Let me invite you to take up a copy of God’s Word and to turn with me to the book of Genesis as we are going to be reading chapter 24 and the first twenty-seven verses together and then we’ll look at verse 61. So chapter 24 of Genesis, reading the first twenty-seven verses and then verse 61. If you’re using the pew Bibles, you’ll find the passage on page 17.
Well this evening, as many of you know, this is the fourth in our evening sermon series which is entitled, “Indispensable.” And it is an opportunity for us to be able to turn our attention, to turn our gaze, to some of the nameless figures that are given to us in Scriptures; nameless figures who, simply living life amidst the complex messiness of this world, as they’ve lived their life, they were used by God to fulfill a crucial role in the unfolding of redemptive history. And from the world’s perspective, they were insignificant; they were no ones. But in God’s economy, in His economy, they were indispensable in this unfolding of the covenant of grace.
And this ought to be a great encouragement to each and every one of us because, irrespective of who you are, irrespective of how the world sees you, irrespective of the gifts of the graces and the strengths that God has bestowed upon you, we all are held to the same standard – and that is, that God requires us, as Micah says, “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before God.” We are to love God and love others, putting others before ourselves. And here’s the mystery – because friends, as we seek to faithfully live to the honor and glory of God Most High, to do all things in the service of the King, so our God is faithful to use the life that is poured out to make much of Jesus Christ. And that is partly what we are going to see taking place even in the passage that is before us.
Genesis 24. It’s a delightful passage; it’s a well-known narrative. Many of us have known this from when we were kids in children’s church and we have loved this passage and the story from those early years. It’s filled with intrigue. There’s suspense, there’s romance, and of course the best of all, it has this glorious, happy ending. However, not only is it a heartwarming story of how a boy meets a girl – and in this case, Isaac meets Rebekah and then instantly marries her – but these verses, in chapter 24, they chronicle a pivotal period in redemptive history. And it’s easy for us to miss it in the midst of the romance and the intrigue; it’s easy for us to miss how critical this story is in the movement towards the unfolding of the seed of the woman that Dr. Gibson spoke about this morning. And so, we’re going to see how Abraham commissions his old and faithful, unnamed servant, to go to a far country and to take a bride for his son that this same servant is the one who patiently waits for God’s providence to unfold as he calls to a lady and he woos her and he wins her before bringing her back to the father’s house. And then we are going to see how he gives thanks and he rejoices throughout the story, but particularly the end, he rejoices as he sees this son waiting to claim his bride for himself.
Now if you’re listening just to that outline, I’m hoping that you are hearing not just the story of Isaac and Rebekah, but you are hearing this redemptive plan of God to save a people for Himself across the nations and from across time. I’ll give you this as a little bite ahead of time and we’ll pick it up right at the end. The New Testament is very clear that Isaac is a type of Christ. He is a foreshadowing, a representative of Christ. We just need to think of Abraham and Isaac walking up the hill to the place of sacrifice. Isaac was spared and the ram was given as a substitute. Well Christ Himself was taken up the hill. He was sacrificed, but there was no substitute. He was the substitute. And so, as Isaac is the foreshadowing of Christ in our passage, I want you to be on the listen for how the Father sends His trusted servant, namely the Holy Spirit, who is at work in and through the church, the believers. And that He, the trusted servant, He woos and He chooses and He wins a bride for His Son. And then it is the Son who is patiently waiting to receive His bride at the glorious marriage supper of the Lamb. There’s a phenomenal redemptive implication that is embedded in this well-known narrative.
So, with that, before we read God’s Word, let’s bow our heads and let’s commit this time to the Lord. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we pray that You would take Your Word, prepare our hearts and minds, and implant it deep within each and every one of us. Use it to encourage us. Use it to draw us to Yourself. Use it to make much of Christ. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Genesis chapter 24, reading from verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years. And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had, ‘Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac.’ The servant said to him, ‘Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?’ Abraham said to him, ‘See to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.’ So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.
Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master; and he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor. And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. And he said, ‘O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.’
Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, ‘Please give me a little water to drink from your jar.’ She said, ‘Drink, my lord.’ And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, ‘I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.’ So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water, and she drew for all his camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not.
When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels, and said, ‘Please tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?’ She said to him, ‘I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.’ She added, ‘We have plenty of both straw and fodder, and room to spend the night.’ The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.’”
And then down to verse 61:
“Then Rebekah and her young women arose and rode on the camels and followed the man. Thus the servant took Rebekah and went his way.”
The grass withers, the flowers fade; the Word of our God, it stands forever. Amen.
Now before we get into some of the details of the passage that is before us, I think there are some important details in the backstory that would help us to understand what is transpiring here. Isaac, as you know, his beloved mother, Sarah, has just died. Genesis 23 tells us that she was 127 years old when she breathed her last. And Abraham appears to be close to his own death as we enter these first few verses of Genesis 24. In fact, the last recorded words of Abraham are given to us in the text that is before us as he is speaking to his servant. Isaac, we know, is about 40 years old; we are told that in Genesis 25. And it is all of these details that actually are influencing the search, the urgent search for Isaac’s wife at this point in redemptive history.
Now the question that obviously needs to be asked is, “Why is there such an urgency for Isaac to get married? Why does it matter if he gets married or not?” There’s plenty of people in Scripture and throughout the course of history who have remained single and have lived their single life unto the Lord. Paul tells us, whether you are single or whether you are married, live it unto the Lord. So why the urgency with regards to Isaac? Well the urgency is rooted in Genesis 12. Let me read a couple of verses:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
Now at this point in Genesis 24, God has already given the land that was promised to Abram and to his descendants. But how is God going to make him a blessing to the nations and that all the families of the earth would be a great blessing when there is no next generation at this point? You see, the entire future of the covenant depends on the family line of Abram. Abram knows this. He knows that everything, humanly speaking that is, everything hinges on Isaac finding a wife and having a family of his own so that eventually, the promised seed of the woman that was spoken of this morning, would come forth, and in that promised seed there would be the one who would save His people from their sin. See how the redemptive story continues from where we were this morning?
Friends, if you’ve ever been tempted to think that being a believer, being part of the people of God, is meant to mean that your life is uncomplicated and simple, this passage actually brings a tremendous corrective to you, because if there is ever an individual whose life should have been straightforward and uncomplicated, it should have been that of Abraham. After all, he is the one that heard the voice of God, the covenant promises from God’s mouth Himself. Surely if God promised it should have been, “One, two, three” – everything should have just fallen in place. But if everything was simple and uncomplicated, where would the gift of faith come in? What does it mean to trust and lean on the providence and the grace of God in the midst of the very circumstances of life if everything is straightforward and simple? What does it mean to know that what God ordains is right and good and true?
And so, what we see in the text is, before Abraham finishes his earthly journey, he puts his faith into action and he takes out an advert in the local Canaanite gazette. The heading says, “Wealthy, Handsome Son of Abraham Seeking Wife.” Subheading, “Eligible ladies, please submit resume.” Of course not! That’s ridiculous! What he does is, he turns to the one person in all the world that he trusts the most – it’s his old and faithful servant. And that’s the first point that I want us to see in this passage. I want you to see how the servant is commissioned. He is commissioned to go.
The Servant is Commissioned
You know, one of the things that strikes me as I was reading through this, I find it interesting that Abraham doesn’t embark on this most incredibly important endeavor by himself. This decision is crucial. So why doesn’t he? Some of that might be related to age, absolutely, but at the end of the day, who knows their son the best and who knows the wife that the son needs? Well that’s right, it’s not Abraham. It’s the Lord God Almighty, isn’t it? And so irrespective of whether it’s Abraham or whether it’s his right-hand man, Abraham knows that the Lord has already gone before him; that it is the Lord who is preparing the way and it is the Lord who has already placed His hand upon the one who is to be the wife of Isaac. See, Abraham is resting in the sovereignty of God and that’s why he is calling out and pleading for the God of heaven and earth as he commissions his servant. And so, as he entrusts this task to the servant, he knows that the servant is safe in the hands of his God.
