Genesis 24 God in the Transitions

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsek and is a part of the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis.

If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

We've spent a lot of time in the book of Genesis so far, would you guys agree with me on that? It's been a journey in the book of Genesis, and we are almost halfway done. Almost halfway done, all right?

I want to let you know that I'm going to be taking a break at the end of the summer from the book of Genesis. We're going to be moving over to the New Testament book of 1 John, and probably that will carry us through the end of the year, finishing 1 John.

I think sometimes it's good to kind of break things up, and we can kind of get so Old Testament focused that we're missing some of the New Testament, so I'd like to bounce back and forth like I did with the series on the book of Acts.

It took me three years to get through Acts, but in between there, I preached Esther and Jonah and Joshua, and I put some other books in the middle of it so that we were able to kind of take that really long book and that long series and kind of cover some other things in the middle of it.

That's just to let you know where we're going so you can be prepared. I would encourage you to get to know 1 John as we're going into a series about that. If you're looking for something to study in your own personal time with God and your own time in the Word, then that would be something good for you to already be connecting with that book as we're approaching it and thinking about it for yourself and letting it change you and transform you from the inside out as we come to that text, so that would be a good thing if you're looking for something like that, but hopefully you've been growing through the book of Genesis.

Have you been growing in your understanding of who God is and knowing Him better? I know that I have, but I want to take a moment this morning to just talk in terms of as we think about church growth and stages that churches go through, as a shepherd of this flock, I want to give you a caution this morning as a church.

The Danger of Comfort and Inward Focus in a Growing Church

I've grown in my conviction lately that recast could potentially be at a dangerous stage in our history. Now, I've probably got your attention, but if you study church history, if you understand how churches go, as a leader of the flock, I've been here from the very beginning, obviously, church planner, got this thing kind of rolling, and obviously it's God's work, but everything in the first couple of years was tentative, which makes it kind of exciting and everything is new and you're not quite sure how this whole thing is going to work out.

It was very outreach oriented. Everything was focused on reaching the lost and being out engaged in the community and connecting with people out in the community and getting kind of the word out and a very outward focus.

Can you relate to that and understand it? Some of you have been here from the very beginning. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Everything was very focused outside of the walls of taking the gospel out to people out in our community.

But the reality is that now that we've grown in numbers and God has blessed us with many decisions to follow Christ, we could easily sit back into a stage where we begin to pat ourselves on the back and go, great job us, right?

Good job recast, we've arrived. We could have that mindset. Are you getting what I'm saying? Where we could begin to kind of slack a little bit in our outreach out into the community. And that is something that I think we ought to be very, very careful of.

We could find ourselves in a place of comfort and ease, status quo and growing in our inward focus as a church. Now many will talk about the mission of the church as building up Christians. And I disagree in one way and agree in another.

Is that a fundamental thing that the church ought to be doing is building up believers? Yeah, it is. Is that why Jesus has left us here is for our own sake, for what happens within these four walls? Is that what the church exists as its ultimate end?

It is not. That's a part of the great commission. That's part of the plan, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you. But we exist to connect sinners with a savior, to connect people with the reality of the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ.

I believe the mission of the church is to be a lighthouse to the world and the light we shine out is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We make disciples and then subsequent to making disciples, we then follow the order that Jesus gave us and to teach them to obey all that he has commanded them.

So it's both, right? It's both aspects. But I think churches as they go through history, they win some to Christ and then eventually they go, you know what, we need to get these people to the place where they're strong and they forsake bringing more to Christ, right?

So they throw out one for the sake of the other. And that's what I want to caution us about. As a church, we cannot afford to take a vacation from the mission that God has called us to. And it will be our tendency, it is a tendency in many churches to slide away from the promises of God and the good news he has offered us into busyness and activity.

I've seen churches at our stage give up on sharing the gospel in the community because they are satisfied with where they are. And to be honest, they don't want the church to grow anymore. They don't want it to grow because in essence, they're comfortable at a church this size.

And I think that challenges, that could challenge maybe some of us that are sitting here. It can challenge my own heart that, hey, this is comfortable. We've got a lot of work to do. We've got a lot going on here.

And do we really want it to grow? And that's something that I just want to be challenging all of us to think about as we move forward. There will be times of transition. I sense as a pastor that we're kind of at that point where we are making decisions that will be for outreach and for further growth.

