God's Guidance in the Life of His People Part 2, Genesis 24:10-28

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Last week, we looked at the beginning of the search for Isaac's future wife.
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Abraham gathered all the information and sent his trusted servant to the correct location to find a wife for his son
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Isaac. He did not want his son to pollute the family line by marrying a
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Canaanite, who were predominantly wicked people. Rather, he desired for his son to marry a woman from Haran, the place where his family was from.
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The point I made last week is that the clear theme of this passage is the will of God.
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And the question we need to ask and that we're helped by is how to discern the will of God for our own lives.
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Abraham followed the Lord's guidance by sending his servant to the right place. Now that the servant is there, he is going to seek the
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Lord's guidance about who is the right woman. The application is clear for us.
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This narrative is informing us about what to do in those difficult circumstances when the direction seems foggy.
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To remind you, 95 % of our decisions are already made for us because the Bible tells us what to do.
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So if we're wondering whether I should sin or not sin, we don't need to ask that question. We already know.
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But it's those 5 % of the time situations, when the Scripture does not speak to them clearly, where we need to seek the
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Lord and ask for wisdom. And in these circumstances where we do not know the answer, every decision we would make would be in conformity to the
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God's will of command or his will of desire. It would not contradict Scripture. However, there is a decision the
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Lord desires for us to make. He is writing our story and he desires for us to take one path over the other.
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How do we figure out what that path is? We learned in our first point last week that we must gather all the information necessary.
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What we will see today is that by gathering all the necessary information, it enabled Abraham to send his servant down the right path.
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Now today, we will see the other two lessons for discerning the will of God. This is all one big sermon that started last week, and we're finishing it today with points 2 and 3.
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So I encourage you to turn with me in a Bible to Genesis 24. We're going to be looking at verses 10 through 28.
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And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 21. Our proposition from last week was we need to seek to discern the will of God for our lives.
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And the first point last week was one of the ways that we discern the will of God, one of the lessons we learned is that we discern by gathering all the necessary information.
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The second lesson to discern the will of God is to pray to the
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Lord to help lead in the right direction. And we'll see this in verses 10 through 14.
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After Abraham knew what he wanted to do by sending his servant to the right place to find a wife for Isaac, his trusted servant heads on this journey.
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In verse 10, Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master.
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And he arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. So we see here that the place the servant traveled to,
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Nahor, was located in a region known as Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia literally meant between the rivers, specifically between the rivers of the
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Euphrates and the Tigris in this region of the world. In Hebrew, this place is called
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Aram Nahorim. The servant travels with ten of Abraham's camels, and he leaves with gifts that he can give to the future wife of Isaac.
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This area has cities named after two people, Nahor and Haran. Both of these names are the names of Abraham's brothers.
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It's not a surprise that these places came to be named after these men. A well -known person names the place either after themself or someone else names it after them.
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Haran is the place where Abraham's family originally settled before Abraham was called by the
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Lord to go to the land of Canaan. And that happened in Genesis 12, where the Lord said, So he left his family behind.
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And so now this is the place where the servant is telling him to go there to find a wife for Isaac.
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Now, in verse 11, we see that the servant begins his search at this location.
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So the servant puts himself in a position where he is going to be around women, where the right one will stand out.
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He does the right thing in verse 12 by going to prayer. And he said,
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So he does the right thing here by going to prayer. Now we're going to see him do something that he shouldn't have done.
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Okay, so he prays, but he prays in the wrong way. And I'll make a point on this here in a second. In verses 13 and 14, this is what he says.
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Okay, so the servant knows that this is going to be difficult.
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It's like picking out a needle in a haystack. He desires for the Lord to guide him to point out
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Mrs. Wright. The servant does something here that we should follow and something that we should not follow.
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We should follow his example of prayer. When we need help, we go to the Lord in prayer.
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And it takes humility to acknowledge that we don't have all the answers. And you say, Lord, I need help. We should do that.
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But what we should not do, and what he does here, is ask for a sign. Now what we will see in our third point is that the
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Lord graciously does give him a sign. But we should not take this to mean that this is what we should do.
