Beyond The Basics

Transcript:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. My name is Dan Snyder and I’m your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Beyond the Basics, where we are exploring the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, one chapter at a time.

Well welcome once again to Beyond the Basics. We’re going to go through Genesis chapter 24 today.

Abraham is old, his wife is dead, and he decides it’s time to find a wife for his son Isaac. So he brings his senior servant to him, makes him swear an oath that he’s not going to take a wife for his son Isaac from the Canaanites, but he’s going to go back to Abraham’s family and find a wife for Isaac there. So the servant swore the oath and he took 10 camels and some gifts and went to the city where Nahor lived and went to the well where the women would come to draw water and there he asked for a sign. He asked God for a sign and that sign was that he would ask a woman for water and the one who offers to water his camels, that would be the one who would be Isaac’s wife.

And so sure enough, Rebecca came to the well and so the servant asked Rebecca for a drink and she offered to water his camels and so he gave her gifts and introduced himself as the servant of Abraham. So, Rebekah told her brother Laban, who invited the servant to his house, and he spent the night and ate and drank, and in the morning he asked to leave. And so, Rebekah left with the servant and returned to Isaac, who lived in the Negev, and he took her as his wife.

So, before we get into the chapter on a deeper level, if you’re reading through this chapter you may notice that there’s a lot of repeated words in pairs. And these are relationship type words. So I’m going to give you these words that I found that are repeated in pairs. And I’ll give you the significance at the end here.

So we have the pair of master and servant. And then we have the pair of son and daughter. And then the pair of woman and man. There’s father and mother. And then there’s brother and sister.

And then the last word that’s repeated does not have a pair. And that word is wife. And you would think it would be paired with husband, but husband does not appear in this chapter. But the word wife is repeated 10 times.

So what’s the significance of all that? Why is that important? Well, I don’t know that the number of times for each individual word is all that important. It could be. And maybe somebody smarter than me has figured that out. But what I did notice is that the words master, servant, and son were repeated the most. I believe this is going to give insight into the main purpose of this story. Master, servant, and son. So be thinking about that as we go through.

Because the other thing that I think is important about this is that the word wife is repeated 10 times. The number 10 represents God’s authority. We’ve talked about that. So I think that that emphasizes that this marriage is under God’s authority. This marriage between Isaac and Rebecca is under God’s authority. It’s God ordained. This is God’s will for this to happen.

But also I think that’s important because this story, as we’re going to find out, represents God looking for a bride for his son. This story is going to be an analogy to what God did and what God is doing to find a bride for his son, Jesus. And again, I mentioned the master servant son. God the master sent out a servant to find a bride for his son. And this was done under God’s authority. So I’m going to make a case in this chapter as we go through why I believe that’s what this chapter is talking about.

So let’s get into it.

So Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and in verse two Abraham said to his servant, so he asked him to take an oath. And in verse four he asked him to “Go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife.”

So the servant said, “Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?”

And Abraham said to him, “See to it that you do not take my son back there.”

So God’s promises still require obedience here. Remember in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1 God said to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

And if you remember in the episode on Genesis chapter 12 I talked about how that was marriage language to leave your father’s house. So Abraham had partnered with God in a sort of marriage. So sending Isaac back to that land would have been disobedience. God had partnered with Abraham to bring him into the land of Canaan and God told Abraham, “This is your land. I’m giving you this land.”

So it would have been better for Isaac to not have a wife than for him to leave the promised land because if Isaac doesn’t have a wife, he’s at least still obeying God by staying in the land that God had commanded him to be in. That essentially leaves that up to God to find a wife for Isaac. He’s saying, “Lord, I trust you. I leave this in your hands. You say I’m supposed to become a great nation. You need to find me a wife so that I can become a great nation.”

But if he leaves the promised land to go marry somewhere else, now he’s taking matters into his own hands, just like Abraham did several times. So it’s better for Isaac to stay and not have a wife. That’s what Abraham is saying here.

So the servant swears to Abraham that he will do what Abraham asked him to do and he departs. And he arrives in the city of Nahor and approaches the well outside the city and in verse 12 he starts praying. He said, “Oh Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.”

And he goes on to ask for a sign. And this is a passage that many people have used to ask God for a sign that God will answer their prayers. But I think we need to be careful about learning a lesson from this. We need to remember that in those days there were different spiritual conditions than we have now. In other words, Abraham followed God, but not everybody else in his household may have. So this was something that they may have been used to doing, asking their other gods, their idols, for signs that really may have been a pagan practice and not necessarily something that we should continue doing. And just because God answered the prayer doesn’t mean that we should assume that this is how God wanted people to operate.

