What do we do about Isaac?
This week's verses are on Genesis 24:1-27:
These verses are the beginning of where God continues his blessing of Abraham on to the next generation. Abraham was very old and didn't have many years left. His son, through whom God had promised that he'd have countless descendants, was already forty and still hadn't married. Keep in mind, this is in a culture where a boy is ushered into manhood around age thirteen and people married young by necessity so that they could have enough kids that some of them would survive to adulthood and care for them in their old age. What was wrong with Isaac?
You can imagine Abraham's frustration. He's about to snuff out, and his boy is showing no signs of taking the torch and running with it. I think of the stereotype of the middle-aged mama's boy here, a sort of chubby, disheveled guy in a faded polo shirt and sweatpants watching TV all day in his apartment over the garage, whiling away the time between mama's home cooked meals. He has no ambition. All of his needs are provided for him. He is content. Maybe it was the same with Isaac? Abraham was massively wealthy. So for that matter, maybe Isaac was a bit of a socialite. We don't really know. All we know is he was quite a bit older than average for carrying on the family line.
Abraham knows he's not going to survive long enough to find out how the story ends if he just sits there, so he puts top men on the job. If his son does start thinking about marriage some day, maybe, he doesn't want him to pick a local and end up in a tangled mess of alliances and disputes. So Abraham sends his best guy to a foreign land, before Google Maps was a thing, to a specific tribe, to find an ideal wife for his son.
His best guy sounds apprehensive. Think of it from his perspective. You're in charge of a very wealthy household in what you probably grew up thinking was the center of civilization. Would you want to leave all of that to go to some third world country and hit up local girls in the hopes of finding one who would give up everything to marry your boss' unremarkable forty year old son? It could take years!
Abraham's answer is awesome. He basically says that if God doesn't come through on his 100% reliable promise, he's not going to "waste" any more of his own servant's paid time. Abraham is that sure that this is going to work out. His top guy decides to go with it and see what happens.
To speed things up, the top guy prays that God will have the unwitting bride-to-be engage in a kind of James Bond airport conversation about camels and water. It's almost like he wants it to fail so he can go home early and tell his boss he tried! But God honors it and somehow it unfolds like he says. Before he's even done praying, a girl walks up.
It turns out that the girl is:
He thanks God not only for helping his master out, but even thinking of his needs too. He worships God for performing a double miracle. A lot has happened!
First of all, Abraham is willing to push a bit to see his promise fulfilled, but he's learned his experience with Hagar and Ishmael and doesn't push too hard. He knows his son will eventually produce kids, but he doesn't know how much control he has over the outcome, so he takes his shot. God lets us collaborate with him in shaping the future sometimes. We can't design or manufacture the car ourselves, but maybe we can pick some of the options before it's delivered.
Second, God follows through with his promise and honors Abraham's desires. His servant finds his way to exactly the place and family that he wants, and there is a suitable match available. And she is willing to accept his proposal sight unseen. How likely is any of that? Just think of how close Abraham and God must have been at that point late in his life, forty years after his initial promise was kept.
Third, God honors the senior servant's sort of ridiculous prayer request. As if Abraham's instructions weren't specific enough, he had to add to the unlikeliness of what he was asking. And yet God does it for them both. The more unlikely the miracle the greater it is when it happens!
Just think of how unlikely all of this was to happen by chance, and yet how necessary it was for the rest of the stories in the Bible, even the New Testament. What if the servant said no to the journey? What if he got lost or robbed? What if a different girl came out to draw water? What if she decided not to personally fetch the absurdly large amount of water needed to water ten camels? What if she decided the out of towner who wanted her to run off with his boss' middle-aged son was a creep and just took the shiny baubles and ran home? What if her family forbade it? What if she got cold feet and decided not to go through with it after all? What if Isaac decided she wasn't the right one for him once she traveled all the way out to meet him?
And yet despite all of the ways it could have gone wrong, God's plan unfolded exactly as it needed to, even with Abraham's and his servant's fingerprints on some of it. In the beginning it looked like things weren't going to work out with Isaac, but in the end we have no doubts at all that God has kept his word and will continue to keep it.
And think of it the other way too: If Isaac had been the model son, and had married at age eighteen and Abraham had instead had grand kids after those forty years, would the story have been as beautiful? Just like the way Isaac appeared in the world at first, after Abraham and Sarah had practically given up all hope, God used Isaac to make them wait again so that his miracle would taste so much sweeter.
So that brings us to the question of what we do about the "Isaacs" in our lives? How do we handle those things which we have waited on for so long, or which seem so unlikely, but which we can't help but feel like God has promised us would happen? How do we look at situations like that? Those stories always look a lot different in the beginning than they do in the end. Read through this story again on your own, and imagine how it would have looked to you at each point in the story, if you didn't know how it was going to end? What fears would you, as Abraham or the servant, have had? How angry would you have been for having been made to wait for so long already? And how awesome is the ending then, when it comes as a wonderful surprise?
If you're lucky, you can learn from how Abraham handled waiting on God. The way he handled Isaac is a demonstration of his righteousness in believing God would bless him. Doing so, God not only blessed Abraham, but also Isaac, and the guy Abraham sent to go make it happen.
Abraham was now very old, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. He said to the senior servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh. I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac.”
The servant asked him, “What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country you came from?”
“Make sure that you do not take my son back there,” Abraham said. “The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’—he will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there. If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine. Only do not take my son back there.” So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore an oath to him concerning this matter.
Then the servant left, taking with him ten of his master’s camels loaded with all kinds of good things from his master. He set out for Aram Naharaim and made his way to the town of Nahor. He had the camels kneel down near the well outside the town; it was toward evening, the time the women go out to draw water.
