Genesis #27 - The Gospel According to Abraham #17 - "Faith for an Uncertain Future" (Gen 24)

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We turn our thoughts once again to the sermon series that we have been in for the last few weeks now called the
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Gospel according to Abraham. We are walking our way passage by passage through the life of Abraham and this afternoon we come to our penultimate message.
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We've got this and one more next week and we will have finished our study through Abraham's life.
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And so if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, take it and turn with me to Genesis chapter 24.
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Genesis and chapter 24, if you've grabbed one of the red hardbacks we give away, that's page 17.
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Genesis chapter 24 and this is a very long chapter so we won't read the whole thing.
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I will read verses 1 through 9 and the rest we'll just read as we go. So Genesis chapter 24 verses 1 through 9, page 17.
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And if you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's word.
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Genesis chapter 24 then, reading from verse 1. Brothers and sisters, these are God's words.
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Abraham was now old, getting on in years, and Yahweh had blessed him in everything.
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Abraham said to his servants, the elder of his household who managed all he owned, place your hand under my thigh, and I will have you swear by Yahweh, God of heaven and God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughter of the
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Canaanites among whom I live, but will go to my land and my family to take a wife from my son
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Isaac. The servants said to him, suppose the woman is unwilling to follow me to this land.
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Should I have your son go back to the land you came from? Abraham answered him, make sure you don't take my son back there.
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Yahweh, the God of heaven who took me from my father's house and from my native land, who spoke to me and swore to me,
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I will give this land to your offspring. He will send his angel before you and you can take a wife for my son from there.
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If the woman is unwilling to follow you, then you are free from this oath to me, but don't let my son go back there.
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So the servant placed his hand under his master Abraham's thigh and swore an oath to him concerning this matter.
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Pray that God would bless that reading of his word and give us understanding of it. Allow me to pray, ask for the
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Lord's help, and we will dig into his word. Well, Heavenly Father, we thank you for yet another opportunity to gather and another opportunity to worship, another opportunity to leave the busyness and challenges of the week and to render to you thanks and praise for all that you have done to us and for us.
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And so Father, we ask that as we come to your word now, that you would speak to every heart, you would grant us understanding of your word, help us to see your glorious work, your glorious person, and most importantly, help us to see the glories of redemption even in a passage like this.
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Father, it's our custom to pray for churches in our area during this time, and Father, we want to pray for two churches in particular.
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Pray for Medford Neighborhood Church, pastored by Dr. Lee Gregory, and The Living Room, pastored by Dan Gregory.
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They're churches that are part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and this week their denomination meets for what could potentially be some rather large conversations regarding women's ordination and issues and conflicts surrounding that.
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Father, we pray for clarity as their churches gather. Pray that you would grant grace to both
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Dr. Gregory and Pastor Gregory as they have made their stance very clear in agreement with your word.
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So we just pray that you would help them, that they would know your blessing, they would know your help as they seek to speak faithfully for your word, and we pray for votes and decisions that will be made in this next week as they gather, that ultimately they would glorify you by obedience to your word.
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And Father, we pray that that would be the case for us too, that we would glorify you by our obedience to your word even as we hear it preached now.
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And so we ask all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated.
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Well, this afternoon I want to speak to you on the subject as we near the end of our study in Abraham's life.
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I want to speak to you from the subject, faith for an uncertain future. Faith for an uncertain future.
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Would life be easier if you knew the future in advance? Let's do a little bit of a thought experiment together this afternoon.
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Would life be easier if you knew the future in advance?
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All the uncertainty, all the unknowns, all of the complexity, all of it, for the most part, basically gone.
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Would life be easier if you knew the future in advance? Let's build on our little thought experiment here.
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Let's ask, what would you do differently if you could know exactly how your individual future would pan out?
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There's not a question I ask myself all the time, but I do ask it occasionally. Because if we're honest, most of us would probably say that we would love to have that kind of knowledge of the future.
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Because not much you can do about the past, that's happened. But at least you can skip all of the mistakes, all of the missteps, every faux pas you could possibly make.
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You could skip all of that and just get straight to the good stuff. After all, you know what to avoid. So again, what would you do differently if you knew exactly how the future would pan out?
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Well, I invited you to do this thought experiment with me for a couple of seconds. But the reality is, from a
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Christian perspective, this thought experiment starts to break down once you start pushing back on it a little bit.
