Isaac's Legacy

This is not a day I've been looking forward to. Today, we're turning the chapter. We're saying goodbye to a dear friend. We are going to move on in this story of God from Abraham. I don't know if you've picked up from the preaching and the way we've been looking at Abraham, but he's actually my favorite Old Testament character. He is a man that I can identify with in so many ways. A man called out from a life. A man who fails miserably. But a man who always has God personally caring for him and loving him. I particularly love the story of Abraham because God is so clear and explicit in his promise and his comfort and his care for him. So, this morning we're saying goodbye to a dear friend here. of our father in the faith, even we're turning the chapter. There are many chapters in God's story. There are many characters. There are many different stages of the story, and here we are completing one. But if you look at the whole story, we can see that it is unified. It's an amazingly unified story told by numerous people over thousands of years. It's amazing how that story is unified in Jesus Christ. Everything in the Old Testament pointing toward him, every promise, finding it's yes and amen in him. And then looking back in the New Testament, everyone, everything being based upon him. So we have different sections. We're going to be turning over to the next patriarch next. Here's a transitional passage. We see that all things are unified in Christ. This morning, we're going to be looking at three chapters, 23, 24 and 25, and the reason those three are put together are solely because it's transitioning. We have the death of Sarah. We have Isaac being married off. That's not a good connection. Sarah is She dies and is buried. Isaac and Rebecca are married. So the the lineage of the patriarch, the lineage of the promises is secured. And then Abraham himself passes away. Chapter 23. Chapter 23, we see two things. We are called to mourn by faith and we are called to sojourn by faith. In chapter 23 this morning, we will see that we are called to mourn by faith, and we are called to sojourn by faith. Our first point comes from the very first two verses. Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, that is, Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Now, if everything we learned about Sarah, this is a surprisingly quick conclusion, this is a surprisingly short declaration. It simply declares how long she lives, where she died, that she died and that her husband mourned and weep for her. There's no eulogy. It's a surprisingly quick end. And it's especially surprising because Sarah is held up throughout Scripture as a model of faith. We see in Isaiah 51-2, Israel is called to look to her and Abraham as models of faith. We can see her as a model of how we can have hope in our failures, forgiveness in the midst of our sin, how we can have faith in the God who loves us. For women, particularly in 1 Peter 3, we see her as a model of beauty. We see in 1 Peter 3 that beauty is a gift from God that is hers. It's her gift of being submissive to her husband, a gift of not what she wore, but a gift of who she was and how she loved others and how she particularly treated and respected her husband. A challenge there is for our women who live in a culture who have a very shallow and ever-changing definition of beauty. You try to keep up with the times. If you just go from the 80s to the 90s to today and you look at what beauty was supposed to be, it's ever-changing. You look at it and you see how shallow our culture defines beauty. And you need to be encouraged that beauty is not what you wear. It's what you receive from God. It's what you have in living a wise life, trusting in His Word, following His Word, loving the Savior, and following your husband. Beauty is not what you wear. It's what you receive from God. Sarah is among the first covenant family to experience the peace of God. Okay, so we see her dying here. But what's really happening is she's the first person in the covenant family to receive the peace of God. She's the first person in the covenant family to receive rest in God. She's the first person to die, and that means she's the first person to go and see God face to face. If you look at Abraham's response, it's the only response one should have here in this life. He mourns. He weeps. I don't think we as Americans have a good tradition and culture of mourning for the dead. Somehow we've created this idea that what we should do for the mourning family is put them next to the body and then have everyone come by and greet them. Let's put them through all that pain. I remember my grandfather died. My grandmother was exhausted. from how people wanted to come and mourn. It's belabored me to think through how should we mourn. There's one camp that would say we shouldn't think of death as anything other than just the escape to heaven. And so we should rejoice in death. Yes, there should be rejoicing in death. We don't mourn like those who have no hope. Paul is very clear with that. But death is painful. Death means we lost someone we love. Death means we come face to face With the real curse of sin, death means that we are looking at the effects of sin in all its power. When someone dies, it hurts. There's real pain. Just as Abraham weeps here, we see Jesus weeping in death. We see Jesus weeping when his friend Lazarus dies. Death is real. The pain is real. And we need to mourn. We need to mourn together as brothers and sisters. We need to mourn by talking about the grief we have. Friends, be encouraged that we do not mourn like those who have no hope. We see death in its destruction. We experience death and what it takes from us. And let it be a reminder of the hope we