Faithful Servant

A reading from the book of Genesis.

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

And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, 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 the 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 and to 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 this land.

Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?

Abraham said to him, See 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, and 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 a wife for 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

I've got a couple of announcements before we get into our text for today.

Uh and we're we're all going to make vows with the person that you're sitting next to.

So that was a joke because the way they did that was by putting their hand under their thigh.

You don't have to do that.

That was a joke.

So a great do you know where I get my announcements from?

Where?

The app.

Exactly.

So that's I'm not just texting right now.

So if you pull up the Redemption Church Denver app, you can tap calendar.

And then when you tap calendar, a little spinny thing loads, and you can see it what all the announcements are gonna be.

And I know that most of you are here for the announcements.

So a couple of things that we've got going.

Uh right now we're doing a Bible in a year reading plan.

Now, if you missed the beginning of the year, it's not too late to jump in.

The great thing about a Bible in a year reading plan is you need to think of it not necessarily as a tool to read through the whole Bible in a year, but as a tool that you can use each year to make sure that you stay in the Word.

That's the way that it's most helpful.

And accompanying that Bible reading plan is a uh chat group that's in the app, like an uh an old chat room, but with nobody weird.

And the uh oh I made it weird, of course.

The uh uh that chat group, there's 30 folks from our church in it that are doing this reading plan and just like asking questions of one another, answering questions in the group.

It's it's so I've loved seeing this happen so much.

Honestly, it's like this is culture.

This is our church developing a culture around the Bible.

It's so exciting to me.

So that's something you can be a part of uh just by signing up.

You can do that right through the calendar.

Also, uh the Marshall Fire donations uh are being sort of hoarded in our back room.

Uh so if you would like to help organizing those each Sunday in January, you can just dip back there after the service and help organize those donations.

Uh also today is the last day of the stock show.

Do you know what that means in Denver?

You take down your Christmas lights, exactly.

So today, if you would like to stick around after the service and help us take down our Christmas lights, would be greatly appreciated.

Uh man, there's a lot of announcements.

Uh also, just beginning.

It was supposed to begin this this past Wednesday, but it got pushed a week due to weather.

Uh, we are hosting a women's study uh that's moving through the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

I believe there's like 25 women signed up currently.

It should be a wonderful time together.

Uh, and that'll meet on Wednesdays.

You can also sign up for that in the app.

Then the next event is on February 20th.

We uh a church in town, two churches actually, both dear to my heart.

Uh one is called The Well, one is called Trinity Church Denver.

Uh, good friends or pastors of each uh are getting together to host a uh uh this wonderful author named Nancy Pearcy.

Uh she wrote a book that I love called Total Truth.

Um if you're familiar with Frances Schaefer, anybody know that name?

She's like the best disciple of Frances Schaefer, I would say.

That's the way I'd describe her.

Uh well, she's speaking at Trinity Church on uh February 20th.

So also in the app, there's a sign-up for that.

It's free.

Uh and it would be great if a bunch of us went.

I think it'll be a wonderful time.

Uh okay.

That's that's good enough.

That gets us through February.

Uh let's pray and we'll move into today's text.

Holy Father, we praise you for your word.

That each week we come together to gather around your word and be fed.

Lord, we are hungry and in need of your food, the nourishment that nourishes not just our minds, uh, but our souls.

Lord, would you show us in your word, form us by your word, uh, and by showing us who you are.

Lord, as we look through today's text and this long story of a marriage, we pray that you would attend this time by showing us who you are.

Lift that up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So today's uh today's story in Genesis chapter 24 is like 68 verses.

Genesis 24 · chapter mention

It's an incredibly long story, basically relayed in real time, of a wife being sought for Isaac, Abraham's son.

And the the story, if you look in your Bible, the heading would be Isaac and Rebekah.

But Isaac and Rebekah play a very small role in their own marriage as compared to the servant that Abraham sends to find Rebekah, who becomes Isaac's wife.

And so what we're really looking at in this story is a picture of this servant, this hidden servant in Scripture.

He's one of the most beautiful and I think attractive and winsome characters uh in Scripture, this little servant character.

Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5–6

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

This is a description of uh what a Christian heart looks like.

It's it's not just a heart that uh ascends to a certain list of beliefs.

It is that, but it's not just that.

It's a mode of being, it's a type of person.

It's a it's a person who, in all their ways of living, they submit themselves to the Lord and they lean not on themselves, but they lean on the Lord, and they trust the Lord with their direction and with the paths that they've been put on.

