Sunday Night, January 20, 2019 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Yes, Norm. I've been hanging out in Exodus here lately,

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Exodus 33, 11, Moses was speaking face -to -face with the

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Lord, and then in Exodus 33, 20, there's a man who's in my face with a whip, and then in Exodus 33, 11, and Moses.

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Yes. Yes. Well, what we have here is an intent of meeting.

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I could be off about this, and I think Dwight's a resident Exodus expert, having talked through it just recently, so I'll hit him up with this.

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Dwight, when you talk through Exodus, what do you understand about the intent of meeting?

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Is this the same thing as the tabernacle, or is this a different place for them to meet? I'm not sure.

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Yeah, that's what I'm reading. What I'm reading through it, when

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I'm reading through it, as soon as we hear about where the tabernacle was pitched and all of this kind of thing, in verse 7, now,

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Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting.

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And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. This is, you know, as far as I understand, when you read the book of Numbers and everything else, the structure of the encampment centered around the tabernacle.

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And there was the holy of holies, which was inside the holy place, and the holy place was inside the courts of the tabernacle.

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And around the tabernacle encamped the Levites, and around the Levites encamped the tribes. And this was the size of the camp.

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And the only reason why you would be outside the camp is if you were unclean. If there was something that had happened and you were unclean for so long of a time, you were outside the camp.

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In this particular passage, God is angry with the people because they're obstinate.

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They're, as he says in the first few verses, he says, you are an obstinate people.

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So he says he's going to stay out of, he's going to put the camp, he's going to commune with Moses outside the camp because he's so disgusted with the people.

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So as far as I understand, this is not necessarily the tabernacle proper, okay?

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But this is a tent of meeting where Moses, because he is essentially

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God's mouth to his people, he's meeting with God in order to lead the people.

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So he's meeting with the Lord in this tent away from the people because holiness of God and the sinfulness of Israel just do not mix.

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And Joshua is there with him. So I don't think it's about a high priest in the

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Holy of Holies. That would be Aaron in any case. Now, who are they meeting with?

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After all, you note in verse 20 that after Moses prays to him, says,

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I pray, show me your glory, okay? He responds, you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live.

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So it's a remarkable thing that Moses, the man who on the one hand sees and meets with the

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Lord face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend, wants to see more.

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What does Moses understand? There's more of God to see. He understands that God in some way is limiting what

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Moses sees. For Moses' own good. And so Moses is conscious of that and he wants to see more.

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This might be the best Old Testament parallel passage to Philip saying to Jesus Christ, show us the father.

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And Jesus says, have you been so long with me, Philip? And you do not know, right?

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If you've seen me, you have seen the father. So Christ, the second person of the

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Trinity, is the one who is face to face as the mediator.

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There's only one mediator between God and man. And Christ, the second person of the

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Trinity, is meeting with Moses and Joshua. Just as every other time we have in the

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Old Testament a man meeting with God face to face and not dying, it's because the holiness and the glory of God was mediated in a way that they would survive the presence of God.

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So in that sense, God still is true.

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No one can see God and live. He dwells in unapproachable light. But the only way we may be in the presence of God is through the mediator

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Christ, and that's what was happening here. And Joshua, of course, is the appointed successor of Moses.

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He's there getting trained. Even when Moses leaves the tent, Joshua is still there because he needs to know how to lead the people too.

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Does that help? Yeah.

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All right, so if we're taking into account when was the tabernacle built, this tent of meeting preceded it.

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There we go. So that's what this is. This is the precursor. It's a good note. Okay, anything else?

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All right, let's take a look at Genesis chapter 24. We talked about last week some premarital advice, always marry within the family.

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This is from Genesis 24. Remember that Moses is writing this under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit. He's writing the story down. The original audience is Israel. They're about to cross the

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Jordan and conquer the land of Canaan. And one of the clearest restrictions about their entry into Canaan was they were not allowed to intermarry with the

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Canaanites. They were not supposed to do that. This is one of the primary things, one of the primary laws, rules they broke.

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And you can read about the disaster in the book of Judges. So this foreshadows that restriction.

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As Abraham is old, advanced in age, verse 1, and the

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Lord had blessed Abraham in every way. Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of this household, who had charge of all that he owned, please place your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the

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Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife from my son, from the daughters of the

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Canaanites among whom I live. But you will go to my country and to my relatives and take a wife from my son

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Isaac. And the application ultimately is to not be unequally yoked.