have in Christ. Death is powerful. You can't stop it. Death is powerful, but our God who has conquered the grave is more powerful. He died to take away sin. He rose again to give us hope. And now we can find true peace and rest in him. The Crest family is with us, and as I prayed, Betty's health continues to deteriorate. And so let me encourage you with the explicit exhortation Rejoice in the life she had. Rejoice in the full, blessed life she had. Rejoice in the fact that she was blessed with a husband who loved her. What a rare, wonderful jewel that is. Rejoice in God and what he gave her. Mourn with what you lost. Mourn over what you truly lost. We'll lose in the death of your mother, your grandmother and your wife. And trust God. And all of his promises that he will deliver her from the grave. That's not her final resting place. Jesus Christ is her final resting place. Let me stop and pray again. Lord, how real it is to face death, not only in this passage, but in real life. Give comfort, O great God. Let Your Spirit come down and give comfort and peace. In Your name we pray, Amen. The second thing we see from chapter 23 is that we are called to sojourn by faith. If we look at this passage, we're going to see Abraham and he's in Canaan. He's among the Hittites. And I'm not going to read the passage for the sake of time, but there in verse four, he comes to them and he admits, I'm a sojourner, a foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dad out of sight." The Hittites answer him. Okay, take whatever piece of property you want. And he says, well, I want ephrons. And they go to this weird bartering. Oh, you can have it. No, I'm not going to take it for free. No, what's 400 pieces of silver between you and me? Okay, he named the price. There's there's there's some courtesy on both sides, but we ultimately see is Abraham buying a piece of land in Canaan to to bury his wife and for his own permanent burial site. Now, this should stand out. In the story, it's it's the emphasis of this story is actually where she will be buried is where she will have her final resting place. And what stands out is how much time is given to this over against her own death and the fact that she's not being buried at home. You're supposed to have your burial ground at home. You're supposed to go home. He's supposed to take her back to the land of Ur. He's supposed to go back into the land of Haran, back to their homeland. That's where he was supposed to make her final resting place. But he chooses Canaan. He chooses a place where he's a sojourner. He even admits as much. Well, this really points out that Abraham believed the promises of God. He did not take her back to where he was supposed to traditionally and culturally. He intentionally chooses a place outside of his homeland. And what he's saying there is, I don't have a home. He's paid an extremely amount of a large amount of money. But he's saying this is where I'm sojourning. I'm not going to take my wife back to where I'm supposed to bury her. He has believed in the promises of God. He has believed that God has called them out, that God has prepared a better place, that God has said, I am preparing for you an eternal home, a true land. And he has believed those promises, which is clearly seen in Hebrews 11. Now, what are we supposed to take away from this? Well, we are very much like Abraham. We are sojourners. We are foreigners. First Peter, chapter one, makes this very clear. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people. But now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation. Notice here, Peter takes this concept of sojourners and he begins by talking about the new identity and the new purpose of his people. The new identity, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Those are identity markers for the nation of Israel, for Abraham's children of the Old Testament. Now those are being taken and applied to the church of the New Testament, Gentiles and Jews alike. You have the new identity. You also have a very similarity, the similarity with Abraham. We're called out. Let's not forget how Abraham began his journey. He was called out of the land of Ur to be a sojourner. He's called out of where he was. He's called out of his paganism and into a faith in God. The new identity is a holy people, a royal priesthood. A people that had no mercy, that had no God. But now our people of mercy, they're called for a new purpose for his own possession. They're called out to be God's own possession, his own special treasured love possession. We're called out to proclaim his excellencies, we're called out to glorify God, that is our purpose. Now, this new identity and purpose means we have a new way to live. We are called to live as sojourners, which in this text in 1 Peter says we are to avoid the passions of this world. We are to resist the passions of this world. Now, as sojourners, as foreigners, as aliens, that language necessarily means we're different. As Christians, we are supposed to be different. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean we have socks on our ears? Does that mean we walk and talk and wear different clothes? No, that doesn't make us weird, not different. What makes a Christian an alien and a soldier is that new identity, the new purpose and the way that's going to change the way you live. It means you deny yourself, you take up your cross and you follow Christ. It means you're going to avoid the temptation to gossip and to harm others with your words. It means you're going to resist the temptation to be self-promoting. It means you're going to resist the temptation to indulge in sex and food and other pleasures outside of a way that brings God glory. It means you no longer pursue the things of this world for your pleasure. It means you pursue God and His glory and His delight with the things of this world. It changes everything. When we're saviors and aliens and foreigners, it doesn't mean we're rude to the world. It means we're amazed by our love. It means they're amazed by our willingness to be smacked, both physically or metaphorically. They're amazed that we turn the other cheek. We don't return evil for evil. We even love our enemies. Yeah, the world will look at that as weird, but that's what the calling of God is on our life. They'll look at it and their jaws will drop and they'll say, how do you do that? If we truly do that, and our only response is because the love of Christ compels us. Friends, we need to be good sojourners. We need to remember that this is not our home. The delights of this world are not what we're supposed to be delighting in. We're supposed to be delighting in God. You're supposed to not be finding your final resting place here. You're supposed to be longing for the better home that God has created for you. You're supposed to long to see God face to face instead of in a mirror dimly. How do you love God more than this world? How do you really live like a sojourner? Well, the first thing you have to do is start loosening your ropes that are tied so tightly to this world. You have to start loosening the rope of your heart that is tied to delighting and finding pleasure in the things of this world. And then you have to let God consume your passions and your affections. Long for heaven as a sojourner. Know this is not your home. This is not your final resting place. Believe in the promises of God that He has truly created a new home for you. Let's turn to chapter 24. Here we see that we are called to trust in God's providence. We are called to trust in God's providence. Abraham believes that God is going to provide Isaac a wife to continue his promise. Abraham goes to great efforts. This is the longest single chapter, the longest single episode in Scripture. Abraham goes to great lengths and Moses goes to great lengths to record how God and Abraham secured a wife for Isaac. Now, we look at this account, it's about Abraham as well. Now, Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. What a sweet declaration that would be to have. And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. This is the man who was called to leave his home and to make a hard journey into a foreign land where he didn't know where he was going. He didn't know how to have food. He was called to be faithful in the midst of famine. He was called to sacrifice his only son. He was called to the hardest, most difficult trial in all the Old Testament. Here's Abraham. So we've seen flourish in faith and fail miserably. We've seen him, and I hope you experienced the tension he had last week. And here it says, God has blessed him in all things. What does that mean if we look at Abraham and the way he failed and the way he suffered and the way he was tested? What means God was with him. In the midst of every trial, in the midst of every temptation, in the midst of every test, in the midst of every failure, God was blessing him because God was with him and committed to him. To be blessed is to be prospered by God. To be blessed is to be made happy by God. In everything he did, God was with him. And while he may have failed, God's presence, God's commitment, God's love took even the evil of Abraham and turned it out for his own good because God blessed him. Friends, if we believe in Christ, we also are blessed in all things. We should be able to look back on our lives and rejoice in what God has protected us from, what God has carried us through and what God has in store for us. God is a God of blessing. As we look at the story and what it's really focusing on here, it's an interesting, great little summary of Abraham's life. We see Abraham providing a wife for his son. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, maybe Eliezer of Damascus here. We don't know that for sure, but possibly. Who had charge of all that he had. Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country into my kindred and take a wife for my son Isaac." The servant said to him, perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to the land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you have come? Abraham said to him, seek to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, who spoke to me and swore to me, to your offspring, I will give this land. He will send his angel before you and you shall take away from my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine. Only you must not take my son back there. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter." Now, if you look at this, we see this symbolic swearing. We see the servant putting his hand under his thigh. This is symbolic, maybe of circumcision, of the sign of the covenant. Maybe it's symbolic of the offspring, the seed of Abraham that needs to be protected and cared for and that's been blessed by God. Maybe it's the symbol that this man is taking on the authority and the responsibility of his lineage now. All authority and all responsibility has been given to this servant to continue the lineage and the prosperity of God's promise to Abraham. It could be all three of those. We're not quite certain of what the real symbolism there is, but it has something to do with the prosperity of the line that God has promised. He makes a promise in the name of Yahweh, the Lord, God of heaven and the God of the earth. This is a personal name, Yahweh. The covenant name that God has given to his people, and it gives him the supreme universal power. He's the God of heaven, the God of the earth. He's the