Now a couple of things we need to just mention in passing. Don’t think that this servant is someone who has been randomly selected in the last couple of years and all of a sudden has been given this task. This is someone who has been journeying and in the household with Abraham for many, many, many years. He has been entrusted with small items, with middle-sized decisions, and now he has been entrusted with this very important one. We must also remember that he is part of the covenant community. He would have been circumcised as with the rest of Abraham’s household as God commanded back in Genesis 17. And in addition to that, he would have proven himself to be loyal, to be prudent, to be tactful, to be persuasive, and most importantly, to be utterly, utterly dependable. And some of those qualities we actually see emerging in the way that he deals with both Rebekah and Rebekah’s family in the context of this passage.
And so as you look at verses 2 through 4, we get to listen in to Abraham’s last recorded words here with his servant as he is commissioning him. Let’s read the passage where he says, “Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac.” It’s an interesting prayer, or an interesting commission I should say, because the only insistence that he has for his servant is that his servant not take or not select a daughter from amongst the Canaanites. Remember that God had taken His people, taken them out of amongst the nations and placed them in this new land and given that to them. And so for Isaac to go and marry a Canaanite woman, it would have been flagrant disobedience and may have compromised the seed and the lineage of the woman. And so the servant is to swear an oath, by the Lord of heaven and the Lord of earth, that he will do as he is being asked.
But the servant, he sees that there is a problem in Abraham’s reasoning. Verse 5, “Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land.” That’s a great question, isn’t it? After all, which young woman would leave her father and mother, her family and friends, her life and would listen to a stranger that she has never met except for the first time and would go to marry a man who she has never seen or met herself? Parents, that’s the exact thing we tell our kids don’t do! This was a different era, and of course there was a lot of wisdom and discernment that was going on behind the scenes, and of course more importantly, God was in the midst of this. But anyway, he says, “What happens if she doesn’t return?” to which Abram immediately, well he offers to Abram, “Maybe I can take Isaac, then?” and Abram immediately responds and says, “You may not take him back to where he came from. He is not to be removed from the land of birth, the land of promise.”
And then he says something to the servant that would have been a lightbulb moment. Verse 7, he says, “The Lord will send His angel before you.” Now we don’t, we read that and we kind of just gloss over it, but for the Israelites and for this servant of Abraham who would have been instructed and raised in the ways of God’s people, that was a lightbulb moment. These words would have reminded every Israelite of the time when God promised to lead Abraham to the promised land, which he did, and how God would continue to work in the future by going ahead of them in a pillar of cloud by day & a pillar of fire by night out of Egypt. And essentially, what Abraham is saying to his servant is, he’s saying, “As God worked then, guess what? God will work now.” He goes ahead of you and He will guide you as you go. And it’s with these words of assurance, freshly ringing in his ears, that he loads the camels with supplies and gifts and he embarks on the 400 mile – and I put this in inverted commas – the 400 mile, humanly impossible assignment to the homestead of Abraham’s relatives.
Now I want us to pause there and I want us to bring this a little bit closer to home because this has some great implications and applications for our lives here in the 21st century. The first one is that our text is instructive with regards to believers marrying in the Lord, believers marrying in the Lord. Young people, when you are looking for someone who is going to be your life partner, make sure first and foremost your priority is that they know the Lord Jesus Christ and that they are growing in their knowledge of that relationship. And parents, be praying for your child’s future spouse. Be praying for them even now. And then even when they do get married, don’t stop praying. Grandparents and parents, keep praying that every day the Lord would go before your children and your grandchildren and that they would live their lives in a way that brings honor and glory and that is pleasing in the sight of God. It’s part of Abraham’s desire here as he commissions his servant to go and get a bride for his own son.
