Prayer and Providence

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 24:1-28

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Well, we're gonna spend some time in Genesis 24, not only this morning in verses one through 28, but also next week.
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And what I'd like to do is focus more practically on verses one through 28 this morning.
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Not that there's not always some level of theology, even in the most practical and mundane matters, but that's just to say next week's going to be particularly theological as we complete the rest of the chapter as we consider why the longest chapter in the book of Genesis, one of the most detailed narrative passages in the book of Genesis, why that has borne theological significance throughout
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Christian interpretation. We go back and read with the church through the centuries and we see just how significant
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Genesis 24 is in light of God's plan and purpose of redemption. So we're gonna unpack that a little bit next week, which is to say, as you've read through this very long chapter, and you're thinking, what is the significance of this?
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How is this theological? It'd be good to meditate and reflect on these things in preparation for next week. But we wanna consider some practical matters this morning, and that's mainly prayer and providence.
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Not as two separate topics, but really as one interrelated topic.
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Prayer and providence, the way these things weave together in our lives, in our
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Christian experience. Now on our way to there, we begin, of course, with the context of Genesis 24, beginning in verse one.
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Abraham being old, well -advanced in age, and the Lord having blessed him in all things.
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He's come through that great trial of the faith. He's buried his wife in the hope of the promise.
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He's continuing to exercise this faith in God's covenant promise, even in his advanced age.
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And so he calls his servant, we read here the oldest servant, this could be, though unnamed, this could be
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Eleazar of Damascus. Some older interpreters simply just state that as fact, that this is
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Eleazar. Of course, Eleazar was set up to be the heir when Abraham was under the impression that he was going to remain childless.
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And he said, see, in his great complaint to the Lord, Eleazar the Damascene is my heir.
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And so perhaps this oldest servant, this chief servant from among Abraham's household is indeed
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Eleazar, which is to say, someone who's been with Abraham through thick and thin. And also, therefore, someone who has seen
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God move in miraculous ways, in profound ways, like his mistress
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Sarai giving birth when she was well past the age of childbearing. And that's also giving us a glimpse of Abraham as a discipler within his household.
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Of course, household to the ancient mind would have never just been blood relatives. Household would have been all that were under the domain of the master of the house, all that were under the roof and contributed to the economy of the house, the oikonomos, that's where we get the word, house rule.
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And so servants were family members, servants were part of the household. Heirs worked alongside servants.
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They did the same work, they ate the same meals, they shared in so many of the same blessings and privileges, they bore each other's burdens.
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The difference between the heir and the servant would have only been what they would have received, what they would have gone on to inherit.
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But they would have been plowing the same fields together, eating at the same table. It's not perhaps our understanding of household.
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So this oldest servant is well -trusted. This older servant is one who has been discipled, one who has experienced the covenant promises of God unfolding in Abraham's life.
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And Abraham calls him over and he says, please put 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 will not take a wife from my son, from the daughters of the
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Canaanites among whom I dwell, but you shall go to my country and to my family and take a wife from my son,
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Isaac. So Abraham is continuing to pursue the Lord's covenant promise, and now he makes his servant basically enter into a covenant with him.
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Put your hand under my thigh. This is an idiomatic way, it was actually a gesture, of forming a bond, of taking an oath.
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This isn't the first nor the last time we've seen this particular form of oath -taking, and scholars are not necessarily finding a consensus about the significance of grasping the under thigh.
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It could be a euphemism for the genitals, and in that sense, there's a way of saying it has to do with progeny or inheritance.
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That might be the significance of this particular oath form. There's other ways of taking an oath, and this one seems to be connected with inheritance.
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We'll see it again later in Genesis in a very similar context about inheritance and progeny.
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Abraham will go on to make two demands of this servant. First, as we read, his son's wife must come from among his relatives, which is to say
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Isaac needs to be married, and Isaac must not marry a Canaanite woman.
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He must not marry with those who dwell in the land. He must be set apart.
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He must remain steadfast to the Lord's calling that he will indeed inherit this promised land, and therefore, he cannot compromise with those who are not heirs, but rather stooping in the land as it were.
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Now, of course, Abraham's concern here is not racism, pure and simple. It's spiritual.
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It's covenantal. The reason Abraham cannot tolerate a Canaanite woman for Isaac is all about the idolatry and immorality of the
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Canaanites within the land, and the negative impact that would have upon Isaac. So notice, in his old age,
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Abraham is laser -focused on the spiritual dangers that are ahead of his son
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Isaac. He's gotten to the age, and he's been through enough of those dangers to say, I don't want my son to stumble where I've stumbled.
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I don't want him to go after Egypt. I don't want him to do what my nephew did and go after Sodom.
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I want Isaac to be well -prepared and protected, and the most important thing
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I can do for him is make sure that his spouse, his helpmate, his one -flesh union is with someone who has not given over to the idolatry and immorality of this land.
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The basis for his decision we have in verse seven. The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family, who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, to your descendants
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I give this land. He will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.
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That's a very interesting statement for Abraham to make. He could have just simply said what he says at the very end.
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The Lord will send an angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there. That's the only necessary information.
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So why give this whole preamble about Abraham's calling and Abraham's experience? The Lord, the
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God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family, who swore to me, saying, to your descendants
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I give this land. That's the God that will lead you to find the wife for my son.
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So Abraham is viewing this covenantally in light of God's calling. And that calling now is not only upon Abraham, but on the seed of promise.
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Every action that Abraham has made continues to be on the basis of what God has revealed, his purpose and promise for Abraham in the land that he caused him to dwell, his plan to make
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Abraham a blessing for all of the nations. And Abraham knows that cannot happen if Isaac intermarries with the nations.
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He'll no longer be able to be a blessing in the fulfillment of that great promise. And so this servant must swear he will not allow
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Isaac to have such a bride from among this pagan peoples, but that he goes among the own relatives, and that Isaac marries in the
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Lord, so to speak. And of course, this is a theme that develops throughout
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Scripture. It plagues Israel. We saw that when we were in Ezra and Nehemiah, and the great lament that came over the intermarriage of the people.