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The Lord Jesus Christ said, an evil and wicked generation seeks for a sign. Now the
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Lord obviously gave signs throughout history, right? But we shouldn't ask for more than what he's already given us.
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As if we need to have a sign before we make a decision to move forward. And the
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Lord may have been gracious to give a sign at this point in history, like he's going to do here, because they did not have written revelation like we do.
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We have the Bible, the Word of God, and that is our foundational reference for guidance. The Bible tells us how to seek guidance.
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It tells us, right, pray for wisdom, talk to wise people, and so on and so forth.
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The servant did not have all this instruction that we have. What the servant should have done is just pray for wisdom in the matter.
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James 1 .5 says, If the servant would have asked
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God for wisdom, the Lord would have graciously given him wisdom. Because the Lord always works the same with his people.
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But the Lord is so kind that even though the servant is misguided, he will still answer his prayer and help point out
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Isaac's future wife. As we think about the topic of superstition and wisdom, here is a good quote from one of my former professors,
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Kevin Bauder. He said, Such things are too easily counterfeited.
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The prayer for guidance will be answered through the exercise of wisdom, judgment, and discretion.
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So that's what we must do. That's the biblical way to approach seeking the Lord's guidance for our life.
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So in other words, we should expect the Lord to lead us as we gather information.
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And that's what we saw Abraham do in our previous point. You can tell that he probably prayed and gathered all the information to send his servant to the right place to find
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Isaac's future wife. Otherwise, if he would have acted foolishly, he might have sent him to a different place.
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But he sent him to where his family was from. And we're going to see that the Lord blesses this decision that Abraham made.
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As we face big decisions in our life, we should ask for wisdom from the Lord as well. But what we must remember is that the
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Lord always leads us on a path that will always agree with Scripture. Much of what we are supposed to do has already been told to us, right?
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The Bible tells us how to live a pleasing life to the Lord. But we need to pray for wisdom when the Bible does not clearly address our particular situation.
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And all of us have dealt with these situations in our life. No one is exempt from difficult decisions that we have to make.
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I mentioned in the first point that Brianne and I prayed and sought counsel before we made the decision to pursue the move to come up here about 19 months ago.
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On your end, this church did the same as well. This was a big decision that was going to affect the future.
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It was going to affect the church. It was going to affect Brianne and I and Aletheia. We had to ask for wisdom.
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And there were moments when it was perplexing to know which way to go. As I mentioned, there were two other churches at the same time that I was talking to.
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And so instead of making things more clear, it was as if God actually made it a little more confusing. But again,
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He cares about who we become through the process. So sometimes the decision is difficult because we have to seek
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Him out during that time. But as we prayed and as we gathered more and more information, it became clear that the
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Lord was sending us to this church. And it may have been the same on your end as Pastor Larry led the search committee and the leaders as you made that decision.
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But we learned from Abraham's servant that we should ask for help when we do not know what to do. He needed wisdom to differentiate between the women to see which one stood out and which one would be the best fit for Isaac.
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And he asked for a sign. But as I mentioned, we should pray for wisdom as James 1 .5 tells us.
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Because what this tells the Lord is that we need help. And He loves to answer the prayer when we say,
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I don't know what to do. I need your help in this situation. So this is the second lesson to discern the will of God in your life.
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The second lesson is to pray to the Lord to help lead in the right direction.
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The third lesson to discern the will of God in your life is to see the Lord's confirmation over time.
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To see the Lord's confirmation over time. And we'll see this in verses 15 through 28. Now in verse 14, as we just saw,
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Abraham's servant prayed to the Lord that the one who lets down her water jar to give him a drink and also water his camels would be the one that would be
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Abraham's wife. Actually, sorry, Isaac's wife. At this point,
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Abraham is thinking about dying probably more than getting a wife. He's at the very end of his life here.
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He said to the Lord that if you do this, I will know that you have shown steadfast love to my master Abraham.
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In other words, if this happens, he will know that the Lord has agreed with Abraham that Isaac's wife was to be found in this place among his kinsmen.
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Right from the get -go, we are going to see that the servant spots a woman whom he has a good feeling is the one.
