Dennis Tuuri

great love of God for his elect found in the biblical narratives. The sermon text for today is Genesis 24. And as we did last Sunday, we’ll read all 67 verses. Story of God’s love manifested in human love. God’s love, his faithfulness, his truthfulness to his covenant. Please stand for the reading of Genesis 24.

Genesis 24. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.

So Abraham said to the oldest servant of his house, who ruled over all that he had, “Please put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but you shall go to my country and to my family and take a wife for my son Isaac.” And the servant said to him, “Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I take your son back to the land from which you came?”

But Abraham said to him, “Beware that you do not take my son back there. The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land.’ He will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. And if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be released from this oath. Only do not take my son back there.”

So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter.

Then the servant took 10 of his master’s camels and departed, for all his master’s goods were in his hand. And he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor. 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.

Then he said, “Oh Lord, God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day and show kindness to my master Abraham. 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 let it be that the young woman to whom I say, ‘Please let down your pitcher that I may drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I will also give your camels a drink,’ let her be the one you have appointed for your servant Isaac. And by this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”

And it happened before he had finished speaking that behold Rebecca, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, came out with her pitcher on her shoulder. Now the young woman was very beautiful to behold, a virgin, no man had known her. And she went down to the well, filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your pitcher.”

So she said, “Drink, my lord.” Then she quickly let her pitcher down to her hand and gave him a drink. And when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking.” Then she quickly emptied her pitcher into the trough, ran back to the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. And the man, wondering at her, remained silent so as to know whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not.

So it was when the camels had finished drinking that the man took a golden nose ring weighing half a shekel and two bracelets for her wrists weighing 10 shekels of gold and said, “Whose daughter are you? Tell me please, is there room in your father’s house for us to lodge?”

So she said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor. Moreover, she said to him, we have both straw and feed enough and room to lodge.”

Then the man bowed down his head and worshiped the Lord. And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his mercy and his truth toward my master. As for me, being on the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren.”

So the young woman ran and told her mother’s household these things. Now Rebecca had a brother whose name was Laban. And Laban ran out to the man by the well.

So it came to pass when he saw the nose ring and the bracelets on his sister’s wrists, and when he heard the words of his sister Rebecca, saying, “Thus the man spoke to me,” that he went to the man. And there he stood by the camels at the well, and he said, “Come in, oh blessed of the Lord. Why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house and a place for the camels.”

Then the man came to the house. And he unloaded the camels and provided straw and feed for the camels and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. Food was set before him to eat. But he said, “I will not eat until I have told about my errand.”

And he said, “Speak on.”

So he said, “I am Abraham’s servant. The Lord has blessed my master greatly, and he has become great. And he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female servants, camels and donkeys. And Sarah, my master’s wife, bore a son to my master when she was old. And to him he has given all that he has. Now my master made me swear, saying, ‘You shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land I dwell, but you shall go to my father’s house and to my family and take a wife for my son.’

And I said to my master, ‘Perhaps the woman will not follow me.’ But he said to me, ‘The Lord before whom I walk will send his angel with you and prosper your way, and you shall take a wife for my son from my family and from my father’s house. You will be clear from this oath when you arrive among my family. For if they will not give her to you, then you will be released from my oath.’

And this day I came to the well and said, ‘Oh Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will now prosper the way in which I go, behold, I stand by the well of water. And it shall come to pass that when the virgin comes out to draw water,’ and I say to her, ‘Please give me a little water from your pitcher to drink,’ and she says to me, ‘Drink, and I will draw for your camels also,’ let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master’s son.’

But before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebecca coming out with her pitcher on her shoulder, and she went down to the well and drew water. And I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’ And she made haste and let her pitcher down from her shoulder and said, ‘Drink, and I will give your camels a drink also.’ So I drank and she gave the camels a drink also.

Then I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ And she said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bore to him.’ So I put the nose ring on her nose and the bracelets on her wrists. And I bowed my head and worshiped the Lord and blessed the Lord, God of my master Abraham, who had led me in the way of truth to take the daughter of my master’s brother for his son.

Now if you will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me. And if not, tell me, that I may turn to the right hand or to the left.”

Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, “The thing comes from the Lord. We cannot speak to you either bad or good. Here is Rebecca before you. Take her and go, and let her be your master’s son’s wife, as the Lord has spoken.”

And it came to pass when Abraham’s servant heard their words that he worshiped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth.