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Again and again, foreign intermarriage turned away the hearts of the kings of God's people.
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And of course, Christians are called to marry only in the Lord. Christians are called to be equally yoked.
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So this is developed and taught as a command in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7. But right here in Genesis 24, we have a biblical principle of marriage in the
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Lord, of not intermarrying with those who reject the Lord. That was the first requirement.
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The second requirement is that Isaac must not return to his homeland, his ancestry.
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The woman is to be brought to him. He's not to go back to his homeland. He's not to return and settle outside of the land.
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And so this is a, for lack of a better phrase, a mail -order bride for Isaac.
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Isaac is not to leave the promised land. He must understand, though it seems like such a far -off fulfillment, that this is indeed his inheritance.
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And therefore, he must stay in the land, settle in the land, be rooted in the land. He must not seek that which seems more promising, which seems more comfortable, which may just seem temporary for the time being.
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Abraham knows from experience the dangers of leaving the land. And so if Isaac were to go back to Babylon, so to speak, the chances are it would be difficult for him to reenter the land, perhaps undesirable for him to enter the land.
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Perhaps he will be like Esau will come to be and despise his birthright in light of the immediacy, in light of the urgency.
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So even here, we see Abraham discipling his son, protecting his son, guiding his son in the promise of the
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Lord. And of course, we also see Abraham understanding the weakness of the flesh. He's an old man.
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He knows from experience just how secure and stable and solid you think you can be until the circumstances change.
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Abraham has been called out of the world, and in light of his experience and his struggle, he does what he can to protect his son from going, as it were, into the world, from being saturated by the ways of the world.
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He does what he can to protect Isaac. And Christian parents, we all know
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Christians, of course, who have reentered the world, as it were, spurned their faith, left their promised inheritance.
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And Christian parents can learn from Abraham's experience example here. Christian grandparents can learn from Abraham's example here on how to do what they can to protect their children from the influence of immorality and worldliness.
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So we see, as Derek Kidner says, to the very end, God's will for Isaac continues to make a demand on Abraham's faith.
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Abraham still is walking by faith in what God has promised. And we can ask the question, this is called counterfactual history, what if Abraham wasn't walking by faith?
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Been there, done that, I did the whole thing on Mount Moriah, I've been through it all, now I can retire,
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I can just let things be, I fought my fight, Isaac's gonna have to be his own man and make his own decisions.
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What if Abraham had done that? And Isaac had settled in with a nice Canaanite girl, how would history have been impacted?
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There wouldn't have been a redemptive history that followed. It came on the providence within Abraham's faith through his own household, through his care for his son.
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So all of redemptive history is hinging on these kinds of steps and decisions that Abraham is making under the will and power of God by his grace.
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We perhaps don't feel that we're in the same position. But we recognize, even just as Americans in light of what we celebrated perhaps this past week, how little decisions within families, a decision like getting on a boat and coming into a new world for the sake of protecting from worldly influence, how in four centuries' time, that can remarkably impact the flow of human history.
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Family decisions matter. God's providence in family decisions, as simple and mundane as marriage, matter.
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They carry redemptive historical weight because God is always at work through the lives of his people.
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What if the servant, as we'll come to see, hadn't persevered in the task? Again, redemptive history would have shuddered.
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This loyalty, this obedience, this trust in God's providence propels God's purpose for the world.
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And so we see Abraham being faithfully obedient to what God had revealed. And then we see the servant being faithfully obedient to what his master had revealed.
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And there's this cascading, beautiful glimpse of obedience. And that's interwoven with the sovereign providence of God.
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What we notice about Abraham is this. Even in his old age, even with his wife buried now in the caves by Machpelah, he doesn't sit back and just say, well,
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God's going to have to do it. He doesn't become presumptuous. He doesn't think, well,
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God's going to have to find a bride and drop her out of the heavens, and then we'll just know that this is the odds it gets to be married.
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He undertakes to pursue a bride for his wife. He exercises faith and dependence upon God.
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This hasn't necessarily been revealed to him. He makes the servant take an oath, but as we'll come to see, he also releases her from that oath.
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If she doesn't want to come back with you, and this plan is totally frustrated and failed, then you're not bound by this oath anymore.
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He doesn't know necessarily that this will be the case. And so here's Abraham at the very end of his life, and with eyes of faith, he's looking ahead of himself, even ahead of his son.
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Remember that God had told him that he's going to have offspring, and they'll be taken into a land of Egypt for 400 years.
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Abraham's looking ahead covenantally, and he's concerned about his son, and he's concerned about his son's marriage, and the offspring from that marriage, and the offspring that are all part of God's unfolding purpose.
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Abraham is thinking generationally. And it's a sad thing when we can get to the last stages of our lives, and still not even think of the next generation.
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Abraham's thinking way ahead of that. He's thinking generationally of the inheritance within the land.
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He's thinking of God's covenant promise. He wants to see this blessing through the world fulfilled.
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And so the generations to come were, of course, people that Abraham never would know. He can't control that.
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He trusts in the Lord for that. But where he has influence, where he can have some effect, some impact, he acts.
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I may not be able to have any influence on my offspring's offspring's offspring, but I can have influence on my son, and on the woman he marries, and the kind of woman she is.
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I can protect, and I can guide, and I can discipline and disciple. I'll do what I'm capable of doing, and I leave the rest to the
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Lord. And so here we see this concern. He's giving us an example to follow.
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This is what believers do. We do what we can, and we leave the rest to the
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Lord. Where do we have a sphere of influence? Where do we make an impact? Where can we exercise control?
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Here we act by faith, according to God's grace, and the abilities he's given us.
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We act for the sake of the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God moves generationally.
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It moves covenantally. And so the calling to fulfill these little household rules, right?
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Ephesians 5 and 6, you know, Colossians 3. These little household rules. It's no different here.
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These little decisions, these little acts, these influences, this impact. It propels the kingdom of God and God's work in this world.
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Everything believers do ought to be with an eye toward the advancement of the kingdom of God. And we tend to think that the kingdom of God only advances with mighty movements and mighty men, and we miss the fact that it's often rolling in situations like this.
