Abraham
is now a very old man. He
wasn't young when he started his big adventure in life, moving from
Ur to Canaan. Now he's pushing 140. Sarah has died. Isaac is well
into adult life, and ready to take over Abraham's responsibilities –
for a family business and more importantly for living in that
covenant relationship with God. But – he is still single. So
Abraham is concerned – like all parents – to see his son settled
and happily married. So he calls his chief steward, the servant who
is kind of general manager of the family business, an older, trusted
employee who is kind of like a godfather to Isaac. Abraham trusts him
to find a suitable partner for Isaac. But he makes his promise, not
to choose a wife from Canaan, but find someone from back up north,
where Abraham's relatives still lived. More important than finding a
partner, was preserving family purity.
The
servant asks “What if I can't persuade a girl to come down south to
marry Isaac, shall I take him up North instead?” And Abraham
replies “No way. Whatever you do, don't take Isaac back up north.
He must stay in the land God has promised.” Abraham's
priorities are clear.
First,
the land God has promised. The first priority for Abraham, in looking to the future and
setting Isaac up as a married man, is pursuing that promise. Don't
leave the land. Make sure he stays in the land. Don't take him back
up North. He has to stay in Canaan. Because that's the place God
promised
us.
And
we need to make
our first priority receiving
the promises God has for us. We need to be concerned about
appropriating the “land” that god has promised
to give us. And in our NT world that is the Kingdom.
It is the Spirit-filled life; it is the reality of being a New
Community, the people of God today; it is the grace of God not only
forgiving us but transforming us. It is the riches of our
inheritance in Christ Jesus. And
it may be the specifics of how God has spoken within the context of
the New Covenant, into our personal lives.
Second,
the blood-line. Family purity
is the next priority. Abraham had taken the Egyptian Hagar as a wife
and raised Ishmael. He and Sarah had experienced various challenges
and difficulties among the Canaanites. It was important to Abraham
that Isaac marry one of their own people.
We
need to be concerned about purity – not in the racial sense but
spiritually: if the desire for the racial purity in
the OT means anything at all for us today, it means that we need to
belong wholly to god and not compromise or trade the realities of the
Kingdom of God for a “quiet life” or for a cheap sense of
popularity. Paul says “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor
free, male nor female...” and we want to be an inclusive community
– but we want to be a community that belongs 100% to God.
And
then, finally,
the practicalities.
Finding a wife for his son. Yes, it was important. He wanted to see
it sorted. But it was not his first or even his second priority.
And
interestingly, it is as Abraham stands firm
in his desire to see Isaac enter and possess the land, that he is
able to take a stand on
faith – not just wishful thinking – and tell his servant “[God]
will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son
from among
our people up North.”
We
have a legacy for the next generation. But the quality of that
legacy will be determined by what are our priorities. Get them
right. First, the promises. Second, the purity. Thirdly, the
practicalities. So often we turn it on its
head. We are concerned about the practicalities:
I
could easily stop there. Do I hear an amen? I don't want one! I
want briefly to unpack the rest of the story and show how that works
out.... how
the legacy Abraham wanted to leave, is secured.
Almost immediately,
the servant decides
it is
time to make a journey, pursue his master's desires, and find a wife
for Isaac up North. So he provides
himself with what he needs
from Abraham's wealth, loading up ten camels with good gifts.
When he
gets
there he sits
by the well and prays
for guidance (verses 12-14). He calls the Lord, “the
God of Abraham””. That isn’t meant to suggest the servant
worshipped another god. Not at all. The Lord was his God too – but
God had made a covenant with Abraham
and
the servant says “show kindness to my master” and as we learned
from Colin Symes, that word kindness
is chesedh –
covenant-keeping love! Literally “serve up covenant-keeping love”.
He
prays that when
he asks one of the girls who comes to the well, the
girl God has chosen for Isaac will not only give him a drink but will
water these ten camels. That is a lot of water. One big camel can
drink as much as 200 litres – 40 gallons. Even if they were
smaller – half that size, ten camels might drink 200 gallons of
water.
 |
| "Camel" by "Jiron" licensed Creative Commons by SA 3 |
And
as he finishes his prayer, this gorgeous girl, called Rebecca turns
up, and draws water. The servant asks her for a drink, and she
offers to water the camels; the servant
observes her as she does this job, give her a nose ring and
bracelets, and
finds
out
that she is related to Abraham. She runs home to tell her family
what
has happened; her big brother Laban
runs back to the well and the
servant is invited to stay the night. Before eating he tells them
why he is there
– verses 34-49 are the servant's
word-for-word retelling of the whole story.
Bethuel
the girl's father and Laban her brother, immediately recognise God's
hand in this, and it is all agreed, before dinner. I wish it was
always that easy. That is – as the servant acknowledges in a
prayer of thanks,
God's covenant-keeping love at work.
So
after a night of feasting, Abraham's servant is keen next
day
to get back home to report to his master
how good God has been,. Mission accomplished! But the family,
understandably, want to keep Rebecca for a while, to give her – and
them – time to get used to the idea. It's all a bit sudden. But
the servant is desperate to get home, so they ask Rebecca what she
thinks and she is happy enough to go off there and then. I think she
is a very special girl. Sure,
she will have her weaknesses. A tendency to make a favourite of one
of her twins, Jacob, and then
resorting
to deception and encouraged Jacob
to do the same. So she is
far from perfect.
But
she's
beautiful, hard-working, decisive, fearless and adventurous. She
turns out to be wise and sensitive to Isaac's needs and culture,
putting on her veil as soon as she sees him. If she had chosen
to wait – or indeed refused to go at all, her family would have
respected that. But she was ready for the big adventure. How
good god is to
Abraham! He knows that all he can do has been done to pass on the
right legacy to the future. How good god is to Isaac! He has a
wonderful wife to comfort him after the death of his mother and as he
begins to pick up where Abraham has left off (the servant treats
Isaac as equal to Abraham now) he is beginning to enjoy the spiritual
legacy of his father. We have a faithful and good God.
If
we want to leave
a legacy of
faith,
we need to get
our
priorities right: God's promises; spiritual purity, and then the
practical details.
In
the little story of Rebecca we are almost back where we started.
Here is someone new, who is, like Abraham, prepared to leave her home
comforts, and step out in to the big world, following God's call.
One last thing. There's one
word that is used twice in the story – and missed out both times in
the NIV! In v. 10, we are told that Abraham's servant “arose,
and went to Mesopotamia;” and in v. 61, that “Rebecca and her
maids arose, and rode upon the camels ...” (RSV gets it right both
times!)
If
we want to be part of the legacy, part of the promise, we need to
arise. To stand up. To
step out.
No comments:
Post a Comment