Then the servant brought out jewelry of silver, jewelry of gold, and clothing, and gave them to Rebecca. He also gave precious things to her brother and to her mother. And he and the men who were with him ate and drank and stayed all night. Then they arose in the morning, and he said, “Send me away to my master.”

But her brother and her mother said, “Let the young woman stay with us a few days, at least ten, after that she may go.” And he said to them, “Do not hinder me since the Lord has prospered my way. Send me away so that I may go to my master.”

So they said, “We will call the young woman and ask her personally.”

Then they called Rebecca and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” And she said, “I will go.”

So they sent away Rebecca, their sister, and her nurse and Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebecca and said to her, “Our sister, may you become the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and may your descendants possess the gates of those who hate them.”

Then Rebecca and her maids arose and rode on the camels and followed the man. So the servant took Rebecca and departed.

Now Isaac came from the way of Beer Lahai Roi, for he dwelt in the south. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening. And he lifted his eyes and looked, and there the camels were coming. Then Rebecca lifted her eyes. And when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from her camel, for she had said to the servant, “Who is this man walking in the field to meet us?”

And the servant said, “It is my master.” So she took a veil and covered herself.

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

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Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we pray now that your Holy Spirit would open our hearts to hear this word, that he might write this law, this word, this way upon our hearts. Help us, Lord God, to be attentive and to learn from this your word, your message to us. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

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Water—a wonderful gift from God. Water is present in our story in this biblical historical narrative, a flesh and blood reality to some of the great truths that the scriptures teach us. And both the central portion of this, the answering of the prayer of the servant, as well as the culmination of the story, occurs at water.

We have a beautiful romantic story—I don’t know if I should use that word or not; the origin of the term is not a good one—but we have a beautiful biblical love story here. To a certain extent, particularly in the concluding verses, we have this wonderful picture. It’s evening. Isaac’s been waiting for his wife. He knows what’s going on. He knows that he hopes God will prosper the servant bringing the wife back. He’s out meditating. It’s nighttime, and yet he can see the camels coming, from which I infer that there’s moonlight.

So we’ve got moonlight. We’ve got Isaac at a well—that’s what that Beer Lahai Roi is. It’s a well. It’s the same well that Hagar had been visited by an angel of the Lord at. It relates to the presence of God, that God sees us and is with us. He saw Hagar in her difficulty, was with her, told her to go back to her servant Sarah. But he, God, was going to bless her with a child. So we have this well that Isaac is at, moonlight, nighttime, sees in the distance the camels coming, bringing his bride to him, and she sees him from a distance. They see each other. She talks to the servant: “Yeah, that’s my master—it’s the master of the master. So, the son of the master—he’s the master. It’s going to own all these things.”

And she departs. Doesn’t want to be in an elevated position above her husband-to-be, gets down submissive to him, veils herself, and they then come together. Servant relates what happens to Isaac, and he, of course, sees the providence of God in this. This is his wife, and he consents to the marriage. It takes her into his mother’s tent, and he’s comforted after the death of Sarah. It’s a wonderful little vignette of biblical matchmaking, biblical love at a well—that beautiful picture of the well, the sovereignty of God, the blessings of God to his people in the midst of desert.

Yet there are these wells. And it was at the well that Rebecca becomes manifested to the servant and God answers these prayers.

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Providence of God—we’re here on Valentine’s Day, February 14th. Some say that day was chosen because the old idea was—Chaucer even writes about it in the Middle Ages—that birds would pick their mates. February 14th, they’d start to mate up for the springtime. Valentine’s Day refers, of course, to St. Valentine, who gave his life because of his love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Various other legends and myths surround the day and St. Valentine. Some say he married people that the emperor had forbidden to be married. Some say there was a blind daughter of a jailer that he ministered to while he was in jail waiting his beheading. Because of his talking with her and love for the girl, her and her father, the jailer and his whole family became converted to the faith.

We don’t really know these things, but these are good things to meditate on Valentine’s Day if there’s a real man—or couple of them, even a couple of saints named Valentine—behind this who speak of the great love story, the Lord Jesus Christ and his love for us.

We had kind of a biblical love-focused evening Friday night. I want to commend the teens of the church—children of the church, I guess, maybe a better way to say it—some of them aren’t teens anymore—who made the effort to put that evening on and the blessing it was to the couples that were there, particularly Anna F. and Roseanne, Abigail, who helped take care of the kids, Jesse and Hi H., who helped put that event on, and all the other young people that were there as well. Thank you so much for that. It was an act of self-sacrificial love for which we thank you.