You know, another thing that we have to remember is this is before Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and gave us the Holy Spirit. Now we have the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit’s job is to teach us, to give us wisdom, to counsel us, to guide us. So in those days, in the days of Abraham, they didn’t have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit hadn’t been given to people.

So very, very different spiritual conditions. It wasn’t easy necessarily for a person to determine the will of God simply by asking. Asking God for a sign would be a way that people would determine the will of God.

Also, there’s no biblical precedent for this. This is the first time this happens. This is the first time that somebody asks God for a sign and it was not at God’s command. So there’s no biblical precedent and it’s not necessarily clear that it should be setting a precedent for use later on.

But, God answered the prayer anyway. And the important thing that we should learn is that he trusted God to lead him to the right woman. He didn’t ask God for a sign for God to prove himself. He wasn’t saying, “God, if you exist, lead me to the right woman.”

He was saying, “God, I already trust that you are going to do what you promised. So because I trust you, I ask that you would show me who the right woman is.”

Do you hear the difference there?

So when is it appropriate to ask God for a sign? I think that would be the logical next question. If we’re not sure if this is something that we should be doing, if we’re not sure if this is prescriptive rather than just descriptive, when is it appropriate to ask God for a sign?

Well, I’ve got a few thoughts here.

The first, the servant already had clear instructions from Abraham and these instructions were given out of obedience to a mandate from God. So he already knew what he was supposed to do. He already knew that these instructions came from God and that these instructions were for him to remain in obedience to God’s command.

Second, he did not ask God for a sign out of a desire for personal gain. It was done for the good of his master and for the good of his master’s son. So we should not ask for God for a sign if the purpose is for personal gain.

Third, the servant already knew in general who he was looking for. He was looking for a woman from the family of Nahor. And he only needed clarity on the specifics to make sure that the woman he was talking to was from that family. So when we ask God for a sign, it should only to get to gain clarity on the specifics of what we’re looking for.

We should already have a command in place. We should be wary of any selfish desires for personal gain and we should know already in general what we’re looking for. We should know what we’re trying to ask God to show us.

So then the next litmus test would be that the request that he asked from God was improbable but not ridiculous and not far-fetched. It was related to the task at hand. So he asked God that the woman who he was to bring home to Isaac, when he asked for a drink from her jar, that she would say, “Yes, and I will water your camels as well.”

So it was related to where he was. He was at the well. He asked for water and she would say, “Yes, I’ll water your camels.”

That’s a lot of work for a woman to do in those days, but not completely out of the ordinary. So if you’re asking God for a sign, are you asking him to do something completely far fetched? Are you saying, “God, give me a sign by making the sun stand still like Joshua did.”

Well, that’s pretty far-fetched. I would say that’s probably not a sign that you should ask for from the Lord. It should be related to what exactly is going on.

Fifth test here, the request was specific. It left no doubt that God had heard and answered the servant’s prayer. If you’re asking the Lord for a sign, it’s got to be specific. You can’t leave it open-ended.

Then sixth, the servant’s view of God would not change based on whether or not the sign appears. This is very, very important. He didn’t ask because of doubt, but only to determine success of his mission. So the servant knew that God was sovereign no matter what. So this is very, very important.

I do not know that it’s appropriate to ask God for a sign to prove that he exists. There are signs of that everywhere, already. To ask God for a sign in which the outcome of the sign determines your view of God is probably not an appropriate request. If you ask God for a sign and the sign doesn’t happen and therefore you determine that God does not exist, then that is not an appropriate request. If, however, you ask God for a sign and whether or not the sign happens, your view of God does not change, then this may be an appropriate request, as long as it lines up with the other tests that I’ve listed here.

So hopefully that helps. If you are thinking about asking God for a sign, run through those six tests because I think that in this case, the servant, whether or not asking God for a sign is something that God is okay with, I think that if you were to do it, the servant here provides a good model of how to do it and in what situations.

So let’s move on. Let’s talk more about the specific sign he asked for.

In verse 14 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.’”

So camels can actually drink up to 30 gallons of water at once. So for 10 camels to be there and for her to offer to water all 10 camels, this would take a very long time. And as I mentioned, this would be a very difficult task for someone to do, but it’s certainly not impossible.

