Andy Davis preaches another expository sermon on Genesis 24. The main subject of the sermon is how God provided a wife for Isaac after his mother’s death.
Andy Davis preaches another expository sermon on Genesis 24. The main subject of the sermon is how God provided a wife for Isaac after his mother’s death.
I. Introduction
This is our second week of looking at this, the longest chapter in Genesis. And as I was thinking about the lessons and just the truth that there is in this chapter, I was thinking about the theme of guidance, and it reminded me of a story that I heard from the mission field, a while ago, concerning Hudson Taylor, who may have been the greatest missionary in church history or in the 19th century, at least, founder of China Inland Mission, a great man of God. And as he was en route to the mission field — he was heading there — the ship that he was sailing on was heading towards some sunken reefs off the coast of New Guinea. The charts were unmistakable, the captain knew that that’s right where they were heading. The problem was there was no wind. And without any wind, the ship was in the hands of the currents in the sea, and they were bringing the ship right toward the sunken reefs. The captain did everything he could think to do to turn the ship but there just was no control without any wind. And so he said to Hudson Taylor that, “We’ve done everything that we can,” and he said, “No, sir, we haven’t. Four of us are Christians, and we’re going to go pray that God would give us wind.”
So they went down to their berth rooms and they got down on their knees, each in their own room, Hudson Taylor prayed a very brief time. And when he got done, he was absolutely convinced that God was going to send the wind and do it quickly, so he went up to the top and talked to the first officer who was steering the ship at that point. He was a godless man, had no faith in Christ, no interest in the Gospel. Hudson Taylor told the sailor, “You should let down the main sail in preparation for wind.” He said, “What good is that? There’s no wind.” And he said, “Well, the wind is about to come because God is going to send it.” And the sailor swore at Hudson Taylor, cursed at him and said, “I’d rather see a wind I can see, than hear about one that comes by prayer.” Right as he was saying those words, the top most sail started to flap gently in the breeze. The guy looked up and said, “Well, it’s only a cat’s paw”, that means only a puff of wind, but he didn’t believe it. And so he went and loosened the main sail and tied it down just in time for a pretty strong gale that came along.
It wasn’t long before that ship was moving along at six or seven knots. They were able to miss the sunken reefs and go on to China. And this was the lesson that Hudson Taylor learned from that experience. “Thus did God encourage me before landing on China shores to bring every variety of need to him in prayer, and to expect that he would honor the name of Jesus Christ and give me help, the help that each emergency required.” Now, as I think about that ship, just kind of adrift and just being carried by the currents of the sea, no control and all that, and then in answer to prayer, along comes a God-given wind, directing it exactly where it needs to go, I get a picture of Genesis 24. And not just in the creation of a godly home, in marriage, as a direct answer to a specific prayer, as we saw last week — not just that — but just all the issues of our lives.
Now, I know this morning that I’m speaking to a group of people, among a larger group, a group of people that are anxious about the spouse that God will bring into their lives. Some of you are in that category. Some of you remember the days when you were anxious about the spouse that God would bring into your lives. Some of you have children that are anxious about that. Others have other issues to do with marriage. But you know marriage as important a theme as it is in this chapter, and it will take a central role, is only a subset of God’s larger sovereign control over the events of our lives to accomplish His end and His purpose. As I look, just speaking somewhat autobiographically, there have been few things in my life that I have prayed as fervently about as the things that led up to me being married to Christi. God really had me there for a while, and it’s kind of like when God has you, he doesn’t let you go quickly and easily. Put me back in the oven, I’m not done baking yet. And so there was so much prayer and so many things that went into us getting together as husband and wife. But again, that’s just a subset of things that we still care about, even if we’re married. We care about things concerning our children, about our church, about our nation, about our world, about loved ones and friends and co-workers that don’t know the Lord. And the question is, is God still sending puffs of wind, strong breezes even an answer to a specific prayer? I say he does.
So my enemy this morning is anxiety. I’m going after anxiety, that’s my enemy, because I don’t want you to be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, to present your request to God and let the peace of God transcend all understanding and bring you into a haven of peace as you rest in God. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna get your spouse today. You might — I doubt it — but it doesn’t mean that you will. But it does mean that God can put you at rest in his sovereignty, at peace in his guidance and control until it happens, that thing it is that you’re concerned about.
II. Review
Now, last week, we saw in this account, it’s the longest chapter in Genesis, 67 verses, and all I sought to do last week is just bring us through the text. So really, this is just the second half of last week’s sermon, which I draw out theological principles and draw out applications from that, but that was last week, and I just need to remind you of some of the details of the text so that it will make sense to you.
Some of you were not here last week. But in this chapter Abraham, aged, toward the end of his life, sees the hand of the Lord’s blessing and everything that he’s done, but knows there’s something significant missing. His 40-year-old son, Isaac does not have a wife. And he knows this is absolutely foundational to the plan of God, the redemptive history. Isaac will not die a bachelor. That’s not going to happen. He’s got to have a wife, and so he calls in a servant and he puts the servant under an oath, commissions him to go get a wife from Abraham’s home area, his home town, back in Mesopotamia. Abraham’s servant takes the charge and goes, he makes his journey, and when he gets there, he prays a remarkable prayer. He prays specifically, concerning a well of water, and when the women, the young women would come, that if there would be one that would come and offer him some drink, if she would also offer drink to the camels, he would know that this was the one that God had chosen. And so, immediately after he finishes praying that prayer, Rebekah comes and the servant initiates with her and says, “Could I have some water?” And she says, “Yes, but also, could I water your camels?” Which amounted to, and I correct, 3200 pounds of water, not 320. Thank you for those of you that pointed that out, I do appreciate it.
I have forgotten much of the math I learned at MIT, I’m ashamed to say it but I appreciate it. It’s good to be humble. It’s good to be humbled. 320 gallons, 3200 pounds of water. A big job nonetheless. And so she offered to do this, and it was this simple act of hospitality that led her into God’s plan for her life. Remarkable. Little things matter. Little things are huge. Little acts of servanthood made all the difference for Rebekah. Well, the family learned of God’s providence in 28-49, and they submitted to it gladly. The servant wanted to go immediately, the next day. They asked Rebekah, “Are you willing to go with this man?” She said, “I will go”. By faith. Put yourself in Rebekah’s shoes, young ladies. Would you have gone to marry some man sight unseen back in some place somewhere? Her faith is significant. It’s of a kind that’s similar to Abraham’s. “Leave your country and your people and go to the land I will show you. And I’ll provide for you, I’ll meet all your needs.”
And so she trusted God and went off and married this man who she had never met before. Isaac, for his part, went out into the field — he was meditating — he looks up, he sees the young woman; she covers herself with a veil — she’s such a picture of purity and chastity — a beautiful picture there of righteousness. And the two come together, he brings her into his mother’s tent as a sign, I believe, of her role that she’s gonna play in that covenant community. She is taking Sarah’s place in that way.
The wedding ceremony itself is interestingly passed over in silence, but it, I believe, was there, and he pledged to marry her, and they had a covenant ceremony in that culture, whatever it was. Every culture is slightly different, but the core of it is the same. He pledged to be her husband and she to be his wife, and they were married. And it’s so precious. At the end, it says that Isaac took Rebekah as his wife and he loved her. And he was comforted concerning the death of his mother. Just a beautiful picture. And that’s the way it ends. That’s the account of last week.
III. Three Distinct Points of View for Applications
Now, this week, first of all, I wanna change the order in your bulletin. What I wanna do is take three and do it at two and two at three. I wanna look first at three distinct points of view, the three different ways to understand this account. And this will stand somewhat as a paradigm for the way you can handle a lot of narrative accounts in the Book of Genesis. Secondly, we’re going to look at five theological topics or spiritual issues connected with this account. And then third, we’re gonna look some more at some specific applications. Let me tell you, the applications are gonna run right through the message for the most part. So it’s not just at the end. I’ll just probably be summarizing applications at the end. But listen throughout, I hope for God’s wisdom to be speaking to you in your situation.