Throughout Genesis so far, we've seen a lot of negative examples for this passage.

We see Adam and Eve in the very beginning trust in their own understanding rather than trusting in the Lord.

We see Cain trust in his ability to provide justice for himself instead of trusting in the Lord's mercy.

We see Noah right after the flood, trusting in his vineyard to numb him from the pain that he had seen, rather than the Lord's grace.

We see Abraham when he first moves to Egypt, trusting in his own cunning to protect him and his wife, and instead getting them into more trouble by doing so.

We see Lot dragging his feet to leave Sodom right before it is destroyed.

We see Lot's wife, who doesn't leave Sodom, but instead shares in Sodom's fate as she turns to a pillar of salt.

We see Sarah laughing at the promise of the Lord.

We see all of these examples of people trusting in themselves, their own understanding of the world, and not trusting in the Lord and his promises.

And then in this little servant passage, we see this glorious example of somebody whose name we don't even know for sure.

It could be Eliezer, because he's mentioned earlier, but we don't know his name for sure, and it's never mentioned here, and he never refers to himself by name.

We see this picture of somebody who trusts in the Lord with his whole heart, who's consistently committing his ways to the Lord and not leaning on his own understanding.

And so we're gonna follow this passage, follow this story of how Isaac and Rebecca get together, and we're going to see what it looks like to trust in the Lord with your whole heart and not lean on your own understanding.

So let's get our plot straight.

It begins with Abraham's faith.

The journey that the servant takes begins with Abraham's continued faith.

Now, Abraham's faith, we saw throughout uh Genesis chapters 11 through 22, was constantly tested against this backdrop of will I have a son?

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

The Lord has promised me a son to live in the land.

Will I have a son who actually comes from me and my wife Sarah?

The Lord has promised this, but as time goes on, the promise becomes more and more absurd to believe in.

And it becomes easier to can to consider what you yourself would think is true, rather than trust in the Lord for something like a miracle.

But Isaac is provided.

And then you think Abraham will finally reach a point where his life will not need to be guided by faith anymore.

And then when Isaac is born, God asks him to offer up his son as a sacrifice to God.

And we see that Abraham's life will constantly be driven by faith.

There will never be a time in his life where he will be able to sit back and say, I was faithful then.

I trusted in the Lord then.

Now I'm able to just take that, my faith is now turned into something like certainty.

And I don't need faith anymore.

No, Abraham's whole life will be guided by faith.

And even now, when Isaac is born, and there is no pressure of something like a sacrifice for Isaac, Abraham looks off into the future and considers what is the promise?

It is that my offspring will occupy the land of Canaan.

And yet Isaac doesn't have a wife.

And you know where people come from?

Women.

Amazing, isn't it?

It's insane.

What a way for people to get here.

After our first child was born, and I remember seeing this process that my wife went through, and and then it and it's just absolutely absurd.

And then the the birth process was wild.

And then I remember just walking outside and then looking at all the people and just thinking, I can't believe there's so many of us.

Since this is the way, this is where we come from, there should be like six or seven.

Isaac needs a wife for the promise to take place.

Abraham must once again trust in faith for the promise to continue.

And Abraham's faith is not something like a passive resignation.

We see his faith, just like what we saw in that Proverbs verse, is a way of life.

It's a mode of being.

It expresses himself in how he thinks about the world, how he experiences the world, and then what direction he thinks his life should take and how he should participate in the things that he thinks he should participate in.

And so he sets in motion this plan that is guided by his faith in the promise, the promise that his children will occupy the land of Canaan.

This promise provides direction.

The direction is Isaac needs a wife.

And it provides a boundary.

The boundary is Isaac, first of all, can't leave Canaan.

Why can't Isaac leave Canaan?

Well, what's the promise?

The promise is that his children will occupy the land of Canaan.

So for Abraham to take Isaac out of Canaan is a way of dishonoring the promise of God.

Instead, he sees that the very particulars of this promise of God set real boundaries and real constraints on his life and on the life of his son.

So Isaac needs a wife and he can't leave Canaan.

And there's another boundary.

His wife can't be a Canaanite.

That's a bit of a pickle.

His wife can't be a Canaanite because the nature of the promise, of the occupation of Canaan, is not one of assimilation.

The promised land will not be taken over by the promised people of God assimilating into the culture of Canaan.

