Listen now to the voice of God in Genesis chapter 24. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had, Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to my country, my kindred, take a wife for my son Isaac. The servant said to him, Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came? Abraham said to him, See to it that you do not take my son back there. The Lord the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, to your offspring I will give this land, he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine, only you must not take my son back there. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master. And he arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. And he said, O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love 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 to my master." Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, Please, give me a little water to drink from your jar. She said, Drink, my lord. And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking. So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water, and she drew for all of his camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not. When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing half shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels and said, Please tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night? She said to him, I'm the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor. She added, we have plenty of both straw and fodder and room to spend the night. The man bowed his head and worshipped the Lord and said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsman. Then the young woman ran and told her mother's household about these things. This ends our reading of God's Word. Let's ask His blessing now upon it in a brief word of prayer. Lord, help us. Help us to grasp what you have recorded here for us in your Word. And we pray, Lord, that your Spirit would strengthen our minds, strengthen our hearts, that we might believe everything that you intend to teach us here, that we might, Lord God, internalize it, and that it might stir us up, both to faith and to good works. We ask, Lord, this in Jesus' name. Amen. At some point in life, hopefully, you begin to accept that the world will survive without you. A youth comes with a certain naive assumption of invincibility. It's going to go on forever, nothing can hurt me, nothing can stop me, but as joints begin to ache, and as hair begins to gray, season gives way to season long enough, it becomes increasingly clear that there will be an end to our story, at least, on Earth. We just hope that somebody will be around to remember that story and to benefit from it in some way. And thus, those who are wise spend time, especially in their twilight years, preparing in some way, I don't know how, but in some way to pass on their legacy and to provide for the next generation. To make an investment that will last beyond the years of their life. And such was surely the case with Abraham. What a long, strange journey he had taken as he walked with the Lord for a hundred years. After so many miles, so many promises, and so much time, Abraham understands in Genesis chapter 24 that the sun is setting on his earthly life. These are the last recorded acts we have in the book of Genesis. of Abraham. And so like any thoughtful person, he begins to think about what is to become of the next generation. And specifically, he begins to think on his son Isaac and the promises which he would inherit. God had repeatedly made generational promises to the old patriarch, and the initial fulfillment of those promises came when Isaac was born to Sarah. But as Abraham prepares to close his eyes and to breathe his last breaths, he begins to contemplate, he begins to look down through time and think about that generation after Isaac, which would only exist in terms of Abraham's lineage, if Isaac were to marry and bear children. And thus Genesis chapter 24, surprisingly, the longest chapter in the whole book devoted to this story, it focuses on Abraham's preparation for passing on the covenant promises, specifically by finding a wife for Isaac. Now the whole story here in chapter 24 hangs together quite nicely, so we could have considered the whole chapter at once, but in the interest of approaching it in more digestible portions, it is a chapter of 70 verses nearly, we're going to focus on the identification of Isaac's future wife this week, and then, Lord willing, we'll take a look at the response of the woman and her family to the proposal next week as we examine verses 29 and following. And there our focus tonight is on the identification of Isaac's future wife by divine appointment. As God reveals the woman who will secure the extension of the covenant promises unto a third generation. And that divine appointment unfolds really in two stages, which we will consider tonight in turn. In short, we find here in this passage an agenda verses 1-9, and an answered prayer in verses 10-28. So an agenda and an answered prayer. We begin with an agenda in verses 1-9. When we speak of an agenda, more precisely, we're talking about Abraham's agenda, which he gives to his servant to execute on his behalf. But before we jump right into the details of that, we want to note that our