So by having 10 camels there, it makes it very clear that God is involved. Remember that number 10 refers to God’s authority, mandate from God. So for the servant to ask God that this woman would water the 10 camels, it is making it very clear that this is not a everyday request. It’s not something that somebody would offer to do every day, so clearly God would be involved here.

So, Rebecca waters the camels. Verse 22: When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels.

So, this constituted a marriage proposal on behalf of Isaac. These were gifts that were given to a woman as a marriage proposal in that culture in those days. So she would, if she were to accept the items, she was now betrothed to Isaac.

So notice the servant didn’t even ask what family she belonged to yet. He doesn’t even know that she’s the granddaughter of Nahor. He has no idea. All he knows is that the Lord answered his prayer. And so he acts in faith now to give her these riches, these gifts in marriage when he doesn’t even know that she’s from Abraham’s family. But the next question he asks is, “Please tell me whose daughter you are.”

He finds out she is, of course, the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milca, the wife of Nahor. She is from Abraham’s family. She says, “We have plenty of both straw and fodder, and room to spend the night.”

So she says, “Come spend the night.”

And in verse 26, the man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord. The first thing he did when he recognized God working is he worshiped the Lord, when he recognized God had fully answered his prayer, that his mission was a success because he had followed the instructions of Abraham and because he had prayed and God had answered his prayer. The first thing he did was worship.

How quick are we to worship when we recognize God working in our lives? Is that our first response? When we see God answering prayer? When we see God making our work or our missions or the things that we’re involved in, when we see him making those things successful, is worship our first response?

So Rebekah went and told her brother, Laban. So Laban invites him to the house.

Moving down to verse 53. So after the servant told the story, Laban and Bethuel answered and they agreed that this is from the Lord and that Rebekah should go and become the wife of Isaac. And so the servant brought out jewelry of silver and of gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebecca. He also gave to her brother and to her mother costly ornaments.

So this is the dowry that was paid by the family of the bridegroom to the family of the bride. And the purpose of the dowry in those days was to show the ability of the man to provide for his bride so that the family had no concerns that the woman would be provided for. So that’s why he does this.

So they ate and drank. He spent the night there and in the morning he said, “Send me away to my master.”

And her brother and her mother said, “Let the young woman remain with us a while, at least 10 days; after that she may go.”

They tried to keep Rebecca from leaving her family behind to go be with Isaac. And if you remember from a couple chapters ago, I mentioned that Isaac is a picture of Jesus and he would continue to be a picture of Jesus throughout his entire story.

And I’m going to get much deeper into this later on, but this is a picture of the world’s attempt to keep us from leaving everything behind to follow Jesus. This is Rebecca’s former family, the people she used to be with trying to keep her from leaving everything behind to go be with her husband, Isaac. It shows the temptation that Rebecca faced and that we might face when we are given the invitation to leave everything behind to go be with our true husband, Jesus.

Luke 9 in verses 61 through 62 tells us that there’s a man that said, “I will follow you Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Tarrying with the world means we are not ready to follow Jesus. If you have been thinking about giving your life to Jesus, if you’ve been thinking about surrendering your life to Jesus and you’re not sure and you just, and there’s maybe something that you want to do first, or maybe there’s somebody that you want to go see first, or maybe there’s a couple things that you want to experience first, or maybe you’re just not really sure because you don’t know what your family is going to think. Don’t delay. Don’t wait.

If you’ve been waiting, if you’ve been tarrying, if you’ve been living with one foot in the world and one foot with Jesus, don’t wait any longer. Make the decision today to turn your face towards Jesus and go that direction and don’t look back. Because there’s always going to be something that asks you to look back or to stay behind just for a short time. There’s always going to be something, you’re always going to find something that will ask you to stay back, that will ask you to hang back. Just once. Just for a couple days.

Put your hand to the plow. Look forward. Don’t look back. Make that decision today. Don’t wait.

And in verse 58, they called Rebecca and said to her, “Will you go with this man?”

She said, “I will go.”

She did not wait. She understood that she needed to go. But if she held back and waited to say goodbye to her family, that it would be more and more difficult for her to leave. So she gave the immediate response in faith to obey what the servant had said was the command of God.

Her family tried to delay her just like there’s gonna be those who try to delay us from obeying God’s word. There’s gonna be people who try to tell us that we don’t need to obey God right now, that we can do it tomorrow, we can do it next week.