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Because despite the fact that we as human beings, not always wrongly, but we generally prefer what is easiest and what is least painful, despite our general bent towards that, what if the hard moments, the moments with the least information, the mistakes and missteps actually were what we needed?
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What if not knowing the future was actually a good thing for us because it forced us to act in greater faith?
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I mean, think of it this way. Would you really need to have faith if you knew how things would pan out?
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But putting aside the fact that God alone is all -knowing, so none of us will ever get to know the future with perfect knowledge, the reality is,
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I would venture to say God doesn't tell us the future, at least not our individual futures.
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His word says a lot about the end of all things, to be fair, but he doesn't tell you your individual future precisely because faith grows best day by day as it seeks understanding and the only kind of understanding that comes from God.
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Well, as I said, we are on the home stretch of our study in the life of Abraham. Actually, next week will be the final part in this series in Abraham's life.
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As we're on the home stretch of Abraham's life, the question that looms large over this text is, if you wanted to boil it down to one word, uncertainty.
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Again, just to kind of pick us up on where we are in the narrative of Abraham's life, he from all the way back in chapter 12,
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God came to him, spoke and said, you should leave your father's house, you should leave everything that you know, everything you're familiar with, leave all of that, go to a land that I will show you.
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Oh, by the way, you have no children, but I'm going to give you offspring. And in fact, not just a few offspring, but so many that you won't be able to count them.
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Well, Abraham obeys God, not really knowing what this is going to look like. And so off he goes, and now almost 30 years has passed.
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Actually, more than that, if you count the years of waiting for Isaac, years and years have passed.
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Remember in the last chapter, we noted the death of Sarah, his beloved wife has now passed. The text begins in verse one by telling us that Abraham is getting on in years.
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And as Abraham is getting on in years, the question that kind of hovers over this text is, how is the covenant promise going to advance?
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How do we move to the next part of the story, so to speak?
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And though we are not Abraham having to be faced with this question, we should ask the question, well, how exactly do we approach a future that is fundamentally uncertain?
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None of us know what will happen tomorrow. And since we don't know that, how does faith approach the future?
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How do God's people approach the future knowing that we don't know the future?
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Well, if I can leave you with one big idea this afternoon from this passage, I think it's very simple. I think the big idea that we're left with is that it is through the lens of God and His faithfulness that we can have confidence in the face of an uncertain future.
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The reality is if we try to have confidence or have faith for the future, a future that we don't know, we're going to find ourselves falling short every single time.
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Ultimately, the only way that we can have confidence in the face of an uncertain future is when we look at that future through the lens of God and His faithfulness.
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So again, it is through the lens of God and His faithfulness that we can have confidence in the face of an uncertain future.
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Well, for the rest of our time, we have a long text to get through, so just a heads up, I'm going to summarize a lot of this passage because there is so much to get to.
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And so for the rest of our time, I want to consider four faith -driven responses to the uncertainty of the future.
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Four faith -driven responses to the uncertainty of the future, and they all come out of this passage.
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How does faith view the future? How is it that faith looks at the unknown?
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Well, the first response that faith has when it comes to the future, response number one, is that faith recognizes the providence of God.
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Faith recognizes the providence of God. Faith looks to the future recognizing the providence of God, especially
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His past providences. So our text begins with the reality of Abraham's old age and impending death.
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So verse one, Abraham was now old, getting on in years, and the Lord had blessed him in everything.
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Don't skip past that second clause there in verse one. Abraham had been the graced beneficiary of God's kind providence for decades now at this point.
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He knew what it was for God to care for him and to protect him and to provide for him, even as he had left the land of his birth, even as he had given up the security of where he had been raised and having no doubt a home and all of those things, to go into a land that he didn't know, to give up the security of an actual house for the general insecurity of tents.
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He knew what it was for God's providence to go before him. And as we have, as you've been here, if you've been here, as we've been walking through Abraham's life, as we have lived through the rises and falls of his following God by faith, we've seen that God has been with him and God has indeed kept him.
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Well, I put it to you that it's that knowledge of God's providence that fuels a desire in Abraham to tie up a pretty big loose end as he knows his days are coming to an end.
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And so in verses two through four, he essentially says to his servants, swear to me that you are going to go back to the land that I came from to go and find a wife for my son,
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Isaac. Isaac is basically a grown man at this stage. So the question becomes, why is
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Abraham taking on this responsibility? Why is he just leaving it to his son to find a wife?