And it fits in very nicely with this story of Isaac and this wonderful picture of love at the well and this culmination where the seed is going to be pressing on, as it were, in terms of this replacement for Abraham and Sarah.

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I want us to first of all go over a little bit of an overview of the text very quickly, and then we’ll look at some of the main characters as potential examples to us, and then we’ll look at the real significant main freight of the passage, so to speak—that it’s really telling us about God’s faithfulness, not really about these characters and their qualities. They’re there, and it’s appropriate to touch on them. But then the main freight of the passage is the loving sovereignty, providence, grace, graciousness, and reliability of God.

So, let’s first of all look at an overview of the text. It’s a long text. I know you haven’t read it as many times as I have in the last couple of weeks. To me, it’s kind of all up there now, but I know that we’ve read it twice now, and it’s probably a bit of a jumble in your head. And I’ve tried to give you an outline here that will help focus, I think, upon what the text would have us focus upon.

You see that the purpose of the indenting of the outline is to draw our attention to the middle in terms of importance of the text. And the mission—the text begins, of course, with Abraham old but blessed. Those two things go real closely together. He’s been blessed by God. This is the first statement, pure statement, in the scriptures that Abraham is blessed. Blessings were given to him before. But now we’re told explicitly: Abraham is blessed in all that he does. But he’s old. He’s got to look at covenantal succession.

Now just before this, in the last chapter, Sarah has died. Yet Abraham has bought a piece of the promised land. And you remember the promise to Abraham involved land, and it also involved a seed, and then it involved victory in the context that over the enemies who would possess the land before him.

And so Abraham buys a little bit of promised land, and now he has to make provision for the seed that God has promised him. And yet, like all of our promises that God gives us, it doesn’t mean we just sit and wait. It means that we do, we perform the secondary means that God attaches to our being responsible servants of his.

So Abraham conceives the mission at first in verses 1-4, and as I said, he, in the context of obtaining seed and land, and then as he calls his servant—probably Elezer—to him to tell him what he wants to have done, then there’s some negotiations, as it were, between the servant and Abraham. He says, “Well, okay, you want me to take this covenant oath, but what if she won’t come?” “Well, okay, I assure you that God will in his providence take care of this. God will prosper you. His angel will go with you—ministering angels that God sends with us will be with you—and you’ll bring the wife home. But if she won’t come home, you’re released from the oath.”

So there’s this negotiation thing that goes on between Abraham and his servant. And then the servant goes, of course, to the previous land of Abraham. Now he doesn’t go to the Chaldees. Remember Abraham, when he comes out of the Chaldees, comes out with his brother, with Lot his brother’s son, and they go to Haran or Nahor, two cities there in this area to the north. So that’s where the servant goes—not only back to the Chaldees, but to where he came out of and then stopped before he then progressed on to the promised land to Canaan.

So he sends his servant back to the homeland—not the pagan homeland, but where he had first come out of the Chaldees with his brother and established a community there. He sends the servant back there to obtain a wife for his son. And at this scene then progresses after negotiations, the scene is then the success at the well of the servant’s task.

So the servant goes, makes a long trek up there with 10 camels, and at that well that he first comes to in the land of Abraham’s family, he has success granted to him.

Now that’s really the center part of the text in terms of its meaning and emphasis. He goes on from there to spend a lot of time then in negotiations with the family of Rebecca, the way that he had negotiations with Abraham at first, and there’s a final section before she actually comes back and marries Isaac of negotiations with the family. He then moves, so the scene shifts from the well to the household of Rebecca, and he talks with them and presents the reasons why she should be given as Isaac’s wife.

So he involves himself in negotiation. And then specifically there’s negotiation about when she can come back with him. Well, in our translation, it says that Laban suggested that she stick around with her own household for a few days, maybe 10. The actual language could indicate a year or a month is another way that same phrase is sometimes translated in the Hebrew. So it could have been a long period of time.

But in any event, that negotiation with the family kind of correlates to the negotiation with Abraham that the servant does, and then finally at the end of this narrative account, the mission is accomplished. Rebecca leaves, says “I will go”—you know, definitive statement—she goes with the servant back then to where Isaac is now dwelling in the south, and they then see each other, and we have this beautiful interlude in the evening with the moonlight, and the lovers meet and get married, and the covenantal succession is assured.

