In the last two sermons I’ve been trying to get across that although Abraham is “the father of faith”, he truly appears to have had a problem when it came to ultimately trusting the God who called him to leave his father’s household and all the security he had there and go to a land that God would show him; and once there, God would give him numerous descendants and God would make them to be a great nation that would be a blessing to the other nations. Abraham did faithfully go but once he got to the land he had a difficult time trusting God to provide for him. Something that becomes horribly and painfully evident when he came to the brink of child sacrificing his son Isaac but God stopped him by providing a ram. Abraham then named the place, “The Lord will provide.” His lack of trust leads to Abraham striving to provide for himself and creating messes that only God can clean up.
Two moments thus far in Abraham’s story demonstrate this lack of trust. First, instead of trusting God who made the promise to make a great nation from him and his descendants to protect his life, Abraham deceitfully cashed in on Sarah’s beauty by saying she was his sister rather than his wife whenever they went somewhere new. He feared someone would kill him and take her if they knew she was his wife. Well, Pharaoh in Egypt and King Abimelech in the land of the Philistines believing her to be his sister did take Sarah to add to their collection of wives and Abraham wound up collecting a generous dowry for her. God had to clean those two messes up by threatening the lives of the two kings…and of course, Abraham got to keep the dowries making him very wealthy and in turn very powerful among the kings of Canaan land. That’s an interesting way of playing the “livestock” market, if you ask me…exploit your wife.
Second, when Abraham and Sarah had grown old and it seemed that they wouldn’t have children, in an act of slave owner privilege Sarah got Abraham to bear a child by one of her slaves, Hagar, in an attempt to make God’s promise of descendants come true. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. But then, according to promise and against all possibility God provided and Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac. And, as you would expect when an inheritance is on the line, Ishmael’s very existence became a threat to Isaac receiving the full inheritance he was entitled to being the “bloodline of the promise”. Abraham expulsed Hagar and Ishmael into the deserted wilderness of Paran where they would have certainly died had not God stepped in and provided for them.
Another moment of Abraham’s distrust that we didn’t cover was when Abraham bought land in the land that God promised to give him in order to bury Sarah. Though his neighbouring kings or tribal leaders were more than willing and adamantly tried to give Abraham a place to bury Sarah, he had to secure a spot of his own to bury his wife. He bought land in the land not trusting God to protect Sarah’s grave.
In today’s reading we find Abraham stepping in to secure a wife for Isaac instead of letting God carry through with his promise and provide a wife for Isaac. At this moment in the story it almost seems as if Abraham steps into the place of God. Similarly to how God called him, Abraham gets his most faithful servant to go to the land Abraham in faith left in order to find a wife for Isaac so that God’s promise of descendants could come about. Abraham doesn’t want Isaac to marry a Canaanite for reason we won’t get into. Abraham is afraid to let Isaac himself go and see the world because he thinks that if Isaac leaves the land that God had promised to give them, he won’t come back and God’s promise to them would become null. And, yes, by now we should be picking our jaws off the floor, astounded, and bewildered at how Abraham just can’t seem to trust God to make his own promise come true. It really is perplexing how he won’t let God provide.
So Abraham tells his faithful servant to go to the land and to the kindred God told him to leave behind and find a wife for Isaac so that God’s promise to make his descendants numerous and to be a great nation may come true. He made his faithful servant swear an oath that he would never take Isaac there. His servant faithfully up and went just like Abraham did when God told him to go. He took a small caravan along of men and ten camels and jewelry and other dowry stuff and headed out from what is southern Israel today to northern Syria. He came to a town called Nahor, which was apparently named after Abraham’s brother. Very prudently he went to the local watering hole; not the bar but rather, the well that lay outside the city, the place where he knew the young women of the town would sooner or later come parading by to get water. There by the well, he prays for God’s help for the task.
The prayer is a humdinger if not very presumptuous, but it shows if anything he realizes that he and the God of Abraham are in this task together. “Lord, grant me success, show steadfast love to your servant Abraham. Here’s the sign you’re going to give me, she will be the one who gives me a drink and offers to water the camels too.”