And sometimes it feels like there are gaps in ministry and that's just reality of doing life together as a church. In our text this morning, we encounter a sense of transition in the book of Genesis. The baton is going to be shifting away from Abraham if we spent some time talking about Abraham.

We've spent weeks talking about Abraham. The baton is shifting away from him to his son Isaac and we see the first transition in the promises that God has given to humanity through Abraham. And God raises up a faithful servant that we're going to talk about in our text to bridge the gap.

And we see that God is working his plan even in the absence of his chosen man, Abraham, who is going to become progressively absent in the next, well, this week and then progressively absent next week all the way to the grave.

Abraham Secures a Wife for Isaac by Faith in God's Promises

So open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 24. That's page 15 in the Bible and I'll see it back in front of you. And we are going to read the entire thing. It is 67 verses and yet I think that there's a benefit in us reading the word of God, letting it pour over our minds, letting it roll.

I'd encourage you to have it open in front of you and a text this long, it could be easy for you to start wandering into tomorrow and the work week. And so I encourage you to follow along and read with me as I read it that we actually take in the word of God this morning.

But Genesis chapter 24, 1 through 67. 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 she'll 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 10 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, Oh 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, Rebecca, 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. As 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 half a shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing 10 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 towards my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen.

Then the young woman ran and told her mother's household about these things. Rebecca had a brother whose name was Laban. Laban ran out towards the man to the spring. As soon as he saw the ring and the bracelet on his sister's arm and he heard the words of his, of Rebecca, his sister, thus the man spoke to me.

He went to the man and behold, he was standing by the camels at the spring. He said, come in, oh, blessed the Lord. Why do you stand outside? For I prepared the house and a place for the camels. So the man came to the house and unharnessed his, unharnessed the camels and gave straw and fodder to the camels.

And there was water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. Then food was set before him to eat, but he said, I will not eat until I have said what I have to say. He, Laban said, speak on.

So he said, I am Abraham's servant. The Lord has greatly blessed my master and he has become great. He has given him flocks and heard silver and gold, male servants and female servants, camels and donkeys.

And Sarah, my master's wife, bore a son to my master when she was old. And to him, he has given all that he has. My master made me swear, saying, you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land I dwell.

But you shall go to my father's house and to my clan and take a wife for my son. I said to my master, perhaps the woman will not follow me. But he said, the Lord before whom I have walked will send his angel with you and prosper your.

Way.

You shall take a wife for my son from my clan and from my father's house. Then you will be free from my oath when you come to my clan. And if they will not give her to you, you will be free from my oath.

I came today to the spring and said, oh, Lord, the God of my master, Abraham, if you if now you are prospering the way I the way I go, behold, I'm standing by the spring of water. Let the virgin who comes out to draw water to whom I shall say, please give me a little water from your jar to drink.

And who will say to me, drink, and I will draw for your camels also. Let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master's son. Before I had finished speaking in my heart, behold, Rebecca came out with her water jar on her shoulder and she went down to the spring and drew water.

I said to her, please let me drink. She quickly let her jar let down her jar from her shoulder and said, drink, and I will give your camels drink also. So I drank and she gave the camels drink also. Then I asked her, whose daughter are you?

She said, the daughter of Bethuel, Nahor's son, whom Milca bore to him. So I put the ring on her nose and the bracelets on her arms. Then I bowed my head and worshiped the Lord and blessed the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham, who had led me by the right way to take the daughter of my master's kinsman for his son.

Now then, if you're going to show steadfast love and faithfulness to my master, tell me, and if not, tell me that I may turn to the right hand or to the left. Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, the thing has come from the Lord.

We cannot speak to you bad or good. Behold, Rebecca is before you.

Take her and go.

Let her be the wife of your master's son as the Lord has spoken. When Abraham's servant heard their words, he bowed himself to the earth before the Lord. And the servant brought out jewelry of silver and of gold and garments and gave them to.

Rebecca.

He also gave to her brother and her mother costly ornaments. And he and the men who were with him ate and drank and they spent the night there. When they arose in the morning, he said, send me away to my master.

Her brother and her mother said, let the young woman remain with us a while, at least 10 days. After that, she may go. But he said to them, do not delay me since the Lord has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master.

