of getting a mature Christian
woman. So I’m not going to find her in
Now Genesis 24:5, a reasonable objection to this approach, he says, well maybe the woman is not going to follow me, I’m going to go up there, says this servant, on kind of a screwy mission, do you think some girl is going to just hop on my camel and trot back with me to marry a guy that she’s never seen; how’s that going to work? “…must I needs bring your son again to the land from which you came,” you know, she might want to meet the guy first. Verse 6, “And Abraham said unto him, Beware that you do not bring…” “do not bring my son back.” So now he’s got a third thing and so right here we have a triangulazation. No Canaanite girl, that’s one principle; it’s the same principle as 2 Corinthians 6. I want one of my kindred, that’s the principle you see early in the song that Adam sings to Eve, oh, she is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh and so on, the principle being that they are most compatible. And the third principle he’s saying is I do not want Isaac to go back there and meet her.
Well now you can say the old man has really flipped his cork. No. What was the deal now, why does he lay down these stringent conditions in finding a bride? The Bible again doesn’t say but we can speculate. Why do you think that Abraham, who loved his son dearly, did not want him to leave the land? I suspect it’s the continuity principle, that Abraham learned every time he was in trouble it was outside of the land. And he doesn’t want his son to get outside of the land, so to be real hard-nosed about it he’s going to say, no, I don’t care what happens, I will risk not even getting a girl but I am not going to let my son get out of this land. I did it twice and every time I did it I got faked out. So again he is applying the continuity principle. And as each principle is applied this territory gets cut down, smaller and smaller and smaller. Right now three principles have been applied and that leaves an area of a zone for the will of God.
Now, Genesis 24:7 is his answer to the restriction problem. Verse 6 obviously restricts it because you can imagine this poor guy saying what kind of a mission is this, I’m supposed to get a girl for his son, this girl is supposed to never see his son and supposed to be automatically will to just give up everything she has, her home and everything, and come and marry a guy she never saw before, come on Abraham!
Verse 7 is Abraham’s answer, “The LORD God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, who spoke unto me, and who swore unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; He,” that God, “will send His angel before thee, and you will take a wife unto my son from there.” Now the point of verse 7 is that God separated Abraham, and this is the continuity principle again, he reasoned look, didn’t God call me alone to a land that I hadn’t seen before; wasn’t that just as screwy as a girl leaving her home to marry a man she hadn’t seen before. You can say that’s hard on the girl but it’s just as hard on the man, pack up all his business, all his plans, all his resources and just head over into the wild blue yonder and know nothing about where he’s going. That’s just as much a trial to the man as the other is a trial to the woman. So Abraham says the God who did that to me, He’s the same God that can bring us a bride. So he answers the restrictive clause with a faith-rest attack; he says I’m going to faith-rest it right at that point. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, I’m going to trust God for it, but I know one thing, I do not want my son there, so God’s going to have to work around that restriction. God loves to work around godly restrictions; He just loves to do this, it challenges His ingenuity. You watch.
Genesis 24:8, “And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then you will be clear from this oath: only bring not my son there again.” See, he’s still dogmatic about that restriction, but look what he says in verse 8, if the woman won’t be willing to follow you, now there’s proof that Abraham has no crystal ball in which he’s 100% certain he’s going to find a bride. Verse 8 tells you that there’s some uncertainty in his mind, there is a possibility, and this is what makes this so familiar to you and me because that’s exactly the way we pray; we try to design a specific prayer request and we always have kind of an escape clause because unless God has personally boomed down to us, go ahead and pray that, we don’t know. So therefore in that situation we have this uncertainty thing and we have to deal with it. And that’s what the servant is saying. If she doesn’t, okay, no sweat, I’ll release you of the oath.
So Genesis 24:9, the oath is formally taken
and the journey proceeds. [“And the servant put his hand under the thigh of
Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning tat matter.”] Now this journey is a classic in how God
leads people who are willing to be led in the most peculiar way. Follow as I read: Genesis 24:10, “And the
servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and he departed; for all
the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and he went to
[15] “And it came to pass, before he had finished speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. [16] And the damsel was very beautiful to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known he: and she went down to the well, and she filled up her pitcher, and she came up. [17] And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water from thy picture. [18] And she said go ahead, Drink, my lord: and she hastened, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. [19] And when she has finished giving him drink, she said, I will also draw water for thy camels also, until they have finished drinking. [20] And she hastened, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, she ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew water for all his camels. [21] And the man, wondering at her, held his peace, to see whether the LORD had made his journey prosperous or not.”