This will be a problem that the Jewish people try and work out throughout their whole history as they keep intermarrying with the people around them.

And instead of them moving into Canaan and occupying the promised land with the culture of God, instead, the culture of God's people disintegrates into the promised land.

And so there is this cultural genetic boundary given by the promise of God that says Isaac can't leave Canaan and he needs a wife and he can't get a wife in Canaan.

That's the dilemma.

So what do we need?

We need some sort of an intercessor.

Somebody who can leave Canaan and go to this family of promise, which is Abraham's family, and find for Isaac a wife.

That's the nature of the dilemma here.

That's the logic of why we need this servant to leave Canaan, go back to where Abraham came from, and find Isaac a wife.

And the servant asks, as we read earlier, uh what if uh the woman that I find back home where you're from, Abraham, what if she doesn't want to come over here to Canaan and instead wants to stay back there with uh her family?

Then should I come back and get Isaac and bring him back to Canaan?

Here's Abraham's answer in 24, 6 through 7.

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

And then Abraham says this, which shows that Abraham understands this whole journey to be under the providence of God.

Says, The Lord the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and 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 a wife for my son from there.

Do you see how Abraham look I want us to grasp the dynamic of how Abraham views this promise?

How much this promise of God shapes his life.

He says, Look, this is the promise is the direction that he must go.

You can't violate it.

You can't uh you can't bring my son out of Canaan.

Whatever happens, you can't do that.

You know, he sets up this very practical boundary, and then he at the same time moves forward with this absolute assurance.

Look, the God who gave me this promise, he will send his angel before you, and you'll find a wife because of that for my son.

The promise is a boundary and direction, but it's also the the root of hope.

That's what's so amazing about it.

This is the picture of the Christian life.

We are tied by this boundary, this direction, this narrowness, this particularity of Christ's promise towards us.

But that particularity, that thing that we often try and run away from, so that we can optimize our success by keeping our options open.

Instead, we see that that is the very root of hope.

Abraham sees it that way.

Now, the servant agrees, puts his hand under Abraham's thigh, as you do, makes an oath, and he um uh uh sets out in a caravan uh with many other men and lots of riches and wealth.

Uh he's he's rolling.

Arrives just outside the city where Abraham's brother lives, and he stops himself at the well just outside the city in the evening.

The well in the evening.

That's where the women go to collect water each day.

He's looking for a wife, seems to make sense, right?

And right when he gets there, he prays.

And I want you to hear the servant's whole prayer.

Genesis 24, 12 to 14.

And he said, O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show how, 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.

Okay, there are three things about this prayer that I want us to see and then incorporate into our own lives.

I want us to be inspired by this servant and then start to pray like him.

First, his prayer is grounded in the promise.

O Lord, God of my master Abraham.

When he brings up his master Abraham, he understands Abraham to be the one who holds the promise of God.

And what does he expect God to show?

Steadfast love.

He trusts in the promise of God as a reflection and demonstration of the very character of God.

So his prayers are not some generic wish.

They are not some hope to something, some story of the world that he doesn't understand.

Instead, he is tying himself directly into the very promise that God has given him, the promise of this faithfulness of who God is.

So I want you to consider when you pray, are you praying generically to just some sort of undefined God in the sky?

Or are you praying to God the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself went to the Cross on our behalf, showed his absolute faithfulness towards us by going into death, and promised that whosoever believes in him might have eternal life in him, that therefore there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and that it is he who brings the kingdom, because he is the king, and that he has his ears turned toward his children.

Is that who you're praying to?

Are you considering the particulars of the promise?

He has a wonderful promise, you know, of land and offspring, but it is realized most completely, more completely, better for us who find the source of our promise in the death and resurrection of our Lord.

So we aren't praying generically, we are praying in the promise, just like this servant does.

Secondly, we see that he is participating in the outcome of his prayer.

Another way to say this is that he is, I wish that I want a better way to say this, but he's praying right where he's standing.

Look at what he says.

Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.

So he prays as uh grasping the particulars of this glorious story of the promises of God, and he holds those, those closely to him and prays in those particulars, and then he prays right where he's standing.

Behold, I I'm standing uh at the well of the city and the where the women come out uh to get water.

See, what he's doing there is he's seeing these promises of God.

God is so faithful and so interested in the particulars of my life that I'm able to stand right here in this very moment and connect these two stories.

Connect where I'm standing to this glorious promise of the Lord.