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So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to read verses 15 through 20 and we'll see how this encounter plays out.
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So before the servant 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.
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The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known.
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She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said,
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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.
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When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.
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So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water.
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And she drew for all his camels. We read the servant's prayer in the previous point, and what you will notice is that Rebekah does exactly what the servant prayed the woman would do.
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Is this a coincidence? Or is this really the one? What we need to highlight here is not only does she do precisely what
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Abraham's servant prayed, but she is also an upstanding woman who meets the qualification that Abraham had in mind as a wife for his son.
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The qualifications. Verse 15 says that she was from Abraham's kinsmen.
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She is Nahor's granddaughter. That would make Rebekah Isaac's second cousin. In this day, they didn't care as much about close family relations.
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I know in this area a lot of people are related, and sometimes you have to wonder, am I related to this person that I'm interested in?
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But in this case, it wouldn't have mattered, because at this point in history, a lot of people who were more distant relatives, but still somewhat close, married.
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We need to note that the author Moses tells us who she is as well, that would meet Abraham's approval. And he would find out, by the way, officially in verse 24, that she is the one, but Moses is telling us right now, the author, he's cluing us in as we read this to say, she's it.
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But the servant's going to find out in a little bit that she's it. Furthermore, this woman meets the qualifications that Abraham would want, because she was a holy woman.
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Verse 16 says that she was a maiden whom no man had known, so she was a virgin. You could tell that she had an excellent character by how she helped the servant by giving him a drink and watering his camels.
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We can assume that the holy character was a qualification, of course, for Isaac's future wife, because Abraham was a holy man.
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He would have wanted his son's wife to have strong character, like Rebekah appears to have.
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And Rebekah was also attractive, as the text says, which Isaac would, of course, want his wife to be.
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And it's a good thing to be attracted to one's spouse. God made it so that we would be attracted physically to our spouse.
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We can see that this woman checks the boxes for Abraham, and the servant thinks she may be the one.
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When I met Brianna, it became clear to me that she checked all the boxes that I was looking for in a future wife.
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She was a godly woman, and she was a godly woman who was willing to go on this journey of pastoral ministry with me.
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There's lots of women who would not be willing to go on that journey with a husband who is a pastor.
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To be a pastor's wife is not for the faint of heart. And I think you probably know that just from what you've observed in your lifetime, as you've observed pastors' wives.
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But she was willing to take on this challenge. From weighing the scriptures and gathering information and praying,
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I knew very early on that she was going to be my wife. The Lord made that clear to me.
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Not through an audible voice, not through something that was written in the sky, or a dream, or a vision.
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No, none of those ways. But I was confident that the Lord had led me to marry
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Brianna. Over time, I became confident.
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And as we see here, Abraham's servant is becoming confident as he gets more and more confirmation.
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And at this point, he begins to think that she is the one, and we see this by his response in verse 21.
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The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the
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Lord had prospered his journey or not. Okay, so the servant gazes at her thinking, this may be the one the
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Lord has led me to. He is thinking the Lord may indeed have blessed Abraham's wisdom by sending me to this place.
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This must have been a wonderful feeling knowing that this was not a wasted journey.
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At least it didn't appear that way. And the Lord led him to the golden nugget.
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Once the Lord apparently answers this prayer to lead him to Isaac's future wife, he is looking for confirmation that this is indeed the
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Lord's will. What we'll see in the remainder of the sermon and next Sunday is that he keeps getting more and more confirmation, which is what happens when the
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Lord leads you down the path that he wants you to take. It just feels right as you go on that journey.
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So Abraham's servant has seen enough to lean toward thinking that she is the one for Isaac. He's fairly confident.
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Okay, he's not 100 % confident, but he's fairly confident and he's willing to act with that confidence that he has.
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And we can tell that he is leaning this way by what he does here in verses 22 through 25.
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When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten golden shekels and said,
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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,
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I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milca, whom she bore to Nahor. She added,
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We have plenty of both straw and fodder and room to spend the night.
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Abraham's servant gives a gold ring and two gold bracelets to her. He would not do this, of course, if he did not think that she was the one, if he was not leaning in that direction.