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Now at the center of this overview then is this success at the well, and in this success at the well I’ve given you another indentation in terms of the outline to show you what I think is the central, most emphatic, most important part of this text. And you can see there this five-fold structure under “Sea”—Success at the Well.

The servant goes to the well. At the well, the servant then prays that God might show him who the wife for Isaac is to be. The prayer is then answered by the activities of Rebecca as she comes to the well. There’s a two-fold answer. One, she answers by the demonstration of her character in response to what the servant had prayed for. And secondly, the other criteria: she’d be of the family of Abraham. And lo and behold, she’s actually a descendant of both of Abraham’s brothers. She comes from a marriage. She comes rather—her father is the son of the marriage of one of Abraham’s brothers with another woman who is actually the daughter of his other brother. So the man marries his niece, and that couple then has Bethuel, and Bethuel has Rebecca. So she’s actually descended from both brothers—miracle of miracles.

That’s the second part of the criteria. He prays that God would show by means of this character test that this girl was to be the one for Isaac, but then she also has to be from the father’s household. And that prayer is then answered at the well. And after the answer of the prayer, he then worships. That kind of correlates: he prays, prayer is answered, and then he thanks God and worships God for the answer to that prayer.

And then finally, Rebecca goes home from the well in the context of this well scene. Servant comes to the well, prays, prayer is answered, worships God, and then she goes on home—and he goes as well after he meets Laban.

The point of that is to kind of give you an idea of what the story is doing and to show you that the central part of the story is really the answer to prayer at that well, at the center of this narrative. The center aspect is the well meeting, and at the center of the well meeting is the answer to prayer of the servant by Rebecca’s actions.

So that’s an overview of the text itself.

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Now it’s interesting—a literary point here—the way the text is spun out for us. As Rebecca comes to the servant at the well, the text identifies who she is in terms of her lineage at the start of the story. We know things. That’s the one example. But we know things in the text before the servant knows them. As you read through the text, you’re told things, but then the servant has to find those things out by asking questions and doing his job.

Now, it’s an interesting narrative device. Sometimes we’re left in suspense, so we go along with the main character, the servant, trying to see if this will really be the one or not. That’s not this story. This story gives us upfront what is going on before the servant knows it. And that’s an important object lesson to us because most of the time in our lives, we’re like the servant, aren’t we? We’re making our prayers. We’re trying to live in the presence of God. We’re trying to do things for our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, and for our masters here on earth.

But most of the time, we don’t know the end in its specific details as we begin tasks. Here we do know the end. And God has us—again then remember that—in all the details which we don’t know in our lives, there is this heavenly perspective that’s given to the reader of this account that the servant doesn’t quite know in terms of details, but it’s moving on. God is moving.

See, in the context of our lives, even though we can’t see it until the end of the matter, or even maybe sometimes not even at the end of the matter, we don’t see how God has worked. But it’s an encouragement to us to read a story like this, to remember that in the details of our lives that God is working in the context of them.

Okay. So that’s an overview of the basic story. And let’s now look at some character studies for the old and young in our audience.

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The reason we’re preaching from this text today is because we’re trying to go through the scriptures, and right now the book of Genesis, looking at key texts relative to marriage. And this is certainly a key text. This is, by far, the longest narrative account in the Old Testament—certainly the book of Genesis—67 verses as a unit. And this narrative account really gives us a picture of the courtship or marriage arrangements that happened early on in our family history.

When we read the Old Testament, we’re reading our family history. And so we see here an example, an inspired example, of how marriage relationships work themselves out. And one of the things it gives us are these character studies.

I assume here that we have people here who are married and many of those people have children that they’re trying to think and plan for their marriage. And we can get some truths out of this story for that purpose. There are others here who are single people who may desire to be married, younger people who are going to grow up to want to be married. And there are object lessons or character studies here for the young as well—for husband and wife wannabes.

In terms of the outline, so let’s look at these very briefly.

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First of all, in terms of those of us who are seeking out mates for our children or praying for them, we have the example of Abraham. These are for matchmakers now—character studies. Abraham was a faith-filled man. That’s obvious. It goes without saying. He is filled with faith. He is full of faith. He’s an example to us that as we go about the task of seeking out mates for our children, we want to be faithful, full of faith, and as a result, faithful to the word of God. Abraham is a faithful man. He is a fatherly man.