universal, absolute God. Now, one of the questions here is this invoking of the name of God, breaking the third commandment that you shall not swear falsely. We have also James that says, do not swear by heaven or by earth, but let your yes be yes and your no be no. Here, I think Abraham is not breaking the third commandment. The third commandment is saying, do not swear falsely. Do not take an oath in the name of God and then break it and therefore hurt the name of God. Here, he's saying, take an oath in the name of God and obey it. And this servant has a fear of God. He wants to know what happens if I fail. And he gets his safety closet will soon. He takes, the servant takes this promise with solemnity and takes the responsibility. It's interesting in verses six through nine. Abraham ensures him success. He gives him that kind of safety clause. Well, if it doesn't happen, you're released. But he gives him absolute assurance that his way will succeed. And his assurance is based upon God's own promise. The Lord who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, who spoke to me and swore to me, to your offspring will I give this land. Abraham's assurance is built upon God's word. He knows that God is true to his promise. God promised him a son, and then he commanded him to kill that son. And God provided a substitute. God knows that he is going to keep this promise no matter what. That God has a proper end, and he is going to supply the means. In order for the offspring, the final offspring, to truly possess the land, his son has to have a wife to have a child. And so he knows that God is going to provide a wife. Just as sure as God had already provided that substitute lamb on Mount Moriah. He has the comfort of knowing that God is going to care for him. Now, it's interesting, why does he not want Isaac to go back to his homeland? He actually bookends it with that. He begins with that and he ends with that. Do not take my son back there. Some people say because he wants to make sure his child is marrying someone in the faith. Well, there's no reason to think that Abraham's parents and siblings are of the faith. He was called out of there because they weren't of the faith. So why does he want his child to not go back there? It may be because he knows Laban. We're going to see later that Laban's a pretty tricky cat. Laban is mischievous. We already see in this passage coming up. He likes the treasure. He likes the stuff. And he doesn't reveal himself completely yet, but you're going to get a little taste of what Laban is going to be like later on. So maybe Abraham knows that if Isaac goes back up there, his family will keep him there too long. Isaac doesn't belong back there. He was called out of there. He needs to stay as a sojourner. It may also have something to do with Genesis chapter six, where one of the major problems that led to the earth being destroyed in the flood was intermarriage of different people groups or of the evil and the good. I think Abraham is probably very concerned that he doesn't want to try to go back there because they don't be kept there, but he wants a wife from there because he is afraid of what intermarriage can cost. So we see that the angel is promised to lead him. And then as you look throughout the passage, chapter verse 21, 40, 42, 56, this servant, he's always saying, God provided. God gave me success. God gave me success. As we see, the primary actors are Abraham and the servant. God is orchestrating everything. They are completely dependent upon God. So the servant sets off on his long journey. He goes to the well, the local place where singles gather to meet. It's logical. If you're a child, you're going to go and you're going to gather water and this is where you might have a chance to intermingle with some of the opposite sex and maybe you catch someone's eye. It's a good place to go look for a spouse in ancient Near Eastern world. I don't know about the well today. So, the well. It's like the water cooler. It's where you meet. And this servant, he declares. He gets the camel and he says in verse 12, O Lord God of my master Abraham, Please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master, Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. 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 to my master. Here we have a servant who I think has learned to pray from Abraham. We have a servant who's watched Abraham up close and personal. This is the oldest servant. This is the head of the house. Maybe Eliezer, whom Abraham was trying to give the lineage to, and I believe you see here a man of faith who has to say, grant me success, show steadfast love. He's done everything in his power. He's done everything that he can possibly do, but he knows that if success is going to come, if it's actually going to work, God has to grant it. And he wants to make sure he follows God. He wants to make sure he knows exactly the right woman. And so he gives a pretty high bar. Maybe it's a test of God to say, well, I want to make sure, you know, if you fill this out, kind of like the fleece throwing out. Or maybe this is the task to say this is the most faithful, loving, servant wife Isaac could have. Whatever his motivation is, he wants God to make it clear to him that he has made his journey successful. Look at verse 15. Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebecca. Born of Bethuel, the son of Milca, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, she came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, Please give me a little water to drink from your jar. She said, Drink, my lord. And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking. So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water. She drew for all of his camels. The men gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not. Before he'd even finished praying, God sends Rebecca. Behold, this is the woman. Behold, she's of the right lineage. Behold, she's going to fulfill the task. And this isn't an easy task. This isn't a thing that was easy. Camels can drink a lot of water, and she probably wasn't carrying a large bucket. Many trips were made, back and forth, putting the water down, drawing it up, carrying it. We don't know how many camels he had. But only times it took her to pull enough water. But she labored and she served, and God proved that he was going to prosper his way. When the camel had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring, weighing a half of shekel, and two bracelets for her arms, weighing ten golden shekels, and said, Please tell me, whose daughter you are? Is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night? She said to him, I'm the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor. OK, now he knows this is it. That's Abraham's brother. She added, We have plenty of both straw and fodder and room to spend the night. The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness for my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsman. And the young woman ran and told her mother's household about these things. God has given success. He doesn't beat his chest. Yeah, look what I did. I'm going to make my master so proud. He does the only thing he should properly do. He bows his head. He worships the God who grants success. Rebecca had a brother whose name was Laban. Here we go. Laban ran out toward the man to the spring. As soon as he saw the ring and the bracelet on his sister's arms and heard the words of Rebekah, his sister, thus the man spoke to me. He went to the man. And behold, he was standing by the camels at the spring. He said, Come in, O blessed of the Lord. Why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house and a place for your camels. So the man came to the house and unharnessed the camels and gave strong fodder to the camels. And there was water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. Then food was set before him to eat. But he said, I will not eat until I have said what I have to say. He said, Speak on. Here we see, though, all things are really just running smoothly. And something I want to draw our attention to, we're going to see Laban later on. We're not going to really focus on him, but he's obviously enticed by the bracelets in the ring. Notice the hospitality here. Remember before we talked about Abraham's great hospitality to the angels, the visitors. And I gave a challenge that one of the things, the main thing I want this church to be known for is the gospel. And one of the great fruits of the gospel is showing hospitality towards others. Well, let me just take this opportunity to ask, did you go out of your way to be hospitable to others? Right, we need reminding of these things. Here's another opportunity for you to write down, show your spouse, show your children, this is who we're going to be hospitable towards. This is our commitment. Be hospitable towards one another. Now, really, there's kind of an awkwardness there. Okay, the pastor said I've got to call somebody and invite them for dinner. They're going to know I'm just doing it because of the pastor. Yeah, let's just get over that. If somebody calls you, say, thank you for letting me be the person that you called to follow what the pastor said. Just get past that awkwardness. We're called to obey God's Word, and God's Word commands us to be hospitable. Verse 34, So he said, and here we have a long record, a repeating of everything that has happened. And if we look through it, we would see, and the Lord granted, and the Lord granted. He's given all honor. He's given all credit for what has taken place. In the end here, we see in the morning they rose. I'm jumping up to verse 54 now. When they arose in the morning, he said, send me away to my master. He knows he doesn't want to sit around here. He can see Laban's eye. It's twinkling with that gold. Her brother and her mother said, let the young woman remain with us a while, at least ten days, and for that she may go. But he said to them, do not delay me since the Lord has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master. He's a good servant. He's faithful. He knows what he's going to do. He's gotten what God has sent him to find. He's received the success of God, and he's not going to be hindered. They said, let us call your woman and ask her. And they called Rebekah and said to her, will you go with this man? And she said, I will go. Now, if we're in the Hebrew, that would resound pretty strong. Because it's the same word that God uses to call Abraham out of her. When God called Abraham out of her, he said, Alex. It's a great word. You got to get the guttural there. Go, you're called out. Whenever she is called out, she says, Alex, same exact Hebrew word. She is here following the model in the footsteps of faith of Abraham. She's really a proxy. She's a representative of Isaac. She gets to be called out of the homeland to be a sojourner as the spouse of Isaac. She here is acting in faith. She is saying, I'm going to go because God has clearly called me to come out. Let me jump down to verse 62. Now, Isaac had returned from Ber-Laharoi and was dwelling in the Negev. