Our text tonight is Genesis chapter 24 as we continue the story of Abraham. Abraham has come a long ways in his walk of faith. We find him now in chapter 24 quite, we could say, tempered in his typical desire to try to kind of help the promises of God move along and try to do his own thing to make them come to pass. He has learned the lesson that we all have to learn. God is faithful, and therefore we should just obey Him. We should do things His way. Let's look tonight, Genesis 24, verses 1 through 14, which say this, now Abraham was old, advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in every way. Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, please place your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live, but you will go to my country and to my relatives and take a wife for my son Isaac. The servant said to him, suppose the woman is not willing to follow me to this land, should I take your son back to the land from where you came? Then Abraham said to him, beware 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 birth and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying, to your descendants, I will give this land. He will send his angel before you, and you will 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, my oath, only do not take my son back there. So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. Then the servant took 10 camels from the camels of his master and set out with a variety of good things of his master's in his hand. 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 evening time, the time when women go out to draw water. He said, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show loving kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, I'm standing by the spring and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Now may it be that the girl to whom I say, please let down your jar so that I may drink, and who answers, drink, and I will water your camels also. May she be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac, and by this I will know that you have shown loving kindness to my master. Let's pray for God's blessing on the preaching of his word this evening. Our Father in heaven, As we look at the continuing story of Abraham, as we see in it the changes that you have brought about through all sorts of trials and tribulations in his life. I pray, Father, that as we look at his story, we would recognize our own stories, that we would see how you, over time, how you grow us, how you build and strengthen our faith so that we would walk in obedience to you. And may we, Father, like Abraham, as we grow older, may we emulate his faith and his obedience, and may we live a life that is pleasing to you, based upon all the good things that you have done for us. So help us, please, in Jesus' name, amen. Being independent and self-sufficient are some of the qualities that we value the most in our society. The kind of get-or-done attitude that pervades lots of what we do. You know, take the bull by the horns and act instead of talking about acting. That's behind the success of all sorts of endeavors in this life. And there's a sense in which we don't want to dismiss that. We want to recognize that that's a reality in this world, and it's a reality for success in this world. It's even a biblical idea, right? Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Yet in scripture, we find that there can be a misguided approach to certain tasks in life. And if we follow the wrong path, it'll take us down a place of sorrow, a place of destruction. We think about Adam and Eve, right? They acted independently of God. You could say they took the bull by the horns, that God had made them promises that were symbolized in the tree of life, and they decided that through their actions, they would try to kind of move the promise along, move them into the place where they could have everything they wanted. Their failure to acknowledge God took them, and by extension, every one of us down a path of destruction and pain and death. We look at the life of Abraham. We see how often he did the same thing. God gave him a promise, right? Constantly, Abraham is trying to bring about the promise by his own means. And every time he does, every time he acts independently of God, it brought about a disaster. It didn't end well for him. Abraham has learned his lessons. Maybe he didn't learn them totally and ultimately, but the narrative is depicting an Abraham who has learned God is faithful. God's just going to do what God says he's going to do. God's going to keep his word and And his only response now is trust in God's word and just do whatever God says to do. Ian Duguid, as he's commenting on this chapter, speaks of his father-in-law. He says, my father-in-law's a great fan of second hesitations. He says, this is a mythical extra book of the Bible containing all those well-known sayings that people think are in the Bible, but which are not. He says, a good example is the saying attributable to John Wesley, cleanliness is next to godliness. That's not in the Bible anywhere, actually, though it should be. Another, he says, almost biblical saying is the proverb, God helps those who help themselves, right? How many of us have heard that? This is, he says, many people's motto in life. It was in many ways Abraham's favorite text in his early walk with God. But his life's journey was a process of abandoning that text in favor of a genuine text. Genesis 22, 14, the Lord will provide. He says we've seen how he was repeatedly faced with the temptation to take shortcuts, to try to help fulfill the promise and over the years. He grew in his power to resist it. And our text today is a demonstration of that growth, growing in the power to resist the temptation to try to get in there and make things happen, to try to make the promise come about. Instead of doing what was, we're gonna say pragmatic, we'll say slash practical, we'll even say, instead of acting by common sense, whatever would be easiest or expedient, Abraham just decides to obey God. And as sojourners and strangers, which is what the previous section, remember, was talking about, we're just like Abraham, sojourners and strangers in a land that's not our own. We need a roadmap. We need God to tell us, how do we live in this world and not become part of the world? How do we live in this world as strangers and aliens? And how do we overcome this tendency to try to make things happen? How do we get over all of that and learn how to wait on the Lord and just obey His commands? Well, because God is faithful, we should obey Him. Why? Why should we obey God? Number one, first point tonight, we'll be answering that question. We should obey God because God has blessed us in every way. That is our top primary motivation for obedience to God. Now the question becomes, how should we obey him? So we have a why, we