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And now there are theories that abound. Some have more merit than others. Ultimately, it's all speculation. So the text doesn't really tell us why.
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And really, it's not that important to figure out the why per se, as much as to note that it's important enough to Abraham, so much so that he makes his servants swear.
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And by the way, if you're wondering, what is all this business about hands under thighs and making him swear that way?
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Not the typical way we make somebody swear or promise something.
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If you try to do that to me, it's not going to go well for you. That's generally not what we do in our culture.
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Well, in the culture of the ancient Near East, when a man wanted to basically swear by the most serious thing he could, this was one way they did it.
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Because in their understanding, your thigh or your loins were where children came from.
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It's a symbol of your manhood, essentially. So quite frankly, this is a big deal to Abraham.
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Basically, he says, swear to me by my manhood, as it were, that you will not get a son, excuse me, a wife for my son from this people, but you'll go back where I came from.
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Well, that raises the question, why? Why does he have to go all the way back to where he came from?
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Does Abraham dislike the people of Canaan that much? Is this racialism kind of gone a little bit wild here?
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Why is it such a big deal to him that he has to go hundreds of miles?
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We'll see in a moment. This is almost a month's journey. Why? Well, this isn't racial more than anything else.
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This isn't, I really dislike these people and they get on my nerves. Not even close. You see, this is more spiritual than it is racial.
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Racial. Abraham's issue with the Canaanites who surrounded him was their idolatry.
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Now, for us as readers, thousands of years removed from this story, we might lose some of that. But for the original audience, this wasn't quite so out of their realm of normal understanding.
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A couple of texts, Exodus chapter 34. This is what God says to his people in the wilderness.
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He says, Do not make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land, or else when they prostitute themselves with their gods, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices.
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Then you will take some of their daughters as brides for your sons. Their daughters will prostitute themselves with their gods and cause your sons to prostitute themselves with their gods.
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Deuteronomy 7, 3 and 4. Again, this is God speaking about Israel's conduct with the nations around them.
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You must not intermarry with them. And you must not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.
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Why? Because they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods.
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Then Yahweh's anger will be against you and he will swiftly destroy you. This isn't so much about where these people come from as much as what these people worship.
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This is really a matter of spiritual separation from the peoples of the land.
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And again, I can't 100 % prove this, but I think there's a sense here of Abraham recognizing, where has
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Canaan grown? No, excuse me. Where has Isaac grown up? He's grown up in Canaan. He's grown up around these people.
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These people don't seem as weird to him or as off to him as they maybe would have to his father.
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The urgency of being separate from them maybe wasn't as heightened for Isaac as it was for Abraham.
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So Abraham essentially says, okay, we need to ensure that whoever
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Isaac marries is not one of these people who will draw him away to worship these other gods.
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So Abraham lays out this mission and of course his servant, and by the way, the servant is not named. I personally think this is the same one who was mentioned back in chapter 15.
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If you remember, he mentions Eliezer of Damascus who would inherit his estate if he were to die.
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He's mentioned in similar language. He's the one who's the leader of the home, kind of the house manager, if you will.
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I happen to think it's the same one. So for the rest of the sermon, if you hear me say Eliezer, that's who
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I'm talking about. Well, his servant Eliezer, I think he has some questions. So verse five, it says, the servant said to him, suppose the woman is unwilling to follow me to this land.
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Should I have your son go back to the land you came from? I mean, these are reasonable questions. Women have the power of consent to a relationship.
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Just because a guy asks doesn't mean they have to say yes, even in ancient Near East. So reasonable question.
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Why she doesn't want to come back? Well, Isaac's also not there.
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So there's already a couple of steps removed from this. It's not like Isaac's dad is asking on Isaac's behalf.
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It's Isaac's dad's servant asking on Isaac's behalf. He's an intelligent man.
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And so he's asking a reasonable question. And Abraham's an intelligent man too, which makes his response all the more striking.
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So verse six and seven, he says, Abraham answered him, make sure that you don't take my son back there.
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Yahweh, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from my native land, who spoke to me and swore to me,
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I will give this land to your offspring. He will send his angel before you and you can take a wife from my son from here.
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Abraham's not concerned because Abraham responds with providence in his sights.
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He recognizes that God had acted in the past in the interest of his promises.
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And given the importance of this, he would do so again. I need to pull up here for a moment.
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Is that your perspective when it comes to the future? If I can be vulnerable with you for a moment, this doesn't always come naturally to me.