But the second application is that, embedded in these verses, they also are a great encouragement in our own pursuit of Christ and our trust in God. You know, one of the great dangers is that when life gets hard, when we face insurmountable odds in our lives and there is weightiness on every side, the temptation is very real to compromise ever so slightly or to find an easier and more comfortable route in order to get to the end. That’s part of what the questions were designed to do as he posed it and brought it back to Abraham. “Perhaps there is a different way of doing this?” But you see, God calls us to actively press in at every moment. When things get tough, it’s an opportunity for us to be trusting the promises of God and to be trusting the God of the promises, knowing full well that He has us in the palm of His hands and that in the midst of it all He is sanctifying and He is shaping us as we grow in obedience and in our love for Christ. God is doing the work. That’s part of the active dimension of faith you could say.
But there’s also a passive dimension to faith, and that is where we are to prayerfully rest in God’s providence. And that brings us to the second point:
The Servant Prays
That I want us just to have a brief look at. I want you to see that the servant is the one who prays and then he patiently waits on God to bring things to pass. George Swinnock, he is one of the English Puritans, he writes this with regards to prayer. He says, “Prayer is like the ring Queen Elizabeth gave to the Earl of Essex and said, ‘If you are ever in distress, send this ring to me and I will help you.’” And then he continues, “God commands His people that if they be in any perplexity to send this ring (the ring of prayer) to Him.” Quoting Psalm 50, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you and you shall glorify Me.” And that’s part of what we begin to see in verse 10 through to much of the end of the passage before us. I would also qualify it that I wouldn’t wait until the day of perplexity or trouble to begin praying. As Christians, we ought to be nurturing the attitude of praying regularly, “praying without ceasing,” as we are told in Thessalonians so that when the day of trouble and when the day of perplexity arises, our instinct is to turn and to lay it before the feet of the One who is sovereignly in control.
So the servant, he leaves Abram’s house. The scene shifts immediately to the city of Nahor in Mesopotamia. It’s a 400 mile, month-long journey which is summarized in half a verse. Look at verse 10b. It simply says, “He arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor.” I love the way the Bible spares all the intricacies of what thirty days in the desert looks like. But really, it’s designed so that when we arrive at the city, our focus is immediately on the drama of God’s providence as it begins to unfold.
Let me say this. Friends, 400 miles gives a person a lot of time to fret and worry, to think and reflect, and to plan and to pray, and maybe a combination of all of those. But one of the things that we do see as he arrives in the city of Nahor, besides his exemplary character, we can certainly say that the servant was a man of prayer. He was a prayerful individual. Notice that as soon as he arrives at the water well, he prays. He’s committing this to the Lord. Friends, this prayer doesn’t simply emerge out of nowhere. He had learned how to pray in the community with Abraham. He had learned what to pray for, how to pray, why we should be praying. He had prayed with Abraham. He had seen that as an example and he himself had been spending hours and hours of time over the years praying for his own needs and of course the needs of his master. Matthew Henry writes this. He says, “Prayer is lifting up the soul to God and pouring out the heart before Him.” Lifting up the soul to God and pouring out the heart before Him. And so it would have been perfectly natural for this servant’s journey to be filled with prayer. Thirty days – what else is he going to do? And so you can imagine that it was a month of pleading with God to guide him. It’s a month of pleading that God would prepare the way; pleading that God would sovereignly orchestrate his meeting the chosen woman suitable for Isaac, pleading that she would respond positively to a strange man who is asking her to come and marry a 40 year old man, Isaac. And as he is praying that, you can imagine in his own mind he is thinking, “What am I doing? This is crazy! I must be crazy!” And then like the psalmist, he has to rail himself in. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Hope in the Lord.” He has to remind himself of the covenant promises that have been made to Abraham and that the Lord goes ahead of him in the angel and that ultimately God will work things out for good and true.
This is very applicable to the wrestling that we have in our own lives. And so he arrives in Nahor and in verses 12 through 14 we have the prayer that he offers to God. Just as a quick aside, it’s the first recorded prayer outside the intercession that Abraham offers for the city of Sodom and Gomorrah before God destroys it. As was mentioned this morning, whenever you have something that was introduced in its seed form in Scripture, you can use that as the seed which will then be developed and extrapolated out through the rest of the corpus of Scripture. And so in this prayer, we see a servant who is reliant upon the sovereignty of God; a servant who is asking God to lead the providential events of his life. He is leaning upon the Lord God Almighty in this decision that he is faced with.