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening, and he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there were camels coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel and said to the servant, Who is that man walking in the field to meet us? The servant said, It is my master. So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things he had done. Then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rebekah. And she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. What I'm going to say down here is really the quick declaration, and he loved her. He didn't wait to fall in love with her. They didn't hang out. He loved her. It's a quick, bold declaration. And what I want to emphasize here is that our concept of love is really skewed from what Scripture teaches as love. Our romantic culture says love is a feeling that kind of grows in you. You fall in love. You fall in love. Love happens to you, is the way our culture often talks about it. You love someone because it happens to you. That's not the biblical understanding of love. The biblical understanding of love is that you intentionally set your affections on someone. The biblical doctrine of love isn't waiting for something to happen to you so that you love them. You intentionally set your affections on them. If the biblical doctrine of love was that you have to fall in love, we would not have salvation because there's nothing lovely about us to make God want to love us. We're sinners. We're offensive to God. We're rebellious against God. Praise God for the true definition of love that is intentionally setting our affections on others. Because God had to intentionally set His affections on us. So, we think about love. Realize that love is committing yourself to someone. Not waiting for a feeling. There's lots of application from chapter 24. First, we are called to trust God to secure our ways. This man has a prayer that should be a model and a challenge for us. He and Abraham are trusting God. They have heard God's promises and they are saying we're not going to prosper unless God gives us success. We must trust that God will lead us. It's the only way we can have success. Do we trust God like we all? That's a question we should have in seeing the great faith that's brought out in this passage. Abraham believes God's word. Abraham believes he's going to give success. Do you believe God is going to lead you in success where he wants to lead you in success? Here's a test. How much do you pray over your daily needs? How much do you pray for your daily needs? How much do you pray for your spiritual needs when you're faced with impossibilities? How much do you get depressed and down? How much do you trust God that he will eventually be the victor and give success? How much of your decision making is found in prayer? I like to get notebooks and write out all the different possibilities, strengths and weaknesses, and try to rationally think through things. We are supposed to have a responsibility in our decision making, but are we going to God and praying about the decisions? Are we seeking Him in how we make our decisions? In short, are we dependent upon God? See, friends, God isn't your co-pilot who just kind of tags along with you. God's not just there to pick you up when you fall down. God is a great orchestrator of everything that's happening. And if we listen to Him, if we actually stop and listen to Him, He will lead and guide us. He will direct us. He will give us success. He will not keep us from suffering, but He will lead us through it and give us comfort in the midst of it. Do we submit our ways to God? Do we trust the great orchestrator of all things? Secondly, what does this passage teach us about relationships? This is where it gets quite fun. Well, first, we see the first marriage after Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve was the first marriage ceremony. Now we see Rebecca and Isaac. And if we look at this, we are moved by this love. And we think about our spouse, we need to realize that God has provided us our spouse. It may not be as clear as what happened here when you first get married, but you should be able to look back and you can look back and say, God led me to him or her. God gave me this person to live the rest of my life with. If God didn't want you to marry that person, he would have kept you from your spouse. Do you trust that God has intended you to be with this person? Because when you doubt if your spouse is good enough for you, what you're doubting is God's wisdom and goodness to provide that spouse for you. Men, we are called to love our wives. We are called to intentionally seek our wives out and love them as the second greatest gift God has ever given to us. First is salvation. The first and best gift God has given us is his son, Jesus Christ. The second best gift we've ever received is our wives. Do we love our wives as God's gift to us? Do we wait to fall back in love with her or do we intentionally pursue her? Do you see your calling first and foremost to love her above everything else? Do you thank God and praise Him regularly for the great gift he has given you? Intentionally set your affections on her. Love her as Christ loved the church. Lay down your life for her. If you ever attempted to think you deserve better, know this, you probably don't deserve her at all. By God's grace, he saved you. By God's grace, he lets you marry her. We must seek God's power and His guidance to love our wives. We must long to love her and build her up into godliness. And you can't do that in your own strength. If you want to have success in your marriage, depend upon God the way Abraham and his servant depended upon God. You can't lead her by yourself. We're going to move kind of backwards from marriage. Let's talk about dating. Dating today is a horrible scene that I am very thankful I'm not part of. I practiced before a Christian the worldly dating. It is a weird, horrible, destructive culture. It teaches us that we're supposed to move on from partner to partner with emotional and physical. We're supposed to be able