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I find this actually quite hard. It's easy to recognize and be thankful for providence when it happens in the past.
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It's like the Presbyterian minister from Scotland, Rabbi John Duncan, called
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Rabbi because of his love for the Jewish people. Reverend Duncan famously said that providence are like Hebrew letters.
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Providence is like Hebrew letters, excuse me. It's read backwards. It's easier to do that.
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It's kind of difficult though to view the future through the lens of providence especially when the present looks kind of bleak.
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And I put it to you that in moments like this, like I have and I'm sure you have them too, we maybe would do well to remember
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God's past providence and allow that to be the lens through which we view future providence.
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I remember the example of David before he goes to Goliath. If you remember that story, 1 Samuel 17. In verse 37,
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David says something really interesting when he's speaking to Saul. The text is then
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David said, Yahweh who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear.
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No, he's looking back at the past. He rescued me, past tense, from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear.
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That same Yahweh will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. If God had been good in the past, that should be the lens through which
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Abraham, excuse me, David looks to the future. That should be the lens through which we look at the future.
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And so when things get difficult and when things look shifty, can I give you something that I've been trying to do of late? Like I said,
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I don't do it perfectly. So I don't say this from up on high down below. Might I recommend giving yourself a history lesson?
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And might I suggest that this history lesson not start with your own personal history, but it should start with redemption history.
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Because think about it. Every time we are reminded of the gospel, aren't we celebrating past providence?
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Think about this with me for a moment. Aren't we celebrating the fact that God acted in power? A very different way of acting in power than we would think as human beings.
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It's almost kind of subversive. That's a sermon for another time. It's subversive power, but power nonetheless.
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Aren't we celebrating that fact every time we think about the gospel? Aren't we celebrating the fact that before time was even a thing,
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God within himself, father, son, and spirit covenanted to redeem a people?
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Aren't we celebrating the fact that the love that he planned before time came into bold relief when he sent his son?
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Aren't we celebrating past providence when we remember the fact that this son that he sent lived a life empowered by the spirit of perfect obedience to God's law?
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Aren't we celebrating past providence when we remember that he capped off that life of obedience with the supreme act of obedience in the giving of his own life?
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And aren't we celebrating past providence when we remember what he did in raising up from the grave his own son?
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If you understand the gospel properly, brothers and sisters, the gospel properly understood is one long, glorious act of providence.
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And as I've had calls to even this week, I would do well to remember that act of providence every time
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I'm tempted to think that things look hopeless.
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In fact, Abraham, coming back to our text, Abraham is so assured of God's providence over the situation, he's even willing to give
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Eliezer an out. There's a release clause for this oath. So look at verse eight, he says, if the woman is unwilling to follow you, then you are free from this oath to me.
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But don't let my son go back there. If this doesn't work, okay, come home. So the servant placed his hand under his master
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Abraham's thigh and swore an oath to him concerning this matter.
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Faith recognizes the providence of God in the face of an uncertain future. But there's a second response that faith has.
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There's a second response. Faith recognizes the providence of God and secondly, faith seeks the guidance of God.
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Faith seeks the guidance of God. Verses 10 right through to 27.
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Now I need to give a bit of a sermonic health warning. This text starts to get very detailed very quickly from this point.
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So I will do a lot of summarizing. Well, Abraham's servant has his orders.
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So off he goes. And as you read verses 10 right through to 27, there is quite an emphasis and I want you to notice this emphasis on the leading of God throughout this process.
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The servant doesn't go in with his own plan and his own side. He is very carefully trusting
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God to lead and to guide in this situation. And this is an attitude that is encouraged to God's people all the time.
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We're told constantly in God's Word, not to trust in ourselves, but to trust in God. Not to seek our own wisdom, but to seek
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God's wisdom and to allow Him to guide our path in the direction that we need to go in.
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And as you move through this text, really there are three moments in the actions of the servant, which
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I think we can learn from. We can learn some lessons about what we should do as faith seeks the guidance of God.
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But how exactly does faith seek the guidance of God? Well, first off, faith says,
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I might not know, but I will pray. I might not know, but I will pray.
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This is a massive undertaking on Eliezer's part, verse 10. The servant took 10 of his master's camels.
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These were not cheap animals. With all kinds of his master's goods in hand, he went from Aram Nahariim to Nahor's town.
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Now, if we assume that Abraham is where we left him in chapter 23, that's a month's journey from this point to where he was going.