They said, let us call the young woman and ask her. And they called Rebecca and said to her, will you go with this man? She said, I will go. So they sent away Rebecca, their sister and her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men.

And they blessed Rebecca and said to her, our sister, may you become thousands of 10 ,000 and may your offspring possess the gate of those who hate him. Then Rebecca and her young women arose and rode on the camels and followed the man.

Thus, the servant took Rebecca and went his way. Now, Isaac had returned from Bir Lahai Roy and was dwelling in the Negev. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field towards evening. And he lifted up his eyes and saw and behold, there were camels coming.

And Rebecca lifted up her eyes. And when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel and said to the servant, who is that man walking in the field to meet us? The servant said, it is my master. So she took her veil and covered herself.

And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. And then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah, his mother, and took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, we encounter in this text a transition period, a time in between and questioning and wondering, will you bless the offspring of Abraham as you had promised?

And we see your faithfulness time and time again, text after text in the book of Genesis of you being the one who is carrying all of this forward. And Father, we sense in our own lives that we go through eras and times of transition and a period of time where we need to put our trust in you.

And Father, there's so many promises that you've given to us and so many good things that you have given us in blessing and the most important thing being salvation through your son, Jesus Christ. And I pray that as we come before you to worship, that our hearts would recognize our need for.

You.

That we would come as people without anything to give except worship in essence and faith in you and trust in you. Father, that we would come with empty hands but with hearts full of joy and gratitude that you have provided a way for us through your son, Jesus Christ, and his sacrifice on the cross.

Father, that we would be a people who worship you, not just here on Sunday morning as we sing these songs, but worship you with our very lives. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Always appreciate it, you guys, the time and energy that you put in each week and grateful for that.

I encourage you to get comfortable. I know we just took a break, but there is more coffee, donuts, juice at any time. And settle in, have your Bibles open in front of you to Genesis chapter 24. And we are going to settle into what is the longest recorded account for us in the book of Genesis.

That doesn't necessarily mean the longest sermon you've ever heard. I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see if we can get through this. But it is the longest, literally the longest contiguous recorded account in the entire book of Genesis. So, put that in perspective, the description of creation of the world takes fewer words in the book of Genesis than this account of finding a wife for Isaac, okay?

The description of the fall of humanity into sin takes fewer words. The account of the entire flood takes fewer words. So just by the volume of this text, we should sit up a little and consider why so much time is being dedicated to finding a wife for a dude, okay?

Like what's going on here? There's something significant. The promise of God to bless Abraham's line is now coming to the place of its very first transition. Abraham, according to the text right off the bat in verse one, he's well advanced in years, which is an understatement.

The guy, according to just kind of the chronology of his life and figuring things out, his wife died last week in chapter 23. She was 127 years old. We know from all the different accounts and things that he was 10 years older than her.

So we're talking about Abraham being at least 137 years old when this is going down right here, what we're reading about, and probably older. Now Abraham has been promised a long life and the blessings of God, and he has indeed received the blessing of God in all things, like the text tells us right there in the end of verse one, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.

So Abraham calls in his most senior and most trusted servant in the text, who surprisingly remains unnamed during this entire text. We do not know this guy's name. I have to be stuck kind of calling him the servant all morning, the servant of Abraham, because we don't know his name.

I'd like to get kind of that kind of honorable mention in scripture where some significant event in your life was recorded, but your name, oh, we forgot to put your name in there. We just left that out.

I'm sure he's fine with that, to be honest. As we see the character of this servant, as he runs through this text in faithfulness and service to Abraham, I'm sure he was fine, Abraham, getting the primary nod in this and ultimately even higher than that, God getting the greatest nod in this entire text.

So he remains unnamed, and Abraham calls him in, asks him to swear an oath by the Lord, who is Lord of heaven and Lord of earth. Can you think of anything that doesn't encompass? Everything above the earth and everything that is earth.

Okay, I guess that's pretty much everything. The Lord over all things, he says, swear an oath to me by that Lord, the one who is in control over all things, that you will not take a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanites.

Now, where is Abraham living during this era and during this time? He's living in the land of Canaan. So he's saying, you're going to need to leave this country. You're going to need to leave this area to find a wife.

Abraham knows that he's dying, his life is near the end, and his son is not yet married. And since the promise, we see the promises that God made to Abraham contained in all the notion of offspring, that God would bless him, bless him with children, who would have children, who would have children, and they would become a great nation.