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It was the influence over a marriage. It was that guidance when that marriage was just beginning. It was that godly instruction in child rearing.
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It was a multi -generational vision. That's what we see here in Genesis 24.
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But moving beyond this, we actually begin to see prayer and providence interwoven.
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Beginning in verse 10, the servant departs. He takes 10 of his master's camels.
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These might have been multi -generational camels. These might have been the offspring of camels that Pharaoh had gifted
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Abraham back when Sarah was finally released from his harem. 10 camels, that's a lot.
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Remember we said a camel's like an exotic car. It's like a Tesla. It's advanced technology in the ancient
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Near East. So much so that it used to be the claim of some skeptics that the biblical account couldn't be trusted because there was no archeological evidence of camels this early in Egyptian history.
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And since then, of course, we've found all sorts of decorations with camels and remains of camels and whatnot, so that's been shot down.
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But that's just to say camels are high -tech. Camels are exotic. We're going to go on to see the jewelry that's brought out.
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Abraham is, as he was said, a mighty prince among the Canaanites. This is a man of great wealth, great might.
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The servant takes 10 camels. That's just showing off. He doesn't need 10 camels to travel, right?
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He needs one. So why take nine more? Why nine more camels to water and to feed?
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It's this show of luxury and extravagance and wealth. It's meant to impress this potential bride -to -be.
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All of his master's goods, we read, were in his hand. And he arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor.
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Remember, that's Abraham's brother. Most likely this is named after him. And he made his camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water.
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And then here we have this beautiful prayer, beginning in verse 12. Oh Lord, God of my master
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Abraham, please give me success this day. Show kindness to my master Abraham.
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Behold, here I stand by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water now.
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Let it be that the young woman to whom I say, please let down your pitcher that I may drink.
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And she says, drink, and I will also give your camels a drink. Let her be the one you've appointed for your servant
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Isaac. And by this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. So Abraham clearly is not the only man of faith in Genesis 24.
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This servant, perhaps Eleazar, this trusted chief servant is also a man of faith.
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He says, oh Lord God of my master Abraham. In other words, he understands that God is in this covenantal relationship with Abraham, and therefore he prays to the
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God of Abraham, to the God of Isaac. It turns out to be one of the great acts of faith in Genesis, that this servant brings the bride to the seat of promise.
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And so this act of faith, it's not only recorded for us here, but then we have it in the remainder of Genesis 24, because the servant recounts everything to Laban.
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And so you get it twice, and that's just an amazing amount of emphasis for Hebrew narrative.
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The fact that this chapter is as long as it is, largely because of the servant's actions and words, and then his recounting of that says, this is vitally significant.
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This servant has a central role, and his act of faith is celebrated in the history of God's redemption.
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Now, a little bookmark for next week, this has important theological significance for what this chapter presents theologically.
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So we'll touch on that next week. I don't want to give away the thunder, so to speak, but it's very beautiful once you see it.
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This servant's act of faith literally bridges God's purpose of redemption.
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And he has a plan, and he recognizes that this plan has to be bathed in prayer, and we have that prayer.
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It begins, right? Lord God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day.
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And success, in light of the context, is please lead me to find the bride that I swore
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I would take back for my master. And then he asked God to identify the one.
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There's all of these young women now from Mesopotamia, and it's heading toward nighttime, and so they're coming out to draw water for the evening.
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And he says, God, help me identify the one. And how am I going to do that?
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How am I going to identify the one? And he, as it were, lays down a fleece. He sets up a test, as it were.
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And he says, let it be this way, that the one that I say, please let down your picture, and if she offers to give my camels drink, let her be the one.
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And we'll see that even this, even if this encounter goes to plan, he still is going to be discerning.
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He's still somewhat cautious and guarded. That's very, very helpful and instructive. But don't miss the fact that in his prayer, he's praying very specifically.
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He's praying for God to answer this test, this means of identifying the potential bride -to -be.
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And then we read, and this is just beautiful, even before he had finished praying,
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Rebecca's walking to the loo. And we think, well, you know, if my prayers could be answered that immediately and that self -evidently,
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I would pray specifically all the time. We tend to pray generically to guard our hearts. We don't want to be disappointed or feel that somehow we're lacking the faith that God requires.
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And of course, we all have times that we wish God would speak to us. Apparently, God had not spoken this to Abraham.
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Apparently, God had not spoken to the servant. They're praying in light of what they do not know.
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They're praying specifically and acting in faith. The servant knows I may return empty -handed. Abraham knows that.
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He says, if you do, you'll be released from my oath. But they're acting in faith and they're praying in faith.
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There's no angelic visitation here. There's no direct message from a prophet. He's praying and he's saying,
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Lord, I need help. I'm here now. This is the time and I need your help to identify this woman.
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And I think that's a common experience for us. Rarely do we feel so prompted by the
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Lord, so assured of his guidance or will for us. It's usually something like this.
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We know there's something we're trying to do, a direction we're trying to go, and we need help. We need help,
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Lord. What would you have me do? Help me narrow something down. Would you have me be in this relationship?
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Would you have me pursue this opportunity? Should I be in this line of work? What would you have me do in light of this situation and the news that's come down or how my management is viewing me,
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Lord? What am I going to do? And we tend to pray generically, don't we?
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Well, how ought we to pray? I think there's four things that we can put together here from how the servant prays, four things.
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And the first thing is something we notice throughout, not only here, but in every time the servant speaks, we see this
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God -centeredness. So the first thing, his prayer is
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God -centered. It's God -centered. In a sense, whose prayer isn't
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God -centered, right? You begin by addressing God, but it's amazing how easily and how quickly our prayers become rather self -centered.
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And what we see in this man's demeanor is that every turn where he can honor God or give credit to God or worship
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God as a result of answered prayer, we find this note of God -centeredness, this adoration.
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I think the fact that he responds in worship to answered prayer is already signaling that to us.
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It's a sad phenomenon that rarely do Christians worship for answered prayer.