He is not going to sit by passively thinking about, “Well, I wonder if my kids will ever get married.” He goes about actively involving himself and trying to see that happen.

Now, I know this is a special story. This is one of those miracle stories. Rebecca will be barren like Sarah was barren, and we’ve got the seed that’s going to be passed on, the covenantal succession. So, I know there’s not a one-for-one correlation. But in many cases, I think the examples for us are still sound.

I think we as parents do more than just sit by waiting to see if our kids ever get married. I have a close friend who several years ago was asked what he was going to do to oversee his daughter’s marriage, and he said, “That’s none of my business. It’s her business.” Then within a year and a half a young man showed interest in her, and all of a sudden it became his business. He developed three pages of criteria to oversee the courtship, and now he’s very much involved in overseeing his daughter’s marital state.

Notice here that Abraham is an example to fathers not of arranging marriages for our daughters—or not of trying to oversee or direct or pray for marriages for them—but he’s trying to see, find a marriage for his son. You know, there’s something about us that thinks, “Well, yeah, for the daughter we really want to oversee their relationships. But the sons, that’s a different deal.” No, it isn’t. You have covenantal headship relative to your son.

Isaac is 40 years old—40 years old—and Abraham is fatherly in trying to see to the fact that he gets married and fulfills his requirement in terms of raising a household for God. He’s fatherly. He’s fatherly also because he doesn’t want to put snares in front of his son. He will not let his son marry a Canaanite woman. Because in Genesis 9, we read that the Amorites, the Canaanites, their iniquity wasn’t full yet.

Abraham knows that he’s going into a land that is given him by faith that he eventually will possess—his descendants—but he doesn’t possess it now. The Canaanites are in the land, and they’re bad folks. He doesn’t want to have his son marry a Canaanite woman.

Now throughout the scriptures, we have many, many verses forbidding such alliances. Coming down to the New Testament where Paul says that after the death of a spouse—spouses getting remarried, but in the Lord. Your marriages are to be in the Lord. And then, of course, the famous statement from Corinthians about not being unequally yoked, referring certainly to marriage.

So, we have in our confessional statement of our church, our covenant document rather, that a couple of the men signed last week—new families—where they pledged not to marry a non-believer. You know, we know that they’re probably not going to get remarried, but they’re signing the document for their descendants. See? And they’re saying that in our household, we’re going to teach our sons and daughters not to marry outside of the faith.

Now, that was the same concern that Abraham had that drove him to seek a wife from his ancestral land—not of the Chaldees, remember—but from Haran and Nahor, where he had come out, and he had come out with his brother. You see, God had called him out of the Chaldees, and his brother was part of that call as well. So, they were more amendable to the faith.

We see Laban in this story referring to God as Yahweh. Now, it could be he just heard that. Could be he’s not really professing faith. Laban is an interesting character in this story, but in any event, he at least verbally expresses a belief in the God of the scriptures. And we see Rebecca very much modeling Abraham and coming out from her father’s household the way Abraham did.

So, the point is that Abraham is not just seeking family ties. He’s seeking to marry in the context of the faith, or at least those elements of his household that would be more amendable to the faith of Yahweh, and it actually seemed to already have it in place. Once Abraham describes what he did—praying to God and the answer to prayer—they say, “We can’t answer this thing good or bad. Things from the Lord, you got her. See?”

They immediately—both of them, now the mother and the brother of Rebecca—you know, say, “Yeah, this is of God.” So Abraham doesn’t want to put a snare in front of his son that way. He also doesn’t want to put a snare in front of his son in terms of having him go back to the land of the father, because he knows that Abraham was—he knows that Abraham was given the grant to the land and that his successors, his descendants, were supposed to be in that land too.

He doesn’t want to send him back there himself in case he might get ensnared in a marriage and not come back and possess the land in disobedience to God. And so, you know, we as parents looking at Abraham as a model want to be faithful, and we want to be fatherly. We want to look for our children and provide mates for them in such a way that they don’t have snares placed in front of them.

Matthew Henry talking on this says that parents in disposing of their children should carefully consult the welfare of their souls and their furtherance in the way to heaven. Those who through grace have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust and have brought up their children accordingly should take heed of doing anything by which they may be again entangled therein and overcome.

Now that was what Abraham was doing. He was fatherly.