But she knew that she needed to obey right now. She heard the story from the servant, she heard the servant’s words and responded with faith and she went. So she left with the servant.

So in verse 65, Rebecca said to the servant, “Who is that man, walking in the field to meet us?”

The servant said, “It is my master.”

And she took her veil and covered herself.

So this is preparation for marriage, or this is an act of betrothal. This is what women would do before they were married, is they would cover their faces with a veil. And implicit here is the idea that she removed it once she entered Isaac’s tent, because she was now married.

So there’s a picture here of Israel. Remember, Isaac is a picture of Jesus. Israel would be separated from God by a veil under the law. And there was a literal veil. We’ll get to the book of Exodus where it describes this veil and the book of Leviticus, how the priests were to use the veil. We’ll get to that, but there was separation. That veil would separate the people of Israel from God’s presence, which was in the Holy of Holies. So there’s that separation there.

The separation doesn’t separate God from us. It’s not that God wants to be away from us. The veil hides, it masks the beauty of God’s bride, of Jesus’ bride, until it’s ready to be revealed. Just like a bride would wear a veil to cover up her beauty before the wedding day, the veil was used to cover up the beauty of the church, the beauty of Israel, until her wedding day. Revelation 19:7 says, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready.”

See, until that day the bride hasn’t made herself ready. So the bride needs to be covered. Just like Adam and Eve were covered. To cover their shame. Were covered. Until the veil is removed and the wedding day has come.

That law given at Mount Sinai, that was the betrothal between God and Israel, God and his people. And of course today, as Gentile believers, those of us who are Gentiles, we are grafted in to the nation of Israel and we’re able to partake in that betrothal and in that marriage. But that was the betrothal when the law was given.

The veil was placed just like Rebecca covered herself with a veil. That was when the veil was placed to cover Israel. That was the betrothal.

And then the veil was removed at Jesus’ death. When Jesus died, the veil was split in two. That veil was removed. The bride was now uncovered. When Jesus died, that was the day at which we could then look at Jesus with an unveiled face. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says: And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So because we are now able to see the Lord with unveiled face, we can now be transformed back into his image. So the process isn’t done. There’s still more to do to transform us back into the image that we were created in, that Adam was created in. But we can now do it with unveiled face. We can now do it confident in the coming marriage of the Lamb that the book of Revelation speaks of one day when he returns for his bride. That is what awaits us.

So how does this chapter point us to Jesus?

Beyond all the ways that we’ve already talked about, there’s so much imagery here. There’s so much that we can talk about.

First, Abraham sent his servant to look for a wife for his son. Remember I mentioned earlier in the episode at the very beginning that the words master, servant, and son were the most repeated words in this chapter and that they would be very important. Well, here’s, I believe this is why.

So Jesus in Luke 14 would tell the parable of a king who sent his servants to invite people to a wedding feast. And the idea is that these servants that he sent out were the Old Testament prophets. So I believe this is the same story as in Luke 14, that the master, Abraham, sent his servant, a prophet, to look for a wife for his son.

And this is a story that’s repeated over and over and over throughout the Old Testament. You’ll see this is a theme that’s picked up by the prophets, that they were sent by God. And it took several prophets to really develop this idea that God is a husband looking for a wife or looking for a bride. It’s not something that’s spelled out explicitly throughout many of the prophets, although Isaiah and Hosea for sure get into that in very explicit terms.

But the Old Testament prophets understood that they were sent by God to bring Israel back to himself, to invite Israel back to the wedding feast. That’s what Jesus says was the purpose of the Old Testament prophets.

So that’s what this whole chapter is pointing towards. It’s pointing towards the master, God, sending his servants, the prophets, to look for a bride for his son, Jesus.

So we also have this story that lays out God’s long-term plan. As I mentioned, Abraham sent a servant to look for a bride for his son, which parallels God sending his prophets to look for a bride for his Son. I mentioned that already, but there’s more.

Abraham’s son was considered dead and resurrected. We went through that a couple chapters ago. God’s son, Jesus, died and was resurrected. So there’s that parallel. Okay. In verse 36, it says that to Isaac, Abraham has given all that he has. God has also given his son, Jesus, all things. So just like Abraham had given Isaac all things, God has given Jesus all things.