Now there is another important word that is embedded in this prayer and it’s verse 12. There is a Hebrew word, “hesed,” which is translated as, “steadfast love.” And it refers to God’s covenant faithfulness. That’s what motivates him in this prayer. He’s praying back the promises that God has already established with His people. Friends, let me just say this as an aside. If you are struggling in your prayer life, this is always a safe way to pray. Take a passage of Scripture and put some notes. “What does this passage tell me about who God is and His person and His attributes, His works? What does this tell me about the promises of God? What does this tell me about who I am and my identity in Christ?” And then take those truths and pray it back to the Lord and use that as a springboard to energize and to revive and to renew your own prayer lives. It’s always safe to pray back the revealed will of God to Him because He has given that to us and it’s true.
But you’ll also notice that embedded in his prayer that the servant has devised a simple, and I think quite brilliant, little test. Maybe it’s a test that he devised in the thirty days in the desert as he was moving between Abraham and he was arriving at the city of Nahor. But it’s a test designed to reveal the character of this young lady that he is seeking out. And at the end of the day, which young woman at the end of her long day is going to volunteer some water, not just for the servant but also for ten camels? Let me explain. It’s known that a camel, at the end of a long journey at the end of a day, will drink up to 25 gallons of water. That’s 250 gallons of water that will be required for the camels. The water jugs in those days, the average amount that they used to carry was 3 gallons. You can do the math. That’s eighty journeys back and forth to go down and extract the water and pour it back into the trough so that the camels will be fully watered. It’s a test, you see, that is designed to reveal her humility, her hardworking nature, her selflessness, her compassion, and of course her hospitableness. Those are all qualities that Abraham’s son, Isaac, would have been looking for in a wife. And so this test is actually designed to show whether this is the right person or not. And so he prays. “God, use the test.”
And don’t you just love it? It’s the shortest wait for an answer in prayer because we’re told before he had finished speaking, Rebekah appears on the scene. So he starts to watch her and eventually he approaches her and he says exactly what he asked the Lord, “Lord, if I ask her for some water, would You please allow her to respond?” And that’s exactly what she does. The entire chapter demonstrates God’s faithfulness and His sovereign hand at work behind the scenes, that in the midst of the prayer and the plan that has been put to place, God is actually orchestrating from the side to bring across his path at the appointed time the providence of this young lady who is the right person and who has been appointed to marry Isaac.
And so they continue to have a little bit of a conversation, and as they get to know one another, he realizes that she doesn’t just pass the character test, but he realizes she is from the lineage of the family that he is supposed to be going to. Again, the hand of God’s sovereign providence bringing it to bear. He then goes back to – you can go read these verses for yourself – but he goes back to the homestead; she is excited. He meets with Bethuel and Laban, the brother and the father, and after he has explained everything, they themselves, we are told in the text, are forced to acknowledge that this is God’s doing. God had done this. But there was one more hurdle, and it’s a Mesopotamian hurdle. What about Rebekah? What does she say? Verse 58 – I just love it. No long explanation; she just simply says, “I will go.” That’s pretty remarkable when you think of the context and the circumstances that have just unfolded. But you see, she also recognized the hand of God at work and so she immediately obeyed and she became part of the spiritual line of Abraham.
So how does the servant respond? Look at verse 26 with me please. Verse 26, “The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.’” And then if you look at verse 52, verse 52 – When he had spoken to the rest of the family, “When Abraham’s servant heard their words, he bowed himself to the earth before the Lord.” After all the events, it leads him to a place of thanksgiving, of praise, of adoration, and he bows before God Most High.
