01(Gen 24,19) Water for Your Camels Also
How does this story apply to our everyday jobs?
A. We live in sophisticated and subtly evil times.
§ Today’s principle: So much work for so much pay.
§ I'm going to do the least that is expected, and I'm going to try to get the most payment for it.
B. There is a place for nonviolent pressure to be put upon employers and companies.
§ But I'm talking about something much further than that.
§ What happens when you get those rights, decent hours, good pay, equal oppty & all the rest?
§ Something is happening to the quality of workmanship of our people.
C. Cover story of Time magazine: "America the Inefficient, or Why Nothing Seems to Work Anymore in the United States.”
§ America was noted around the world for its efficiency and quality of its products and its honesty.
§ Men prided themselves in what they made.
§ But in the last few years that's changed.
§ There's a feeling all over the world now that our country has lost this characteristic.
§ There have been complaints coming from everywhere that we cannot be trusted.
§ We are coming to be known as America the Inefficient and the Deceptive.
D. Why is it taking place?
§ Should we blame it on some heartless employer, or labor unions, or the lack of organization or prestige or power? Certainly not.
§ It's happening because a subtle, underlying spirit has crept into all of us, and I mean into us Christians as well.
§ The feeling of Why should I do more than I have to do?
We need a Rebekah philosophy in the way we work.
A. Jesus said our righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees.
§ Does someone strike you on one cheek? he says. "Then you turn the other cheek.”
§ Does he sue you and take your coat? You go the next step and give him your overcoat as well.
§ Does that nasty Roman soldier force you to carry his heavy military pack the legal limit of one mile? At the end of one mile, you turn to him, "Let me carry it for you the second mile.”
§ Are you beginning to get the message this morning?
B. A Rebekah philosophy
§ "Yes, have the drink of water. Now I will draw water for your camels also.”
§ When Rebekah spoke those words, she became a beautiful woman in spirit as well as in body.
§ This is the difference between being an attractive Christian and a repulsive Christian.
C. Jesus says your Christian witness is not just about the Christian service you do.
§ Or how you respond to unusual emergencies in life.
§ We do a lot of preaching on our response to emergencies, and I wouldn't belittle that at all.
§ But I find that most human beings arise to an emergency. They respond in a good way.
§ Jesus says your greatest witness is in the extras that you put into your everyday life and work.
§ I'm not belittling Christian service.
§ But perhaps the most important and the most effective witness a Christian can make in this world is to put into daily practice this Rebekah principle and philosophy.
How does the Rebekah principle work out in our daily life?
A. First of all, it means that as Christians we are not to live our lives by the measuring rod.
§ Pharisees had a religion of the yardstick.
§ You almost had to carry around a portable yardstick or a measuring tape to be a good Pharisee.
§ He says the life of the Christian is not living according to a yardstick and a measuring rod.
§ It's the life of the added miles and the extra measure.
B. Second, it means that the only way you get to the second mile is by going the first mile first.
§ It means that you can't witness through your daily job by just going the second mile until you do a good job at the first mile.
§ There are Christians who think they can get by doing their job sloppily, unfaithfully, and then make it up by a lot of direct witnessing to people on the job.
§ We Christians must make sure we're faithful and loyal to the first mile of the work given to us.
§ There are Christian farmers and factory workers and secretaries and students; who'd have a much greater impact for Christ if you were more conscientious and honest in the first mile of work.
§ Don't shirk the difficult, the irksome tasks.
§ Only through the duties of the first mile can we reach the joys and the witness of the second mile.
§ Duty is the first word, and we must learn faithfulness to the first mile first.
C. That leads us to the third idea, that duty is not the last word.
§ That's where this lovely, Rebekah principle comes in.
§ The second mile is reached after we go the first mile and we are faithful there, by doubling the first mile.
§ Jesus is telling us that the most effective Christian witness you can make through your daily jobs is service that exceeds payment or requirement.
§ That is the opposite of today's philosophy, so much work for so much pay; minimum effort for maximum pay.
§ Jesus says that if you are a Christian, you cannot work by that principle. The Christian principle is "Yes, have the drink, and I will draw for your camels as well.
D. Put this into some of the areas of our life.
§ Husband and wife here this morning, what do you think would happen to your marriage if you went home today and quietly determined to go out of your way to do not only what your partner expected you to do, but joyously, lovingly, to do the unasked and the unexpected?
§ What would happen in your office or factory or store if you were to put this in practice?
§ It would become the means of you making a better, more effective, direct Christian witness.
How will living this way affect our own lives?
A. What would happen to us if we lived according to this spirit? What will it do for us?
§ What did it do for Rebekah?
§ Immediately when she said those words, a great, divine principle took over and began to operate:
B. Principle
§ When Rebekah gave more than she was asked to give, she received more than she was expected to receive.
§ Jesus: "According to the measure you mete out to others, it will be measured unto you.”
§ Little did Rebekah realize that such an important door hung on such a small, unimportant hinge.
§ She didn't realize it was going to be the determining factor in the rest of her life.
§ When she said those words, at that very moment something clicked in the plan of God, & she became a part of God's plan for the salvation.
C. But that's exactly the point of the story, and that's the point of my sermon this morning.
§ Jesus said in the judgment the sheep will say, "Lord, we didn't know we were giving you food.
§ We didn't know that we were clothing you, healing you, and visiting you.
§ Of course not. That's the point.
D. Doesn't the same thing happen to you and me when in Christ we go the second mile?
§ We're not only saved from the boredom of our jobs and the drudgery of just making a living.
§ We get a sense of fulfillment, a sense of fitting in as a link in the divine chain, and we become partners with God in the salvation of the human race.
§ I didn't say it was easy. Do you think it was easy for Rebekah to draw two hundred gallons of water from a village well? Not at all. It wasn't easy. But didn't it turn out to be interesting, surprising, and wonderfully rewarding? It did, indeed.
Conclusion: Are you willing to "draw water for your camels also for others?
§ I hope that all of us that take the name of Jesus will take to heart what I'm saying here.
§ I dare to believe that this may be a turning point in someone's life
§ That you will go from here determined that when you go back to your work and your job or your classroom or whatever it is, when life says to you "Will you give me a drink of water?”, then I pray that you will say to life and to your job and to your fellow workers, "Here, drink, and when you finish I will draw water for your camels also.”