[22] “And it came to pass, as the camels had finished drinking, that the man took a golden ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her wrists of ten shekels weight of gold. [23] And he said, Whose daughter are you? Tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in? [24] And she said I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore unto Nahor. [25] And said moreover unto him, We have both straw and fodder enough, and room to lodge in. [26] And the man bowed his head, and worshiped the LORD. [27] And he said, Blesses is the LORD God of my master, Abraham, who has not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren.”
A fascinating account of how a believer followed God’s will. Let’s look at some of the details. In verse 10 he takes ten camels; now it wasn’t that he was fond of camels. Camels were beasts of burden to carry things. What was he carrying? Wealth; notice what it says in verse 10, “all the goods of his master.” Abraham is an upper class, economic upper class, businessman as well as a spiritual upper class person. God has blessed him; remember we read in verse 1 God has blessed Abraham. So by now he has great wealth and the customs of the East were that the deal was made between the family of the bride and the family of the groom. And the deal involved tremendous wealth transaction. Marriages were backed up in a very material businesslike way in that time. That’s, incidentally, where we got the document that we use in weddings here, the marriage contract thing. That came originally out of Orthodox Jewry that persisted in this argument that there were deals made at the point of marriage and the deals included exchange of thousands of dollars of wealth; the marriages were rooted in a business contract. That’s what the ten camels are for.
So he goes… where does he go? He goes to the city of
And he did it at the well of water, at the
time of the evening, the time that women go out to draw water. Now again, no big prayer in verse 11, he’s
looking for a girl, he goes where the girls are. And in the city life where were the
girls? They had their chores to do and
the chore was go down and get water, incidentally showing in the Scriptures
again and again the association between the well of water and the woman. Jesus talks to the woman at the well. You find Hagar at the well; you find Rebekah
at the well. Again and again and again;
that’s no accident, the woman is the life-giver, the water is that which gives
life and again and again you’ll see this juxtaposition of the woman at the
well. So here he goes to the well of
water, the place where the women come to draw.
Now conceivably and logically he could have said something else; he
could have said well, we want an upper class princess type of girl to follow in
Sarah’s footsteps, so why don’t I go to some of the big parties in the city of
He doesn’t pray oh God, drop one right here; he goes and uses normal cause/effect, finds them and looks at them as they work; that will tell you what kind of character. Now some of them may be characters but he wants one with character.
He said, “O LORD God,” notice again the connection with the covenant, “LORD God
of my master, Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show
kindness,” and the word “kindness” is the Hebrew word chesed, it’s the Hebrew noun for love that means love that
functions with a covenant. And that’s
how the vocabulary of this chapter tells you again and again, we saw it in the
oath, the peculiar oath form in verse 6, verse 2, all of this detail is to show
you that the selection of the bride is against the backdrop of his
calling. So, show chesed to my master, Abraham.
In other words, give him the progeny, Lord, that You promised, and to
get that we need this woman.
[13] “I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water,” and then he proposes his condition. Verse 14 is the condition, but again to show you that the guys aren’t being religious fanatics about this, in verse 14, though as particular as that petition is, notice in verse 21, after Rebekah has fulfilled those conditions he still stops because she has fulfilled all the conditions of verse 14 by verse 20, and yet in verse 21 he’s standing still. Why? Because there’s one added condition; she’s got to be of the blood line; she’s got to be in the family of Abraham. And so though the conditions of verse 14 were fulfilled, it doesn’t tell him completely.
Yet verse 14 does do something and does challenge us as Christians. The challenge of verse 14 is to pray specifically. I wonder why we’re afraid to pray specifically. God loves specific prayers; look, the most He can do is say no, you haven’t lost anything. But pray specifically. We’ve had some wonderful answers to prayer in our congregation, of people who have faced impossible barriers in their lives; barriers to their professional careers in many instances and they say God, You’d better open that door because I’m walking and You’re going to peel me off the door if you don’t open it, so let’s open that door. And the doors were miraculously opened. Now why? Because somebody prayed. Remember last Sunday night you heard some law students. What did the do? How did they get involved at Tech, getting into the law journal, writing a thing, envy of complete number of Christians around the country; why? It started with prayer, special prayer. Did you hear what they said? We thought through where were the critical areas in the law school that we wanted to control. And they studied, and then they took those particular things and they took particular special petitions before God and God answered them in a particular special way. God is not going to answer any more specially than your petition is; sloppy petitions get sloppy answers. And so verse 14 is a particular petition that got a very particular answer.