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So it takes a month's journey. Oh, this is a month's journey with animals that granted they were used to long journeys, but he's got all kinds of goods.
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This is a long time. Well, eventually he arrives in verse 11 and before he sets off on doing anything in verse 11, note what he does in verses 12 through 14.
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So look at it, verse 12, he prays. Yahweh, God of my master
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Abraham, he prayed. Make this happen for me today and show kindness. Pay attention to that word kindness.
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We're going to come back to that later on in this message and show kindness to my master Abraham. I am standing here at the spring where the daughters of men, the daughters of the men of the town are coming out to draw water.
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Let the girl to whom I say, please lower your water jug so that I may drink and who responds, drink and I will water your camels also.
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Let her be the one you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this,
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I know you will have shown kindness. This is the second time his words come up to my master.
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Before he does anything else, Eliezer prays.
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And can I put it to you that when we are seeking the guidance of God, that's probably the best place to start. If you need more biblical proof of that,
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James chapter 1 verse 5. If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given to him.
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Can I put it to you that when you don't know how to make heads or tails of your next step, wisdom might be a good idea and who better to ask than the
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God who the Bible says is the only wise God. What's all this servant praise?
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I think his prayer is worth paying some attention to for a moment. His prayer is very humble. He doesn't pray for success on his own mission.
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He prays that God would make it happen and would show him kindness.
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Not only is it humble, it's specific. He doesn't pray in spiritual vagaries.
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He doesn't kind of pray around the point. We've all been in prayer meetings where people are very good at saying absolutely nothing in the time of prayer.
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And praise God that God's ability to answer prayer is not hindered by our ability to be clear. But you can give
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Eliezer points here. He is not vague. His prayer is humble, is specific.
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It's also a big prayer. See verse 14 might fly by you, but here's where we need to do some quick details.
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I promise you, I will keep this technical moment as short as possible. So remember back in verse 10, we were told that Eliezer took 10 camels with him.
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The average camel, I looked this up as we didn't know this. The average camel drinks up to 25 gallons.
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25. So he's got 10.
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So let's do some quick maths. I know you didn't come here to do math, but bear with me. So 10 camels, 25 gallons,
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I make 250. Verse 14, he specifically says that, look at verse 14.
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Let the God to whom I say, please lower your water jug. Well, in the ancient world, these water jugs were actually fairly standardized.
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You know, it's kind of like how if you go into a store and you grab a can, I drink a lot of sugar -free soda in my life.
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So I'm drinking a lot of cans. Anybody know what the standard amount in a can is? Yep, someone said 12.
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It's 12 ounces. In a standard soda bottle, not a longer one, just your standard soda bottle.
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Anyone know how much is in that? 20 to be exact. Kind of like how we just know those things instinctively.
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Well, in the ancient world, when they made their water jugs, they were pretty standardized. The average water jug could hold about three gallons, give or take.
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So let's do some maths here. 10 camels all drink 25. So that's 250.
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Remember, he prays not just that she would give me a drink, but she would water the camels also.
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250 gallons. So let's say you have to water all of these camels. Let's say they drink the maximum.
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Let's just go with that. After a month, I imagine they'd want to drink the maximum. So 250, three gallons.
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That's 84 trips. So think about that. That's 84, thing down the well, because that's how typically you got water in those days.
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Water jug down the well, lift it up, carry it to wherever they were. Typically the troughs were not too far from where the well was.
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But still, you still gotta carry that thing. 84 times. This would be a
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Herculean task even for the strongest person among us. Almost as though only
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God could do something like this. And if that's the sense you get from this passage, knowing all of those details, that's exactly the sense you're supposed to get.
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He prays a big prayer because he knows who he's praying to. I mentioned my favorite quote on prayer earlier from, well, not earlier, but I've mentioned it before from this pulpit.
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John Bunyan, a guy who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, The Holy War, some really great stuff. John Bunyan in his little book on prayer says, you can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray before you pray.
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I wrote myself a short remix of that because that gets a little wordy to remember. Here's my remix of that.
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Pray and then do something. And don't mess up the order, please. Pray, do something, and do it in that order.
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I think we can learn something from the servant and the fact that he is, first and foremost, before he does anything else, willing to pray and ask for the help of God.
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And so when we are seeking God's guidance, it's okay to say, I might not know, but I'll pray. It's also okay to say,
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I might not know, but I'll watch. I might not know, but I'll watch.