to move from partner to partner both emotionally and physically. The way dating is practiced in your younger generation and even throughout high school and college and now even older in the world is it is teaching us that physical intimacy can be transferred over and over again. I think that's why our divorce rate is so high. People are learned to detach quickly and easily, both physically and emotionally. For those who are single, especially those who are young, Set yourself towards protecting your body and your affections. Set yourself to protect your body and your affections. You're not just playing around. You're not just having a good time. You're dealing with a great treasure of your innocence that you can never get back. Now, if you look at this model of finding a spouse, We have to ask, what is a parent's role in marriage? Well, we could say every parent should get a servant and that servant should be sent out to find a spouse. Sounds like a good plan. Now, I say that because we have to deal with the tension of what's descriptive here and what's prescriptive. So, at one level, this is describing what happens then. So, there are some definite cultural elements. There's camels. But then we have to look and say, what is prescriptive? What can we gain from this? What can we get out of this? Well, the first thing is we should be, as parents, dependent upon God for our spouse, for our children's spouses. We, as parents, should be praying for our children and for their spouses. We should be constantly dependent upon God saying, please be preparing for my daughter now. her spouse, or for my son now, his spouse. Parents should be preparing that child for marriage. Parents should be modeling marriage. Marriage should be modeling how to fight and how to find forgiveness in one another. Parents should be modeling the gospel in marriage. Children, you need to trust your parents in dating. Honor your mother and father by listening to them and hearing them. If you're to think about dating or courting, whatever that difference is, you need to be praying with your parents about how you're going to find a partner, enter into a relationship, and what that looks like. Dating or courting. There's a recent article in World Magazine. John will send you the link if you ask him. He likes it. It's... It shows the difficult position Christians are in. It's a difficult world. And I don't know about all the prescriptions, I think their description as well, but the prescriptions I'm still I'm still wrestling with. John will tell you about them. What I think is better is to find parameters. I'm a parameters person. I would say there's a lot of freedom in how you're going to find dating or courting. But here are some clear parameters. One, don't date anyone you know you could not marry. Don't date anyone you could not marry. It doesn't mean you're dating someone you're going to marry, but don't date anyone you wouldn't marry. This isn't just a fun thing. This isn't just finding someone because you're too lonely. This isn't just feeling time. This isn't just having fun. Don't date someone you could not marry. That means if you're a Christian, you're not dating a non-Christian. It means if you're a Christian, you're not dating someone who's not leading you into godliness. It leads us to our second parameter. Don't date anyone that tempts you to sin, that does not lead you into godliness. Don't enter into a relationship where you're going to be tempted to sin. Don't enter into a relationship where you're not pursuing God with that person. And finally, and really most importantly for the young folk, don't date anyone without praying about it with your parents. Do not date anyone. Do not enter into a relationship without praying about it with your parents. You should both have a peace about it. Your parents' role isn't just to pay for your wedding. Your parents' role isn't just to give away the bride. There's really something beautiful about that symbolism. You are supposed to have had the partnership with your family to the point where your father is excited to walk you down the aisle and hand you over to this man. There is something beautiful about that symbolism. It's not just because he paid for the wedding he gets to do that. No, it's because he was part of the process from the very beginning into the very end. Now, if you were like me, you were married and you know that you failed in the way you dated. You know now, looking back, how many mistakes you made. Know that Christ knew of those mistakes when He died for you. Know that you are forgiven for how we failed in the way we dated. Our next application, we are called to be the bride of Christ. We are called to be the bride of Christ. Every marriage reflects the marriage of Christ and the church. He is the ultimate bridegroom and the church is the ultimate bride. We are, in every marriage, a model of the gospel, as Ephesians teaches us, as Paul teaches in Ephesians. We now, as the bride, are supposed to be waiting anxiously for the true bridegroom who will provide for us, who will delight us, who will love us. We're supposed to be waiting anxiously, knowing that we are not yet with the one we're supposed to be with forever in eternity. God has not yet come to complete the good work he started us. So we're supposed to be waiting anxiously. There's a question, friend, how are you waiting. I'm reminded of the work Pride and Prejudice. There are the girls sitting around in the latter part of the book and they're all eating bonbons. They're relaxing. They're laying on the sofas. They're gossiping and they're just letting themselves go. And then comes Mr. Darcy. He walks up and he startles them because they didn't expect them. And all of a sudden they have to run