Genesis 24 I Peter 2.18 – 3.7
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 2nd February 2025
The story we have before us today is of a marriage; it is also a succession story. Abraham is nearing the end of his run; he is guardian of an important promise about the future, and needs to hand it on to the next in line. God has sworn and covenanted, to make his descendants a great nation, give them a land, and a special relationship with himself. Thanks to Jesus, we have been admitted as honorary members of this family—if we want to, we can become heirs with Israel of their promises. The promise of a land has turned out to be bigger than we thought: a new resurrected world—eternal life.
God has given Abraham a son, and confirmed that the promise will run through him; he is now old enough for marriage. Without offspring the promise comes to a dead halt.
Whom to marry?
When I read our passage in preparation for today, it hit me forcibly how packed it is with political incorrectness; all the questions we argue over are there: patriarchy, slavery, racism, marriage inequality, and an arranged marriage. So let me start with a political incorrectness of my own, and say: “Every man needs his woman and every woman her man.” That doesn’t mean everyone will marry or even want to marry, but it is normal, and we need normal. It may be OK to deviate from the normal, but know when you are doing that. Without a healthy sense of normal we are at sea without a compass. Without an idea of what is normal the education of our children will lead them into a swampland of confusion.
Despite its political incorrectness the story of Isaac and Rebecca is one of the most beautiful of all the stories in the Jewish Bible. It was chosen as a model by those who crafted the marriage service in our Book of Common Prayer; finally, we have the union of one man and one woman who love each other—“until death us do part.” Normal, but not common! But the author of Genesis didn’t choose this incident to give us a model of marriage. It is always good to ask after the author’s purpose, because that will be close to what God wants us to learn.
The Covenant Family
And the first message is plain enough: don’t marry a Canaanite!
There are lots of nice Canaanite girls around, but it is unthinkable to Abraham that his son should marry one of them. Why? Is this racism showing its ugly head? No, Abraham lives amongst the Canaanites and some of them are his friends and allies. But they are a people with their own gods and their own customs. Culture is a powerful thing. When you marry a girl, you marry her family and her god(s). Canaanite society—the big city—was attractive, but it was doomed. Abraham doesn’t want his son and his son’s children to merge into the Canaanite world. His thoughts turn to his father’s family who had accompanied him from Ur in Chaldea, who knew the call of God on his life.
The Slave
He called one of his slaves, the senior servant in his household, gave him the task of finding the right woman, and made him swear an oath. Only if the girl refused to come back would he be discharged from his oath.
Slavery was many things, and here we see its better side. We will not go far wrong if we think here of a successful family business, and you want to join. You live with them, because travelling on a daily basis is impossible. You serve, but others serve you; you are supported and sustained for life. Modern translations are wise not to call him a slave; a servant is closer to the mark. Here we meet a slave, who loves his master and worships his God. He could easily have absconded; ten camels loaded with precious things could set him up for life.
Of the journey we are told nothing, but to have successfully trekked one-thousand kilometers with ten camels and a team of fellow-servants he must have been younger than his master, and a capable man. We don’t know his name or anything much about him, but at the end of the journey when the camels kneel, we get a glimpse of his simple faith. He is praying to Abraham’s God and asking him to guide him.
And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love (hesed) to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love (hesed) to my master.”
Remember that God promised to bless not just Abraham and his descendants, but also those who blessed him. The servant may not have been a family member, he may not even have been a Hebrew, he could even have been a Canaanite, but in joining himself to Abraham and worshipping his God he became an heir of everlasting blessing. We will meet him one day.
It is the same for us. In the wider scheme of things, we are all insignificant people. But if we join ourselves to this covenant family—we do this through Jesus—if we join ourselves to Jesus, we become heirs of a raft of incredible promises that include everlasting glory and a name of honour, whatever our national identity.
We talk about races and racism, but there is only one race—the human race. We are all related, all cousins, however distant, all children of Adam and Eve, who by my estimate lived less than ten thousand years ago—including our Aborigines, I would guess. The differences between us are superficial; we can all be treated in the same hospitals by the same doctors and nurses. We may have different hospitals for men, women, and children, but for different people groups, no. Our ethnicities are different; they are determined by our history, language, and culture, and they are forever changing. And Jesus, by his death, has opened the kingdom of God—Abraham’s inheritance—to people of every nation and language and ethnicity and tribe. We must only be careful we do not discount the original family.
Choosing a Wife
The servant appeals to the God of his master, and asks him to show loving kindness to his master. This word, hesed, means the sort of love and loyalty someone shows to a covenant partner. The nearest equivalent in the New Testament would be charis, in English, grace; it occurs three times in this story. The servant knows Abraham and God are in partnership, so he expects God will act loyally and lovingly. And he does.
But the servant also sets up a tough test. Watering ten camels must have been a chore. Any girl healthy enough to do it, and volunteering, has got to be a quality person.
The providence involved here is miraculous. God chose a wife for Isaac. What a shock it must have been to Rebecca when the servant started loading her with gold jewelry. No wonder she ran back to her father’s house, and no wonder her brother Laban ran to find out who this was and what was going on. We meet him later on in Jacob’s story, and he is not a nice man.
Identifying Rebecca as Isaac’s intended had the fingerprints of God all over it—the family could only agree to her becoming Isaac’s wife, especially when the girl herself was willing. The servant lost no time; he was on a mission. Many valuable things were left behind with the family, but on the journey home he was carrying even more precious cargo.