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And the further application of this is that I think the further we go in the kind of world in which we live, parents need to take a very active role in their children finding godly spouses to marry.

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I think that's a good application to whatever degree, but I think there could be some help in that.

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Now, why is Abraham so concerned that Isaac not marry someone from the land of Canaan?

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Well, not so very long ago, Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

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And Ham dishonored his father and a curse fell upon one of Ham's sons, not

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Ham in particular, but one of his sons named Canaan. A curse fell upon Canaan and the prophecy was that the descendants of Shem would dominate the descendants of Ham, Canaan.

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This is in the background of what's happening here. Here is Abraham, a descendant of Eber, a descendant of Shem, and he's in the land of Canaan, a people group that are cursed.

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And he does not want to get a cursed wife for his son. So he says, we've got to go back to my family, back of the descendants of Eber, from which we get the word

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Hebrew. We're going to go find a wife for my son back there.

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So in that sense, Abraham is doing the will of God. In fact, he's thinking theologically, he's thinking about what

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God has already said, what God has already revealed in his word. He's thinking about the promise of the seed of the great descendants.

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And so he says to his servant, you've got to go back. So they make a plan. They make a plan.

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They know what God's will is. It's no secret, no great mystery. So they make a plan.

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The servant said to him, suppose the woman is not willing to follow me to this land. Should I take your son back to the land from which you came?

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And Abraham said, beware, you do not take my son back there. Abraham's hard to please. First I knew, she's not marrying anyone from here, and you're not bringing him back there.

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Why that? Because again, the will of God is clear. This is the land that God gave to Abraham and to his descendants.

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So no, we're not moving back home. We're not going back to the land of Ur. The will of God is clear, and therefore we know how to make our plan.

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He says, verse 7, the Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my birth and who spoke to me and swore to me saying, to your descendants

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I will give this land. He will send his angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there.

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That's a godly plan. I know what the will of God is. God's going to make it work. We're going to be obedient.

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I don't know how it's all going to work, but God will make that work. We just obey, and he'll fix the details.

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This is a great plan. He says, but if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you should be free from this my oath, only do not take my son back there.

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So Abraham's conceding his limitations. He's very confident this is what God wills. Now I may be completely off, but hey, this is as far as I understand.

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This is everything that God has said. This is his will. This is our plan. This is what we're going to do.

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So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. So they've made their plan.

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They're committed to the plan. And that's when the servant follows through.

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Verse 10. The servant took 10 camels from the camels of his master and set out with a variety of good things of his masters in his hand.

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And he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nehor. He made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the evening time, the time when women come out to draw water.

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Okay, now just notice. Everything that they've done so far is, you know, everything you've got to do to make this plan work.

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He's brought the dowry with him, right, or he's brought the bride price with him. He's got all these fine things from Abraham.

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He's got – and he knows exactly where to show up to see the eligible young women of the town.

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He's where he's supposed to be. He is maximizing the opportunity for this plan to work. Now, they've made the plan.

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He's following through on the plan, and he now prays. Why does he pray?

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Because any plan to obey God means that we have to depend on God for the plan to work.

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There's no hope of – we make a plan. I make a plan I'm going to obey God, and we do it in our own strength.

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We fail. Every time we plan to obey God, we have to pray and depend on his strength, his blessing, his grace.

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So verse 12, he said, This is the sign that the servant asks for.

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It's a good sign in the sense that most young women would not even offer to water the camels, unbidden.

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All he's asking for is a drink of water, right? Jesus is asking them to have a drink of water.

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That would be a common request. She may be too shy and standoffish to even do that.

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But if there is a young woman who is willing to do that and also water the camels, which is no easy, quick task.

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It's a very laborious task. Someone with that kind of desire for hospitality, someone willing to not only give water to a complete stranger, but then water all of his camels.

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Hey, she's a go -getter. She's like, I got to get home. This is a signal of maybe not only her character, but maybe even her personality, that this would be the kind of woman who would be willing to travel across the world to go marry someone who she's never met before.

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So he's asking for a sign that is fairly in line with what he's there to do. So he's definitely not asking for something ridiculous.

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You know, it's like, oh, God, please turn the sky red when she appears. It's just something that is in line with his goal to obey

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God. So he's praying for this. Now, verse 15, before he had finished speaking.

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That's not the best part of the story, right? Before he finished speaking, before he finished praying,

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God's answer to the prayer is already in motion. Behold, Rebecca, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Abraham's brother

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Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder. So she meets all the requirements.