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Now, of course, when you pray for something in the midst of a crisis, you pray for someone who's terribly ill and then they're finally healed and you're so thankful and you worship
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God in light of that, but I mean the mundane prayers, the prayers that we pray generically that we're supposed to pray, but we're not actually praying with faith, we're not praying with any real vital recognition that God is acting or granting or moving, and so we don't worship when that prayer is answered.
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We just think this is the way things naturally developed. Things would have happened this way with prayer or not.
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Prayer's just this token duty. So the response of worship is almost a litmus test to say, am
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I really God -centered? Am I really praying with faith that God is intervening and acting, that God is moving, that prayer is effective?
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Or is it just a token? How you respond to answered prayer will be your answer. How you respond to answered prayer.
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This servant's prayer is God -centered. He doesn't just acknowledge who
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God is covenantally, right, oh Lord, God of my master Abraham. He also acknowledges throughout his prayer that God is sovereign and able to do this, you know?
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God, you are able to so coordinate a young woman to respond to my question and to offer something, so let it be this way.
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That's an amazing trust of God's sovereign control over all that takes place.
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So this is not a general prayer at all, and that's the second point. Not only is it God -centered, but it's specific.
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This is specifically what I need, this is the mission that I'm on, and this is what
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I need in order to fulfill that mission. There's an old maxim, and I think it's true.
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General prayers receive general answers, all right? General prayers receive general answers.
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There's a way of praying, and we can do this day by day, that is utterly indifferent to the reality of lived life.
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We can pray so generically, so vaguely, that there's nothing specific for God to answer at all.
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We might as well pray a lot, Lord, let the day be as the day would be. Let meals and health come as they will, you know?
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Let my work go as it usually does. Lord, be distant as you often seem to be, because that's how
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I pray to you anyway. This is not how the servant's praying. God is present, he's active.
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Because he's the God of Abraham, he's gonna be intervening for the sake of his promise to Abraham.
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The servant's already seen that. If God can cause
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Sarah to have a baby, he can cause a woman at the well to give the right response.
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That's this man's perspective. And so it's a specific prayer. We pray something generic, like Lord, guide us, lead us, and we're not giving any recourse for that prayer to be answered.
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Of course God is guiding and leading us. Do we ever pray a little more specifically than that? Now, it's interesting to me,
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I mean, I didn't have enough time this week to look into it, but it's interesting to me that it wasn't just in the
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Old Testament that believers cast lots. There were different moments at different times, and you can read certain
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Christian biographies where pivotal decisions were made by casting lots.
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One of the great theological minds of the turn of the last century, Hermann Bavink, he, with his family, cast lots when deciding which school he should pursue his training in as a young seminarian.
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Ended up at the liberal school of the day, speaking in the Dutch Reformed world,
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Leiden University. But in God's providence, he ended up having to so defend the faith against all that liberal onslaught that he became one of the greatest apologists of his day, of his generation, and still his works are being translated from Dutch into English for the benefit of the
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Reformed faith. That was all from casting lots. I think of another Dutchman going back a few centuries prior,
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Theodor Frulinghuizen, who is in the Netherlands and a senior minister in the area said, you know, there's an assignment for you to consider, and I don't remember the name of the town, but he mentioned a town, and it was a well -known town within the
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Netherlands. And so he said, yes, I will accept that. However, the minister hadn't been speaking of that well -known town in the
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Netherlands, he had been speaking of the similar named town in Pennsylvania, here in the colonies, in the
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New World. But the way Frulinghuizen understood God's providence was, well,
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I said I would take it. I was under the wrong impression at the time, but this is God's will. And so he came to Pennsylvania.
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And there's a great biography of Theodor Frulinghuizen called The Forerunner of the Great Awakening, because God used him mightily to sow the seed of God's word in order that when later, men like Whitefield and Edwards began to preach, a great awakening broke forth.
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And that was largely from the seed that had been sown from this man, who understood this is how
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God's providence works. And perhaps you've read biographies where there's all sorts of occasions like this, things that were unclear at the time, and the specific
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Christian prayed specifically. They looked for concrete guidance.
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They needed help. They wanted to pursue God's leading. And so the challenge here for us is to discern, are we safeguarding our prayers in a way that we would not recognize
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God's intervening, and we don't actually need to exercise faith in praying? If you're anything like me, it's so easy to check prayer off as a token duty, and to even think you're praying with faith because you're praying sincerely, or genuinely with a full heart, but you're not actually praying with faith because you're not praying specifically.
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And you're not praying with faith because you're not responding in worship to answered prayer. You don't know if the prayers have been answered.
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You're praying too generically. You're praying too vaguely. Of course you can't have the response that the servant has.
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Third, notice that he's not presumptive. Right? As we'll go on to see, even when
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Rebecca meets that request, he's still kinda squinting. He's observing to see if this is what the
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Lord has willed. That just again shows you he's not anything like these so -called name it, claim it, which is a false theology of prayer, that you can speak something into being, that you have creative power, that your prayers are rhema, as they would say, that you can be like Creflo Dollar and say, money coming, money, you know, claim it, and it's like an arena full of the brokest people in the city all saying, money's coming, money's coming.
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No, no, no, there's no place for that. There's no place for presumption or spiritual arrogance. Here we see the servant, he's
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God -centered. He's praying specifically, and he's not presumptuous. Okay, God answered that very specific prayer.
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Now I'm still gonna be discerning. You know, I don't trust myself. I don't trust my, you know, it's not that uncommon for someone to offer a drink to a stranger, so I gotta be a little more careful than that.
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And so he doesn't pray presumptuously. So this is the real balance. We are far more afraid of praying presumptuously than we are of praying specific, praying specifically than we are praying presumptuously.
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Reformed Christians, those who have the highest view of God's sovereignty are often the most scared to pray as though God were sovereign.
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Isn't that an interesting phenomenon? Charismatics who think that their will is what affects their relationship with God pray with more faith than most
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Calvinistic Christians. Something is wrong with that picture. And so that's the fourth point.
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The servant prays in faith. He prays in faith. He expects God's going to answer.
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He's God -centered, he's specific, he's not presumptuous, and he's praying with faith.