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I know I, as a young man post-high school—graduated in ’67, ’69, and ’70—I was working at the post office in California. Long story, but my parents ended up getting the state of California to rehabilitate me. I had some health problems, and they paid. The state of California paid for me to go to Heald College of Business in San Francisco. This is early 1970. My parents take me up there. Now, I’m 19 years old. They put me in a residence club, which is like an apartment building, but little rooms and mixed rooms—guys and girls living right next to each other. They didn’t know that, I guess. I don’t know. And then they dropped me off there, said, “Okay, we’ll see you in six months. You know, have a good time learning programming at Heald College of Business.”

And left me there in the middle of this residence club that was also filled with drugs. Marijuana, you know, wafted through the corridors every night. And my fall was fast. My fall was fast. We don’t want to do that with our children. And my parents, you know, didn’t—weren’t—I don’t know, but we don’t want to do that. It’s an example we’re not supposed to do. We want to be like Abraham with our children. We want to be fatherly, understand where they’re going, the context in which, if we’re going to send them someplace, what it’s like, so we don’t put a snare in front of them.

Abraham was fatherly in seeking out a mate. He avoided snares for his son on both counts—going and not coming back, and then marrying otherwise.

Another third way—I’ll just touch on this. I don’t know if we can talk about this much—but a third way that Abraham was fatherly was, you know, he didn’t marry Isaac off to one of the servant girls in his household. I mean, by now he’s got a lot of servants, a lot of people, must be a lot of pretty young girls, you know, marrying age for Isaac, but he didn’t do that.

We could talk about that a little bit, but we don’t know why. But it seems like maybe Abraham is thinking through his son where he is at in terms of his possessions, his monetary interests, and he’s kind of trying to see some common find some common ground with his family members instead of marrying off in the context of the servant household that he had created. We don’t know why that is. But it’s certainly worth contemplating and meditating upon as we overlook and oversee and supervise our children as they move to marrying age.

And then the third thing about Abraham is he’s blessed. He’s a blessed guy.

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Now you know, again in our in the Christian culture today, blessings of a material sort are looked upon as scant in some circles. Not so in the scriptures. You know, when the servant goes to get the wife, and after he meets Rebecca and then he starts negotiations with Rebecca’s brother for her hand in marriage, what he does to part of all that is he gives her this nose ring. And yes, that is a nose ring. It’s biblical for the right reasons. He gives her a nose ring and a couple of bracelets—not really as a dowry at that point in time because she hasn’t revealed who she is—as a gift.

And then he tells Laban as he’s looking for her hand in marriage, how rich his master is. And he comes here with 10 camels loaded with goods. He’s rich. And his son is a miracle son. And his son is going to inherit all this stuff.

Now, in the Proverbs, we read that a present is a precious stone in the eyes of its possessor. Wherever he turns, he prospers. The importance of gifts. At some translations this says a bribe is a precious thing that it turns and manipulates affairs. Again, that’s in Proverbs 17:8. In Proverbs 18:16, a man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men. A man’s gift makes room for him.

There’s a sense in which the servant exemplifies that proverb. His gift first to Rebecca made room for him in terms of negotiations with Laban. Laban, it said, comes and sees the guy after he notices the nose ring and the gold bracelets on the girl’s wrist. See? So, and you know that cannot happen unless Abraham is blessed with material goods. So, Abraham’s material goods are put into the plan to seek out a wife for his son.

He’s blessed by God and he uses that blessing from God as part of the tools that God has given him to secure a wife for his son. So Abraham can be seen as a model for us.

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Another thing that of course is very important here is the attitude of the servant. He’s submissive, but he’s discerning. The servant is called in, and Abraham says, “I want to take this oath.” Now, I should probably touch on this. You’re probably wondering about the hand under the thigh stuff. It does seem to be a reference to the organ of generation, but this is not a fertility thing going on.

Remember that the sign of the covenant to Abraham is circumcision. And so this is properly understood: What Abraham wants the servant to engage in is an oath of circumcision, so-called. In other words, an oath that sees as its backbone, as its support, the covenant with God that we have and the relationship of that oath to that oath.

And so Abraham and the servant are faithful to the covenant of circumcision. And that’s why they take the oath in the manner they do.

But the circumcision—the servant isn’t just submissive to the master. He’s not, you know, just a yes man. He is discerning. He wants to know, in terms of this covenant, what portion, what are the details of it? What are the small print relative to what if I don’t get—if she doesn’t come back? What’s going to happen to me then? See?