Examples of Godliness
First, let’s look at three different ways of looking at this account. The first way of looking at this Old Testament historical narrative is just as examples of godliness, that we’re gonna look through, and as we read this account, we’re going to learn how to be godly people, godly men, godly women. We’re gonna just learn from the people in this account. Pictures of godliness.
For example, Abraham. A godly man, submitted to God’s work in his life, under the authority of God, seeing God’s hand of blessing, but knowing something’s lacking and wanting to be sure that the wife that is gotten for his son, Isaac, will be a godly woman who can carry on the work that God intends.
And then you’ve got the servant. We don’t have his name, we don’t know for sure who it is, but the servant. So humble, so faithful, so obedient. A faith-filled man, a man of specific prayer, a man who loved to rejoice in what God was doing and to celebrate it openly, who would bow down before God in front of everyone and give praise and thanks to God. The servant.
Or Rebekah, as we’ve mentioned. Again, humble. Again, hospitable, hard-working, faith-filled, chaste, in that no man had ever lain with her. Courageous, willing to allow her faith to be transferred into courageous, bold action. “I will go,” she says. A beautiful picture of a godly woman.
And then you’ve got Isaac. We don’t see much of him in this account, but we do see that he is submissive to God’s will, he is a man of prayer and of meditation, he’s a thinker. And I think if you look at the patriarchs and just the Old Testament accounts, he’s one of the few men in the Old Testament who never married a rival wife. He was a one woman man. He loved Rebekah. It’s not a small thing, at the end, when it says that Isaac loved Rebekah. He cherished her for their whole marriage; they had a delightful marriage.
And then also we have an example of godly marriage as a whole, and we’re gonna talk more about that as we go on. But if you wanna learn some things about marriage, this is a great chapter to go to in the Old Testament. So that’s one kind of whole way to look at this account. Examples of righteousness. How can we be righteous like that? But let’s remember that Abraham and Isaac were not just anybody in history. We are not Abraham, and neither are we Isaac, and so they were unique folks.
Redemptive History
And so the second way of looking at this is how God was fulfilling redemptive history. What is redemptive history? It is the unfolding of events in space and time that lead to Christ. That lead to the birth of Jesus Christ as a man. A man who humbled himself under the plan of God, who took on our sins, who died on the cross, and who was raised on the third day. This is the Gospel, and by belief in that gospel, forgiveness of sins is ours. But without Jesus having a human body, he could not have been a merciful and faithful high priest to us in service to God; he could not have offered himself as a sacrifice in our place for our sins.
“What is redemptive history? It is the unfolding of events in space and time that lead to Christ. “
And so the birth of Jesus was ultimately contingent upon a whole genealogy of marriages leading all the way up to this one that we’re talking about here. Isaac and Rebekah. And so it isn’t just anybody that’s getting married here, but it’s Isaac, the ancestor of Jesus Christ. And it isn’t just any woman we’re talking about here, no, this is Rebekah, the ancestor of Jesus Christ. And so here is God, faithful to His covenant promises to Abraham, fulfilling what he had said he would do, bringing Isaac a wife, who could carry on the lineage leading up to Christ.
And if you are a saved person, this is, in part, your story. Not just that you would know how to be a godly husband or a godly wife, or how to find a spouse. That’s important. But that you would realize that this had happened, this happened, almost 4000 years ago, and as a result of that, you have salvation. Because in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and he took on a human body. So that’s a second way of looking at this account.
Spiritual Typology
The third way is a little dicey, but it’s really kind of fun, so I’m gonna go ahead and tell it to you. It’s the spiritual analogy way of looking at this text. There was, for a long time, a whole school or a system of interpretation, always looking for typologies and analogies in everything. But this one is kind of so clear and direct, I at least wanna bring it to your attention.
The reason I feel that it’s okay to talk about this marriage this way, namely as a picture of Christ in the church, because the Apostle Paul gives us permission to look at every marriage that way. In Ephesians Chapter 5, he says, “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery [says Paul] — but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Did you hear that? Profound mystery. Marriage, then, is a picture of the beautiful relationship between Christ and the church. Oh, what a beautiful hymn that was earlier. Wasn’t that pretty? I just love listening to that song. It always makes me cry, and that’s tough right before I preach, but I was able to pull myself together and get up here and preach. But just the beauty of marriage, the beauty of the picture of Christ and the church, but do you see how beautiful the typology is here? You’ve got Abraham, the father, representing God the Father. You’ve got the servant representing the Holy Spirit. You’ve got Isaac representing Jesus Christ. You’ve got Rebekah representing the church.
And you’ve got the mission that the servant goes, representing the worldwide evangelization. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, you will receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and be my witnesses, and by the redemption and the regeneration of the spirit, the bride of Christ is assembled and brought to Christ. And so in Revelation 21, she’s the bride beautifully prepared for her husband. It’s the Spirit that’s given to prepare us, to wash us and make us clean, to redeem us and to bring us in. And so the servant brings the bride to Christ, and they are married, what a picture. So those are three different ways you can look at Genesis 24. And I think all of them contribute something to our understanding of what’s happening in this chapter.
IV. Five Theological Topics
Covenant Faithfulness
But now, what I’d like to do is zero in and look at specific topics that are important to this text, to this account, and that come forward that we can learn something about God. We can learn about his ways of dealing with us. The first is this idea of covenant faithfulness. It’s in this account four times. The Hebrew word is hesed. Hesed — and it is sometimes translated kindness, covenant love, steadfast love, this kind of thing. Look at verse 12, for example, when the servant prays, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love [or lovingkindness, or something like that] to my master Abraham.’”
Now, what is he talking about? Well, God, you made a covenant. Please uphold your covenant. The covenant is not complete yet. He’s going to have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. That means he’s got to have a wife for Isaac, so remember your promise and get a wife for Isaac — covenant love. Be faithful to your promise. He does the same thing in verse 14. As he’s praying, he says, “Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’ — let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love [or Hesed, covenant love] to my master.”
Now, the basic idea is this. God operates with us on the basis of the covenant that he’s made. The Old Covenant, the New Covenant. This was a covenant that he had made to Abraham under the stars, remember? The covenant cutting ceremony in Genesis 15. God had made a promise. Basically, on the basis of that promise, the servant is standing and saying, “God, fulfill your promise to Abraham.” And so also we have promises made to us in the New Covenant, don’t we?
How about this one for example? It says in John 6:39, “And this is the will of him who sent me [said Jesus], that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Is that not a covenant promise? He’s made a promise to us that we will be raised up at the last day. We can pray that and say, “Oh Lord, I pray that I would not be lost, but that I would be raised up at the last day. And Lord, I pray that my children and that members of my church and then co-workers that are believers in Christ, that have made a pledge to Christ, that Christians who have trusted him would never, none of them be lost, but all of them raised up at the last day. You made the promise, Oh Lord, now, fulfill it.” Covenant faithfulness, our God makes promises and then he keeps them and they’re very nitty-gritty. There’s nuts and bolts to the promise. Isaac’s gotta have a wife, and so please show your faithfulness in your covenant promise here and now. Please. We can pray like that and believe God is a covenant maker and keeper.
God’s Accurate Guidance
Secondly, is this topic of God’s accurate guidance. Look at verses 26-27. It says, “Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD, saying, [This is the servant after God answered the prayer.] ‘Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast [covenant, Hesed] love, and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, [Listen!] the LORD has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.’” Oh, is this beautiful? What a strong testimony for the way that God navigates our lives, very much like that ship, once it had enough wind that the tiller started to respond. The ship gets navigated and goes wherever the helmsman wants it to go.