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See, prayer is critical, but just praying and doing nothing actually gets you nowhere. As one of my favorite preachers back home used to say,
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Pastor Astral Blaze, pray with your eyes open. We skipped over the verse, but verse 11, he essentially says that he's going to go to the well, the place where the women draw water.
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Well, the plan of going to the literal watering hole actually starts to pay dividends because we're introduced in this passage, verses 15 and 16, to Rebecca.
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And there's a description given of Rebecca that, again, because we lack the context of the ancient Near East, we might miss some of this.
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So allow me for a moment to kind of sketch some of this out, why she's perfect as the requirements go.
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For one thing, she's from Abraham's family. It's laid out that she is from the family of Abraham's brother, Nahor.
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Okay, so he's from the family. The text goes out of its way to say that she is a virgin. This might get missed on us, but Canaanite worship was extremely sexual in nature.
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The fact that she is a virgin means she has not engaged in that worship.
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She's from Abraham's family, she's a virgin. Look at verses 17 and 18, note that she's incredibly humble. To verse 17, then the servant ran to meet her and said, please let me have a little water from your jug.
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She replied, drink, my lord. Again, note the humility refers to this man that she doesn't know as my lord.
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She quickly lowered her jug to her hand and gave him a drink. Oh, by the way, remember our little math project we just did a few minutes ago, these 84 trips?
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Verse 19, when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, remember he prayed specifically that she would initiate this.
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She said, I'll also draw water for your camels until they have had enough to drink. So that's why I went with the maximum 25.
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She quickly emptied her jug into the trough and hurried to the well again to draw water. She drew water for all his camels.
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So verse 21 and 22, of course, he's gonna start paying attention because this is everything he'd been praying for.
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If I can pause here for just a moment. When it comes to this whole issue of God's will and guidance and knowing what
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God desires for us as his people, some of you have maybe heard some interesting ideas about how we know
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God's will. Anyone grow up like I did with the idea of laying a fleece? I don't know something and so what do
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I do? I'm gonna lay out a fleece. God, if you do this, then I know you want me to do that. This isn't a message about God's will and guidance entirely.
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But what's causing that? Please note that the Bible never actually says that.
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Actually, the Bible presents knowing God's will very simply. There are the things that God commands you to do. For everything else, we are commanded to pray, seek the wisdom of God, get counsel and make a decision.
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Okay, Kofi, what does this have to do with this? Well, one thing in the study guide this week, there's a ton of resources there about God's will and guidance from what's called the wisdom view.
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But I have us pause with that for a moment because the reality is the server demonstrates how you're supposed to seek
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God's guidance. You pray and he prays and he pays attention.
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He watches. And so when we are looking for God's guidance, it's okay for us to say,
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I might not know, but I'm gonna pray. I might not know, but I'm gonna watch. It's also okay for us to say, I might not know, but I'll worship.
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I might not know, but I'll worship. Verses 23 through 27. And he just had enough time to watch and be like, okay, this might go our way.
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So verse 23, whose daughter are you? He asked, please tell me, is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night?
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She answered him, I am the daughter of Beth. I am the daughter of Beth who was son of Milka, who she bore to Nahor. She also said to him, we have plenty of straw and feed and a place to spend the night.
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She meets the criteria. This is the one. And I can't help but smile when I look at verse 26 is where this point comes from.
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Verse 26, then the man knelt low, worshiped Yahweh and said, blessed be
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Yahweh, the God of my master Abraham, who has not withheld his kindness and faithfulness.
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Oh, there's that word again. From my master, as for me, Yahweh has led me on the journey to the house of my master's relatives.
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This is a great faith driven response. He responds in worship.
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As Matthew Henry puts it, when God's favors are coming towards us, we must meet them with our praises.
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As some of you know, I grew up Pentecostal. And growing up in the tradition I grew up in, I would hear preachers say varying iterations of the same theme at times.
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They would say that you should praise God before you see something happen. And my hypological self growing up always struggled with that.
