April 2, 2006 Sermon

A Marriage Arranged By God
Genesis 24:10-27

A certain preacher climbed up into the pulpit one Sunday morning and let fly with a rip-roaring, fire-and-brimstone sermon. He named the sins his people were committing. He described Hell in excruciating detail. He made them feel the raw terror of spending eternity there. After church they could hardly look him in the eye as they shook hands at the door.

The next Sunday that preacher let ‘em have it with exactly the same sermon, word for word. The shocked congregation received the blow in silence. The next week it happened again, and then again. People began grumbling. “Why,” they complained, “do you keep preaching this harsh sermon week after week?”

He said, “I’m gonna keep on giving it to you until you get it right.”

The book of Genesis keeps giving it to the reader, presumably because God wants us to get it right. But what is “the right” in Genesis? Several great themes span the book; they appear in our chapter today. First, God works in the everyday lives of people. Second, the love we feel can be a reflection of God’s love. Third, God’s will, will be done.

God works in the everyday lives of people. The people of Genesis lived at a particular time in a particular place. For Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah that time was 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus. Their place was the Middle East . By Genesis 24 Abraham’s wife Sarah has died. Abraham knows soon he will too. He tells his servant to fetch a wife for his son and quickly. But not just any wife will do. Isaac must marry a woman from Abraham’s “kindred”, his close relatives.

Abraham instructs his servant to go back to where they came from and to fetch a girl. She must come from the family and she must come back, to the Promised Land where Abraham now lives. He wants to make sure his son and their descendants will inhabit that exact piece of property. So the servant retraces the long journey Abraham had made years before, when he left his home in Mesopotamia and first came to what we now call Israel . He returns to the town of Nahor , where Abraham’s brother of the same name lives. Real people, real places, real needs.

God works in people’s lives. God worked in all those lives all those years ago, and God works in lives today. The question for us is how can we recognize it when God is at work in our lives? We can more easily see it when good things happen, or when we receive protection from bad things. You face a test. You pray and pray. Fervently and sincerely you pray. The results are positive. You thank God.

But can we recognize God at work when our hopes and dreams do not come true? What if Abraham’s servant had failed in his quest to find a suitable wife for Isaac? Would that have indicated that God did not care to get involved in the daily affairs of human beings? The Book of Genesis—and indeed, the whole of the Bible—would respond that God’s purposes do not always match ours. When we do not get what we hope for, we may have hoped for the wrong things. This sounds harsh. It is not. By all means, pray for protection when trouble threatens. But pray also that your eyes might open to God’s purposes.

God works all the time, everywhere. When we pray to see God at work, not to see God working to do what we feel we need, we see God more clearly and more constantly. It builds our faith. Abraham had seen more than his share of trouble. He had endured fear and pain. He tried to do what God told him to do. Many times he had to wait for God; no doubt he often did not get what he wanted. Yet he kept his eyes open to God at work in his life. We would do well to follow Abraham’s example.

Now for the second theme from Genesis: the love we feel can be a reflection of God’s love. Let’s start with the nature of God’s love. Genesis tells us when Isaac and Rebekah met they fell in love. The word translated “love” comes from the Hebrew word hesed, which means eternal kindness and faithfulness. Scriptures almost never use hesed to refer to human love. Genesis uses God’s covenant promises to Abraham as a great example of hesed, of eternal kindness and faithfulness. Genesis also tells us that Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage is founded on hesed.

The love we feel can be a reflection of God’s love when we love in a hesed kind of way. Other forms of love can be godly, as well, but the focus in Genesis 24 stays on eternal kindness and faithfulness. We can see hesed love most easily, perhaps, in the love of a devoted older couple whose marriage has had decades to ripen. We can see it in the love of parents who make sacrifices for their children over the years. Time is a key part of hesed love. Hesed love grows over time. Godly, eternal kindness and faithfulness creates a bond of trust. We need to trust and to be trusted. We reflect the love of God when we do.

Why bother to care about the “love” we see in the check-out line, about Ben and Jen and Brad and Angelina? Okay, they’re all really cute, but why waste our attention on their problems when we could be learning from the older, in-love couples who walk among us as giants? This is an important lesson from Genesis.

Finally, the third theme of Genesis: that God’s will, will be done. When Abraham sent his servant back home to find Isaac a wife I wonder: did he expect God to deliver so spectacularly? I mean, Rebekah had it all. She was kin—vital to Abraham’s understanding of God’s covenant gift of the land to his family. She was young and pretty. She willingly left her home and mother. I wonder: did that servant share his master’s faith? Did he expect God would make it so easy to complete his mission, or did he find it just a little spooky when all the pieces fell so quickly into place?

Do we expect that God’s will, will be done? Before we can answer that, we must learn God’s will. But how can we do that?!? Two answers stand out. First, pray. Second, read the Bible. The people in Genesis brought their needs and their fears to God in prayer. And we would know nothing about them were it not for the Bible. Praying and reading the Bible remain key ways of learning the will of God.

But I want to lift up a different way of learning the will of God: watching God at work in the lives of our brothers and sisters in the church. Remember our three themes from Genesis: God works in the lives of people; our love can reflect God’s love; and God’s will, will be done. All three themes are on display in the lives of the people who surround us at church. Learn from them.

Where do you see God at work? I see God working through our elementary and Jr./Sr. High youth group advisors. Last fall we sent a fledgling out of the Riggins nest. Our daughter went off to college. It comforts me to know she learned from the adults who care about Jesus and about her. She has watched them cope with conflicts. She has watched them draw on their faith to endure troubles. She has laughed with them. They have rubbed off on her and I praise God for it. Where do you see God at work in the people of the church?

Where do you see the hesed love of God at work? I have already told you I see it in several older couples here at church. I could name names but instead I will just encourage you to watch and learn from them.

Where do you see God’s will being done? We can see it at church no matter which direction we turn. If you do not see God at work your eyes need to be opened. Pray. Read the Bible. And pay attention to your brothers and sisters here at church. God works everywhere, all the time. Praise God! Let your eyes be opened!