Friends, this is the mystery of providence. God’s providence takes place in the midst of the slobber of camels in the water trough. It takes place in the messy details, the typical, ordinary details of our lives, and it’s as we rest and as we trust in the Lord, as we pray for daily mercy and daily grace, and as we see prayers being answered and as we see how He takes care of us in the most unexpected ways, it too brings us to this place where we bow down because there is no other explanation but to give thanks and to give praise and to adore the One that has our lives in His hands.
The Servant Brings the Bride Home
And then thirdly and just very, very briefly, I want you to see the servant bringing the bride home. The servant bringing the bride home. They’ve traveled the 400-mile return journey, and Isaac and Rebekah eventually spot one another from a distance and they prepare to meet each other for the first time. You can imagine there are some butterflies, maybe a little bit of anxiety and angst. “What are we going to say?” Perhaps it’s Isaac who breaks the ice and says, “Are you Rebekah?” to which she says, “Yes. You must be Isaac. I’ve heard so much about you on this 400 mile journey!” And they go off to begin life together. But have you ever stood back and wondered about how the servant responded at that point? Can’t you just imagine him grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat? Joy that has filled his heart as the mission that was entrusted to him to bring a bride home to Isaac is now complete.
It reminds me of another instance in the New Testament in John chapter 3. John the Baptist, he’s introducing Jesus to the crowds and his own disciples actually leave him to follow Jesus and people start to ask him questions. And he says these words. He says, “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is complete. He must increase; I must decrease.” Friends, let me say this as we wrap this up, as we bring it to a conclusion. At the outset, I said that Isaac, the son, is representative. He is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. But I wonder, as we were working through the text, as to whether you also realized that Rebekah is also a type. She is a representative of the Church. She is a representative of the Church. That is part of the picture, the redemptive picture that is embedded in this beautiful story. Donald Grey Barnhouse, once the preacher at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, he said this. He says, “She was thought” – speaking of Rebekah – “She was thought of before she knew it and was chosen when she did not know of the existence of her bridegroom.” It reminds us of Ephesians chapter 1 where we are elected before the foundation of the world. He has placed his love upon us and that we are predestined to be brought into union with Christ. You once were this, and He has made you this.
Christians, we are the bride. We are the bride, the bride of Christ. Do you remember being called by the Spirit of God, how He wooed you and how He won you by the loveliness and the beauties of the Lord Jesus Christ in His person and His work? Don’t ever forget that. Do you remember how we were called to love someone that we had not yet seen? That we felt the urge to leave family and friends and to go after this one who called us by name? And friends, we are journeying to meet Him at this point in time. We are journeying to that country, to the Father’s house, where one day we will gather around the table for the great marriage feast of the Lamb. The redemptive implications of this passage apply to you and I today.
One more nugget that I want to leave you with because if you’ve been listening, and if you read the passage carefully when you go from here, you will realize that the central character is actually not Rebekah. It’s not about the bride. But the spotlight on the story is on the person that we have been looking at, and that is, the servant. He is the central character. And in many respects the central character also is representative of something else. There’s typology that is being used here. And it represents the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who is at work in believers and through believers. As we proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ, He is the One that is at work through us to woo us and to win those who are hearing to the loveliness and the beauties of the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, that is why we are called to tell others about Jesus wherever we possibly can. Tell of His person. Tell of His work. Tell of His worth so that they might believe Him and they might follow Him and they might join us on this journey back to the land where He now resides. And He is waiting for us to welcome us. And in the in between, He is making us holy and blameless in preparation for that great and glorious day. It’s a passage that causes us to sing, “Praise God, from whom all blessings dwell and flow.”
Let’s bow our heads in praise. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we rejoice that You have given us Your Word. We rejoice at how these stories of the early parts of Scripture, they point us forward to a culmination in Christ – His arrival and His work throughout the ages – and how we have been brought and welcomed into that great number. We give You thanks and we give You praise. But Father, we do pray that if there would be anyone here this evening who is not yet joined in that number, Lord, may they yet repent and believe and come to follow the One that they have heard of, and Lord, that they may continue to be newly amazed at His grace and His love to them. Father, be with us and go with us. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.