Then he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.
The servant hurried to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water from your jar.”
“Drink, my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink.
After she had given him a drink, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough to drink.” So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels. Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful.
When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a beka and two gold bracelets weighing ten shekels. Then he asked, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?”
She answered him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milkah bore to Nahor.” And she added, “We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night.”
Then the man bowed down and worshiped the Lord, saying, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives.”
These verses are the beginning of where God continues his blessing of Abraham on to the next generation. Abraham was very old and didn't have many years left. His son, through whom God had promised that he'd have countless descendants, was already forty and still hadn't married. Keep in mind, this is in a culture where a boy is ushered into manhood around age thirteen and people married young by necessity so that they could have enough kids that some of them would survive to adulthood and care for them in their old age. What was wrong with Isaac?
You can imagine Abraham's frustration. He's about to snuff out, and his boy is showing no signs of taking the torch and running with it. I think of the stereotype of the middle-aged mama's boy here, a sort of chubby, disheveled guy in a faded polo shirt and sweatpants watching TV all day in his apartment over the garage, whiling away the time between mama's home cooked meals. He has no ambition. All of his needs are provided for him. He is content. Maybe it was the same with Isaac? Abraham was massively wealthy. So for that matter, maybe Isaac was a bit of a socialite. We don't really know. All we know is he was quite a bit older than average for carrying on the family line.
Abraham knows he's not going to survive long enough to find out how the story ends if he just sits there, so he puts top men on the job. If his son does start thinking about marriage some day, maybe, he doesn't want him to pick a local and end up in a tangled mess of alliances and disputes. So Abraham sends his best guy to a foreign land, before Google Maps was a thing, to a specific tribe, to find an ideal wife for his son.
His best guy sounds apprehensive. Think of it from his perspective. You're in charge of a very wealthy household in what you probably grew up thinking was the center of civilization. Would you want to leave all of that to go to some third world country and hit up local girls in the hopes of finding one who would give up everything to marry your boss' unremarkable forty year old son? It could take years!
Abraham's answer is awesome. He basically says that if God doesn't come through on his 100% reliable promise, he's not going to "waste" any more of his own servant's paid time. Abraham is that sure that this is going to work out. His top guy decides to go with it and see what happens.
To speed things up, the top guy prays that God will have the unwitting bride-to-be engage in a kind of James Bond airport conversation about camels and water. It's almost like he wants it to fail so he can go home early and tell his boss he tried! But God honors it and somehow it unfolds like he says. Before he's even done praying, a girl walks up.
It turns out that the girl is:
- Very beautiful
- Single
- From exactly the tribe and ethnicity that Abraham had requested
- Willing to say the code words about camels and invite him home immediately to seal the deal
He thanks God not only for helping his master out, but even thinking of his needs too. He worships God for performing a double miracle. A lot has happened!
First of all, Abraham is willing to push a bit to see his promise fulfilled, but he's learned his experience with Hagar and Ishmael and doesn't push too hard. He knows his son will eventually produce kids, but he doesn't know how much control he has over the outcome, so he takes his shot. God lets us collaborate with him in shaping the future sometimes. We can't design or manufacture the car ourselves, but maybe we can pick some of the options before it's delivered.
Second, God follows through with his promise and honors Abraham's desires. His servant finds his way to exactly the place and family that he wants, and there is a suitable match available. And she is willing to accept his proposal sight unseen. How likely is any of that? Just think of how close Abraham and God must have been at that point late in his life, forty years after his initial promise was kept.
Third, God honors the senior servant's sort of ridiculous prayer request. As if Abraham's instructions weren't specific enough, he had to add to the unlikeliness of what he was asking. And yet God does it for them both. The more unlikely the miracle the greater it is when it happens!
Just think of how unlikely all of this was to happen by chance, and yet how necessary it was for the rest of the stories in the Bible, even the New Testament. What if the servant said no to the journey? What if he got lost or robbed? What if a different girl came out to draw water? What if she decided not to personally fetch the absurdly large amount of water needed to water ten camels? What if she decided the out of towner who wanted her to run off with his boss' middle-aged son was a creep and just took the shiny baubles and ran home? What if her family forbade it? What if she got cold feet and decided not to go through with it after all? What if Isaac decided she wasn't the right one for him once she traveled all the way out to meet him?
And yet despite all of the ways it could have gone wrong, God's plan unfolded exactly as it needed to, even with Abraham's and his servant's fingerprints on some of it. In the beginning it looked like things weren't going to work out with Isaac, but in the end we have no doubts at all that God has kept his word and will continue to keep it.
And think of it the other way too: If Isaac had been the model son, and had married at age eighteen and Abraham had instead had grand kids after those forty years, would the story have been as beautiful? Just like the way Isaac appeared in the world at first, after Abraham and Sarah had practically given up all hope, God used Isaac to make them wait again so that his miracle would taste so much sweeter.
So that brings us to the question of what we do about the "Isaacs" in our lives? How do we handle those things which we have waited on for so long, or which seem so unlikely, but which we can't help but feel like God has promised us would happen? How do we look at situations like that? Those stories always look a lot different in the beginning than they do in the end. Read through this story again on your own, and imagine how it would have looked to you at each point in the story, if you didn't know how it was going to end? What fears would you, as Abraham or the servant, have had? How angry would you have been for having been made to wait for so long already? And how awesome is the ending then, when it comes as a wonderful surprise?
If you're lucky, you can learn from how Abraham handled waiting on God. The way he handled Isaac is a demonstration of his righteousness in believing God would bless him. Doing so, God not only blessed Abraham, but also Isaac, and the guy Abraham sent to go make it happen.
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