So that when he sees something.

So, what does this mean for us as Christians?

It means that we can say, Lord, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, this glorious promise of the kingdom of God coming into the world.

And then we would say something like, and here I am at work again today.

And I'm facing this challenge with this customer that I can't seem to get on the same page as.

You see how those things are so deeply integrated in this servant's life?

He prays in the promise, right where he stands.

So now his life story becomes not about his own understanding, but it becomes about the promises of God working themselves out in the world.

Do you think that in your life the promises of God could be working themselves out, even in the small details, the particulars of your life?

The servant did.

That's the way he prayed.

And then he risks finally, so so he's he's grounded in the promise and he prays right where he stands.

And lastly, he risks the outcome of his prayer on the Lord.

He bets on the Lord showing up.

Look at how he does this.

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.

Do you see how he prays himself into a corner there?

Now all of a sudden, a a lovely woman might walk up and you know, ticks all the boxes.

Yeah, it's from Abraham's family.

She seems very nice, lovely singing voice.

And then he uh says, Would you uh give me a drink of water?

And she says, Sure, here's a drink of water, and then goes about her day.

Well, now what does he do?

All of a sudden he's narrowed his options completely.

He's somebody from the outside looking in, you know, uh, if we were shrewd about this and him staying in the promise, we would say, Here's what you're gonna want to do.

You know, it's your first day at the well.

And sometimes, you know, sisters take turns, and so you might meet one sister, and then you should really wait until the next fan, if you know, see the rest of them the next day.

Um, and then you can really got the best odds of bringing home the best wife for Isaac.

No, he's not keeping his options open, he's following the promise of God.

He's trusting God to show up miraculously.

And we'll see this becomes particularly important later, but but what we see is this demonstration of a faith.

What he's doing here is he's it says, do not lean on your own understanding.

In the proverb we read earlier, he's leaning on the Lord.

What does that mean?

Another translation might be he's being held up by the Lord.

He's shifting all of his weight onto the Lord.

It's too far away from the pulpit.

He's shifting all of his weight onto the Lord.

An absolute trust on the Lord.

Do your prayers, do you hedge your prayers?

You know, would you if you were on this mission, would you pray something like, what we'd do is we'd put a little tag on the end of it.

But Lord, if that whole thing about uh, you know, her not saying that, would you just kind of open my eyes to like the the type of woman that I should be looking for here?

We'd we'd hedge.

What it is, it's a it's a it's a way of maintaining our own control over it.

Uh lastly, and it should be said about this, that it's not as though he's throwing out some sort of a uh uh this isn't like a magic trick.

Because what he's saying is he's narrowing the qualities that he's looking for in the wife.

It's somebody who is open to the uh being hospitable to a stranger, who considers her uh her uh generosity of time and care.

And she's the type of person who, when a stranger approaches who needs help, she would think, I could even help this person even more.

And so there's a there's a it's it's not just some sort of like, you know, show me the the woman who carries it on her her left shoulder, carries the water on her left shoulder as opposed to her right.

No, this is intrinsic to the character that he's looking for.

Does that make sense?

So before he's even done praying, Rebecca walks up, and she is described as being attractive in appearance, she's not known any other man, and she sorry, I lost my spot.

She's attractive in appearance, she is not known by any other man, and she then dips her jar in the well.

What do we see about Rebecca?

She's attractive and she's uh available, and she is in a situation where she's approachable.

So, uh men, uh you don't walk towards her in that situation.

Genesis 24, 17.

Then the servant ran to meet her and said, Please give me a little water to drink from your jar.

And then the text you and then it the text is like absurd.

It's just toying with us.

And then she dipped her water into the jar and brought the water back out, and then she leaned the water jar over so that he could drink from it.

And you're reading it, and it's like, I'm not interested in him drinking.

Is she gonna ask about the camels?

19 to 20.

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 water jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water, and she drew for all his camels.

And then it says, Um, this part probably would have been strange if we were there, but it says the servant just watched to see if the Lord had uh answered his prayer.

So he's just sitting there, like, okay, I think the camels are being watered now.

She did say that, right?

He witnesses his prayer being answered in front of him.

And because he prayed with such specificity, because he prayed, and he's praying in a way where he's not thinking, okay, I've got to get all the data laid out so that I can find the best wife to bring back to Isaac.

That's not the way he's thinking.

Instead, he's following the providence of the Lord.

He's considering that the Lord is attending this because I am in his promises.