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And he asks to spend the night and she says that he can spend the night. This further confirms that she may very well be the one.
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So he keeps receiving more and more confirmation. Again, this is how the will of God works.
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You desire what he desires by following what he has revealed in Scripture. Then when a big decision comes up that is not plainly revealed in Scripture, you pray for wisdom.
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And as you pray, the Lord will lead you to make the right decision as you gather all the information.
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And this decision will never, as I mentioned, contradict the Bible. It's fitting that we have the Stouts here today.
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They've been in Macedonia for 12 years. This is 2006. And Brian was telling our
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Sunday school class this morning that he wanted to go to Africa. And he went to all these different places around the world.
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And the one place he said he didn't want to go was Europe. And guess where Macedonia is located?
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It's located in Europe. But over time, I think they would tell you they prayed, they talked to people, they talked to wise people, they gathered all the information, and over time they became persuaded that this was the
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Lord's path. And they'd probably tell you they weren't 100 % certain when they went on the mission field.
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They would think, OK, we think this is where the Lord is leading us. But of course, over time, they received more and more confirmation.
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One of the funny things about Brian is that he's from southern Minnesota, but he actually looks like a Macedonian. I think he does anyway.
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I've been there, and because I know some of his friends, I'm thinking, he fits right in here. And so it was like the
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Lord made him, even as a Minnesotan, kind of look that way, which is odd. So this is what
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Abraham does here. He gathers all the information. And this is what the servant did too. He gathers all the information.
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He takes the right steps by asking the Lord for help. And now they are seeing the Lord's clear guidance in the matter.
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The servant is so overjoyed that he believes the Lord has led him to the right woman. This is his first response in verses 26 and 27.
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The man bowed his head and worshipped the Lord and said, Blessed be the
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Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.
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As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen.
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So he gives thanks where thanks is due. He thanks the Lord that he has blessed
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Abraham's well -thought -out plan, and he gives thanks for guiding him to Rebekah.
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The Lord is the one who planned this. And when we do precisely what the Lord desires of us by going down the right path, it's a beautiful thing.
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A man or woman who follows the Lord's will for his or her life will find that their life is a work of art.
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Even though at times it may not seem that way. But I think when you look at the big picture, you can see, wow, what an incredible story he has written for my life.
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It's a wonderful experience going to a funeral where it is clear that God's fingerprints were all over that person's life.
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Because you do see that their life was indeed a work of art. And by the way, it's the opposite for an unbeliever.
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Right? A lot of times, it's a mess. There really isn't any order to it.
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There's no goal. There's no compass of where they're going. And there's lots of problems.
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And yet you see the believer's life and you see, this is the way to go. This is the right path.
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Because it's the Lord's path. And we see that in our own lives. And we see that in the lives of the people of Scripture.
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Again, it wasn't like they lived a perfect life. No. But we see God's providence. We see how he led each of them.
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And where their stories end well. And that's how we want our lives to be as well. Now in verse 28, the woman is grateful for the gifts she has received.
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And if she could hear the prayer from the servant, she would know that she is related. I don't think she heard this prayer.
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I think that what she's about to do here is to go to her house, just because this guy has, this
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Abraham's servant has been so generous to her by giving her these gifts. And she's going to go and say, this man has given me gifts.
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And he asked if he could stay here. And so now she's going to go and do that. But I don't think that she heard the prayer of the servant that we just read in verse 27.
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So verse 28, this is what she does. Then the young woman ran and told her mother's household about these things.
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So what we have seen is the Lord's confirmation of Abraham's plan. He has followed the Lord's will and it is becoming crystal clear that this is the path the
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Lord wanted him to take. I mentioned earlier that Brianne and I prayed and sought wisdom as we were deciding to come to this church.
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We were pretty sure it was the right move when we came. Sure enough to say yes, we will come.
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But as I mentioned, over time you will receive more and more confirmation. And as you face those decisions in your life, that will be the case for you as well.
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And let me say that there's no question that it was the right decision. We know that now after having the confirmation of being here 19 months.