In a servant’s eyes, somebody offering to water the camels is a major sign of good character. Camels, when they are thirsty, will drink a lot of water…a lot of water, and they are slow about it. For ten camels it would take a couple of hours and a lot of lifting of a ten-gallon clay jar to get the job done. Lower it into the well empty, raise it up full, carry it, pour it into the trough, and do it all over.
Just as he finished praying he looked up and there was Rebekah, jar on shoulder heading down to the well. She filled her ten-gallon jar and came back up. Abraham’s servant ran to her and asked her for water. He drank water from her hand and then she offered to water the camels too. When she finished he gave her a nose ring and two bracelets. They got to talking and he found out that she was the daughter of Abraham’s nephew, Bethuel – a name which happens to mean “Dwells in God”. In a show of great hospitality Rebekah even offered him a place to stay for the night at her father’s. Abraham’s servant spontaneously praised God for bringing him to Abraham’s relatives.
Rebekah ran ahead to tell her brother Laban that they would have guests for the night. Laban ran to the well to meet the man and to invite him in. When the servant got there he refused to eat until he told why he was there. I think he knew that hiding the fact that you’re looking for a woman isn’t a good idea. He told them Abraham’s story and that Isaac needed a wife. He told him about the prayer he made at the well and how God answered perfectly. Laban and Bethuel answered, “The matter is from the Lord’ and tell him to take Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife. The servant again worshipped and then got out the dowry gifts and they celebrated.
The next day they got up and Laban and Rebekah’s mother wanted her to stay another ten days, but the servant wanted to get on his way. So they decided to do something remarkably rare in a patriarchal society, they asked Rebekah if she wanted to go. Without reserve Rebekah simply answered, “I will.” Rebekah became the second person in the story who was asked to leave the security of her father’s household and go to a land God would give her and her descendants. She unreservedly said yes and went. We should actually call Rebekah the mother of faith.
Well, I’ve tried to tell the story here in a way that you would hear the similarities between this servant’s task and God’s call to Abraham. I hope you have seen the similarities but also how they are different. In faith Abraham says yes to God’s promise left his father’s household for the land but refuses to let God provide for him once he’s on the land. So he gains his own wealth and power by deceit. He has descendants not by his wife but by her slave. He nearly kills Hagar and Ishmael. He nearly kills Isaac. Fearing he will fight with his neighbours over Sarah’s grave he buys land in the land that God said was his already. He’s afraid Isaac will forfeit the blessing and inheritance of God’s promise if he ever leaves the land. He doesn’t want Isaac marrying a Canaanite so he sends his servant back to where it all began to find Isaac a wife. Abraham just won’t let the God of the promise provide for him and fulfill his promise and instead provides for himself and strives to make the promise come true by his own efforts. Though it led to great wealth and him becoming a powerful king, it also resulted in him living in a mess of fear, deceit, hurt, acting according privilege, and treating others as expendable. It took the horror of that whole sacrificing Isaac thing for Abraham to get the message that “the Lord will provide”. But…you can’t teach an old patriarch new tricks. Abraham is who he is and God uses him and works good from his failures.
This servant, on the other hand, faithfully goes to the land Abraham by faith left behind to find a wife for Isaac. Mysteriously, the first place he stops belongs to Abraham’s brother’s family. Instead of wheeling and dealing in deceit he prays for guidance and, wondrously, before he even finishes praying, Rebekah comes along. All her family realizes this is of the Lord and don’t want to stand in the way of it. They even ask Rebekah if she will go. There is no deceit; just worship and hospitality, overly generous hospitality; and respect for the woman concerned.
I finished last week’s sermon saying that Abraham’s story leaves me with a question: what would have happened if Abraham humbly and simply did as God asked rather than sought his own gain by the promise God made to him? And also, what would life be like if we just do as God asks and let him provide rather than seeking our own gain? I think here we have somewhat of an answer. Instead of leaving a bunch of hurt and exploited people in our wake and messes that only God can clean up, if we let God provide, our relationships will be full of the abundance of God, hospitality, respect, celebration, wonder, and worship. Let us simply and humbly let God be God. Amen.