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She's of this family group. The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, and no man had had relations with her.

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And she went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, please let me drink a little water from your jar.

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She said, drink, my lord. And she quickly lowered her jar into her hand and gave him a drink.

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Now, when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw also for your camels until they have finished drinking.

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So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran back to the well to draw.

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And she drew for all his camels. Meanwhile, the man was gazing at her in silence to know whether the

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Lord had made his journey successful or not. Yeah, was he still wandering?

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See, we would at some point, like as soon as she offers, we're like, you're the one. No, he waits to see if she finishes the job.

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Right. Is she going to follow all the way through? This is no easy thing. This is a laborious task.

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Was it just being polite? Did she just give enough for the first camel and say,

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I got to go? Is she going to follow all the way through? So he he waits.

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This is the sign he asked for, whether or not she would water all the camels. And so he doesn't just give up on the sign halfway through.

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He watches all the way through. When the camels had finished drinking.

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Now, the man proceeds with the plan.

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He's there's the plan. Abraham and he had made the plan. He's trying to follow through in that obedience.

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But he does so with prayer because he knows this is not going to work unless God brings it about.

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And then and then once he has prayed about the plan, he proceeds with it.

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When the camels have finished drinking, the man took a gold ring, weighing half a shekel and two bracelets for her wrists, weighing 10 shekels in gold and said,

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Whose daughter are you? Please tell me. Is there room for us to lodge in your father's house?

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She said to him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milka, whom she bore to Nehor.

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Again, she said to him, We have plenty of both straw and feed and room to lodge in. And so he finds out who she is.

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This is this is OK. So here is the plan. We know it was the will of the Lord. Try to follow through in obedience, prayer, praying the whole way.

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And then it looks like this is the will of the Lord. We're going to continue on. And there's confirmation. Yes, indeed.

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This is the will of the Lord. And so the so if you're following along plan, pray, proceed. And the fourth is praise.

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Verse 26. And the man bowed low and worshipped the Lord. He's the one who brought it about.

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Right. He's the one who brought it about for all the obedience of the servant, for all of the wisdom that he employed in this whole process.

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He didn't pat himself on the back when when it all came to pass. He bowed low and he praised the Lord. He worshipped the

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Lord said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham, who has not forsaken his love and kindness and his truth toward my master.

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As for me, the Lord has guided me in the way to the house of my master's brothers. So often in our life, that's that's the way it is, right?

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Just this experience of of the servant. Everything about what the servant is doing is centered around the hope of the seed of the woman might center it around.

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There's a seed who's going to crush the head of the serpent. We know it comes through the line of Noah and Shem and Eber and Abraham.

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So we're not going to get away from the cursed Canaanites. We've got to go back and do this, but we're not going to send Isaac back because that's not the land that God gave.

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And everything centered around the promise, the gospel promises of God. We know what the truth is.

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So we know how to make that plan. And so we try to live our lives accordingly. In obedience, we got to pray.

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God, make this work for the glory of your son, for the glory of your good news. Please let this work.

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Show us how we're to do this. And then we've got it. We've got to follow through. Got to follow through. And when it's all said and done, we don't get the glory.

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When it's all said and done, we should bow low and worship God who's brought it all to pass.

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So this is a simple story of just the life of a believer in this pattern.

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And I'm so glad that we have it here at the beginning of Genesis 24. Well, any questions or thoughts before we close?

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Yes, he is. Well, certainly

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I think that very often we'll find ourselves praying what God wants us to pray, as he is the one who is informing us with his wisdom.

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Well, it is interesting that we see the servant speaking of the

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Lord, the God of my master. And then at the end, the Lord has guided me. So sometimes the story is read as he wasn't a believer at the beginning, but he was at the end.

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I'm not certain. I think that because he had taken an oath to serve his master in this way, we find that his obedience ultimately, and throughout his obedience, he was doing it for somebody else and interceding for that person the whole way through.

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Oh, God, please bless my master. And how often our obedience is not just for ourselves, it's for others.

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Yes, Norm. Anyhow, long story short,

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I Googled it real quick. Camels can take in 53 gallons of water in three minutes.

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53 gallons of water in three minutes, huh? How many camels? Five hundred and thirty gallons if they were.

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Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. It's a good thing she had strong arms, you know, she's going to be carrying around that gold.

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So. Oh, man.

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Well, thank you for looking that up. That was a vital portion. All right.

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Well, let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology. Praise God for all.