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I had a seminar a few years ago with a professor, Greg Allison.
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He's a systematics professor down at Southern. And somehow a question came up about the prayer of faith that brings healing in James.
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And he's an elder at his church there in Louisville, and he said, whenever we've gone as elders to pray for someone who's been sick, we have a practice of before we enter in and kind of be with that person, we kind of stop and we come around and look at each other, and one of us will ask, is there anyone who does not have faith that God is able to heal?
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And it's not meant to be a gotcha question. It's not meant to be kind of a, oh, shame on you, and we're gonna have to talk about this later.
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It's just saying like, for whatever reason, the state they're in or the way things have been going, or do you just, in your heart, if you're being honest, you're like, well,
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I'm gonna pray, but really there's, then they say, you should stay outside and just pray for us while we pray.
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And that really struck me. It struck me. They're saying, we need to pray with faith that God is able, and we have to examine our hearts, do we really believe that this is so?
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Now, it's interesting because James, in that very passage, it's wisdom literature, it's not a letter, it's wisdom literature.
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And he uses a very specific verb there that as a result of the prayer of faith, God will raise them up.
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And that's the verb that you would use of resurrection. It's not typically the verb you would use for bodily healing, but it's the typical verb in the
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New Testament for resurrection. So even James is not saying, if you have enough faith mustered up within you, healing is gonna be the result.
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We're not going in that direction. Even James is saying, one way or another, God's gonna answer that prayer.
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Whether they'll be lifted up physically as a result of it, now or physically later, but God's gonna answer that prayer.
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But at the same time, I'm struck by this call to examine our hearts in prayer.
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Do we pray with faith that God is able? Do we pray with expectation? And that expectation is,
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Lord, prove me wrong. Prove me that you have something different that you're doing, because I'm praying with faith, and therefore it's gonna happen unless you have a better reason, a higher purpose not to do it.
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And I don't think we actually ever get there. I think we tend to pray as if, well, we don't really know your will, and we're just assuming things are gonna go the way they're going, which is not praying with faith.
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It's praying with statistics. It's praying with the experience of how things typically go in a fallen world.
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That's not praying with faith. And so please notice the difference between this name it, claim it, this faith healing false theology.
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We're not taking a step toward that at all, but we're also not giving ourselves a pass. If we really believe
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God is sovereign and able to intervene, and that he does so as a result of his people being humbled and praying with faith, do we actually pray in this way?
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Do we pray in this God -centered way? God is so sovereign and so present and so powerfully able to do even more than we could possibly imagine, and that we, in light of that, pray very specifically.
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And we guard ourselves against presumption, but we pray with faith. That's what this servant does. I love,
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I've been quoting him now for several weeks, Jacques Allal, who wrote a tremendous book on prayer, and this is a couple excerpts from it, and one line in particular that just is a lightning strike to me.
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God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him, the prayer is received, it is heard, it is authenticated, because it is
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God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our inner disposition, not our fervor, not our lucidity, how clearly and theologically accurate we can point things at.
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That's not prayer. Allal's saying prayer is constituted by God. Prayer is what it is because of who
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God is and how God receives it. That prayer, which is pronounced for God and accepted by him, becomes a true prayer.
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We do a lot of mumbling. Prayer is that which is prayed in faith and heard by God and accepted by him.
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That's prayer. Prayer is not a dialogue. Allal says it's a form of life.
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It is life with God. This side of that great day, prayer is life with God.
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It's fellowship with God. It's a way of being with God. That is why it's not confined to a mere moment of verbal statement.
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Listen to this. This is beautiful. Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation.
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Prayer makes history possible. That is such a profound understanding of prayer.
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Man was meant to dwell with God in perfect communion, in Edenic bliss, and the fall disrupted that.
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We were torn away from the presence of God, and that creation became corrupted, and our minds became darkened, and our lives became alienated from our maker, the one that we were meant to live for and live with and live through.
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And prayer holds together now these broken fragments of creation. And prayer makes history possible.
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In other words, this is right out of Genesis 24, isn't it? Prayer, this servant's prayer, is making
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God's purpose for the world possible. How high a view of prayer we ought to have.
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And we'll get a higher view of prayer, I think, if we have a better grasp of God's providence.
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Prayer and providence belong together. They're woven together, and this takes us to our last focus this morning in verses 15 through 28.
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Before he had even finished praying, God is answering the prayer, and here comes Rebecca. And we're given her lineage.
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She was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother. And she comes out with this picture on her shoulder.
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Her beauty is described. We'll come again to that at the end of the chapter as she veils herself to give the great wedding day reveal, as it were, to her husband.
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And of course, she follows through on what had been promised. Drink, my Lord. And then when she'd finished giving him a drink, she said,
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I'll draw water for your camels also. Remember, that's 10 camels. It's a lot of camels to give water to. And then we see this servant's discernment in verse 21.
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He wondered at her. He remained silent. He's still seeking to know whether the Lord had made his journey successful.
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And then, of course, when the camels had finished drinking, it could have been an hour later, maybe even longer, he brings out all of these riches, all of this jewelry, a golden nose ring weighing half a shekel.
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That might have kind of brought down one of her nostrils. That's a pretty hefty piece of jewelry there. Bracelets weighing, it would be like 15 ounces of gold.
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It's incredible wealth. Whose daughter are you? This is sort of the final point.
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All right, we've gotten this far. I'm feeling optimistic about this one. Whose daughter are you?
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And here's the great reveal. It's already been told to us, but it's repeated here. I'm the daughter of Bethuel, Milca's son, whom she bore to Nahor.
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And that must have just been this ecstatic moment. God has answered my prayer.
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Look at his response. He bowed his head and worshiped the Lord. And then he exclaims, he gives another prayer now, a prayer of praise.
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Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his mercy and his truth toward my master.
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He's holding together history at this very moment. As for me being on the way, the
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Lord led me. And here's where that prayer connects to God's providence.
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It's in this confession. God's providence is glowing throughout this encounter. Turn by turn, there's more confidence, more awe -inspiring answers to prayer, but now he can't hold it out anymore.