The servant is a model for us as well in examining covenants. And when we talk about marriage, a proper servant overseeing the relationship of the marriage of his children understands the importance biblically of the covenant, that our relationship to God is a way of covenant, and that every human relationship takes that form as well, either explicit or implicit—that we are covenantal in our nature.

And so, the servant is submissive, but he’s also discerning about the covenants that he enters into. He’s careful, and so should we be. We should be careful about the covenants that we establish for our children. The servant is an example to us.

In Proverbs 27:18, we read, “Whoever keeps the fig tree will eat its fruit. So he who waits on his master will be honored.” See, servanthood is commended to us in the scriptures. Again in Titus 2:9 and 10: “Exhort bondservants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well-pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.”

That’s who this servant was. And this servant, in terms of the character study of him, is a submissive but discerning servant who carefully enters into covenants, who takes covenants seriously, and sees as the backbone of all covenants and oaths, the covenant of circumcision—the covenant relationship we have with God.

Secondly, this servant is devoted to his master. In this story, as it works itself out, you know, after the success at the well, he then goes back to the household to engage in negotiations with the family, and Laban has spread a feast for him out, right? They’ve gotten this good meal set, but he will not eat before his errand is attended to. He postpones dinner until after the work is done. Okay? And then after the work is done, then it’s a real rejoicing feast because it’s kind of like a wedding feast almost.

Our Savior says in John 4:34 that his food was to do the will of him who sent him and to finish his work. You see, the servant is a picture of Jesus. He put above his food requirements or delighting in food the will of him that sent him and finishing his work of obtaining this daughter.

And so we should see the importance of our children’s relationships taking priority over the daily sort of things that we enter into, which are good and proper in and of themselves. But we as servants of Christ seeking mates for our children should have that kind of devotion to the task. Now we don’t know Abraham knew Isaac would get married, going to possess the seed. We don’t know that for our children, but we certainly should attend to it with that same sort of commitment.

Also, the servant is a picture for us of a prayerful man. Now this is very predominant in the text. And if there’s one major application point to this sermon, it is that we should pray for mates for our children and teach them to pray for mates as well, because that’s what this servant does. He is a man of prayer. He is a man who understands, as Proverbs 19:14 tells us, that houses and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.

Isaac had the houses and the riches as an inheritance from his father. That was kind of dialed in. But not so a wife. Where are you going to find a wife? Riches can’t do that. The father can’t really do that. It’s got to be from the Lord. So the servant is not relying upon Abraham in terms of his selection of a mate. He’s relying upon the Lord from whom a good wife comes.

The servant is a practical example, as we said last week, of Proverbs 3:6: “In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.” The servant is a picture of a prayerful man who prays in specifics. He prays a very detailed prayer in terms of seeking out a wife for Isaac. And he prays on the basis of the relationship of God to Abraham—the covenantal faithfulness of God to Abraham. He prays in Abraham’s name, so to speak. And he prays calling on the God, as we’ll see in a couple minutes, who is both faithful to us—or reliable—and who is merciful to us in blessing.

That’s how our prayers should be. Our prayers—we stand not in the place of Abraham but in the place of Christ. Yeah. We plead his name in prayer. When we pray for mates for our children, we pray in terms of the Father’s love and providential care for Jesus Christ and all the elect who are covenantally in Christ. So our prayer should be appeals to the attributes of God, to the works of God, and establishing a covenant relationship with us.

And our prayer should flow out into details, looking for particular mates for our children. This is such an important area, and it’s an area that is so hard to develop regularity in. I know that you all struggle in prayer. Most people do. We’ve been talking in the Psalms class the last two weeks about praying through the Psalms as a model to transform our prayers, to make our supplications more biblical, to drive us to the adoration the Psalms do in meditating on God’s word, his works, and his attributes to bring our confession in line with the confession of the psalmist who confesses his sins before God and to bring our thanksgiving into a biblical model.

Well, the Psalms are a way to get us to be prayerful and prayerful in terms of regular prayer for our children as they are moving toward marrying age. An ancient liturgy of the church reads this: “Almighty and everlasting God, who are always more ready to hear than we to pray and are wont to give more than either we desire or deserve. See, that’s the way it is. God is always more wont to hear prayer than we are to give prayer.