text begins with a bit of a prelude. Summing up where we're at in the book of Genesis, verse one says, Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. From our perspective, Abraham has been old since this story started. He was a man in the 70s when the Lord first called him out of the land of his father's, but now he's really old, really old. And as he has reached this elderly state, the Bible declares, matter-of-factly, that he is blessed. Don't miss the significance of that. Don't miss the significance of that. God has promised him blessing on many occasions. We have seen signs of blessing on many occasions. But now the Bible says, in a very straightforward, settled manner, that Abraham was blessed. God had given him so many gifts, foremost among them being his very presence and favor, and the covenant had borne the fruit that it was going to bear in his life. So that's a prelude, and with that prelude before us, we can surmise that what happens next is in the interest of passing on that blessing that Abraham wants to give not just to Isaac, but to Isaac's children. The text tells us that he takes the oldest servant of his household, chief among him, who was kind of in charge of things, and he calls on that servant to swear an oath. Particularly, Abraham wants the servant to swear that he will adopt his master's agenda for finding Isaac. Why? He is to promise before the Lord, the God of Heaven and the God of Earth, that he will go back to Abraham's ancestral homeland in Mesopotamia and find Isaac a wife among his kindred, rather than marrying him off to some Canaanite woman in the land. And he's to make this promise with his hand under Abraham's thigh near his groin, it's a bit strange here, in an oath-swearing ritual that evidently was more familiar to the ancients than to us. This practice is pretty obscure from our vantage point, but insofar as we can interpret what's going on here, it seems to have involved a placing of the hand in a somewhat intimate place near to the member of procreation, which in Abraham's case was marked with that covenant sign of circumcision, and this was done as a way of verifying that one would carry out their duties which pertained to the future, that would carry on into future generations. We're going to see this again towards the end of the book of Genesis, this same sort of ritual, and it's in that case too, a promise to do something in the future. However, before the servant was willing to do this, He needed a little bit of clarification. What would happen if he went all the way back to Mesopotamia? This is not a short trip. This is even worse than driving to Gatlinburg and getting stuck in traffic. I mean, this is a long journey. He goes all the way back to Mesopotamia and he finds a woman, but she won't come back. Would it be advisable in that case to go back and get Isaac, take him to the woman? And Abraham has a very decisive opinion on this matter. He says in verse 6, see to it that you do not take my son there. See, God had called Abraham out of that land. And Abraham had obediently departed and obeyed. Taking Isaac back there would be like traveling back in time. It would be like undoing the last hundred years. Isaac needed to stay promised land. But Abraham is actually hopeful that this will be no impediment to the servant. He explains to the servant that the same God who had promised Canaan to him and his offspring would send his angel to go with the servant. Thereby, invisibly, supernaturally, guaranteeing his ability to take a wife for Isaac from that place. but lest Abraham appear in the servant's eyes to be requiring something impossible, he gives him something right now. In verse 8 he says, but if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine only. You must not take my son back there. Abraham is not asking for his servant to work a miracle. The miracle is going to be left up to God. And so having heard this out, having heard this clarification, the servant is willing put his hand under Abraham's thigh and swear to carry out his agenda. He would go back to Mesopotamia not taking Isaac with him. And he would retrieve a bride for him from among Abraham's kindred. Observe in this agenda the faith and wisdom of Abraham. They're both present. It's hard for us today to imagine navigating the world of arranged marriages. There's something about that that repulses most of us, just because it's so foreign to us. We think it ought to be, you know, love at first sight. You get the butterflies, and that's how you know she's the one. And so this sort of practice is quite foreign to our modern sensibilities, but it was considered a fatherly duty in the ancient world to provide spouses for one's children. And since it was the norm in the world of the patriarchs, Abraham seizes the opportunity and he navigates here in this text challenging terrain quite skillfully. We should especially see here that Abraham exhibited faith and wisdom by being selective and his choice of a wife for his son. He was not content with Isaac marrying any old gal. The woman needed to be from Mesopotamia on his kindred. But Isaac was not to go to Mesopotamia to get her. That's faith and wisdom. How? Why? Why is that faith and wisdom? What drives that very peculiar agenda? Maybe your first inclination is to think to yourself, well, Abraham