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And I wonder what Rebecca, you know, where are you from? Oh, well, this is my father. And all of a sudden he busts down on the floor and he's like, praise
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God. And she's looking at our jewelry like, what is going on? We have to remember that this servant's trust in God's providence is the fruit of Abraham's trust in God's providence.
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Where did this servant, where did, if he is, Eleazar from the pagan land of Damascus, where did he learn to pray?
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Where did he learn to trust? Where did he learn to rejoice? He learned it from Abraham.
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Abraham was totally convinced that God would continue his promise through Isaac and would therefore provide a wife.
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And as this young woman is gathering up all this water, the servant knows in his heart that God has answered his prayer.
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Interesting fact, this is totally killing the flow of the sermon, but I just, I can't resist it.
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Camels drink an immense amount of water. Don't you love
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Google, the age of Google? Up to 25 gallons a day. Now, I'm not very good with weights and measurements, but I have a little solution tank in my boiler room to clean our water.
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And every now and then it has to be filled up. And it takes about 16 gallons of water. So I usually have four empty gallon jugs and one at a time, the faucet fills them up and I take them by four at a time.
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And it's like a 45 minute process. And that's just for 16 gallons. But one camel can drink 25 and he's got 10 camels.
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This is an amazing amount of work. This is not like a cheap offer, like let me pat you on the back.
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This is like, let me labor and sweat for like an hour and a half to give your camels a drink.
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That's a pretty amazing offer of graciousness and hospitality. And it speaks volumes to the character of Rebecca, doesn't it?
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She's not just beautiful, but she's industrious. She's diligent. She's a hard worker.
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She's got Proverbs 31 biceps, drawing all that water, caring for the camels.
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The camels must have loved this woman. And it says a lot about why this servant was so taken with her.
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Who among the other Mesopotamian woman was quite like this? And can't we say then that God's grace had been at work in Rebecca's life too?
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Here's all this fulfillment in the promised land and here's this great seed of promise and all of the focus of the narrative is on Isaac now.
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But God's grace is in Mesopotamia preparing a young woman for such a time. God's time is never wasted.
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You wonder if Rebecca had gotten to a point in her life as a young woman and she's going, what am
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I to do? Where am I to go? What will my life be? Will I be married?
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Will I have a family? What will God do for me? I've heard the stories of Abraham. I've heard of how he had left this land and left our family because God had called him.
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We got the Christmas cards in the mail and it seems like God's done amazing things, but what's God going to do for me?
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So the servant, as we can go on to read, he takes these gifts out. He asks her lineage and then he asks to spend the night and that will take us into our passage for next week.
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But I just want to focus as we close on verse 27. As for me, being on the way, the
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Lord led me. That's the confession that the servant prays. The Lord led me.
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That's the confession that every Christian ought to have. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, meaning like two days, you have enough perspective to say, being on the way, the
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Lord led me. Being on the way, the Lord led me. Offense in my life that I could not understand at the time,
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I now can see with 20 -20 vision, the Lord led me. I needed that at that time. Or perhaps
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I still don't understand it, but considering all the other things he's led me through, I trust him. I trust him.
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I know he's trustworthy. I'm on the way and the Lord has been leading me. So the confession of providence here, it's vital to prayer.
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If you have a faulty or paltry view of God's providence, your prayer life is sure to follow.
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If your view of God's control and presence and intervening in your day -to -day life is thin and almost non -sequitur, your prayers are going to be thin and random and vague tokens of duty rather than prayers of faith that are effective.
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The Lord is leading you. The Lord is leading you. To know
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God's guidance, we put aside our will and we seek the one who's leading us.
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We want to be led and so his providence is leading us and we're praying that more light is shed on his leading.
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Lord, I want to know your way. I want to anticipate the way you're leading me. I want to work with you leading me, not against you.
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You see it, perhaps you've seen this viral video. It was from like a dash cam and some poor, I think it's like a
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Bedouin shepherd is leading all these sheep across a road crossing and he's got his back turned and they're all kind of mumbling along and then one of these young males with horns bears down on him and rams him.
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It's like he's leading you to pasture and you're resisting it, like you're beating the shepherd that's leading you.
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You know, frankly, that's how a Christian can be at times. We don't want to be led in a certain direction.
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We're not prepared to go and so we're resistant. So the very shepherd that is patiently guiding us to a better pasture, a safer refuge, we're resistant to him.
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No, we want to be out in the middle of the highway. We want to get bowled over and torn apart. Do you know that God is leading you?
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Do you pray in light of God's providence? Are you seeking first God's kingdom? The whole reason
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Genesis 24, one through 28 is taking place is because Abraham is seeking first God's kingdom and all these things are being added.
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Understanding God's providence, praying in light of God's providence can never, never truly be a part of our
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Christian experience if we're bent on pursuing our own earthly ends. It begins when we're seeking
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God's righteousness, God's kingdom and that is often the struggle, isn't it?
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Because it's always easier to find a Canaanite wife than take a 500 -mile journey to Mesopotamia and make that parallel to any situation in your life.
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The call to holiness, the call to seeking God's kingdom first is always gonna be harder than defaulting to what's available and what's around you and what the world does.
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It's a higher calling, it's a harder calling, it's a holy calling and therefore you must have this sense of God leading you providentially and you're praying, you're praying in light of that.
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We often don't experience God's guidance because we're so caught up in our own efforts, our own ends, our own devices, our own schemes, our own established routines that it takes some trial, some catastrophe just to get our attention and then that's like the one time we're praying with faith and the one time we respond with worship and then we go right back to the routines, right back to the very ways that we were resisting his leading.
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If we want to have God's guidance, if we want to have this experience of his presence intervening day to day in our lives, we must seek his kingdom first.
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Trust that he'll be adding all those needs that often occupy that focus and that time. We often put the cart before the horse.
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God says those things will follow if you have the right perspective. Finding God's will of course is not a formula.
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It's as Alol said, it's a way of life, it's living with God. Finding God's will is praying with God and experiencing his providence.
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That's finding God's will. You take everything to him in prayer, not as a token but in specific detail with faith and then you recognize providentially that he's ordering your steps.