I can connect to his promises by my prayer, and I can be given the eyes of the Lord to follow his providential guidance in the world.

And so he is not uh, here's what would happen for many of us, and um, especially for guys, you know, deciding whether or not to date someone or approach a girl or propose or something or continue relationship.

Uh it would be it would be something like, okay, yeah, this is great, but uh, okay, there are a lot of other girls out there.

And uh, I think I need to, you know, I'm just gonna kind of wait and hold back.

Girls do this too.

And I'm gonna keep my options open, and we're, you know, we're gonna make sure this relationship has no real definition for a long time.

That's not the way that uh this guy moves.

It's not the way that the servant moves.

There's this great kind of counterexample in an Edwin Friedman quote that I really love.

He says, the great lesson here for all imaginatively grid-locked systems is that the acceptance and even cherishing of uncertainty is critical to keeping the human mind from voyaging into the illusion of omniscience.

The quote continues as if that wasn't enough.

But this is the point, this is the romantic part of the quote.

The willingness to encounter serendipity is the best antidote we have for the arrogance of thinking we know.

What is this servant doing?

What does his prayers, his understanding of the promises of God, his prayers that connect himself to the promises of God, and then his trust to move forward in those, he has a willingness to encounter serendipity, which means that he's seeing something that's good that comes into his life, and he's not pretending to be shrewd by making it a data question.

This is like the one of the chief curses of our culture.

Pretend shrewdness by taking questions that aren't solved by data and turning them into data questions.

This, here if I just had more information, you know, because I just met her, and I don't really know if this is the road to go down.

If I just had more information, then I would be able to know for certain that this is the right road to walk down.

Certainty.

The idea that there is some certainty on the other side of a greater quantity of information, that is an illusion of omniscience.

It is pretending to be God.

Do you know what that's the opposite of?

The opposite of trusting in the Lord.

That's leaning on your own understanding, is what's happening there.

It's not trusting in the Lord.

I'll lean on my own understanding.

But the servant, because he gets the promise, we might think, oh, this servant, you know, he's just a servant.

It's almost like a forest gump type of character.

You know, it's like he's not that smart.

That's why he's so good.

It may look just like naivety.

It's not naivety.

The servant isn't being naive.

He's he's being honest about what the promises of God mean.

Saying the promises of God really are the strongest, most secure, greatest factors of guidance in my life.

So I will follow that route.

It's not naivety or foolishness on the part of the servant.

It's a it's a beautiful faith.

Genesis 24, verse 27.

Genesis 24:27

Well, well, just before this, he's he says, Okay, uh, hey, you know, uh thanks for watering my camels.

Uh I need a place to stay.

Uh, here's a bracelet and a nose ring, you know, and a token of gratitude.

And uh she puts those on and runs back home.

Uh they find a place to stay.

She shares who he is that he's from, she's from Abraham's family.

There's just confirmation after confirmation as he continues down this road.

And then uh what happens?

What how does he respond to this success of finding Rebecca in this way?

It says he prays, he prays again.

It says, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.

As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsman.

Now, to uh a prideful person, success reveals their pride and arrogance.

To a humble person before the Lord, success drives them to greater praise of the Lord.

And so he moves in the in this way that, I mean, he's just being successful, you know, like this is his paths are being made straight by the Lord, and it doesn't puff him up.

Instead, he celebrates the promise.

Do you see it?

Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, the promise.

He hasn't forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master.

What's happening here?

I'm seeing that God really is faithful.

And then he even prays about himself, as for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsman.

He gets to stand back in wonder at what the Lord is doing.

And so his life does not become a song uh about his own, you know, uh particular sort of shrewdness or his own uh, you know, decision-making ability in this particular regard.

Instead, it becomes a song of praise to the Lord.

Now, I need to skip over a lot of details because this is actually a pretty long story.

But we need to introduce one character who's going to become particularly important later, and that's Rebecca's brother named Laban.

Now, the first introduction we get to Laban, the first thing that we see him do is notice that Rebecca has some new jewelry on.

He sees her bracelets and he sees her nose ring, and he's like, uh, where'd you get those?

And it's this recognition of the wealth of the servant that the servant is representing that causes Laban to run back and get the house prepared for this servant to come in.

So just tuck that away.

This is the first thing we see.

Laban really, really wants some of that money.

This is going to be important later for this character.

Now, uh, the the servant is invited back to their home, and uh a great meal is laid out for them.