And so God directs our lives. This is a huge issue. Do you realize that in an average year, Americans spend over $200 million in consultation with fortune tellers and astrologers? Isn’t that incredible? $200 million. And what is it they’re seeking from these charlatans? These instruments of the devil. What are they seeking? They’re seeking guidance. They wanna know what they should do. They want direction and guidance. Some people navigate by reading weekly advice columns. Bad idea, okay? Dear Abby and Dear whatever, I don’t know who has taken their place, but advice columns or Dr. Phil. Tune in. Some folks will just bare their souls and tell their problems, they want guidance; they wanna know. And then there’s the whole self-help book industry and counselors of the non-Christian sort, psychologists and psychiatrists, that are giving advice. That’s what they do. You know why? Because people are desperate for guidance. They wanna know what to do, tell me what to do, guide me. Life is terrifying without accurate navigation.
But you know what? As a believer in Christ, you should know nothing of that terror. Nothing. You should be able to say, like the servant did, “The Lord led me and guided me here, he’s guiding me.” And there are verses that tell us that he’ll do that. Isaiah 30:21 is one of my favorite. Where it says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Isn’t that beautiful? This is the way, walk in it. Or in Proverbs 3:5-6, where it says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.”
We should rely on that. God gives guidance. He gives it through the indwelling Holy Spirit. He gives it through the written word of God. He gives guidance to his children. “My sheep hear My voice, I know them and they follow me.” I give them eternal life. Guidance.
God’s Sovereign Providence
Thirdly, we see very closely related to that the doctrine of God’s sovereign providence. Providence. Things happen, coincidences occur, things line up and get clicked in and connected. It’s the doctrine of providence and a marvelous one. In 1678, John Flavel published a book, The Mystery of Providence, asserting that God’s sovereign rule extends to the smallest of details, and is essentially a mystery. And so it is taught in the Bible. It says in Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Every dice roll comes up a five, or a two, or a one because God says so. God is jealous over His physical universe, He rules over all things, He’s the King. Or how about this? Jesus said this, he said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”
So what the Bible does is argue from those little things up to the greatest thing. If God cares how a lot is cast into the lap, if He cares about how a sparrow falls when it dies off the branch, how much more will He care about how a man and a woman get together in marriage? And how much more of the son of Abraham, Isaac himself? God rules over the events of our lives. It says in Ephesians 1:11, “In him we were also chosen, [it says] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” Our God is a sovereign ruler and King, and it’s a delightful thing to understand this doctrine of providence, this mystery of providence. Now, when it comes to dice, okay, no problem, I don’t know why God would care whether it came up at five or a two or a one, but okay, I can give Him that. And birds, fine. But what about human beings? Does God actually rule over the thoughts and decisions and inclinations of the hearts of human beings?
Well, look what happens in getting Isaac together with Rebekah. The servant prays a specific kind of prayer, and no sooner is he finished than Rebekah comes up and says, “Can I help you?” I mean, is that an accident? Like William Temple said, “The more I pray, the more coincidences happen. When I don’t pray, coincidences stop happening.” And so, these coincidences. Now, either God laid that specific prayer on the servant’s heart, or he laid the hospitality on Rebekah’s heart, or can I suggest both? And he’s working at both ends, so that the two of them get together. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
Henry Blackaby talks about this kind of thing in Experiencing God. He says that God lines up markers in your life, and that you just look and see back, how has God been dealing with me? What kinds of things has he been preparing me for? What is he getting me ready to do? The Providence of God, look for it. And if you don’t see those kind of wonderful, spiritual coincidences happening in your life, I say that you’re not praying the way the servant did, you’re not out on the cutting edge, the front line of the advance of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Cause when you’re involved in evangelism and you’re involved in missions and you’re just doing these things, you start to see these beautiful coincidences happening and boy is it exciting.
But God is a providential ruler. He rules over all things. Now, I will give you a caution, I believe it’s hard to see and interpret properly the providence of God. It’s hard to do. It’s less certain than interpreting scripture. Interpreting scripture, I can say is something like this, but the thing David had done was displeasing to the Lord. Well, it says right there, and therefore, I know what God thought about David’s adultery of Bathsheba. I don’t have to worry about it or wonder, it says, but history doesn’t tell us. When a tsunami happens, we can learn certain things from the Bible, but to specifically apply it to everything, is very difficult to do.
William Cowper, the hymn writer in the early 19th century, was a man given to depression and discouragement. A great lover of Jesus Christ, a great poet, but he had, I think, probably some imbalances and issues in his life, and frequently struggled with deep depression. And at one point in his life, he was ready to kill himself, commit suicide. And he decided he was gonna do it by throwing himself into the Thames River in London. So he called for a cab, a driver, to take him down to the Thames River. However, thick fog came and surrounded the cabbie as he was driving the horse; they couldn’t find the way to the river.
After driving around for a long time, finally the cabbie says, “I don’t know where we are. Get out.” He gets out right on his own doorstep. “Message received. You don’t want me to kill myself.” And after that, he wrote the hymn that we’re gonna be closing with today, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” And this is what he wrote: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter, and He will make things plain.” Now, you can’t scan all of God’s work in history — providence — and interpret it all accurately. You’ll miss it, you’ll get things wrong. But in the end, we will look back and see God’s handiwork. Our God is sovereign, He’s ruling over events of life.
Godly Marriage
Now, one of the main topics in this, of course, is how godly marriages are formed. And I wanna talk to you about four different things I get out of this text to understand how God puts marriages together.
The first is a very simple principle. God makes marriages. Do you see it in this text? God put Isaac and Rebekah together. God makes marriages. The supporting text for this is Genesis 2:22. It says, “Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” Now, I know some of you single guys are saying, “God, do it! Just do it! What is so hard? I mean, Adam had it easy. Wake up and there she is. I mean, there’s no problem, right? And frankly, even Isaac had it easy. He just went out in the field to meditate and there she is. Do that. I like that. That’s good. Bring her to me.” We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but God makes marriages.
A second supporting text for this is in Matthew 19:6, in which Jesus speaking about marriage says, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Point of application: single people who are sorely tempted toward anxiety in this area, don’t be anxious. Cast all your burdens and cares on Him because He cares for you. Trust in him to provide that spouse, that godly husband, that godly wife. But now, I just feel duty-bound to ask a tough question. Does God make every marriage? Does he make them all? That’s a tough question. What if, for example, a Christian violates God’s clear principle on spiritually mixed marriages? It says in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. … For what fellowship does light have with darkness?”
What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? Don’t marry a non-Christian. And it’s the same root word, “yoked together” that you get in Jesus’s statement in Matthew 19:6, “…what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Now, my question is, did Jesus intend to say that God yokes together every marriage? What about those that it were done in violation to his clear scriptural principle? Well, this is not an easy question to answer. But coming at it pastorally, let’s say I come to the conclusion that Matthew 19:6 doesn’t refer to every marriage, just to some. These would be the matches made in heaven, “Oh, there are a match made in heaven.” Do you see the gaping loophole through Matthew 19:6? Through which every troubled marriage will run? Every one? “Well, I don’t think ours is a match made in heaven. I don’t think God joined us together, and I think the sooner we get it separated, the better.” I believe Jesus intended every marriage.
Well then, what about those that were put together in violation to God’s word? Well, I think that God acts differently in putting together godly marriages along the pattern of His commands, than He does in pronouncing a couple that is standing in front of witnesses and saying, “I will be her husband.” She says, “I will be his wife. We are committing to each other.” In every culture, there’s a way to do that. In every culture, we call it marriage. When that pledge gets made, God yokes them together, and Paul calls it a mystery. A profound mystery. From that moment forward, he upholds the oath. He has yoked them together in his mind. He reckons them or considers them no longer two, but now one. And what he does when he does that, we may not, must not separate. Now you say, “Well, divorce is a big problem in our culture.” It’s true, and this is the whole challenge of pastoral ministry. You see, before any sin occurs, a faithful pastor has to do everything he can to warn people not to commit the sin. To labor so that people are protected from the great damage that sin causes. But then after the sin, a godly pastor will labor to bring somebody to a point of repentance, and then once that repentance is there and they repudiate the sin and call it by its biblical name, then they are assured of forgiveness and grace and mercy, and the blessings of God to go on. You see?