and they have to hide on the bonbon. They have to act like they're waiting for the gentlemen suitors to come. No one warned them ahead enough. And so they're found not ready, not prepared. If Christ comes back, how is he going to find you? Are you prepared? Are you waiting? Are you anxiously longing for the bridegroom to come back? Or do you think that there needs to be something else done in this world? That you need to entertain yourself with something else before he comes back? How will he find you at Wednesday at one o'clock at work? How will he find you at home with your family? How will he find you on Friday night? Riding and waiting? Or enjoying this world? Does the glitter of this world fancy you? Are you setting your affections on the eternal and perfect light that does not fade? That perfect light is talked about in Isaiah 60 and Revelation 21. Here in Revelation 21. And I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives us light, and its lamp is the Lamb. Friends, are you setting your affections on the true light, the eternal light, the light that doesn't change, the light that doesn't have a shadow, the light that is eternal and forever? Are you setting your gaze on the things that glitter and shine that will be destroyed in this world? Finally, as we look at chapter 25, We see Abraham's death. We see he lived 175 years. He breathed his last. He died in a good old age, an old man full of years. Interesting, Isaac and Ishmael bury him. Ishmael has come back to honor his father. But as you see, gifts were given to all of his many children, but they were all sent away from Isaac. You see that in verse 6. He's protecting Isaac. As we look at Abraham, we see that we are called to run the race till the end. It's the final chapter of Abraham. This is us turning the next page to the next patriarch. He's dead. He's in the grave. As we look at Abraham, we can remember there were many chapters of his own life. There are many sections in that one chapter of Abraham. There are many chapters. There are many parts to his life. We can look to the God of Abraham and see that he is trustworthy as we look at Abraham's life. Maybe you're like Abraham before he was called out of Ur. Maybe you're like him in that you have not yet left your old life. You have not yet started walking by faith. Let me tell you, there's nothing more trustworthy than the Word of God. There's nothing more faithful foundation for you to live by than the Word of God. Look at Abraham and see how God cared for him so personally. And take that not a blind of a faith, but a leap of faith upon the most sure and steadfast anchor, God's Word. Believe His Word. Believe in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for your sins, who rose again. Repent and believe. Maybe you're a believer in the midst of picking up the pieces after one of your great failures. You see Abraham over and over again, great failure after great failure. Maybe you're relating to him in that you are picking up your pieces now. Know that when Christ was committed to dying for you as a sinner, he was committed to keeping you as a sinner. You cannot be so faithless that he's going to stop being faithful. If you're in the midst of trying to pick up the pieces of a great disaster and failure, know that God is faithful when you are faithless. Know that God is still true to his word. He is more true to his word than you are. Repent of your sin that has caused your disaster. Talk to other brothers and sisters to find counsel and know that he is faithful. Maybe you're like Abraham in Genesis 22, you feel like you're in the biggest test of your life. Don't hunker down, don't try to buckle down and just endure and persevere as if you're going to just sit and wait it through. Journey in that faith, let other brothers and sisters come in that journey with you. Walk in that faith, trusting God to persevere you and to keep you. And let us come alongside of you and enjoy watching God do something in you through that test. Maybe at the end of your road, maybe you're facing the death of a loved one or you're facing your own death. The grave is scary. It's a powerful, powerful, The grave is only conquered by God. We can't escape it. We can't hide from it. But we can trust God who has conquered the grave. We can trust in Jesus Christ who says he is the way, the truth and life. Jesus Christ declares, I am the resurrection. So look at death. Look at it. Don't fear. Look at it and say, I know that God has conquered it. I know that God has given me peace in the midst of it. It's our scariest foe. We have such a great, powerful God who has victory over the grave. Let us pray. Almighty God, we come before you. We thank You, Lord, for the way You used Abraham and Sarah. We thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness to them and how we get this great testimony. We get to watch from the outside as to how You worked in them and among them and through them and with them. You are faithful. Lord, we see that great model of how You love them and we thank You that You have loved us the same way. Your steadfast love. endures us, it calls us out, it keeps us, it saves us. We thank you, Lord, that we know your love even better than Abraham, because we know your love in Jesus Christ. We know your love and that you sent your son to die for us. We pray for all those who do not know that love, that they will be moved to believe. We pray for those of us who have come calling upon your name. that we would just walk away knowing that you were trustworthy, knowing that you were faithful, and we would walk accordingly as sojourners and aliens, longing for your return, where we will get to see you face-to-face, that beautiful, glorious light. In your name we pray. Amen.