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How am I going to praise God for something I haven't seen yet? I mean, I don't thank Him, praise God when
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I see it. I mean, that's what you do. Someone gives you something, you say thank you. I'm not going to say thank you for something you haven't given me yet. But as I got older and I read my
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Bible a little more, I realized they might've been onto something. In a few weeks, we're going to start, well, a few weeks, a couple of weeks, we're going to start the
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Lessons to the Philippians together. Listen to what Paul says in Philippians, Philippians 1, 18 and 19, where he talks about the fact that, you know, though there are some who are preaching
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Christ from poor motives and some who are preaching Christ from pure motives, regardless whether it's poor or pure,
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I rejoice either way. Listen to what he says, Philippians 1, 18, the end of that. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice because I know this will lead to my salvation through your prayers and the help from the
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Spirit of Jesus Christ. Paul hadn't seen the deliverance yet, but he knew who the deliverer was.
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And since he knew who the deliverer was, he could rejoice in advance even though he hadn't actually seen the deliverance yet.
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So maybe the preachers in my, you know, little Pentecostal church that I grew up in in London were onto something.
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Maybe our little Reformed church could stand to be a little more Pentecostal in this regard. How about we just thank
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God for some stuff in advance? I need to move on, but one last thought on this whole subject of guidance.
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It comes from John Wesley, the co -founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley said that when it comes to not knowing what to do, he said, do all the good you can by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
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In other words, when you don't know what to do, do what you can with what you have, where you can, when you can, for as long as you can.
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Pray, watch, and in the words of one of my favorite books on guidance, Kevin Young's little book, just do something. That's the kind of faith that can face the uncertainty of the future.
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Faith that recognizes the providence of God, that seeks the guidance of God. Thirdly, it's the kind of faith that appreciates the goodness of God.
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Faith appreciates the goodness of God. Come back to our narrative, things start to move pretty quickly, and here
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I will summarize a whole lot. Verses 28 to 32, Eliezer receives quite a warm reception.
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Rebecca goes home and tells him, you won't believe what happened. Tells him the story, and they're like, okay, well, go get the guy.
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So they bring him in, he tells them who he is, and why he's standing out here, and says, look, we're ready for you, come on in.
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Verses 33 right through to 48, we won't reread again because it's just a recap of everything we just saw. I'll spare you the repetition, but the climax of this narrative, the high point of this narrative comes in verse 49.
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So this is Eliezer speaking after he's given a recap of everything that's happened. Look at verse 49. Now, if you are going to show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me.
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If not, tell me. And I will go elsewhere.
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You can feel the tension here. If this was a TV show, you can see that thing they do in some shows where like the camera just kind of pans from, not even pans, like hits person after person, and they're all kind of looking like, what's going to happen?
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Who's going to say what? You can see the long drawn out silence. Before we get to the answer though,
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Moses gives us a clue a little bit of how this is going to go. So look at verse 49 again.
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Now, if you're going to show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me. If not, tell me.
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And I will go elsewhere. Did you know that word kindness again? Full time has come up now.
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There's a little clue there though. I'm not one for quoting Greek and Hebrew in sermons. Most people
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I speak to speak English of some kind. But this is one of those
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Hebrew words you should probably know actually. It's five letters. H -E -S -E -D.
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Hesed. Hesed. It's actually quite a common word in the Old Testament.
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245 times this word appears. 245 times. The Christian standard Bible, which is the
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Bible that we use in our public ministry here at Redeemer. The Christian standard Bible translates 154 of those as faithful love.
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Some translations will say loving kindness. It carries the idea of loyalty, of commitment, of standing by someone.
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It carries almost this sense of covenant keeping. And notice that this word, like I said, three times already.
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Verse 12, verse 14, verse 27. This word has come up in this narrative. Did you catch that all three times kindness is mentioned, it's
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God's kindness? So verse 12, when he prays, Lord God of my master
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Abraham, make this happen for me and show kindness to my master Abraham. Verse 14, by this
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I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. Verse 27, blessed be
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Yahweh, the God of my master Abraham, who has not withheld his kindness and faithfulness.
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God has been incredibly kind up to this point. And now the question is, would they show him kindness?
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But here's the clue in the text that you might miss. If God has been acting all the way up to this point, of course, this is going to go well.
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Faith recognizes the providence of God. It seeks the guidance of God. It anticipates the goodness of God, the kind of faith that approaches the future well though.
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If I can leave you with this final point, it rejoices in the promises of God. It rejoices in the promises of God.
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Verses 50 to the end. So come back to verse 50. And as you guessed, the answer is good news.
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So verse 50, Laban and Bethuel answered, this is from Yahweh. We have no choice in the matter. Rebecca is here in front of you.
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Take her and go. Let her be a wife for your master's son, just as Yahweh has spoken. When Abraham's servants heard their words, he bowed to the ground before Yahweh.