It’s a challenge for pastors, how do you do that in one sermon? How do you do both? Well, you just need to know where you’re at in that continuum. If divorce has been part of your past, understand what the Bible really says. You do other folks no good service to undo Matthew 19:6 and say, it’s not there anymore. Don’t do that. Say, “We sinned. We did wrong things. But from this point forward, God has blessed our union and he will continue to do so.” You see? But for those who haven’t been married yet or who are struggling in marriage, work it out. Be faithful to each other. God makes marriages.
The second point I wanna make is that God makes marriages in the flow of everyday life and in a cultural context. What do I mean by that? Well, he puts marriages together in as wide a variety of ways as there are people. If we got all the married couples here and just had the rest of the afternoon and say, “Well, how did you meet? Well, how did you meet? Well, how about you? How did you guys meet?” Unbelievable. The variety of stories. Some people met, they were co-workers at a job, some people met in college, some people met in elementary school. Those are interesting folks, aren’t they? Alright? But not a lot. But there are some, okay?
Some people meet at an airport, some people were on a mission trip together, some people were in a prayer group together, some people just in a youth group or a college and career group. It’s unbelievably varied. You never know how it’s going to happen. And I’d say to you, godly brother, godly sister, God has got somebody for you, in the end, frankly, it’s gonna amount about the same as it was for Adam and for Isaac. He’s gonna bring her. Godly sister, he’s gonna bring that husband. In the end, you will say, God did it. God did it. He brought us together. And so, it happens in the flow of life. It happens as you’re living, as you’re growing.
The third point I wanna make is that special effort and preparation is required by people. God isn’t going to just… You don’t just stand still in rooms, I’m not moving until she comes. Okay, I’m right here. No, you’re gonna live your life and you’re going to prepare yourself. You know, I think someone once said, I think it’s true: Marriage is not so much a matter of finding the right person as being the right person. God sees you, He knows where you’re at in your physical and spiritual development, He knows what’s happening, be faithful in little, and He will enable you to be faithful in much, you see. So be faithful in your relationships now, grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, prepare yourself as a Christian.
But I’m gonna go beyond that. Prepare yourself if you’re a single person, even if you’re youth, if you’re in the youth group now, prepare yourself now for your future marriage. Start praying for your husband, young ladies. Start praying for your wife, even if you’re 14, 12 years old. Pray for him, pray for her. Get ready. Parents, pray for your children. I mean, they come home from the hospital, start praying that prayer. Oh God, I don’t know if he or she’s born yet, but watch over her, watch over him, get them ready. Pray for these things
And also learn about marriage. Study from the good godly marriages in the church, it’s one of the great advantages of being in a local church. Prepare yourself, hang out with godly folks, see how their marriage is going, how It works, prepare yourself.
And then finally, this special effort on your part should not in any way lead you to feel anxious. It doesn’t undo the first point. God will prepare you. He will enable you to do the things you need to do in order to get ready for marriage. He’ll prepare you and He will sustain you and He will strengthen you.
Faith-Filled Prayer
The final point I wanna make, generally, about the text before some final applications, is concerning faith-filled prayer. It says in Psalm 57:2, “I will cry to God Most High, To God who accomplishes all things for me.” Is your prayer life anything like Abraham’s servant? “O Lord, may it be that if the next girl who comes along and says such and such, that I know she is the one”? I mean, that is incredible. It is God honoring, it’s in the flow of redemptive history, it’s fitting into the promises of God, it is specific and measurable, and it is a ground for great worship and praise when God answers. Do you pray like that? Do you have, like some saints like George Müller, in effect, a checkbook of unanswered prayers that you’re waiting on to see what God will do? I think this is a remarkable thing. As Temple said, William Temple, “When I pray, coincidences happen. When I cease to pray, coincidences cease.”
“It is God honoring, it’s in the flow of redemptive history, it’s fitting into the promises of God, it is specific and measurable, and it is a ground for great worship and praise when God answers. Do you pray like that? “
V. Application
Understand God’s Role in Marriage
Now, a couple of final applications and we’ll be done. We’ve understood or sought to understand God’s role in marriage. I know that not every single person I’m speaking to is going to get married. It’s not automatic. There are some people who are given the gift of singleness, and that’s a great gift, Jesus said it that way. It’s a great gift. But it is God’s normal pattern. It is his normal pattern. I tell you this, God will give you one gift or the other. He doesn’t give you no gift. So he will give you either singleness or he will give you a wife. Trust God to give you your gift.
Value marriage
Secondly, value marriage. This is so important in these days. Marriage is under great attack. I don’t need to speak of the strange legislation in Massachusetts or some of the other odd things in San Francisco. I don’t need to go into those things to say that marriage is under attack today. Marriage is under attack from divorce, it’s under attack from feminism, which says that, at some point, in the ’70s and ’80s, that marriage would become obsolete.
Well, it isn’t. It’s not going to become obsolete. And so we, as the church, we need to value and cherish marriage itself. Sometimes it may take courage. I read an article in a Christian young people’s magazine talking about how it takes courage for young folks to still believe in marriage if their folks got a divorce. To say it didn’t work out for them, they didn’t follow God’s ways, but I can get married and my marriage can be godly, it can be good. Key verse on this is Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure…” Honor marriage and keep the marriage bed pure.
Husbands: Value your precious wives
The final word I wanna say to you is really a word to husbands. Husbands, value your wives. I think that Rebekah is an incredible gift to Isaac. She’s precious. She’s special. She’s wonderful, she’s incredible. She’s going to be a fountain of blessing in his life for the rest of his life. He’s gonna cherish her. It’s so beautiful. Notice the odd order, different than America now. Different than America. The different order, it says that he married her and he loved her. We usually go the other way around, don’t we? We love and then we get married.
Well, I’m coming to the conclusion that the love that’s mentioned here and the love that’s in Ephesians 5 develops over years and years in a marriage. It’s not cheap, it’s not light, it’s not easy. It’s Christ’s love for the church. A love that lays down yourself for your wife day after day. Have you told her that you love her? Have you told her that you cherish her? That she’s special to you? God said that He would reward a cup of cold water given to one of the servants of God. He would never forget it, they never lose their reward. How many cups of cold water have you received from this wife? How many prayers? How many words of counsel? How many gifts of love? How many times has she offered herself to you? Body, spirit, soul, everything to help you and strengthen you in your marriage? Do you cherish her? And this community here, this believing community, this church, we are countercultural. We’re flowing the opposite direction. We’re upholding godly roles for men and for women. Well, I say to you, we must be a place that celebrates the role of a godly wife openly. We need to say it’s a wonderful thing to be a godly wife. Indispensable. Indispensable to the sovereign plan of God.
Without Rebekah, there’s no Christ. And therefore, there needed to be a Rebekah. So what I’m saying is value and cherish your wives. Value and cherish them. Tell them that you love them. You hear about the husband that says, “You know, I told you I loved you the day we got married. And if anything changes, I’ll let you know. Alright?”
I don’t wanna be a church like that. “Now women, we told you, your role is important. If anything changes, we’ll let you know.” I think there needs to be a constant stream of affirmation and encouragement of how vital Rebekah is to Isaac.
Trust in Christ
Final word, Jesus Christ. This is a picture of salvation, isn’t it? This is a picture of Christ. Are you saved? Have you trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord? Are you trusting in Him to save your soul and not just get you a wife or a husband? Jesus Christ came into the world as a result of Isaac and Rebekah getting together. As a result of the twins, Jacob and Esau being born, as a result of a long chain of events, but the point is the salvation of your soul and mine. Are you trusting in Him today?