And before he eats, the servant says, Let me, before I eat anything, let me explain why I'm here.

And then he tells, like, word for word, the whole story that we just read.

It's kind of like, you know, the writer of Genesis, Moses, just like hit copy and paste on what just happened, and then he just said, and then the servant said, copy and paste this story.

And but here's what's important to note about the servant's continued faithfulness.

This is the time where me, I would try and I would try and grab the story, and I would, I would try and grab the room to coerce them into the into the right answer that they need to be brought into.

I would start, I I know me.

Um and this is a this is uh this is a a time where what we see in the wonder of the servant is he just lays the story out and offers no coercion.

He uh places completely into these these basically strangers' hands the realization of the promise of God.

That's a hard thing to do.

He just lays the story out.

And listen, you can hear it in the very way that he ends the story.

He says, Now then, if you are going to show steadfast love and faithfulness to my master, tell me.

And if not, tell me that I may turn to the right hand or to the left.

We had known that Abraham had structured this in such a way where if he didn't return, it would be no problem for the servant.

So the servant is able to just lay this out there so freely.

You see, he just uh holds himself in their hands.

And in that way, he's continuing to show that the Lord holds all things in his hands.

He prays that the Lord would bring this outcome.

He gives the Lord the outcome in his prayers, and then as he's living, he continues to allow God to hold the outcome completely, even when that means letting the outcome sit in other people's hands.

What faith the servant has.

Well, they agree.

They hear the story and they say, Surely this is from the Lord.

Then there's a bit of a hiccup with Laban and his mother when they come back and they're like, What if she sticks around for another 10 days?

And the servant says, We need to get rolling here.

Like, this is the promise, where things are cooking.

The servant sees it through, and to log that away about Laban.

You know, he's wanting to hold on wherever he can.

And then the servant sees it through and they come back, and then it's this beautiful cinematic ending where we see Isaac uh is meditating out in a field just outside of another well called Beer Lahroy.

And outside of this well, uh, we see it from both Rebecca's perspective and Isaac's perspective, and they spot each other from afar, and the servant uh tells the story to Isaac of what happened, and then like all great stories, it ends in a marriage.

And behind this glorious story of the fulfillment of this promise, we see shining the faithfulness of this unnamed servant, the one who just moved in trust and faith in the promise of God, and enables this marriage, brings together this marriage from whom Israel will come, from whom our Savior will be born.

Now It's tough to understand these without seeing the servant.

Well, it's tough to hear all these stories.

Does anybody have the question?

What's the deal with all the women at wells in uh the Bible?

Jacob's gonna meet his wife at a well.

Oh, there's of course the the woman at the well.

This other love story, which begins at a well and then ends at a well.

What's going on with all the wells?

Well, well.

That's a shame.

The well that they get married at is called Birlhairoi.

And it was named by Hagar.

Hagar was Abraham's concubine, the uh servant of his wife Sarah.

Abraham got her pregnant at the request of his wife Sarah.

It's a very convoluted story.

And then Sarah and Abraham both turn against Hagar.

They develop this sort of resentment, uh, likely towards their own sin, but they take it out on Hagar, and Hagar runs away, and she goes to this uh place, and uh her son, she's there with her son Ishmael, and and completely unseen by the world, cast out of her own family due to no fault of her own.

And then the Lord lifts her eyes and shows her a well, shows her water, and speaks to her and promises that from her son will come a nation.

And she names that place, she names that well Beirlehai Roy.

The very well that they are, that Isaac and Rebecca meet at.

And that well means the name Birlehai Roy means the well of the living one who sees me.

That's what it means.

Because Hagar there experienced God saw her, is the living one who saw her when nobody else saw her.

And we can't think of the story of a servant going to meet a woman at a well, get a bride at a well.

You can't hear that story without thinking of the other servant that we know.

Jesus, who goes and meets, tells the story of the woman at the well.

And then it's helpful to compare and contrast what's happening here.

What is Rebecca like when this servant in Genesis meets Rebecca?

She's from the right family.

She's attractive in appearance, she's kind and generous, she's all the things that you would expect to be ticked off on the checklist, not, you know.

And then we consider Jesus, who he meets at the well.

She's a Samaritan.

You know, the very mixture of the Jewish people and the Canaanite people that we see being avoided in this passage.

The Samaritan woman is, she's a Samaritan.

That means she is that mixture.

