Genesis 24 - The Role of Trust & Discernment (A short Bible Study)

Following Jesus rarely looks like a detailed set of instructions from IKEA (there’s a joke in there somewhere).  There may be moments like that but most of the time, God asks us to do two things: trust Him and use discernment. We’re in Genesis 24, the part of the story when Abraham sends off his senior servant to find a wife for Isaac. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

I just wish God would give me a flashing neon sign so I would know what I'm supposed to do. Same, bro. Same. You know, I've heard that sentiment expressed to me so many different times, and I've certainly felt the same way. The reality is that following Jesus rarely looks like a detailed set of instructions from IKEA on how to build a particular piece of furniture. And I know there is a joke in there somewhere. There may be moments like that along the way, but most of the time God asks us to do two things to trust him and to use our own discernment. On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am just genuinely glad that you've joined us today. We're in Genesis chapter 24. It's the part of the story where Abraham sends off his senior servant to go and find his son Isaac a wife. Go ahead and read all of that if you have a moment now to go ahead and do that. It'll help you with our time together. It is totally okay if you want to read it afterwards. You'll just be connecting those dots a little bit later on. It's a longer story, so that's why I'm just kind of focusing our time, sort of in kind of the middle sections of that story, to just kind of get to what's uh what's happening there. Hey, before we do anything else, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this really good day that you've given us. God, thank you that you you do care about the details of our lives. And yet, Lord, you do invite us to to trust you because you are trustworthy, and then to to use the tools that you've given us, including our own discernment. God, we want to learn more about what that balance looks like. Would you be with us now? We ask this in your name. Amen. All right. So we're gonna summarize kind of the first portion of Genesis 24, and and just to kind of talk about it, because the story gets retold as the servant expresses all of it uh to the family of Rebecca. So rather than kind of repeating everything, we're just gonna jump in at that point. But before we get there, I wanted to talk a little bit more about kind of how all this is taking place. By the way, dating culture, uh, courtship culture is so different today than it was back then. Um, you know, I I met my wife, Tina, on uh like during a training time for going on a missions trip, and that's how we connected, and and that's quite different than Isaac and Rebecca's story. And and I hear that they got these like dating apps now, which may or be may or may not be an improvement on the old uh how you doing uh move. But anyway, uh good luck if you're in that in that space. Uh, but but here's the key thing, uh, if you're in that space where you're looking for your spouse, by the way, uh more than good luck uh for real. Uh like may the Lord be with you in that. And that's probably the key piece that regardless of the method, like whether you connect at church or or in some other environment, keep Jesus at the very center and just trust him with even in that aspect of your life. Uh, don't be shy about it. Uh talk about him frequently and often and let him lead you uh in that whole process. All right. So let's jump into Genesis 24 and we'll do a little bit of summary work here before we get to the part that we'll read together. So Abraham commissions his senior servant, that's the way it describes him in my translation, to head to back to his homeland to find a wife for Isaac. So uh a couple of interesting things here. We never learn the servant's name, even though he's playing a very central role throughout this whole time. But we do know that he asks the Lord for a very specific sign. Uh, the woman for Isaac would give him a drink when he asked, and then unprompted, would offer to uh to water his camels as well. And it's interesting to me that he wasn't looking for other signs that that they may have thought about during that time. So he wasn't looking for somebody who was wealthy necessarily, like that wasn't the signal. Uh and he wasn't looking just for an attractive young woman, although the scriptures do say that she was quite striking, uh, quite striking looking. Uh, and then, you know, more importantly, uh, as he kind of goes through this process, he just he's paying attention to what she's doing. And she did. Rebecca did the things uh that this servant was looking for as an indicator from God. And and and I find this really, really interesting in just the whole discernment aspect of things that there's, you know, Abraham sends him out, and all of that, all of that's happening in this this man, who clearly is also a man of faith, brings this request to God in a pretty specific kind of a way. And and he's looking for specific things. And he's he's just kind of trusting the Lord that that the Lord will reveal the design, the plan, specifically uh the woman who would become Isaac's wife through what she did. And and he just kind of leaves it there. And then we get to this really interesting little tidbit. I I think it is interesting in verse 21, and it says this after all that had happened, yeah, you know, he's um he's asked for a drink, she's offered to to water his camels, and and then he says, uh it writes this, without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. And it's the without saying a word part that really caught my attention. So he's not like, oh, hey, just so you know, I prayed got to God for these very specific things and you just did them, and so this is what we're gonna do. No, he does he keeps that part to himself and he just kind of waits on it, which I just think is that's wisdom, isn't that wisdom? Uh, and then so after that happens, he he asks for her hospitality and he produces some very expensive jewelry, so some gold bracelets, bracelets, uh, and I believe there's a nose ring involved, and they're substantial, you know, so there's there's a lot of value in them. And this is an act of betrothal. In other words, it's equivalent to being proposed to, but in their way. Uh, and so she understands that, he understands that this is that we're we're not just having a conversation, we're not just it's not a meet and greet, we're we're this is serious business. And again, this is odd to our our Western ears, where we value our own autonomy, but this is how they did things, and and that's what happened. So, Rebecca, in response to this, it says literally that she runs to her family. She doesn't walk, she's excited, she's like, no, this is a good thing, and so she's genuinely interested in what's happening. Uh, and then uh the servant now recounts the story uh to Rebecca uh and her family, which she is hearing about for the first time. Now, she was obviously