Andy Davis preaches another expository sermon on Genesis 24. The main subject of the sermon is how God provided a wife for Isaac after his mother’s death.
I. Introduction
This is our second week of looking at this, the longest chapter in Genesis. And as I was thinking about the lessons and just the truth that there is in this chapter, I was thinking about the theme of guidance, and it reminded me of a story that I heard from the mission field, a while ago, concerning Hudson Taylor, who may have been the greatest missionary in church history or in the 19th century, at least, founder of China Inland Mission, a great man of God. And as he was en route to the mission field — he was heading there — the ship that he was sailing on was heading towards some sunken reefs off the coast of New Guinea. The charts were unmistakable, the captain knew that that’s right where they were heading. The problem was there was no wind. And without any wind, the ship was in the hands of the currents in the sea, and they were bringing the ship right toward the sunken reefs. The captain did everything he could think to do to turn the ship but there just was no control without any wind. And so he said to Hudson Taylor that, “We’ve done everything that we can,” and he said, “No, sir, we haven’t. Four of us are Christians, and we’re going to go pray that God would give us wind.”
So they went down to their berth rooms and they got down on their knees, each in their own room, Hudson Taylor prayed a very brief time. And when he got done, he was absolutely convinced that God was going to send the wind and do it quickly, so he went up to the top and talked to the first officer who was steering the ship at that point. He was a godless man, had no faith in Christ, no interest in the Gospel. Hudson Taylor told the sailor, “You should let down the main sail in preparation for wind.” He said, “What good is that? There’s no wind.” And he said, “Well, the wind is about to come because God is going to send it.” And the sailor swore at Hudson Taylor, cursed at him and said, “I’d rather see a wind I can see, than hear about one that comes by prayer.” Right as he was saying those words, the top most sail started to flap gently in the breeze. The guy looked up and said, “Well, it’s only a cat’s paw”, that means only a puff of wind, but he didn’t believe it. And so he went and loosened the main sail and tied it down just in time for a pretty strong gale that came along.
It wasn’t long before that ship was moving along at six or seven knots. They were able to miss the sunken reefs and go on to China. And this was the lesson that Hudson Taylor learned from that experience. “Thus did God encourage me before landing on China shores to bring every variety of need to him in prayer, and to expect that he would honor the name of Jesus Christ and give me help, the help that each emergency required.” Now, as I think about that ship, just kind of adrift and just being carried by the currents of the sea, no control and all that, and then in answer to prayer, along comes a God-given wind, directing it exactly where it needs to go, I get a picture of Genesis 24. And not just in the creation of a godly home, in marriage, as a direct answer to a specific prayer, as we saw last week — not just that — but just all the issues of our lives.
Now, I know this morning that I’m speaking to a group of people, among a larger group, a group of people that are anxious about the spouse that God will bring into their lives. Some of you are in that category. Some of you remember the days when you were anxious about the spouse that God would bring into your lives. Some of you have children that are anxious about that. Others have other issues to do with marriage. But you know marriage as important a theme as it is in this chapter, and it will take a central role, is only a subset of God’s larger sovereign control over the events of our lives to accomplish His end and His purpose. As I look, just speaking somewhat autobiographically, there have been few things in my life that I have prayed as fervently about as the things that led up to me being married to Christi. God really had me there for a while, and it’s kind of like when God has you, he doesn’t let you go quickly and easily. Put me back in the oven, I’m not done baking yet. And so there was so much prayer and so many things that went into us getting together as husband and wife. But again, that’s just a subset of things that we still care about, even if we’re married. We care about things concerning our children, about our church, about our nation, about our world, about loved ones and friends and co-workers that don’t know the Lord. And the question is, is God still sending puffs of wind, strong breezes even an answer to a specific prayer? I say he does.
So my enemy this morning is anxiety. I’m going after anxiety, that’s my enemy, because I don’t want you to be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, to present your request to God and let the peace of God transcend all understanding and bring you into a haven of peace as you rest in God. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna get your spouse today. You might — I doubt it — but it doesn’t mean that you will. But it does mean that God can put you at rest in his sovereignty, at peace in his guidance and control until it happens, that thing it is that you’re concerned about.
II. Review
Now, last week, we saw in this account, it’s the longest chapter in Genesis, 67 verses, and all I sought to do last week is just bring us through the text. So really, this is just the second half of last week’s sermon, which I draw out theological principles and draw out applications from that, but that was last week, and I just need to remind you of some of the details of the text so that it will make sense to you.
Some of you were not here last week. But in this chapter Abraham, aged, toward the end of his life, sees the hand of the Lord’s blessing and everything that he’s done, but knows there’s something significant missing. His 40-year-old son, Isaac does not have a wife. And he knows this is absolutely foundational to the plan of God, the redemptive history. Isaac will not die a bachelor. That’s not going to happen. He’s got to have a wife, and so he calls in a servant and he puts the servant under an oath, commissions him to go get a wife from Abraham’s home area, his home town, back in Mesopotamia. Abraham’s servant takes the charge and goes, he makes his journey, and when he gets there, he prays a remarkable prayer. He prays specifically, concerning a well of water, and when the women, the young women would come, that if there would be one that would come and offer him some drink, if she would also offer drink to the camels, he would know that this was the one that God had chosen. And so, immediately after he finishes praying that prayer, Rebekah comes and the servant initiates with her and says, “Could I have some water?” And she says, “Yes, but also, could I water your camels?” Which amounted to, and I correct, 3200 pounds of water, not 320. Thank you for those of you that pointed that out, I do appreciate it.
I have forgotten much of the math I learned at MIT, I’m ashamed to say it but I appreciate it. It’s good to be humble. It’s good to be humbled. 320 gallons, 3200 pounds of water. A big job nonetheless. And so she offered to do this, and it was this simple act of hospitality that led her into God’s plan for her life. Remarkable. Little things matter. Little things are huge. Little acts of servanthood made all the difference for Rebekah. Well, the family learned of God’s providence in 28-49, and they submitted to it gladly. The servant wanted to go immediately, the next day. They asked Rebekah, “Are you willing to go with this man?” She said, “I will go”. By faith. Put yourself in Rebekah’s shoes, young ladies. Would you have gone to marry some man sight unseen back in some place somewhere? Her faith is significant. It’s of a kind that’s similar to Abraham’s. “Leave your country and your people and go to the land I will show you. And I’ll provide for you, I’ll meet all your needs.”
And so she trusted God and went off and married this man who she had never met before. Isaac, for his part, went out into the field — he was meditating — he looks up, he sees the young woman; she covers herself with a veil — she’s such a picture of purity and chastity — a beautiful picture there of righteousness. And the two come together, he brings her into his mother’s tent as a sign, I believe, of her role that she’s gonna play in that covenant community. She is taking Sarah’s place in that way.
The wedding ceremony itself is interestingly passed over in silence, but it, I believe, was there, and he pledged to marry her, and they had a covenant ceremony in that culture, whatever it was. Every culture is slightly different, but the core of it is the same. He pledged to be her husband and she to be his wife, and they were married. And it’s so precious. At the end, it says that Isaac took Rebekah as his wife and he loved her. And he was comforted concerning the death of his mother. Just a beautiful picture. And that’s the way it ends. That’s the account of last week.
III. Three Distinct Points of View for Applications
Now, this week, first of all, I wanna change the order in your bulletin. What I wanna do is take three and do it at two and two at three. I wanna look first at three distinct points of view, the three different ways to understand this account. And this will stand somewhat as a paradigm for the way you can handle a lot of narrative accounts in the Book of Genesis. Secondly, we’re going to look at five theological topics or spiritual issues connected with this account. And then third, we’re gonna look some more at some specific applications. Let me tell you, the applications are gonna run right through the message for the most part. So it’s not just at the end. I’ll just probably be summarizing applications at the end. But listen throughout, I hope for God’s wisdom to be speaking to you in your situation.