is concerned that his son marry in the faith rather than marrying a pagan. That's why he wants Isaac to marry someone in his family rather than someone from Canaan. And that sounds nice. Remember, Abraham came from a family of pagans that lived in a pagan land. Joshua describes the father of Abraham as a man that worshiped other gods. And no doubt, as the later story of Jacob and his wives seems to indicate, that sort of idolatry had continued to plague those who remained behind in Mesopotamia when Abraham departed. So that's not what's really going on here, but even if Abraham is not concerned that his son's wife be solely devoted to Yahweh, I mean, it was kind of assumed in that day and age, in that culture, that the woman would take the husband's gods anyways, so that wasn't a big concern. But his concern was still religious. His concern was still religious. What was his religious concern? Well, primarily, when he gave these very peculiar instructions, set this very peculiar agenda, he was thinking of those old covenant promises. He paid attention to the details over the years. Recall that God had promised to give Abraham and his offspring the land of Canaan for a possession. That implies two things. First, it implies that Abraham's offspring need to be in the land of Canaan to actually inherit it. Need to be there. And second, it implies that those currently living in the land The Canaanites would need to be violently disinherited. The Canaanites were going to come under a punishment. They were going to be forced out. So Isaac's wife can't be a Canaanite. The Canaanites are on their way out. That is a very clear implication of the covenant promises. If God's word is true, the Canaanites are going to say bye bye. They're going to be conquered in the conquest during those days of Joshua. So it can't be a Canaanite. It ought to be a Mesopotamian, someone of Abraham's household. But Isaac can't go to Mesopotamia because his family needs to be in the land in order to take possession of it. It's possible that if he goes back there to get a wife, he'll never get back. He'll never make it home. and sorts of family relationships entangle us easily. Particularly when Isaac would be an extreme minority in a land of pagans, worshiping pagan gods. Abraham understands and he believes all this. And thus, with faith in the promise and wisdom in navigating his circumstances, he outlines a very pointed agenda for his servant. And all of this reminds us As we see that the extreme emphasis that he's placed on the wife of Isaac, the extreme care that he has shown, all of this reminds us that God works out His purposes amid the ordinariness of our lives. What do we mean? We all wish, don't we, that we could have divine, supernatural encounters with God like Abraham. That would really seal it for us. But at the end of the day, you see, Abraham realized that the persistence of the covenant on his end, on his family's end, it couldn't be premised on repeated appearances of God in these extraordinary ways. God had taken the initiative. He had come to Abraham. He had revealed himself on many occasions. But he didn't reappear every day and announce the promises afresh. No, the continuity of the covenant line within Abraham's family was premised in large part on his son getting the right wife. Ordinary things. Only if that were to happen, would all the things that God had promised amid those extraordinary appearances, only then would they work out. Because you needed a new generation, and a new godly generation. And surely, the fact that God works out these grand promises in the ordinariness of life is no less true today. Whether we marry, who we marry, how we conduct ourselves as a family, how we relate to one another, all of these things have profound impact on our walk with God and our own reception of the promises. The differences between marriage to a godly spouse and marriage to an unbelieving spouse can be dramatic. I've seen it over and over again. And so we ought to share the concerns of Abraham. We ought to pray for our own family. We ought to pray for families around us. We ought to pray for the younger generation preparing to create families of their own. And we have to praise specifically that God would allow these families to order their affairs and their relationships in a manner which is conducive to maintaining and passing down the faith. That's what Abraham was concerned about, and that's what we ought to be concerned about as well. May we all share Abraham's deep-seated desire, borne by faith, to extend the covenant to yet another generation. And may we all share his faith that God can indeed bring it to pass. God can work these things out. And so we see here in the first nine verses of this chapter the agenda that Abraham sets for his servant to go retrieve a wife for Isaac. Now let's take a look at an answered prayer in the remainder of our passage. Specifically, we're talking here about a prayer offered, as we're going to see in a moment, by Abraham's servant. In verse 10, The servant, we're never told his name. Some have speculated maybe it was Eliezer who was going to be Abraham's heir before Ishmael was born, before Isaac was born. But we're not told. That's speculation. Who knows? This servant, though, he sets out on his journey obediently with ten camels, which, you