a part of it, but she doesn't know all of the other stuff that's been going on in the servant's experience, his what he's been praying for, and all of that. So we're gonna pick it up in verse 42, which is a little bit uh on the way in, and uh, and so we'll start there. So Genesis 24, we're gonna start at verse 42. The servant is speaking, and he says, When I came to the spring today, I said, Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will, please grant success to the journey on which I have come. See, I am standing beside this spring. If a young woman comes out to draw water, and I say to her, Please, let me drink a little water from your jar, and if she says to me, Drink, and I'll draw water for your camels too, let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master's son. Before I finished praying in my heart, Rebecca came out, with her jar on her shoulder. She went down to the spring and drew water, and I said to her, Please give me a drink. She quickly lowered her jar from her shoulder and said, Drink, and I'll water your camels too. So I drank, and she watered the camels also. I asked her, Whose daughter are you? She said the daughter of Bethuel, son of Nahor, whom Milka bore bore to him. Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, and I bowed down and worshipped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master's brother for his son. Now, if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me, and if not, tell me so that I may know which way to turn. Laban and Bethuel answered, This is from the Lord. We can say nothing to you one way or the other. Here is Rebecca, take her and go, and let her become the wife of your master's son, as the Lord has directed. All right, we're going to skip down just a little bit further. They spend the night and they they offer the hospitality. He has a place to stay, his camels have a place to say. And they get up in the morning and they're they're still kind of uh sorting out different things, and they uh uh uh the the the men, Laban and Bethuel, are like, hey, give us ten days before whatever, and the servant says, No, I need to go now. So uh then they have this moment here in verses 57 and 58. It says, Then they said, Let's call the young woman and ask her about it. So they called Rebecca and asked her, Will you go with this man? I will, she said. So again, here Rebecca's uh the has had the evening to sleep on this before they think to ask her what she wants. And again, it's there's a cultural dynamic here, so we don't want to make too much of that. But she happily says yes, and the rest of this story goes on pretty happily. Uh, all of it takes place. She does go with uh with Abraham's servant, they come. Uh uh Isaac sees her, welcomes her, they're married, and uh, and she becomes his wife. It's quite an amazing story, and uh and and it's just yeah, it's one of those cool parts along the way. Genesis is filled with all kinds of crazy, uh, crazy things that happen. Some of them are are like eye-popping, like, wow, did that actually yeah, yep, that did. Uh, and this is one of those where it's just like God is in it, and so you're like, yeah, no, I kind of needed to hear this part of the story as well. So I'd like to leave us with some reflections uh as we as we kind of process this story. And again, if you've already read it, you're tracking with me probably pretty well. If you haven't yet, you know, go ahead and do that, and you'll maybe kind of come back to these reflections and they'll they'll help you out once you've done that. But I wanted us to notice Abraham's trust. Remember, I talked about trust and discernment at the beginning. So Abraham's trust in his servant, and and I think Isaac's trust here is his part is implied. Like he would have wanted a wife. That that would have been pretty normal, uh, and he was okay with how his dad went about it. Again, the methodology here isn't nearly as outlandish for them as it was for us to seek somebody out, and yeah, that was just kind of part of the way that they did life. Uh, so Abraham's trust in his servant, and then the servant's trust in God, like throughout this story, he's probably the one that I admire the most, where he just continues to do the next faithful thing. Like as he kind of walks through the journey, he just keeps trusting God. Like, am I doing the right thing? Am I asking the right questions? Am I seeking out the right person? And and he just leaves it in the Lord's hands. And then Rebecca's trust in her family, number one, so she trusts them. There's, and that kind of comes out just in the way that the story is told, her trust in the servant, right? Their exchange right from the beginning. There was obviously some level of trust. I think she would have, if she was uncomfortable, that would have been pretty clear to everybody. And then also her trust in God, that ultimately this was God's design, God's plan that she was going to marry this man that she had not met, but she was okay with it because of who God is. All right. Then the value of discernment. And we see discernment exercised by the servant himself, right? Like he comes in, he's the one that came up with the criteria, right, uh, that he presented to the Lord. Lord, let it be the one who, when I offer or when I ask for a drink, gives me that drink, but also offers to do more. Uh so he's he's processing that and he's working all of that out. The family uses discernment. They're like, okay. They listen to his story and they're like, you know what? This is from the Lord. Both men uh respond that way, Laban and Bethuel, easy for me to say. We can say nothing to you one way or another. Here's here's Rebecca. Like, so they don't fight it at all, at least initially. They ask for that delay, and but then ultimately they just like they bring it to uh they bring it to Rebecca and and are okay with what all of what happens. So the family expresses and uses discernment, and Rebecca certainly uh does the same as well. She does, uh I think, at least, uh at least at the very end, she expresses of her own volition. She uses her own agency, her own voice to say, Yes, I agree, I want this to happen. So I know this was a little bit kind of a different flow for us today, but but hopefully it was uh again helpful for you. And I'm gonna leave you just with one question, which is this How are you discerning God's design for you? How are you figuring that out? How are you exercising your own discernment? Keep on praying about it, keep on letting the Lord lead you. I'm doing the exact same thing, asking God to lead me in my own life. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you once again for all that you've done and for all that you continue to be in our lives. God help us day by day, moment by moment, to not only trust you, but to exercise wise discernment, discernment that comes from you. Thank you, Lord, that you even promise us in in James chapter one that if any of us lacks wisdom, we can just ask you and you give it generously. We love that. Be with us now. We ask this in your name. Amen.