God would give them a great land, and then one of those offspring, down through the lineage, down through the ages, would end up being the one who would bless all people, Jesus being born of Abraham. We know how that promise gets fulfilled.

But would you then think that maybe Isaac getting married, the child of Abraham's promise, do you think it would be important for him to get married to have more offspring? I mean, to keep the promise going, to keep the promise alive, yes, it's vital.

But he wants his son to marry from the line of Shem, not from the line of Ham. Now, Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. And we know if we were to go way back to Genesis chapter 9, we've already been there before.

Some of you were here for that sermon, where Canaan, the son of Ham, was cursed. Now where is Abraham living? Among the people of Canaan, among those who had been cursed by God back in Genesis 9. And so he's saying, don't take a wife for my son from among the cursed ones, the ones of Canaan.

Go back to the line of Shem, who is Abraham's descendants. So go back to my kin back in the land that I came from. It was common to keep marriage within the extended clan, and that's what Abraham is driving for here.

He wants his servant to go back to his family in Mesopotamia to find a wife. He wants him to go to a family reunion for a wife, for his son. There is a little bit of distance. We'll get there here in just a second.

What is the relationship between these two? It's not as close as you might think. But the servant is savvy. So the servant is his oldest servant. Now we saw a servant named before Eleazar. It could potentially be that guy, but we're not sure.

That guy was pretty old back when we saw him several chapters ago. And so he may have passed on and there might be another top guy. But is Abraham putting a lot of trust in this servant? Go find a wife for my son?

Would you kind of say that's pretty significant? He trusts him significantly. And this guy's smart. He shows that he's got a brain in his head and a head on his shoulders. He is concerned that the woman, the woman you go to, I mean, this is going to be a 700-mile.

Journey.

This is going to take him two to three months to get to that land where Abraham is from. This is not just a hop, skip, and a jump during this era. This is a significant trip. He says, okay, so I'm going to go there and I'm going to meet this woman.

And she may not be super eager to leave home, her culture, her people, to go with a stranger on a three-month journey to go marry a man she's never met. Pretty smart servant. Like, are you kind of agreeing with the servant at this point, going, yeah, that might not, yeah, I kind of see what you're thinking there.

So he asks the question, is it okay for me to take Isaac to her? I mean, he's thinking Abraham is going to be out of the decision-making process from this point forward. I mean, Abraham's concerned, I might die any minute now.

I'm old and I don't know how long God is going to give me, so if we can make these plans now and get them all square so you know exactly what to do. So the servant is wisely asking for feedback. So what if she's unwilling to come here?

Can I take Isaac to her? And we see that Abraham is emphatic in his response. He, in essence, says, no matter what happens, no matter what you do, you are not to take Isaac back to that land. You are not to take him out of Canaan to the city of Nahor.

You are not to take him to Mesopotamia. The basis of his answer is given in verse 7. Why? God had called him out from among his people and out from that land and gave his offspring the land of Canaan.

He said, your offspring will possess that land. So Abraham is basing the future of his family on the promises of God to give him the land of Canaan. He says, don't take my son out of Canaan. He will forsake the promises, keep him there.

A move back to Nahor, a move to Mesopotamia, is a move away from the promises of God and Abraham says, this is important, that my son keep on the track of the promises of God. Abraham shows at the end of verse 7 that he is indeed trusting in the Lord.

Look at 7 with me. He, God, will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from among.

There.

He is trusting that God is going to send an angel ahead. Now whether he received a special revelation from God that God approached him again in a dream that's unrecorded for us and told him, hey, I'm going to send an angel before your messenger and it's all going to work out.

We don't know exactly what that was or maybe it's just that Abraham had seen enough of the faithfulness of God that he's here just making a general statement saying, I trust God that he's going to make your pathway successful.

I've seen how God rolls, I've seen how he works and this is going to work out. He has promised my son will get married and carry on offspring and this is going to be the way that it goes. But now in verse 8, Abraham comforts the servant by giving him an out.

I think Abraham is not thinking that this isn't going to work. It's not a lack of faith, but it's putting some calm and comfort in the servant because his entire everything is staked on this oath. He's going to take an oath before the Almighty that this is what he's going to do.