know, we tend to think everybody was riding around on camels back in those days in this part of the world. Not so. Not so. Camels were rare at this point in history, at least in the biblical historical window. In Abraham's day, they were rare. And they were loaded down with gifts from Abraham. And so these things would serve as part of a bridal price. and they would have been impressive to onlookers. If you saw this caravan coming in, you would know this was a man with some money. And having formed this caravan of gift-bearing camels, Abraham's servant sets off for Canaan. Perhaps Abraham, it doesn't say exactly in chapter 24, but maybe, probably, he's still dwelling there near Hebron where he purchased that field in the cave of Machpelah where he had buried his wife. And he sets off from Canaan on his way to Mesopotamia. He's headed, we're told, for the city of Nahor, meaning simply the city where his brother had lived. And maybe this was just another name for Haran, where Abraham had left his brother Nahor so long ago. Either way, though, we know that it is a journey of hundreds of miles, five, six, seven hundred miles, depending on different estimates, which probably would have taken around a month by camel. But unlike the Lord of the Rings, this text is not concerned with the journey itself at all. Because in the very next verse, the servant has arrived. If we were to compare it, it's like we step straight from the shire to the foot of Mount Doom, forget about everything in between. Surely something interesting happened to the servant on that long journey? Don't know anything about that. Because in verse 11, he's there. He and his camels, they're exhausted for their long trek, but they're there at the outskirts of the city, and so they stop at the well outside the city. So that the servant can water himself, and water his camels. He decides, because they've arrived there at the time of day when women ordinarily came out when it wasn't so hot, they'd come out and draw water for their households. He decides to use this as an opportunity to offer up a prayer for the successful completion of his mission. And as he makes his prayer, it's oddly specific. He sets up a sort of test by which he wanted God to guide him to the right woman. He asked the Lord to grant him success and to show love to Abraham by sending a woman who would respond in a certain way to his request for water. He would ask a woman for a drink from her jar of water, and if she offered a drink for him and for his camels, then he would know she was the chosen woman. Now let's be clear. God is under no obligation to pass our tests. And so I wouldn't necessarily recommend that you use the servant's prayer as a model prayer. It can be dangerous to base our decisions on God's willingness to meet parameters that we have set. That can be dangerous. But, Abraham, he had promised that God would send his angel with his servant. And so he had reason to believe that God was going to be a little more direct in answering his prayers. And so he prays and God, he answers. He answers. And God's answer is to reveal Isaac's future wife by way of what I've called a divine appointment. Everyone shows up in the right place, the right time, saying the right things. Look at verse 15. Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebecca, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, she came out with her water jar on her shoulder." The servant had not even finished offering his prayer and God was already answering it. He didn't know it yet, but the woman approaching the well, as he was praying, she wasn't just one of Abraham's kindred. The language here is really trying to make us think of a member of his ancestral clan. Sort of that mid-range between your family and your tribe. So this is, the clan would encompass many distant relatives. But this is not just a member of Abraham's ancestral clan. She's Abraham's great-niece. The first cousin once removed of Isaac, if you'd like to do your genealogy stuff. This was a near relative. That's not exactly what we look for in our marriages. But it's the very thing that Abraham was looking for. Someone from his family to be a wife for his son. And seeing that the woman who was approaching the well was an attractive young woman who had never been with a man, maybe that was signified by the clothes that she was wearing. Some of this stuff was coded in the way they conducted themselves. The servant figured that he would spring his test on her. She went down to the spring, he ran the meter, and he asked for a little water from her jar. And in response, she lets down her jar and she gives him a drink. And then lo and behold, verse 19 tells us that when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I'll draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking. Here's a woman who seems to meet the parameters that the servant had set out in his prayer. Now you might think to yourself, how is this in any way identified? Okay, you can imagine offering a drink of water to somebody who was thirsty. And you might think to yourself, well surely it's only polite to offer to, I don't know, set a little water dish out for their dog, or something like that. You know, that's not all that peculiar. So how is this identifying in any way? Well, think about it. This is