Examples of Godliness
First, let’s look at three different ways of looking at this account. The first way of looking at this Old Testament historical narrative is just as examples of godliness, that we’re gonna look through, and as we read this account, we’re going to learn how to be godly people, godly men, godly women. We’re gonna just learn from the people in this account. Pictures of godliness.
For example, Abraham. A godly man, submitted to God’s work in his life, under the authority of God, seeing God’s hand of blessing, but knowing something’s lacking and wanting to be sure that the wife that is gotten for his son, Isaac, will be a godly woman who can carry on the work that God intends.
And then you’ve got the servant. We don’t have his name, we don’t know for sure who it is, but the servant. So humble, so faithful, so obedient. A faith-filled man, a man of specific prayer, a man who loved to rejoice in what God was doing and to celebrate it openly, who would bow down before God in front of everyone and give praise and thanks to God. The servant.
Or Rebekah, as we’ve mentioned. Again, humble. Again, hospitable, hard-working, faith-filled, chaste, in that no man had ever lain with her. Courageous, willing to allow her faith to be transferred into courageous, bold action. “I will go,” she says. A beautiful picture of a godly woman.
And then you’ve got Isaac. We don’t see much of him in this account, but we do see that he is submissive to God’s will, he is a man of prayer and of meditation, he’s a thinker. And I think if you look at the patriarchs and just the Old Testament accounts, he’s one of the few men in the Old Testament who never married a rival wife. He was a one woman man. He loved Rebekah. It’s not a small thing, at the end, when it says that Isaac loved Rebekah. He cherished her for their whole marriage; they had a delightful marriage.
And then also we have an example of godly marriage as a whole, and we’re gonna talk more about that as we go on. But if you wanna learn some things about marriage, this is a great chapter to go to in the Old Testament. So that’s one kind of whole way to look at this account. Examples of righteousness. How can we be righteous like that? But let’s remember that Abraham and Isaac were not just anybody in history. We are not Abraham, and neither are we Isaac, and so they were unique folks.
Redemptive History
And so the second way of looking at this is how God was fulfilling redemptive history. What is redemptive history? It is the unfolding of events in space and time that lead to Christ. That lead to the birth of Jesus Christ as a man. A man who humbled himself under the plan of God, who took on our sins, who died on the cross, and who was raised on the third day. This is the Gospel, and by belief in that gospel, forgiveness of sins is ours. But without Jesus having a human body, he could not have been a merciful and faithful high priest to us in service to God; he could not have offered himself as a sacrifice in our place for our sins.
“What is redemptive history? It is the unfolding of events in space and time that lead to Christ. “
And so the birth of Jesus was ultimately contingent upon a whole genealogy of marriages leading all the way up to this one that we’re talking about here. Isaac and Rebekah. And so it isn’t just anybody that’s getting married here, but it’s Isaac, the ancestor of Jesus Christ. And it isn’t just any woman we’re talking about here, no, this is Rebekah, the ancestor of Jesus Christ. And so here is God, faithful to His covenant promises to Abraham, fulfilling what he had said he would do, bringing Isaac a wife, who could carry on the lineage leading up to Christ.
And if you are a saved person, this is, in part, your story. Not just that you would know how to be a godly husband or a godly wife, or how to find a spouse. That’s important. But that you would realize that this had happened, this happened, almost 4000 years ago, and as a result of that, you have salvation. Because in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and he took on a human body. So that’s a second way of looking at this account.
Spiritual Typology
The third way is a little dicey, but it’s really kind of fun, so I’m gonna go ahead and tell it to you. It’s the spiritual analogy way of looking at this text. There was, for a long time, a whole school or a system of interpretation, always looking for typologies and analogies in everything. But this one is kind of so clear and direct, I at least wanna bring it to your attention.
The reason I feel that it’s okay to talk about this marriage this way, namely as a picture of Christ in the church, because the Apostle Paul gives us permission to look at every marriage that way. In Ephesians Chapter 5, he says, “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery [says Paul] — but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Did you hear that? Profound mystery. Marriage, then, is a picture of the beautiful relationship between Christ and the church. Oh, what a beautiful hymn that was earlier. Wasn’t that pretty? I just love listening to that song. It always makes me cry, and that’s tough right before I preach, but I was able to pull myself together and get up here and preach. But just the beauty of marriage, the beauty of the picture of Christ and the church, but do you see how beautiful the typology is here? You’ve got Abraham, the father, representing God the Father. You’ve got the servant representing the Holy Spirit. You’ve got Isaac representing Jesus Christ. You’ve got Rebekah representing the church.
And you’ve got the mission that the servant goes, representing the worldwide evangelization. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, you will receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and be my witnesses, and by the redemption and the regeneration of the spirit, the bride of Christ is assembled and brought to Christ. And so in Revelation 21, she’s the bride beautifully prepared for her husband. It’s the Spirit that’s given to prepare us, to wash us and make us clean, to redeem us and to bring us in. And so the servant brings the bride to Christ, and they are married, what a picture. So those are three different ways you can look at Genesis 24. And I think all of them contribute something to our understanding of what’s happening in this chapter.
IV. Five Theological Topics
Covenant Faithfulness
But now, what I’d like to do is zero in and look at specific topics that are important to this text, to this account, and that come forward that we can learn something about God. We can learn about his ways of dealing with us. The first is this idea of covenant faithfulness. It’s in this account four times. The Hebrew word is hesed. Hesed — and it is sometimes translated kindness, covenant love, steadfast love, this kind of thing. Look at verse 12, for example, when the servant prays, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love [or lovingkindness, or something like that] to my master Abraham.’”
Now, what is he talking about? Well, God, you made a covenant. Please uphold your covenant. The covenant is not complete yet. He’s going to have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. That means he’s got to have a wife for Isaac, so remember your promise and get a wife for Isaac — covenant love. Be faithful to your promise. He does the same thing in verse 14. As he’s praying, he says, “Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’ — let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love [or Hesed, covenant love] to my master.”
Now, the basic idea is this. God operates with us on the basis of the covenant that he’s made. The Old Covenant, the New Covenant. This was a covenant that he had made to Abraham under the stars, remember? The covenant cutting ceremony in Genesis 15. God had made a promise. Basically, on the basis of that promise, the servant is standing and saying, “God, fulfill your promise to Abraham.” And so also we have promises made to us in the New Covenant, don’t we?
How about this one for example? It says in John 6:39, “And this is the will of him who sent me [said Jesus], that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Is that not a covenant promise? He’s made a promise to us that we will be raised up at the last day. We can pray that and say, “Oh Lord, I pray that I would not be lost, but that I would be raised up at the last day. And Lord, I pray that my children and that members of my church and then co-workers that are believers in Christ, that have made a pledge to Christ, that Christians who have trusted him would never, none of them be lost, but all of them raised up at the last day. You made the promise, Oh Lord, now, fulfill it.” Covenant faithfulness, our God makes promises and then he keeps them and they’re very nitty-gritty. There’s nuts and bolts to the promise. Isaac’s gotta have a wife, and so please show your faithfulness in your covenant promise here and now. Please. We can pray like that and believe God is a covenant maker and keeper.
God’s Accurate Guidance
Secondly, is this topic of God’s accurate guidance. Look at verses 26-27. It says, “Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD, saying, [This is the servant after God answered the prayer.] ‘Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast [covenant, Hesed] love, and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, [Listen!] the LORD has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.’” Oh, is this beautiful? What a strong testimony for the way that God navigates our lives, very much like that ship, once it had enough wind that the tiller started to respond. The ship gets navigated and goes wherever the helmsman wants it to go.