May we grow in the grace of prayer and be like this servant.

And then fourth, the servant is thankful. And Matthew Henry says when what we win by prayer, we must wear with praise. And the servant does that. The chiastic structure there—the middle of it is God’s providential answering of prayer, and before it is prayer and after it is praise. So another little vignette right there of prayer, God’s performance at the well, and then praise to God on the basis of his work.

And then fifth, he’s selfless. We talked about that last week a little bit. He’s self-sacrificial for the sake of Isaac.

And then finally, he is wise. Spend a little bit of time on this. He is prepared. First of all, see, he’s got all the goods of his master Abraham. Abraham doesn’t tell him to take 10 camels. That’s his idea. He goes prepared to bring the girl and her servants back with him. And he goes with goods and services by which to demonstrate the success and blessedness of his master.

He goes prepared, you see. And so as a model to us as servants seeking mates for our children, we want to be prepared for that task—prepared with a life of faithfulness and prayer and all that stuff, prepared with material goods, prepared by training our young men to have dowries in place, training our young men to take our stead. Isaac had demonstrated now his care in terms of his father’s household. He’s now 40 years old, a grown man.

And the servant is prepared then for this message—or for this task rather. And then the servant is a wise man in that he brings forth a task. It’s not just a fleece that he places before God. The content of his prayer is this. He says, “Now I’m going to go there. I’m already here.” He’s looking at the gals coming out to water the flocks. He says, “I’m going to ask one of them for a drink, God. And may she tell—and the one who tells me I’ll give your camels a drink also. May she be the one.”

He’s got 10 camels. And the text tells us that Rebecca had to go down to the well. There’s steps back and forth to the trough. It’s work. She’s got to go back and forth just to pull out her own water and then to give the water to the servant and then to actually water—until the camels have had all they want to drink. That’s what the text tells us. She has a lot of work to do, you see?

So his prayer is not just a saying, “This is a fleece. Show me which one.” It’s a prayer that tests and discerns the character of the wife for Isaac. Will she be energetic? Will she be hospitable? Hospitable—such a mark of the faith. Hospitable to strangers. Will she be slothful? Will she be diligent? Will she grudgingly do this task? Or will she do it with enthusiasm? You see, he sets up in his prayer a discerning test for the wife of Isaac.

And parents, as we look at the servant as a model for us, we’re to do the same thing. We’re supposed to have discernment as we look and examine the mate—the potential mates for our children. And we can prepare tests for God to show us what sort of stuff that woman or that man is made of. That’s what the servant does in the context of this prayer. He puts a test. And he doesn’t just leave it at the end of the test.

It’s not an easy test because he has to study the girl to see what she’s going to do. What do I mean by that? Well, in verse 21, he’s made this prayer. She has brought him water. She energetically then agrees to water all the camels. She actually offers to do that. Great answer to prayer. And but he’s not done yet.

In verse 21, it says, “And the man, wondering at her, remains silent so as to know whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not.” He’s meditating. He’s studying her. This word for wondering, in the Septuagint, the Greek word is the same word that’s used by our Savior in Matthew 6:28 when we’re to consider the lilies of the field. And the idea of that means to observe the lilies well so that we might learn thoroughly the lesson that they teach to us.

And so here in Genesis 24:21, the idea here is that Abraham’s servant is observing Rebecca, learning her disposition by seeing her actions. So the servant is a wise man. Sets up this prayer that involves a test of her character. Matthew Henry says this about this portion of the text: “He desires that his master’s wife might be humble, might be a humble and industrious woman bred up to care and labor and willing to put her hand to any work that was to be done, and that she might be of a courteous disposition and charitable to strangers. When he came to seek a wife for his master, he did not go to the playhouse or the park. Okay? When he came to seek a wife for his master, he did not go to the playhouse or the park and pray that he might meet one there, but rather he went to the well of water, expecting to find one there well employed.

Parents, what an example for us of the sorts of mates we should be seeking out for our children and the places wherein we should seek those mates—places of employment, noting diligence, noting exuberance for a task, noting hospitality—and then studying the potential mates for our children the way the servant did to see indeed if this was to be the one or not. This was a wise servant. This was a man who sets up tests, who studies, and then he enters into a dialogue with the family that, as I said, is really sort of set up to put the best possible light on his perspective of the Isaac that is so that the family will agree to the man to the marriage rather.

So to sum up