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In verses 53 to 56, as a sign of respect and also as something of a dowry, a bride price, gifts are exchanged and they celebrate this union.
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But remember, Eleazar is a man on a mission. He doesn't really have time to dilly -dally and hang around and just have a party.
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He's got to get back to where he came from. He wants to leave. But understandably, the family want more time with Rebecca.
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So now there's a bit of a conflict here. We want her to stay. You want her to go.
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So verse 57, so they said, let's call the girl and ask her opinion. They called
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Rebecca and said to her, will you go with this man? She replied, I will go.
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So she's willing to leave. As missions go, mission accomplished.
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So Rebecca consents. But before she goes, look at verse 60.
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Verse 60. They blessed Rebecca saying to her, our sister, may you become thousands upon ten thousands.
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May your offspring possess the city gates of their enemies.
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And I want to argue at this point, this is where the story goes a level deeper than just finding
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Isaac a wife. Only if you've noticed it in our studies in Genesis.
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This is the third time in Genesis, a woman has been promised a new offspring. So back in chapter 16, when
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Hagar left the first time, remember what God said? That she would have, let's look at it real quick.
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Chapter 16. Turn there with me for just a second. Chapter 16. Chapter 16, verse 10.
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The angel of Yahweh said to her, I will greatly multiply your offspring and they will be too many to count.
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Chapter 17. We won't read that one, but in confirmation to Sarah, same thing is said.
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In fact, let's read. I'm just over the page. Verse 16. Chapter 17, verse 16. I will bless her indeed. I will give you a son by her.
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I will bless her and she will produce nations. Kings of people will come from her.
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And now here we are in chapter 24 and Rebecca's father and Rebecca's uncle pronounced this blessing that may you become thousands upon thousands, 10 ,000.
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This was the Hebrew way of explaining a number that was so large, you can't count it. Kind of how we say gazillion when that's not actually a number.
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Three times, all linked to covenant promises. By the way, have you noticed Genesis 24 in the
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Abraham saga, it's the longest. It's the longest single narrative in our English Bibles is broken up into 67 verses.
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Why is this the longest? Well, simple. This is a transition point.
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Remember in the next, spoiler alert, in the next chapter, Abraham dies. The story is shifting from Abraham and Sarah to Isaac and Rebecca.
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See, this program of God establishing his kingdom on the tracks of covenant isn't ending with the death of Sarah and the soon death of Abraham.
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Far from it. See, the fact that she is receiving this blessing simply shows that the promise of God is airtight.
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Well, God said to Abraham that his seed will be like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky. That is going to happen right here.
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We are on the verge of the next step of that program. And so with that,
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Rebecca returns to Eliezer. I'm summarizing the end of the story here. And I'm doing that because in our next part, which we'll pick up in October, Lord willing, in the study of Genesis, we're going to spend a lot of time with Isaac and Rebecca.
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But for now, they get married. In fact, the text is explicit in saying that Rebecca is a comfort to Isaac in the wake of the death of his mother.
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And that's how our story ends. As we conclude, can
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I leave you with just one gospel thought as we come to the Lord's table? What does this story do for us in terms of the grace of God and our understanding of the gospel?
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No, very simple. Beloved, please understand this. It is only in the gospel that we can have the fullest assurance for an uncertain future.
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It was the knowledge of the covenant promises that gave Abraham the faith to commission his servant that gave
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Eliezer the courage in the face of the impossible and that gave Rebecca comfort as she went into the unknown.
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It was the knowledge of the promise of the covenant and for you believer, when it comes to an uncertain future, it is the knowledge of God's greatest covenant fulfillment in Christ that gives us assurance for the future.
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What does faith look like when the future is uncertain? Ultimately, it is only in the clear and present light of the fulfillment of God's promises that the murkiness and the uncertainty of the future shifts into glorious hope.
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And Heavenly Father, we thank you that because of the gospel, we can indeed have hope. We can indeed have the kind of hope that is able to see past the seemingly impossible and the unknown.
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Father, we ask that you would help us that every time we are tempted to think about the future and fall into despair and fall into despondency.
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Father, we pray that you would help us to recite our history to ourselves. Beginning with the history of redemption, the history of what you have done in Christ.
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Father, we don't know the future, but we do know the one who holds it. And so Father, increase our love for you, increase our hope in you, increase our trust in you.