And so God directs our lives. This is a huge issue. Do you realize that in an average year, Americans spend over $200 million in consultation with fortune tellers and astrologers? Isn’t that incredible? $200 million. And what is it they’re seeking from these charlatans? These instruments of the devil. What are they seeking? They’re seeking guidance. They wanna know what they should do. They want direction and guidance. Some people navigate by reading weekly advice columns. Bad idea, okay? Dear Abby and Dear whatever, I don’t know who has taken their place, but advice columns or Dr. Phil. Tune in. Some folks will just bare their souls and tell their problems, they want guidance; they wanna know. And then there’s the whole self-help book industry and counselors of the non-Christian sort, psychologists and psychiatrists, that are giving advice. That’s what they do. You know why? Because people are desperate for guidance. They wanna know what to do, tell me what to do, guide me. Life is terrifying without accurate navigation.
But you know what? As a believer in Christ, you should know nothing of that terror. Nothing. You should be able to say, like the servant did, “The Lord led me and guided me here, he’s guiding me.” And there are verses that tell us that he’ll do that. Isaiah 30:21 is one of my favorite. Where it says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” Isn’t that beautiful? This is the way, walk in it. Or in Proverbs 3:5-6, where it says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.”
We should rely on that. God gives guidance. He gives it through the indwelling Holy Spirit. He gives it through the written word of God. He gives guidance to his children. “My sheep hear My voice, I know them and they follow me.” I give them eternal life. Guidance.
God’s Sovereign Providence
Thirdly, we see very closely related to that the doctrine of God’s sovereign providence. Providence. Things happen, coincidences occur, things line up and get clicked in and connected. It’s the doctrine of providence and a marvelous one. In 1678, John Flavel published a book, The Mystery of Providence, asserting that God’s sovereign rule extends to the smallest of details, and is essentially a mystery. And so it is taught in the Bible. It says in Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Every dice roll comes up a five, or a two, or a one because God says so. God is jealous over His physical universe, He rules over all things, He’s the King. Or how about this? Jesus said this, he said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”
So what the Bible does is argue from those little things up to the greatest thing. If God cares how a lot is cast into the lap, if He cares about how a sparrow falls when it dies off the branch, how much more will He care about how a man and a woman get together in marriage? And how much more of the son of Abraham, Isaac himself? God rules over the events of our lives. It says in Ephesians 1:11, “In him we were also chosen, [it says] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” Our God is a sovereign ruler and King, and it’s a delightful thing to understand this doctrine of providence, this mystery of providence. Now, when it comes to dice, okay, no problem, I don’t know why God would care whether it came up at five or a two or a one, but okay, I can give Him that. And birds, fine. But what about human beings? Does God actually rule over the thoughts and decisions and inclinations of the hearts of human beings?
Well, look what happens in getting Isaac together with Rebekah. The servant prays a specific kind of prayer, and no sooner is he finished than Rebekah comes up and says, “Can I help you?” I mean, is that an accident? Like William Temple said, “The more I pray, the more coincidences happen. When I don’t pray, coincidences stop happening.” And so, these coincidences. Now, either God laid that specific prayer on the servant’s heart, or he laid the hospitality on Rebekah’s heart, or can I suggest both? And he’s working at both ends, so that the two of them get together. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
Henry Blackaby talks about this kind of thing in Experiencing God. He says that God lines up markers in your life, and that you just look and see back, how has God been dealing with me? What kinds of things has he been preparing me for? What is he getting me ready to do? The Providence of God, look for it. And if you don’t see those kind of wonderful, spiritual coincidences happening in your life, I say that you’re not praying the way the servant did, you’re not out on the cutting edge, the front line of the advance of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Cause when you’re involved in evangelism and you’re involved in missions and you’re just doing these things, you start to see these beautiful coincidences happening and boy is it exciting.
But God is a providential ruler. He rules over all things. Now, I will give you a caution, I believe it’s hard to see and interpret properly the providence of God. It’s hard to do. It’s less certain than interpreting scripture. Interpreting scripture, I can say is something like this, but the thing David had done was displeasing to the Lord. Well, it says right there, and therefore, I know what God thought about David’s adultery of Bathsheba. I don’t have to worry about it or wonder, it says, but history doesn’t tell us. When a tsunami happens, we can learn certain things from the Bible, but to specifically apply it to everything, is very difficult to do.
William Cowper, the hymn writer in the early 19th century, was a man given to depression and discouragement. A great lover of Jesus Christ, a great poet, but he had, I think, probably some imbalances and issues in his life, and frequently struggled with deep depression. And at one point in his life, he was ready to kill himself, commit suicide. And he decided he was gonna do it by throwing himself into the Thames River in London. So he called for a cab, a driver, to take him down to the Thames River. However, thick fog came and surrounded the cabbie as he was driving the horse; they couldn’t find the way to the river.
After driving around for a long time, finally the cabbie says, “I don’t know where we are. Get out.” He gets out right on his own doorstep. “Message received. You don’t want me to kill myself.” And after that, he wrote the hymn that we’re gonna be closing with today, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” And this is what he wrote: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter, and He will make things plain.” Now, you can’t scan all of God’s work in history — providence — and interpret it all accurately. You’ll miss it, you’ll get things wrong. But in the end, we will look back and see God’s handiwork. Our God is sovereign, He’s ruling over events of life.
Godly Marriage
Now, one of the main topics in this, of course, is how godly marriages are formed. And I wanna talk to you about four different things I get out of this text to understand how God puts marriages together.
The first is a very simple principle. God makes marriages. Do you see it in this text? God put Isaac and Rebekah together. God makes marriages. The supporting text for this is Genesis 2:22. It says, “Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” Now, I know some of you single guys are saying, “God, do it! Just do it! What is so hard? I mean, Adam had it easy. Wake up and there she is. I mean, there’s no problem, right? And frankly, even Isaac had it easy. He just went out in the field to meditate and there she is. Do that. I like that. That’s good. Bring her to me.” We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but God makes marriages.
A second supporting text for this is in Matthew 19:6, in which Jesus speaking about marriage says, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Point of application: single people who are sorely tempted toward anxiety in this area, don’t be anxious. Cast all your burdens and cares on Him because He cares for you. Trust in him to provide that spouse, that godly husband, that godly wife. But now, I just feel duty-bound to ask a tough question. Does God make every marriage? Does he make them all? That’s a tough question. What if, for example, a Christian violates God’s clear principle on spiritually mixed marriages? It says in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. … For what fellowship does light have with darkness?”
What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? Don’t marry a non-Christian. And it’s the same root word, “yoked together” that you get in Jesus’s statement in Matthew 19:6, “…what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Now, my question is, did Jesus intend to say that God yokes together every marriage? What about those that it were done in violation to his clear scriptural principle? Well, this is not an easy question to answer. But coming at it pastorally, let’s say I come to the conclusion that Matthew 19:6 doesn’t refer to every marriage, just to some. These would be the matches made in heaven, “Oh, there are a match made in heaven.” Do you see the gaping loophole through Matthew 19:6? Through which every troubled marriage will run? Every one? “Well, I don’t think ours is a match made in heaven. I don’t think God joined us together, and I think the sooner we get it separated, the better.” I believe Jesus intended every marriage.
Well then, what about those that were put together in violation to God’s word? Well, I think that God acts differently in putting together godly marriages along the pattern of His commands, than He does in pronouncing a couple that is standing in front of witnesses and saying, “I will be her husband.” She says, “I will be his wife. We are committing to each other.” In every culture, there’s a way to do that. In every culture, we call it marriage. When that pledge gets made, God yokes them together, and Paul calls it a mystery. A profound mystery. From that moment forward, he upholds the oath. He has yoked them together in his mind. He reckons them or considers them no longer two, but now one. And what he does when he does that, we may not, must not separate. Now you say, “Well, divorce is a big problem in our culture.” It’s true, and this is the whole challenge of pastoral ministry. You see, before any sin occurs, a faithful pastor has to do everything he can to warn people not to commit the sin. To labor so that people are protected from the great damage that sin causes. But then after the sin, a godly pastor will labor to bring somebody to a point of repentance, and then once that repentance is there and they repudiate the sin and call it by its biblical name, then they are assured of forgiveness and grace and mercy, and the blessings of God to go on. You see?