a hospitable and welcoming woman who's not just willing to set out a water dish for the dog. She is willing to water ten camels out of a small jar she had carried down to the well. And she was willing to do so until they were satiated. What she was offering was not something small. This is dozens of trips between the well and the trough. Back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. She was offering something big. This was peculiar. So she did. She wearied herself running back and forth, over and over again, filling her jar, dumping it in front of these ten thirsty camels. Filling up those humps. She did it without complaint. And thus, the servant were told, there in verse 21, the servant gazed at her in silence, wondering whether God had granted him success or not. She certainly seemed like an answer to prayer. But would she be willing, personally, to entertain a marriage? Is this the right one? And he would soon find out, as he becomes a little more forthright, he begins to lavish gold rings and bracelets upon her. This must have been quite strange to her. And he begins asking about her family, he begins asking about a place to stay. Maybe she thought, this guy's really thankful for the water. But it's at this juncture that she reveals herself to be not just any old woman, but the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore in Ahor. The servant's now learning what we already know. Abraham's servant here discovers that he's standing not just with some member of Abraham's distant relative in his clan. No, she's standing with his brother Nahor's kin. She's prepared to invite him and his camels back to their home where marriage negotiations would soon take place. And seeing that his prayer was answered before his very eyes, Abraham, certainly, he begins praying again. He bows his head, he worships the Lord, he says, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way, the house of my master's kinsman, through divine appointment. Through divine appointment in the providence of God, Isaac's future wife had surely been found. And thus the first part of our story ends with Rebecca running back to her house to tell them about the encounter with the man at the well. This is an amazing account for many reasons. We'll consider a couple. First, this does show us the meticulous providence of God in ordering our lives. But before Abraham's servant had ever begun to pray, God was setting everything in motion to get the servant and Rebekah to the well at the same time. God was totally in charge, and He is totally in charge. Don't ever forget that. We should derive a lot of comfort from that truth, especially if we're believers. If we're looking to Him for our blessings, for guidance for our lives. In the words of Isaiah chapter 65, verse 24, we serve a God who says this, Before they call, I will answer. While they are yet speaking, I will hear. He's always at work, long before we are, to bring His purposes and His plans to pass in our lives. Do you believe that? Do you live as if it were true? Do you pray as if it were true? He's at work even when you're lazing about. And thanks be that it is so. So this passage shows us the meticulous providence of God in ordering the lives of His servants, everything necessary to accomplish His will. Second, this account also provides us with a brilliant example of faithful reliance upon the God who providentially orders all things. See, Abraham's servant, we talked this morning, didn't we, for those who were here, about servants who esteem their master worthy of all honor, especially if they're brothers in the Lord. They're willing to do a good service for those whom they serve. And certainly, Abraham's servant embodies that. He's willing, in a sense, to go to the ends of the earth in order to esteem his master worthy of honor and to do a good thing for him. And so he goes where he's told for the sake of the covenant promises. And when he goes, he prays for the Lord's success, the outset of his assignment. He meditates upon what the Lord is doing as it's happening. Remember, he gazed upon her and began to think about whether this would be the answer to his prayer. And then he thanks the Lord and praises him when he realizes that his request has been granted. He bathed the whole process in humble, reliant, faith-filled prayer. I may have argued earlier that the servant's particular prayer probably shouldn't serve as a model for us, but his piety and his prayerful dependence upon the Lord certainly do set an example for us. And so, think about your own life. Are you communing with the Lord and depending upon Him as you face the tasks before you? Do you plead with the Lord to provide for you and guide you and to show His steadfast love towards you? Are you mindful, you think about it, of the ways in which He is at work in all of your circumstances throughout the day? Or do you say your morning prayers and you don't give Him another thought until the moment you lay your head down on the pillow? Do you remember to thank Him when He comes through on what you've asked Him, saying with the servant of Abraham, blessed be the Lord? If that's not you, well take some cues from Abraham's servant. The old patriarch, he discipled his servant well. Well catechized, well discipled, ready to serve. And we would do well to learn