Providence | Genesis 23-24
Notes
Transcript
Konnection Kids y’all are good to head on to the back to find your leaders.
Good morning church. What a blessing it is to be here this morning to worship with y’all. If you don’t know me, my name is David Wood. You’ll usually see me up here with a guitar in my hand and a mic in front of me with those beautiful folks that were just up here. Every so often Liam will let me come up here and say a few words and so I’m honored to lead us in our passage in Genesis this morning.
So if y’all have your Bibles with you, you can go ahead and turn to Genesis 23. We’ll be covering chapters 23 and 24 this morning. I gotta be honest with y’all, I feel like Liam was playing a little practical joke on me with me covering these two chapters this week. Because not only is one of our chapters the longest chapter in Genesis (Genesis 24), but that chapter is also widely considered to be the love story of Genesis. So he put the only single pastor up here to preach the love story. Preciate that. I feel like I’m not gonna be allowed back up here.
So in these two chapters of Genesis, we have two very different stories that communicate really one main idea to us. And it all centers around this word, providence. If you’re sitting there scratching your head cause you don’t know what providence means, welcome to my life a couple weeks ago. Let’s figure out what providence means.
The word providence comes from the word provide, but it means so much more than simply “provider.” So to communicate what this word means, I’m gonna need to look to some people smarter than me. I know what some of you are thinking, that’s not really saying much for someone to be smarter than me, so let’s just say we’re gonna look to someone much smarter than me.
A guy named John Piper wrote a huge 800 page book on the subject of God’s providence. I have not read this book, but, I read the introduction. And luckily he gives his definition of providence in the introduction, so that’s what we’re gonna roll with. Specifically it’s how the church he pastors defines providence.
So here it is: “We believe that God upholds and governs all things—from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movements of nations, and from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary persons—all in accord with His eternal, all-wise purposes to glorify Himself, yet in such a way that He never sins, nor ever condemns a person unjustly; but that His ordaining and governing all things is compatible with the moral accountability of all persons created in His image.” You can see why I only read the introduction.
Basically to simplify this. God is working in all things, from the smallest to the largest, for the good of the world for the ultimate purpose of His glory.
And that’s what Genesis 23-24 is about. God working in the lives of all these different people, setting up all these different circumstances to provide for the family of Abraham for the ultimate purpose of His glory.
Now like I said, we have a lot of scripture to cover, so let’s talk about Genesis 23.
We open Genesis 23 with the death of Abraham’s wife Sarah. And the family mourning her death. And Abraham wants to bury Sarah. Now remember, Abraham has left his home country. He’s in the land of Canaan now and he doesn’t own any land to bury Sarah in. So he basically goes to the guys who own all the land and says, “Hey, can I buy some land?” And they have a polite exchange where they try to give him land, but he says, “No I’m gonna pay for it,” and Abraham finally buys some land in Canaan.
1. God’s providence for land.
1. God’s providence for land.
Quickly reading through this chapter of Genesis, it’s easy to read this as just pushing the narrative forward. Like, “Alright, so Sarah has died and Abraham found a tomb for her,” and you move on to the next chapter, but there is significance for this story being here.
So up to this point, we’ve seen God promise Abraham that God would make him into a great nation. We’ve seen God send Abraham to the promised land in Genesis 12; which is the land of Canaan. So Abraham and his crew have been living in the promised land for a while now.
But they haven’t owned any land in the promised land. They’ve just kinda sojourned around. But here in order to bury Sarah, they want to have proper burial in a tomb. So Abraham goes to buy some land.
So we see here God uses these tragic circumstances for His chosen nation to finally own land in the promised land.
And we’re not gonna spend a ton of time here because we’re gonna camp out in chapter 24 for a while, but it’s worth noting that God can, and does, use tragic circumstances to accomplish His will.
Now does this mean God is the one committing sin? And the answer is no, we are the sinners. We turned this world into a fallen world in the garden through the sin of Adam and Eve.