It’s a challenge for pastors, how do you do that in one sermon? How do you do both? Well, you just need to know where you’re at in that continuum. If divorce has been part of your past, understand what the Bible really says. You do other folks no good service to undo Matthew 19:6 and say, it’s not there anymore. Don’t do that. Say, “We sinned. We did wrong things. But from this point forward, God has blessed our union and he will continue to do so.” You see? But for those who haven’t been married yet or who are struggling in marriage, work it out. Be faithful to each other. God makes marriages.
The second point I wanna make is that God makes marriages in the flow of everyday life and in a cultural context. What do I mean by that? Well, he puts marriages together in as wide a variety of ways as there are people. If we got all the married couples here and just had the rest of the afternoon and say, “Well, how did you meet? Well, how did you meet? Well, how about you? How did you guys meet?” Unbelievable. The variety of stories. Some people met, they were co-workers at a job, some people met in college, some people met in elementary school. Those are interesting folks, aren’t they? Alright? But not a lot. But there are some, okay?
Some people meet at an airport, some people were on a mission trip together, some people were in a prayer group together, some people just in a youth group or a college and career group. It’s unbelievably varied. You never know how it’s going to happen. And I’d say to you, godly brother, godly sister, God has got somebody for you, in the end, frankly, it’s gonna amount about the same as it was for Adam and for Isaac. He’s gonna bring her. Godly sister, he’s gonna bring that husband. In the end, you will say, God did it. God did it. He brought us together. And so, it happens in the flow of life. It happens as you’re living, as you’re growing.
The third point I wanna make is that special effort and preparation is required by people. God isn’t going to just… You don’t just stand still in rooms, I’m not moving until she comes. Okay, I’m right here. No, you’re gonna live your life and you’re going to prepare yourself. You know, I think someone once said, I think it’s true: Marriage is not so much a matter of finding the right person as being the right person. God sees you, He knows where you’re at in your physical and spiritual development, He knows what’s happening, be faithful in little, and He will enable you to be faithful in much, you see. So be faithful in your relationships now, grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, prepare yourself as a Christian.
But I’m gonna go beyond that. Prepare yourself if you’re a single person, even if you’re youth, if you’re in the youth group now, prepare yourself now for your future marriage. Start praying for your husband, young ladies. Start praying for your wife, even if you’re 14, 12 years old. Pray for him, pray for her. Get ready. Parents, pray for your children. I mean, they come home from the hospital, start praying that prayer. Oh God, I don’t know if he or she’s born yet, but watch over her, watch over him, get them ready. Pray for these things
And also learn about marriage. Study from the good godly marriages in the church, it’s one of the great advantages of being in a local church. Prepare yourself, hang out with godly folks, see how their marriage is going, how It works, prepare yourself.
And then finally, this special effort on your part should not in any way lead you to feel anxious. It doesn’t undo the first point. God will prepare you. He will enable you to do the things you need to do in order to get ready for marriage. He’ll prepare you and He will sustain you and He will strengthen you.
Faith-Filled Prayer
The final point I wanna make, generally, about the text before some final applications, is concerning faith-filled prayer. It says in Psalm 57:2, “I will cry to God Most High, To God who accomplishes all things for me.” Is your prayer life anything like Abraham’s servant? “O Lord, may it be that if the next girl who comes along and says such and such, that I know she is the one”? I mean, that is incredible. It is God honoring, it’s in the flow of redemptive history, it’s fitting into the promises of God, it is specific and measurable, and it is a ground for great worship and praise when God answers. Do you pray like that? Do you have, like some saints like George Müller, in effect, a checkbook of unanswered prayers that you’re waiting on to see what God will do? I think this is a remarkable thing. As Temple said, William Temple, “When I pray, coincidences happen. When I cease to pray, coincidences cease.”
“It is God honoring, it’s in the flow of redemptive history, it’s fitting into the promises of God, it is specific and measurable, and it is a ground for great worship and praise when God answers. Do you pray like that? “
V. Application
Understand God’s Role in Marriage
Now, a couple of final applications and we’ll be done. We’ve understood or sought to understand God’s role in marriage. I know that not every single person I’m speaking to is going to get married. It’s not automatic. There are some people who are given the gift of singleness, and that’s a great gift, Jesus said it that way. It’s a great gift. But it is God’s normal pattern. It is his normal pattern. I tell you this, God will give you one gift or the other. He doesn’t give you no gift. So he will give you either singleness or he will give you a wife. Trust God to give you your gift.
Value marriage
Secondly, value marriage. This is so important in these days. Marriage is under great attack. I don’t need to speak of the strange legislation in Massachusetts or some of the other odd things in San Francisco. I don’t need to go into those things to say that marriage is under attack today. Marriage is under attack from divorce, it’s under attack from feminism, which says that, at some point, in the ’70s and ’80s, that marriage would become obsolete.
Well, it isn’t. It’s not going to become obsolete. And so we, as the church, we need to value and cherish marriage itself. Sometimes it may take courage. I read an article in a Christian young people’s magazine talking about how it takes courage for young folks to still believe in marriage if their folks got a divorce. To say it didn’t work out for them, they didn’t follow God’s ways, but I can get married and my marriage can be godly, it can be good. Key verse on this is Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure…” Honor marriage and keep the marriage bed pure.
Husbands: Value your precious wives
The final word I wanna say to you is really a word to husbands. Husbands, value your wives. I think that Rebekah is an incredible gift to Isaac. She’s precious. She’s special. She’s wonderful, she’s incredible. She’s going to be a fountain of blessing in his life for the rest of his life. He’s gonna cherish her. It’s so beautiful. Notice the odd order, different than America now. Different than America. The different order, it says that he married her and he loved her. We usually go the other way around, don’t we? We love and then we get married.
Well, I’m coming to the conclusion that the love that’s mentioned here and the love that’s in Ephesians 5 develops over years and years in a marriage. It’s not cheap, it’s not light, it’s not easy. It’s Christ’s love for the church. A love that lays down yourself for your wife day after day. Have you told her that you love her? Have you told her that you cherish her? That she’s special to you? God said that He would reward a cup of cold water given to one of the servants of God. He would never forget it, they never lose their reward. How many cups of cold water have you received from this wife? How many prayers? How many words of counsel? How many gifts of love? How many times has she offered herself to you? Body, spirit, soul, everything to help you and strengthen you in your marriage? Do you cherish her? And this community here, this believing community, this church, we are countercultural. We’re flowing the opposite direction. We’re upholding godly roles for men and for women. Well, I say to you, we must be a place that celebrates the role of a godly wife openly. We need to say it’s a wonderful thing to be a godly wife. Indispensable. Indispensable to the sovereign plan of God.
Without Rebekah, there’s no Christ. And therefore, there needed to be a Rebekah. So what I’m saying is value and cherish your wives. Value and cherish them. Tell them that you love them. You hear about the husband that says, “You know, I told you I loved you the day we got married. And if anything changes, I’ll let you know. Alright?”
I don’t wanna be a church like that. “Now women, we told you, your role is important. If anything changes, we’ll let you know.” I think there needs to be a constant stream of affirmation and encouragement of how vital Rebekah is to Isaac.
Trust in Christ
Final word, Jesus Christ. This is a picture of salvation, isn’t it? This is a picture of Christ. Are you saved? Have you trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord? Are you trusting in Him to save your soul and not just get you a wife or a husband? Jesus Christ came into the world as a result of Isaac and Rebekah getting together. As a result of the twins, Jacob and Esau being born, as a result of a long chain of events, but the point is the salvation of your soul and mine. Are you trusting in Him today?