The key to understanding this story, as I have said, is the importance of preserving the covenant. And this is just as important today as it ever was. I am not suggesting you arrange your child’s marriage, but from the day they are born you should be asking God to bring them to know himself, and to prepare a marriage partner for them, who will share their faith in the Lord Jesus, so that together they may raise a new family of Christ-loving, covenant-keeping children. And there will be any number of things that can be done as they grow up to orient them in this direction. We cannot guarantee the faith of our children, nor that they will find a Christian partner, but there is such a thing as normality, and God will guide us when we have to deal with something different.
For example: your teenage son pulls away from God and no longer wants to associate with Christians. His school encourages him to experiment with his sexuality. He is shy with girls, and teams up with another boy, and they decide to marry. It is cool. What will you, the parent, do? Will you change your views, or will you cut him off? Neither is necessary. He is your son; you will continue to love him. Your love for God is known to him; you can make it clear that you believe sodomy to be against the will of God. But you may see other things in their relationship which are good. You can befriend the partner. You will not stop praying for them that they will come to know the Lord Jesus, and then want to live in his way.
In today’s world, preparing our children and grandchildren for Christian marriage is more important than ever it was. The alternative is to let them merge into the pagan world around them, that is doomed.
What about those of you who are thinking about marriage for yourself. After your decision to follow Christ, the choice of a partner is probably the most important decision you will ever make. You can safely say your life will never be the same again. For good or for ill, the person you marry will redirect your destiny, and you theirs. Who you marry matters. Pray, and ask those who love you to pray. And don’t marry a Canaanite! Settle it in your mind that you will marry someone who shares your faith. That doesn’t mean a nominal Christian, but someone who belongs in the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ. You can reasonably say the life of your children and your children’s children depends on it. Marrying a believer isn’t all there is to it. Wisdom is needed in finding a partner whose dreams of the future are compatible with yours, and someone to whom you are attracted and whom you love, and who loves you.
The providence which brought Isaac and Rebecca together was wonderful—supernatural. I am sure that many of you listening today can also look back to a merciful providence, which led you to your husband or wife—not necessarily supernatural, but wonderful nonetheless. It is good to hear people’s stories of how they met and decided to marry. Some of us can honestly say, God led me to my husband / wife; this should put all thoughts of ever ending it right out of your mind.
The Marriage
After a thousand-kilometer journey Rebecca’s bridal procession arrives in the Negev.
Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel and said to the servant, “Who is that man, walking in the field to meet us?” The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
What is marriage? There was no church or minister. Isaac “caused her to come” into his mother’s tent—this is an odd touch; perhaps it was part of the cultural symbolism—the way you married back then—he brought her into his mother’s tent, and “he took her.” That means they made love. Sexual intercourse is how the marriage covenant is sealed. You now share everything, even your bodies. Sex outside marriage is wrong because you take what God has given to a couple who have committed to care for one another permanently, with no intention of commitment yourself. You steal what rightly belongs to another. But thinking of our own society, be clear that we don’t have to condemn every couple who have started living together without coming to church or a registry office. It is sad to enter into such a momentous state of life without God or family or celebration or gifts. I cannot help thinking that many young men, eager for immediate sex and unwilling to wait, deprive their partner of something she would dearly love. But a de facto relationship may be a true marriage. If there is an honest pledge to remain together for life, sealed by sexual intercourse, and possibly children, God hears and knows. If one partner walks away, it is nothing less than divorce in his eyes.
Isaac and Rebecca’s marriage was arranged, but they fell in love nonetheless. In our own culture we would wish a man and woman to fall in love before marriage, and this is good, for love—romantic love—is special, given by God, and part of his plan. The Song of Songs, part of the Wisdom literature of our Bible, is a celebration of romantic love, and its refrain, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you stir not up love until it please,”[1] means there is something mysterious and uncontrollable about falling love. Matchmaking can be dangerous. You can’t make it happen. Wanting to be in love can be a dangerous beginning to a marriage. Once again, if I may talk about normal—normal is falling in love, being so drawn to another person that you want to commit to being a life-partner. Beware of marrying when there is no mutual love; I am talking about our own culture; Muslims, Indians, and others who live among us may continue to arrange their children’s marriages. But falling in love, when love is mutual, is one of the great experiences of life. It is a glimpse of heaven.
Like the many movies I watched as a child, our story ends—and our study series—with a marriage, one of the high points of life. Isaac takes Rebecca into his mother’s tent and he loves her. To the apostle Paul it is a glimpse of the great marriage of the future between Christ and the Church: the king and his people.
A glimpse it may be, of what is to come, but only a glimpse; it does not stay the same—not in that high emotional way. It settles down, hopefully into a solid friendship, and partnership to build a family, and weather the storms of life. Rebecca would bear Jacob and Esau, and life would not always be easy, but Jacob would father the promised nation, whose destiny is still being worked out, even today.
Can I appeal to you as Christian people to contend for marriage. Increasingly, it is where the world is going to see a difference. My daughter was the only person in her class whose parents were still together. The difficulties of life-together, and the mirage that some new person might give me the heaven-on-earth I yearn for, combined with the affluence that allows us to start again, is leading us to a society of disillusioned, lonely men and women, and confused, angry children. Put God at the centre of your life. Accept that your husband or wife is the one God has chosen for you. Serve them and try to make them happy. Value your children as the precious gift of God. Teach them the way of the Lord, and show it to them. Pray with them, and teach them to pray— for Christ’s kingdom, in the world and in their own life. And pray for their future partner, should that be the way God leads them.