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If you can't see it ahead, you can certainly see it behind you. And that gives you faith to continue walking ahead.
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And of course there's times of trial and suffering and struggle. And you can even turn around at those times and see the great growth that God gave you through that.
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He's not interested in what we're interested in primarily. We're interested in finding the path of least resistance toward our earthly comfort.
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God is interested in finding the path that leads to our eternal blessedness. Our conformity to our savior.
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And if our savior's path, if his prayerful life with God, and experience of God's perfect providence led toward a cross, then we can expect what he said we should expect.
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The call to the Christian life is a call to take up the cross. So as we close, five points.
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Five points about prayer and providence, about discerning God's guidance. And I'll try to be brief here.
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Of course there's more and there's books on finding God's will that probably have a lot, a lot more substance and help to offer.
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But these are five things that I think we can take away from Genesis 24 and apply. First, maintain a healthy distrust of your own earthly desire.
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Maintain a healthy distrust of your own earthly desire. When you consider opportunities the
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Lord puts before you, doors that seem to be open, alternatives that are available to you, weigh them against what you know has been the
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Lord's leading in your life up to that point. How has he been leading you? What kind of things has he been blessing you with?
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What kind of things has he been frustrating? What direction can you anticipate he's leading you in?
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What kind of growth has he been doing? You weigh that against the opportunities that stand before you.
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You do that by distrusting your desire. I want something new, I want something fresh,
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I want something different. I think this will be better for me and I can give 800 reasons why. Fine, but distrust that desire and now examine yourself.
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What has God been doing over the past few years? What has he been blessing? What has he been deconstructing, frustrating?
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When God, in light of that distrust, when there's an open door before you, if you can examine it and say, this seems to be consistent with what
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God has been desiring for me, what God's been doing in and through me, then you can cautiously move forward.
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But you're still doing it cautiously, you're still doing it with a distrusting heart. And this last part,
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I can not only say it as a warning, I can also say it as a charge. When a door is open before you and it's consistent with what
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God has been doing in and through you, go through it. I don't just say that as a warning, go through it with a distrusting heart because it might be your own fleshly desire.
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I also say it as a charge, don't just stand there. God is providentially at work in your life.
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If he opens a door before you and you've examined yourself before him and it seems to be consistent with his leading, have the faith to go through it.
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Take a step forward in faith. Earthly desires, in other words, may be those things that lead you to do something apart from God's will, lead you astray, but they can also be earthly desires that prevent you from doing
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God's will. No, I'm not willing to make this change, I'm not willing to undertake this whole new direction for my family and my life because I'm not willing to give up my earthly desire, my comfort, my stability, what
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I have worked out for my retirement, et cetera. So you have to discern, is this earthly desire keeping me apart from God's will or preventing me from God's will?
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In either case, it could be true. People sometimes say, Christians sometimes say,
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I don't think God's leading me to do this. And if they were being honest, they're saying, I don't want to do this.
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I just don't feel really led by the Lord to do this, AKA, I really don't want to do that. Nothing is appealing to me about that.
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Well, maybe that's exactly what the Lord wants you to do for that very reason. Maintain a healthy distrust of your earthly desires.
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When God is opening a door before you, pursue it carefully, but still pursue it.
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Secondly, so the first point, maintain a healthy distrust of your own earthly desires. Second, obey what
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God has revealed as you wait on what God has not revealed.
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Obey what God has revealed as you wait on what God has not revealed. The Bible is full of God's revealed will for us.
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Things that we know are true and expected of his people. These are the things that God has revealed.
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And if you're at a place in your life, in your walk with the Lord, where you're having a hard time understanding what he would have you do, what direction he would have you go,
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I would say, focus on what you know he wants you to do, on the things he expects of you to do that perhaps you haven't been doing.
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And as you do those things, perhaps then he will reveal what remains hidden. So just to give you a quick example, 1
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Thessalonians 4 .3, this is God's will for you, to be holy, to stay away from sexual immorality.
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Each one of you must control his own body and live in holiness with honor, not in passion of lust like the pagans who know not
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God nor his ways. So here's revealed will. So if you're not even doing 1
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Thessalonians 4 .3, and you're going, I just don't know what God wants me to do. I feel like he's not leading me. I'm kind of at this place where I don't know what to do.
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Okay, you don't know what God's will is yet. Well, here's God's will for you. Live holy, be separate from sexual immorality.
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Start living this out, and then maybe light will come on his will for you and the things that are not yet revealed.
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Too often, Christians are bent out of shape and trying to pursue God's will beyond the things that he's saying,
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I've already told you what I want you to do right now. This gets back to seeking his kingdom and righteousness first.
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Those other steps, those other directions, those life changes will come, but you're not gonna get to point
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B if you're not beginning with point A. 1
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Peter 2, 13 and 15, this is God's will for you, that you live honorable lives and silence those who are ignorant and make foolish accusations against you.
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I just don't know what to do. Should I take this opportunity or not? And it's unclear, and I'm getting kind of discouraged by that.
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Well, you're focusing on what you know God wants you to do. Are you living honorably? Are you living with purity? What has
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God revealed to you? Follow that guidance first, and more guidance will come. Proverbs 3, 6 is simply emphasizing this.
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In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. In all your ways, acknowledge him.
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He'll make your path straight. Third, so second point, right? Obey what
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God has revealed as you wait on what God has not revealed. Third, call before you dig.
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Call before you dig. You've seen those signs, right? And hopefully you've seen those signs, and you don't just take a spade, and go five feet under, and bust open a gas line.
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Call before you dig. Get the utility company in there, and make sure that what you're seeking to dig is not gonna interrupt important things that are gonna have catastrophic consequences.
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So as a spiritual principle, I think we can have some wisdom here. When it's unclear to you what God would have you do, you're not the best judge of yourself.
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No one sees themselves accurately. And so when you're trying to discern God's leading for you, and you're trying to follow some of this advice, and you're saying, yeah,
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I need to distrust my kind of earthly desire. I need to be aware that just because things might be lining up, that it may not be something
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God wants me to do, or it may be something God wants me to do. As you're trying to guard and examine yourself, you need the wisdom of multiple counselors.