And this goes back to our definition of providence. God governs all things, from the smallest particle to giant stars in space, yet He does so in a way that He never sins.
And y’all, this is a topic where you can get lost in the weeds. We could spend an entire sermon on this specific topic, but the purpose here is not for us to get wrapped up in theological debates, but instead to see how great God is from these two chapters of Genesis. So let’s just trust that God is good, and He’s so awesome that He can even use things like sin and death to accomplish His will. Alright?
And this should comforting to us. Because we know that even when we walk through something difficult; whether it was caused by our sin, someone else’s sin, or something else entirely, God is using that to accomplish His will. And guess what His will is? It’s His glory. And guess what brings Him glory? Our delight and joy that we find in His grace.
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Alright let’s move on the chapter 24.
2. God’s providence for Rebekah.
2. God’s providence for Rebekah.
So Abraham’s old. And Abraham wants to make sure that Isaac has a wife before he dies.
Now we gotta understand something about the culture before we continue. Nowadays if we are related to someone, they are not an option to marry. Unless you live in like Alabama, but that’s not us. Back then, it wasn’t, “They’re pretty, but they’re my cousin.” Back then, it was, “They’re pretty, and they’re my cousin.” So Abraham is going to look for a wife for Isaac back in their homeland.
And the way he’s gonna do this is he’s gonna send his servant to find someone. So Abraham calls in his servant in verse 2 of chapter 24 and he tells his servant to place his hand under his thigh. And this… agreement that Abraham is about to make with his servant is about Abraham’s offspring so many commentators believe his hand was… somewhere more specific. I’m good with just a handshake. But Abraham basically tells his servant, “Go back to my homeland and find a wife for my son. Don’t bring my son back there, bring her here. And if you have no luck, you’re free from this agreement.”
10 Then the servant took ten camels from the camels of his master, and set out with a variety of good things of his master’s in his hand; and he arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor.
11 He made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water.
So the servant here has made it to Abraham’s homeland, and He camps out where the women go to draw water at the end of the day.
12 He said, “O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham.
13 “Behold, I am standing by the spring, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water;
14 now may it be that the girl to whom I say, ‘Please let down your jar so that I may drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels also’—may she be the one whom You have appointed for Your servant Isaac; and by this I will know that You have shown lovingkindness to my master.”
So the servant prays to God, asks God to grant him success. And notice this here in verse 15…
15 Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder.
16 The girl was very beautiful, a virgin, and no man had had relations with her; and she went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up.
Before the servant even finished his prayer, this woman that fits all the criteria named Rebekah is walking up.
God is working even before you pray. God is up there playing 3D chess setting everything up for you way before you even pray for what you’re asking for. How comforting is that? That God knows what we’re gonna pray for even before we pray?
Alright, let’s continue on…
17 Then the servant ran to meet her, and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar.”
18 She said, “Drink, my lord”; and she quickly lowered her jar to her hand, and gave him a drink.
19 Now when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw also for your camels until they have finished drinking.”
Things are going pretty well so far…
20 So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, and ran back to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels.
21 Meanwhile, the man was gazing at her in silence, to know whether the Lord had made his journey successful or not.
Suspense is building. The servant is over here, making sure she’s checking all the criteria.
22 When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half-shekel and two bracelets for her wrists weighing ten shekels in gold,
23 and said, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room for us to lodge in your father’s house?”
24 She said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.”
25 Again she said to him, “We have plenty of both straw and feed, and room to lodge in.”
26 Then the man bowed low and worshiped the Lord.
27 He said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His lovingkindness and His truth toward my master; as for me, the Lord has guided me in the way to the house of my master’s brothers.”
Look at that. The servant is so excited that God has granted him success that he bows down and worships God right there.
From there, the servant goes to the house, sits down to have dinner with the family. And the servant recalls the entire story to Rebekah’s parents: Laban and Bethuel (that’s part of the reason why this is the longest chapter in Genesis; cause it kinda tells the story twice).
3. God’s providence for the world.
3. God’s providence for the world.