And so what if the woman won't come back? What if he can't find one? And so Abraham kind of gives him an out. If she refuses to come back, then he is set free from the oath. Another way of thinking of that is he is not to go to the land of Mesopotamia, he's not to go to Nahor and coerce a woman into coming with him.

He is not to steal a woman for Isaac. You get what I'm saying? He's not supposed to make that happen, he's supposed to provide the opportunity for that to happen. But he's not to coerce someone. So the servant swears an oath to the God who is over all and to the God who keeps his promises and he gives Abraham his word, ultimately giving that promise to God Almighty before the Lord over the heavens and the earth.

And we've come to the end of our interaction here in our text with Abraham. He's not going to speak again in the text of Scripture. He is done speaking and he will slowly fade into the background and next week to the grave.

A pretty unceremonial end really for a man who we have been following for a long time in the book of Genesis and he's kind of fading into the background. What we have here in the text is nothing less than the passing of the promise from Abraham to his offspring, Isaac.

And so we ought to be asking ourselves the question, will God bless the offspring of Abraham as he had promised? Is he going to show himself faithful to the children of Abraham and their children and their children just as he said he would?

Will they be under his favor as well? And this text is going to be an indicator, thumbs up, right? God is a God who keeps his promises. There's one thing we've established so far in the book of Genesis.

God Almighty is a God who when he says it, it will come to pass. When he declares it, a promise to us, it is for sure. It's rock solid. You can bank on it. The servant takes 10 camels, which is a huge deal in this era.

Again, scientists and people who study history and stuff get all over things like this. They just eat it up and I kind of enjoy it too. But I know that not everybody in the room geeks out on history like I do.

But camels had just been domesticated during this era. I mentioned that in a previous sermon. It's cutting edge transportation technology at the time, the camel, that they were actually able to train them and get them domesticated and doing what they wanted them to do.

They were learning how to do that during this time. And so he takes how many camels? 10 camels. This is a massive caravan that is going out a big deal. And he takes all sorts of precious gifts in order to offer the bride price and to impress the family of a potential wife.

He's going to take all kinds of bling with him. And he's going to show off to the family of this woman and try to get her to be impressed with the wealth or whatever. I mean, that's part of it and we'll see that.

How many of you in your minds, like I've mentioned this before in the whole Joseph and Mary going down to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus and how we have them traveling alone and all the cards show them up on top of a dune, on a camel or on a donkey and she's riding and he's leading it and you see the silhouette, the Christmas card I'm talking about.

People did not travel alone. You need to get rid of in your mind any notion that people traveled alone during this era. You die if you travel alone. You're done. And we're going to see later that this servant takes an entourage with him, likely including even some military personnel.

He likely has some swords or some spears along with him during this journey, primarily because he's carrying such wealth. So he was no fool. He's not going to travel on those dangerous roads solo. We're going to see just one brief mention later in the text of his men as well, departing Nahor and heading back home with him.

So he's not alone. Just if you're trying to picture this whole event in your mind, never have them traveling alone unless the text outright says, like Elijah once in a while travels alone or something like that.

But you've got to have the right notion of what's going on and pay attention to the text. So he takes the 10 camels. Somewhere between 10, verse 10 and verse 11, the servant travels a two to three month journey.

No mention of that trip whatsoever. I mean, you know, there's just some gaps in stories and things that are there for probably not much happened. They just traveled. But that's pretty significant, wouldn't you say?

Two to three month journey by caravan on a camel's back, pretty big deal. And they journeyed to the city of Nahor in what is modern, is Mesopotamia, which would be in modern day Iran. So a haul, not, I mean, think about Jerusalem to Iran is quite a haul.

And he comes to a well, lets his camels rest. And immediately, it's the first thing that he does when he gets there, puts the camels down and then he prays. The very first step of this servant of Abraham is to pray.

Now he has wisely placed himself in good circumstances to find a lady, right? Do you see that in the text? Has he operated out of wisdom and out of just kind of common sense? He puts himself at the well.

He's in a location where women are going to be coming in the cool of the evening to gather water from the well. Really hot days there all throughout the year. And so he comes there in the evening, sits down by the well.

But rather than merely depend on his own ability, he prays to the Lord for success. Where is his dependence? Is his dependence on his ability, on his, you know, all of the gifts that he's brought or all those things?