The servant went to the east in Mesopotamia to bring a bride back with him. Remember the word east is representative exile or apart from God or separate from God, away from God. That’s what that word east represents. So Jesus also went into the world, which would be apart from heaven or separate from heaven, from where God lives, God’s home. Jesus went into the world to bring a bride back with him.

Another parallel, the servant found a bride and gave her riches and gifts. Jesus gave his bride the Holy Spirit. So the servant gave the bride riches and gifts as a guarantee that on his end this marriage was happening and by her acceptance that was an official betrothal. It’s the same way with Jesus giving his bride the Holy Spirit. He gave the Spirit as a seal and a guarantee of what we would be able to enter into as we accept the gift that he gives us.

The bride returned with the servant to the promised country in the same way Jesus’ bride is called out of the world into the kingdom. Remember I mentioned earlier that that Rebecca’s family is a picture of the world, of worldly living, of temptation. So the bride left the world, left her family, and returned with a servant to the promised country. We, as Jesus’ bride, are called out of the world into the promised country, His kingdom, and eventually the New Jerusalem. That promised country is where Rebekah met her bridegroom, and that promised country, the New Jerusalem, is where we will one day meet our bridegroom when he returns.

And then it says that Rebekah was loved by her husband. In verse 67, she became his wife and he loved her. And we will be loved by Jesus forever. We will belong to Jesus forever. We are his. We belong to him and he loves us forever.

So those are the parallels to Jesus.

But we’re not done because we also have a man who met a woman at a well. And this is going to parallel specifically the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well in John 4. There’s actually going to be a mix of parallels and inversions here in these two stories, but it’s going to foreshadow that journey that Jesus is making to bring his bride back with him.

So in John 4, the woman that Jesus met was a Samaritan, basically a Gentile, instead of being from the family of Abraham. So now Jesus, looking for a bride, has now gone to the Gentiles. This woman had been married five times and now was with a man who was not her husband instead of being a virgin like Rebecca. Jesus asked her for a drink of water and she was surprised because of her ethnicity instead of immediately offering to give him a drink like Rebecca. Then Jesus offered her living water instead of Rebecca offering the servant water. Then the woman went back to her town to tell them the news just like Rebecca went back to her family to tell them the news. The townspeople asked Jesus to stay and he did, just like Rebecca’s family asked the servant to stay. But the servant refused. Jesus stayed.

So the whole purpose of this parallel, I believe, is that the Samaritans and by extension the Gentiles were being offered to join into the family of Abraham. Instead of the servant coming on behalf of the son, the Son himself came. So Jesus himself came to the Samaritans, to the Gentiles, with an offering for them to join into the family of Abraham.

That’s what the purpose of the story in John 4 is. And that’s why it so closely parallels the story in Genesis 24. Because the story in Genesis 24 is about God looking for a bride for his son of the family of Abraham. In John 4, Jesus himself went to find a bride out of the Gentiles and called them into the family of Abraham.

So there’s a lot there. Like I said at the beginning, absolutely jam packed with imagery, with foreshadowing. There’s so much here. It’s a really beautiful chapter. There’s so much we can get out of it. And I feel like I’m only scratching the surface just from this podcast. So I would encourage you to spend a lot more time in this chapter. There’s so much we can get out of it.

But for now, let’s ask some questions for reflection and hopefully that will launch you into even deeper study in this chapter. And as always, you can get these study guides on the website. There’s even more questions on here that you can go through and study deeper.

But the first question I have is, why did Abraham refuse to allow Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman? What can we learn from this regarding our own relationship to the world around us? And as you’re answering, go ahead and check out 2 Corinthians 6:14.

What role does obedience play in seeing God’s promises be fulfilled? What promises has God invited you to take part in through obedience?

How does our history with God strengthen our faith and trust in what God will do in the future?

Have you ever asked God for a sign? What is the most reliable sign that we have already been given?

How does knowing that God already knows our needs change the way you pray?

What was so unique about Rebecca’s response to the servant? How does this parallel our response to God’s word?

Do you ever feel the world trying to pull you back to its practices? How can we resist that temptation?

And finally, do you look forward to the day when you will see Jesus face to face? What thoughts or feelings come to mind when you think of that day?

Well that’s Genesis chapter 24. I know there’s a lot there, but thank you for joining me through that. Don’t forget if you would like to support the show, go ahead and subscribe. Go ahead and click follow. Give the show a five star rating on whatever app you’re using.

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