Genesis 24:15, not only did he get a particular answer, look at how quick it came. “…before he had finished speaking,” before he even finished praying, so here he is mumbling a prayer and the camels are going mnam, mnam, mnam, mnam, like this, and all of a sudden Rebekah comes in the scene, so quick. Perfect sovereignty, perfect timing of God. And she comes out, and in verse 16 the Scriptures add this because this kills off the old problem of God gave her ugly pills or something before He put her on the scene, this shows you that she’s an attractive girl; the emphasis isn’t on her attractiveness, the emphasis is on her character, but nevertheless… incidentally, she was a girl that you’d look 3 or 4 times at. But at least, single fellows, you will notice that in all this praying it is directed toward her character. This guy doesn’t walk up to the well and wait for the first bra-less wonder to trot by and go after her. He waits until a girl who has character is there and he makes that the issue. And though verse 16 is there, it’s there as an incidental to the main purpose.
All right, the test happens, verse 17-18, now the camels in verse 19, how they’re used in all this. Now maybe you don’t realize this but if you observe 20 you see where she’s running back and forth between the camels and the well. Has it ever occurred to you, as you read verse 20, how many times she did that? You figure it out, how many pounds of water could that girl carry? Not very much, surprisingly much but still, of all animals which kind of animal takes the most water. When a camel’s got all his fuel tanks empty you’ve got to gas him up for a long time before he’s going to fill up and she’s got ten of them sitting there waiting for water. And so this girl has to go to the well, fill up the trough, go to the well, fill up the trough, go to the well, fill up the trough, and she’s running back and forth. Those are repetitive tenses in verse 20. She didn’t just do this once in a while.
The first time I read this story as a young
Christian I saw this and I don’t know what I was visualizing, I was visualizing
her, she kind of had a few drops left in her canteen and she kind of tapped one
on the nose and a drop here and a drop there as she went down the line. But that’s not the story; this girl
worked. That was a big job, a fleet of
ten camels; like tem Mack trucks pull up in your gas station and you sit there
pumping, a long time to fill up those tanks.
So that shows the dimension of the character of the girl. Just think of it in normal, straightforward
physical picture the author wants us to see.
So the man sat there and watched her, verse 21, for some time, it took
her maybe an hour or two to do this whole thing, and all the time he’s watching
her, watching her, watching her, and he’s thinking, she’s answered all of the
petitions except one. I’ve got to find
out whose daughter is she?
Verse 22, following the etiquette of the ancient orient he gives her some gifts. It’s not an earring, it’s a nose ring that they used at that particular time, but it was obviously very expensive, a good gift, and then in verse 23 he broaches very delicately the house and the place. It encroaches upon hospitality, notice. He ties, verse 23, the hospitality to her family, again denoting ever so gently but every probing to find out the character of her home.
And then verse 24, the depiction of it, and that’s why in verse 27 the conclusion, he says, “Blessed be the LORD God of my master, Abraham, who has not left destitute my master of His,” the pronoun “His” is God’s, God’s mercy is chesed again, there’s the same word and once again, for about the fifth time in this narrative we’ve got proof that the whole story of the selection of the bride is up again a prior idea, the covenant must go on, there must be a woman who will carry on that godly line and she must be the right person, and God, therefore, picks her out. But he does so with human doing; hence the last, very careful and classic statement of divine guidance, verse 17, the last part: “I in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren.” Do you know what that condition, “I in the way” means? That if he wasn’t in the way the Lord would not have led him. This is the delicate balance between sovereignty and human responsibility and you don’t want to get so heavy on sovereignty that you negate history and you become a Docetic, that history doesn’t amount to anything, it’s just an appearance. Baloney it’s an appearance. Here in verse 27 he had to do something, he had to be in the path and only then, when he got on the path… how did he get on the path? Abraham gave him three triangulazations, he knew the general area, he went to Nahor, he added some common sense to the solution, pinned it down some more, he said okay, I’m going to go to Nahor’s city, then I’m going to go to the well, pick out the girls with character and then finally he found this particular one. All the way getting it down, getting it down, getting it down, cutting it down, principle after principle until he waits for the Lord to lead him in this area. And that’s why he [can’t understand word] “the LORD God of my master.” Now the Abrahamic Covenant is secure for another generation; Rebekah becomes the mother of the next generation.
So how did the sovereignty of God work out in history? Was it ever uncertain? No, not from God’s point of view. But in practice it worked out because believers applied through choice the principles of divine guidance.
We’ll conclude by singing