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You need to call before you dig. Am I seeing this rightly? Do you think this is the right decision?
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Is this the right time? Do you think this would be a hindrance to my growth in the Lord, or a help to it?
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Do you think this would introduce tensions into my family life that I should not introduce at this time, at this season?
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Am I missing something? Am I blind to something? Am I not willing to hear something? Call before you dig. If you barge ahead willfully, and you shut out spiritual advice from your brothers and sisters, you should have alarm bells and red flags everywhere.
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Because others can see what we can't see. Others can see this isn't gonna go well for them. I don't know why they made this decision.
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I don't know why they're living in this way. I wish they would have sought us out. I wish they would have asked for prayer.
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I wish they would have sought us. And you need those brothers and sisters that are willing to give that hard truth.
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I don't think you're in this season. I don't think you've counted the cost. What effect is this gonna have on your children? Are you really thinking generationally here?
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Are you doing what Abraham did? Are you protecting Isaac from influence? Why would you make that decision on your own?
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Call before you dig. And if you've done that, and your whole mode is
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I only receive the advice of those who affirm what I want to do anyway, well,
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I don't know if, you know, you're just breaking into that gas line. You called and you're still barreling down, you know?
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You actually have to be willing to receive it, too. You can't just go with those who are agreeing with you.
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You want to seek out counselors who maybe are against the grain. That one counselor who says, brother,
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I love you, but I don't know. You want to be the quickest to hear. So call before you dig.
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Fourth, and there's only one more after this. Fourth, avoid presumption with patient discernment.
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Avoid presumption with patient discernment. Don't presume that because everything seems to line up, and you found that blog, and it mentioned that verse that you had read in your morning devotional yesterday, and it was on the coffee mug that your brother, you know, no, no, no.
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Don't assume that because things line up that this is God's will for you. Avoid presumption.
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And how do you avoid presumption? With patient discernment. Be slow. Be slow to assess.
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Slow to move forward, like the servant was slow. Okay, you know, so far, so good.
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Let's just kind of be patient with this. Don't get too excited. He waited for that test to play out.
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He waited until Rebecca was already getting to that ninth camel before he said, so tell me about your family.
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The reason we have to not be presumptuous and be patiently discerning is because God so often leads us not with a five -year view, but with like a two -month view, or less.
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He leads us in steps. If he gave us the five -year view, we'd be frozen. We wouldn't want to take a single step.
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That's gonna happen, that's gonna happen. Thank God that he doesn't give us the full view because we would just freak out at what seemed difficult and not realize the good that he was doing through it.
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And so he only reveals things in steps. So we have to be careful to not presume, but to be patient and discern as each step unfolds, as we're moving forward to say, yes, everything seems to be well.
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We've made these changes, but we're still kind of holding our breath. We're still holding things with a loose hand. We're not presuming to understand the will of God.
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And again, by the same token, just because things have wondrously lined up, it doesn't mean you've secured
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God's will for you. By the same token, just because obstacles arise and challenges come, it doesn't mean that you're on the wrong path.
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Most of God's path for you is gonna have obstacles and narrow passages and hills of difficulty.
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It's not going to be an easy and smooth road. And so you can't be discouraged from pursuing what seems to be
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God's will for you just because there's obstacles or challenges. So again, you have to avoid presumption on both sides.
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You have to be patiently discerning, calling in wisdom from a multitude of counselors.
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And then of course, you're pressing on in faith. You feel your own weakness. You're prepared for these unexpected U -turns, these broken dreams, spiritual disappointments.
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You recognize that even these are things that God desires for his people because he often teaches his people lessons of grace through such frustrating and discouraging times.
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If his purpose was only to lead you in what was encouraging and happy and a blessing to you, you would grow very little as a
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Christian. His purpose is to lead you through thorns and difficulties to give you strength and grace and growth in Christ.
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And of course, we see that in the example of our Savior. If he only pursued that which was encouraging and happy and a blessing and seems to keep him on the way in a good mood, then he wouldn't have been the
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Man of Sorrows. He wouldn't have been the one that had to press forward when everything seemed to be against him because he was trusting his father and knew that his father was always working in the midst of rejection and hostility and even what seems to be apparent failure.
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And then fifth and last, and this is certainly what we see with our servant, worship the
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Lord always, worship the Lord always. When the servant saw that prayer of faith being answered, he broke out in worship.
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He can't help but worship for the providence of God, the power of God, the purpose of God unfolding before him.
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He could not but bless God for leading him. He was on a mission for his master, but it was his mission, he owned it.
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The Lord has led me, the Lord has brought me this way. He recognized that God was personally at work in his life, even while he was serving his master, and that's true for every
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Christian. He's personally at work leading us as we serve our master and his mission for this world.
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And so we worship the Lord always, whether that providence is apparently good or apparently bad, whether it's sweet or whether it's sorrow, whether it's confusing or painful, we worship the
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Lord always. To use the language of the hymns, when he's crossing out our earthly schemes or when he's breaking blessings upon our head, we worship the
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Lord. And so, brothers and sisters, what we take away from Genesis 24, one through 28,
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I hope, what will apply, maintaining a healthy distrust of our own earthly desires, obeying what
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God has revealed while we wait on him to reveal what is hidden, calling before we dig, reaching out to others that will have insight and care and prayer for us, avoiding presumption and avoiding it with a patient discernment, and at every turn, for good or for ill, we worship the
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Lord always. Father, we could ask, as the disciples asked,
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Lord, teach us to pray. Forgive my countless series of vague prayers that are not prayed with faith befitting a
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God who is infinitely powerful and infinitely personal. Help us as a church to know what true prayer is, to pray like we confess that you are indeed sovereign, that you are good and holy, that your kingdom is advancing and will know no end.
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Help us to discern your will for our lives, Lord, as individuals, as family units, Lord.
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Help us to take away the faith and the urgency and the trust that Abraham and this servant have in their pursuit of your providence and your leading in their lives.