from his examples as we watch the Lord in this passage answering his prayers. And so we ought to be, like that servant of old, quick to pray and quick to praise. Reliance upon the God of the providence. Well, in Genesis 24 through 28, we see Abraham set an agenda for a servant whereby he would ensure covenant continuity among the coming generations. And when the servant went out to execute his agenda, the Lord answered his prayers. He revealed the woman who was to become Isaac's wife by way of divine appointment. There at the well, he finds a bride who would enter into the covenant, who would receive all of its promises by virtue of marrying herself to the covenant head. It's worth noting that this is something of a pattern in scriptures. On a number of occasions we find men going down to wells looking for wives in order that the covenant might be passed on to a new generation. This is not the only time it even happens in the book of Genesis. It's going to happen again in the case of Isaac's son Jacob as he goes down to a well and finds a bride. It's going to happen for Moses in the book of Exodus as he goes down to a well and finds a bride. And what I'm going to argue here, briefly as we close, is that in a profound spiritual sense, it happens with Jesus, our Lord, in John chapter 4. Did you catch the similarities between the stories? There are lots of them. Jesus travels in that story to a land that is not his own. He travels to the land of Samaria. People that the Jews weren't even supposed to associate with. And he arrives at Jacob's well. Jacob is another one of these men who goes to a well and finds himself at water. And then a woman comes down to the well and Jesus, like the servant, asks her for a drink of water. Soon, Jesus begins speaking of something he calls living water. And suddenly the woman is wanting him to give her a drink. And in the conversation that ensues, the Samaritan woman is revealed to be a woman not like Rebecca, who had never known a man, but on the contrary, a woman with a long history. when it came to husbands. She was not a virgin. She was a woman who had had five husbands, and now she was a woman that was with a man that she wasn't married to at all. Not a particularly suitable candidate for marriage, obviously. But you see, by meeting with her at the well, and offering her living water, Jesus reveals himself to be the sort of suitor that far surpassed Isaac and Jacob and Moses. He came not simply to enter into a physical marital union with some woman. I'm not saying that Jesus was actually trying to make this woman his wife, but he is in fact trying to take for himself a spiritual bride whom he would draw into covenant and nourish unto eternal life. Consider some of the language there in John chapter 4. In John chapter 4 verse 23, the hour is coming is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking. We have another seeking Father here in the text of John chapter 4. Seeking such people to worship Him. And so Jesus finds a Samaritan woman who would have been considered a foreigner, a woman outside of the covenant family. And suddenly, He's making a proposal that would bring her into the covenant family and make her heir to the promises. See, we learn in that story that Jesus had come to show love to the unlovely. She's not the woman we would seek out. We were looking for a good Christian woman. But Jesus comes to her, and he offers her living water. If only she would, in this spiritual sense, betroth herself to him by faith. And in the case of the woman at the well, well, she leaves her water jar behind, and like Rebecca, runs back home. to tell others what she had experienced. She believes, and through her testimony others believe, that Jesus is the Savior, and thus the covenant promises passed down not just to Jews, but to this half-breed group, which was despised by the Jews. The covenant promises come even to them, these semi-pagan people, through union with the covenant head, the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus, in these actions, and in His ministry, and through the Gospel call of both the Jews and Gentiles, He fulfills the pictures which we find in these scenes at Wells in the Old Testament. The old patriarchs, they went down to get a bride so that the covenant could go on. Jesus draws for Himself a bride from among the nations that He might fulfill all that had been promised to Abraham. and grant it to as many as will believe. Congregation, have you received God's blessings and promises through this marital union with the covenant head, the Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus came to take for himself a bride. The Father was seeking worshipers who would unite themselves to Him. And it's only through being part of that bride, which is the church, to be clear, that our deepest internal thirst and our spiritual longings can be satisfied. This is the only way to eternal life. And so we must all entrust ourselves to the God of providence, who answers prayers and receive Jesus to be not just some distant deity, but our beloved. Our beloved. Because through him we can be grafted into the covenant. becoming a people who rest in the favor of God and in his blessing. May God grant us all an entrance into that blessed union through the divine appointment of his own choosing. Let's pray.