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We have complete peace about it and joy that yes, we're doing what the Lord wants us to do.
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And not only has he led us here, but he's led you here as well. The Lord is doing a wonderful work among us.
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Look around. He's doing a mighty work. And it doesn't happen overnight. It happens little by little, day by day, week by week.
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And over time, great things happen. Maturity in the
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Christian faith takes time. It takes years. It takes decades. That's why pastors stay in a pastorate for a long time.
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Which we plan to be here for a long time. Because it takes a long process to grow in the faith together.
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And that's our mission statement. To grow in Christ together. We want to multiply by adding unbelievers to the kingdom of God, but we also want to grow spiritually ourselves.
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We want both to take place at this church. So this is the third lesson. Of discerning
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God's will for our life. The third lesson is to see the Lord's confirmation over time. And before I wrap up this sermon here today, let me say, you might be asking the question, what if you make a decision and you don't receive confirmation?
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And it just doesn't feel right. And you go down the journey and it's like, you know what, I think I may have made the wrong choice.
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And I realize some of you may be asking that question. I just want to address that. I think there's two paths you can take when you make the wrong choice.
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One is to continue with it and trust the Lord. And in future decisions, trust Him that He would guide you.
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Because obviously, this decision isn't the final decision. You're going to have more decisions in the future.
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And just be more wise in the future. Talk to wise people. Pray. Seek the
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Lord's guidance in all of it. And there may be some situations where you need to abort the plan that you moved.
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Maybe you moved to a place you shouldn't have moved to and you're like, you know what, this wasn't right. So you sell your home and then you move back to another place.
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That's one example. And I don't have a clear answer for you on this.
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You need to pray to the Lord if you ever do make a wrong decision. But I think we need a warning up front here.
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Make the right decision up front. Okay, weigh everything. Trust the Lord through the whole process.
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Because like I said, He has a path that He wants you to take. And you need to seek Him to find that path.
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And if you do that, I'm confident that you will choose the right path. So seek to discern the will of God in your life.
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We have seen three lessons for discerning His will. The first is to learn as much information necessary to make the right decision.
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The second lesson is to pray to the Lord to help lead in the right direction. And the third lesson is to see the Lord's confirmation over time.
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We have seen in this narrative the importance of discerning the will of God in the right manner. The one who does this will have a fruitful and joyful life for the
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Lord. Jesus said in John 10, He says, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
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There is no more joyful life than following the Lord's will for your life. Both in His clear commands of telling you what to do that's laid out in the
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Scriptures and also seeking Him when you have those difficult decisions to make. There is no more joyful path than that.
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And it's exciting to look over your life and look back and say, the Lord led me down this path. And at the time,
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I wasn't even sure. I didn't even really know it. And to see His handiwork in our lives and to see
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His wisdom in everything the Lord does in our lives is meant for His glory and for our good as believers.
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That's what we have to remember. Sometimes He takes you down a difficult path too. And we have to recognize that and trust the
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Lord and say that He's doing it for His glory and for our good. So next week, we will see that Rebecca's family becomes persuaded that this is indeed the will of God for her to leave her home and her family and to become
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Isaac's wife. And we will see two more important truths in the will of God for your life as we continue this narrative of Abraham's servant finding a wife for Isaac.
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Let's pray. Father, Your wisdom is incredible as we ponder it, as we look over our own lives to see,
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Lord, that I can say with 100 % confidence, Lord, that Your plan is so much better than our plan.
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Sometimes we can look back at our life and look at the plan that we made and then look at the plan that You've made for us and see how much better it is and how many pitfalls
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You kept us from and how You guided us down the path and Lord, I pray that as we've dug into this and we're going to dig more into it next week that when we do have those decisions that we would seek
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You when they come and that we would rely 100 % on You and that we would use the means that You've given us, like I said, that we would pray, that we would gather information, that we would seek wise people, that we would use...
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These are the means You've given us, Lord, and You've told us these in the pages of Scripture. So I pray that we would seek
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You out and thank You, Lord, that You do care about the tiniest details of our lives.
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You know our life better than we know our life and You know exactly what You're doing and so may we trust You every step of the way.