She's half Jewish, half Canaanite.

She's the very thing to be avoided.

She's not at the well in the evening, she's at the well in the middle of the day when nobody else goes.

She's not unknown by any other men.

In fact, she's known five other men, and the man that she's currently living with isn't her husband.

She's precisely the opposite in every way of who Rebecca is.

And yet there's this other servant that goes to her, that finds her and meets her in truth and explains all that she has ever done, and then invites her to receive a living water in him.

The servant is somebody that we should look up to and be inspired by and try and become in our own lives, embody the characteristics of faithfulness, of leaning on the understanding of the Lord that this servant provides.

But in order to, what's more important than that, what's before our ability to do that, is to see that God himself is this servant towards us.

That Christ Himself is the one who comes to us and meets us at the well, even when we don't fit the mold.

Especially then, he meets us at the well in our sin, and then he makes us his bride.

He makes the church his bride.

Brings us in to his glory.

We move with him into the promised land.

Now we need to see both ways to receive this text.

We need to see that this servant is a glorious uh example and picture, but we won't be able to move in that picture.

We won't grasp how to live in the promise until we see that the promise was shown to us in Christ, who is the servant.

Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

God Himself shows himself to us as this servant.

So then we we learn to trust his faithfulness as we more and more are able to see him seek us out, to bring us into his family.

When we see this pattern of what takes place at these wells, you know, uh part of it's part of it's obvious.

A well is where life continues on, especially in the desert.

And why are why are there all these stories of women at wells?

Well, symbolically, there's sort of evident there, right?

Women are where life continues on.

They're where the promise continues.

But we see that there is a living water from Christ, the true servant who seeks us out.

So I want us to see uh both the servant as an inspiration, but before that, as the one who seeks us out.

That's where our hearts become truly changed, where our faith can become a mode of being, not just an assent to certain facts.

Okay.

Are there any questions?

If we pray in the moment and with specifics, do we show lack of faith if we say, if it's your will?

I mean, uh I not necessarily.

You know, there's a part of that is uh there's a way to do there's a way to do that out of arrogance and a way to do that out of humility.

And that's just up to your own heart.

Um but the it the and we also oh here's something that's worth worth practicing.

The Lord isn't someone here's why it's helpful to not hedge like that, just in case you are hedging.

It's because when we're praying, we're we're not uh twisting the arm of some sort of a genie or something.

We're asking our loving Father.

And so we know that He will give to us whatever is good for us.

So if we don't receive it, it's for our good.

So we do we don't need to hedge because it's not as though we need to go to God and say, like, hey, I'm only asking this from my human limited perspective.

God's not like, what?

You should you should be asked, do you not have all the data yet before you're praying?

No, what we do is we we pray only as why is it so important to consider yourself as a servant to your approach to life as a servant to God?

Because that's the reality.

And so you only speak as you are.

Lord, here's what I want, because it seems best to me.

And it seems like a good thing that you would give this to me.

So, Lord, would you give this to me?

Then he may say something like, Yes.

And then the response might be something else, like, you know, that's actually not good for you.

He is a father who you're praying to.

And uh another thing to consider is how how do we move in hope like this, like this man moves in.

As Christians, we don't need to guard our own hearts in case things don't go our way.

Instead, we can we can hope and even pray particularly for the things that we want to see, trusting that if we don't see them or we live in a disappointment, our Lord will be with us to comfort us.

We will not be left alone by him, but he will tend to us in our hurt and our pain.

So I hope that's some helpful guidance.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

The glory of the marriage that we see between Christ and his church is that Christ took absolute responsibility for his church, even when she didn't deserve it.

And we partake of that now, receiving him as the servant who came and laid himself down, that way we might be counted as the bride of Christ in his church.

This is a glorious picture of what it means to be a Christian.

So let us get a little slice this morning of the wedding feast of the Lamb as we take communion.

After you take communion, if your children are in Redemption Kids, go ahead and grab them so that we can sing together as families.

And also, if you are not a Christian, uh we ask you to not partake of communion with us this morning, because this is also a proclamation, as Paul says, of our faith in Christ as the one who came to save us.

So if you don't believe that, now is not a then don't proclaim it.

Uh and to those of you who are considering it, I don't think I've been seen by the Lord or who may feel alone at a well.

I ask that you would consider.

Holy Father, pray that you would bless this meal, and that you would encourage our hearts to see you as the servant, and that that might transform us into be people who are like you.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.