have a motivation, and we have two hows. We should obey him even when it doesn't seem practical. And then number two, we should obey him prayerfully and wisely. So let's begin with that motivation, which is so important for us. We should obey God because God has blessed us. Notice the first verse of chapter 24. Now Abraham was old, advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in every way. Right, this is in fact the theme of all of our lives. Whether we want to recognize it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, God has blessed us in every way. Paul tells us in Ephesians, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Everything that's happening in our life is a blessing from God. Again, whether you recognize it or not, whether you see it as such or not. Abraham, in all those years where he doesn't have a son, probably thought this isn't much of a blessing. Right? This is a real bummer. But in fact, God is working all things together for good for those who love him. And so, as we're considering this, we need to hear the good news of how God has blessed us over and over and over again. We need to especially reflect on the saving work of Jesus Christ, that Jesus has taken away the greatest problem in your life, which is your sin, how he has washed you clean from your iniquity. And then he has covered you in your shamefulness. He has covered you in perfect righteousness. I mean, these are the blessings that right now we may think little of. because they don't do much for us in this world, but we have a whole eternity to consider. But we also, we need to look back at our lives and learn how to discern God's blessing along every step of the way, how God has blessed us in the past in ways that probably at the time we couldn't see the blessing, but maybe As we grow old and we advance in age, we're able to look back and say, ah, I see why God did that. I see why that was a blessing. I see why that brought about something good. We need to learn how to look at our present circumstance and expect that God is blessing us even when we don't see it. So now we have Abraham. He's old. He's advanced in years and he was in a place where he could look back at his life now and could really see God worked everything in his life together for good. And seeing those blessings, seeing how God was faithful to keep his word, this motivates Abraham now to order his life according to God's commandments. Notice verses two through four. Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, please place your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live, but you will go to my country and to my relatives and take a wife for my son, Isaac. The whole idea of the hand under the thigh, that was how they shook hands on things back then. Really weird, right? It's kind of like the kiss of love that Paul commends. Let's not put our hands on each other's thighs and kiss each other and all that. We just shake hands, right? Don't think too much of it, but that's how they sealed the deal back then. So this happens because they're making an oath with one another here. But what I want you to see, I want you to see how Abraham has changed. Abraham's no longer driven by convenience. He's no longer driven by an expediency in life. He's not driven by that previous desire that we saw in him, that he's just gonna take matters into his own hands. Like, oh man, there's a famine, let's go down to Egypt, get out of the promised land, go to where there's food, and there's where we'll survive. He's not driven by his wife's suggestion that he take Hagar and make this promise come to pass. In fact, The motivation of God's blessings in the midst of his mistakes is what has taught him the best way to ensure that the promises of God will come to pass is that he will just simply trust God and obey God. You'll do what God tells them to do. And it seems right here that we have a very early principle that you're to marry in the Lord, right? We're not to marry those who are outside of the faith. He doesn't want his son to marry a Canaanite. He doesn't want to risk bringing Isaac a wife who is given to pagan idolatry, who is given to false gods who would lead his son away from the one true God. And so he's going to do his best to find a woman who is of godly character for his son. Now, this is where a reflection on God's blessings will help you to organize your life according to God's wisdom and not your own, right? As you think about, okay, in my past, when I've done what God told me to do, that worked out pretty well. In the circumstances where I didn't organize my life in the way that God said I ought to do, it didn't work out so well. Things usually, I would say almost always, fell apart and turned into a disaster. Right here you have a great motivation, seeing the life of Abraham, to obey God on the basis of the fact that God does bless obedience. God blesses us when we do the right thing. There's your motivation, right? God wants us to obey him. He wants us to do what's right. And in the doing of good, we find blessings. Now, how? How do we obey God in this way? Number one, we should obey him even when it doesn't seem practical. If there's a lesson that we can drive home tonight, it's this one, okay? Notice verses five through nine. The servant said to him, suppose the woman's not willing to follow me to this land. Should I take your son back to the land from where you came? Abraham said to him, Beware 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 birth and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying to your descendants, I will give this land. He will send his angel before you and you will take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman's not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this, my oath. Only do not take my son back there. So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning the matter. Okay, one of the most profound lessons that the church has to learn today is that just because a course of action seems practical, just because it seems like it's the right thing to do, does not make it the right course of action. Very often we find ourselves in willful disobedience against God because we reason our way out of the right course of action. This is a hard lesson to learn, right? Because our mind so quickly goes to like a practical, pragmatic, expedient response rather than, okay, what does God just say to do here? What is God's word on this, right? I mentioned earlier, Abraham once leaves the promised land. He goes down to Egypt. Why? Well, it wasn't because he was tempted by false gods. It wasn't because he was tempted by riches or women or anything like that. It's because there's a famine. in the promised land. There was no food. There was a drought. And so in his mind, he decided, oh, well, I've got to take care of myself. So I'll just head down to Egypt where there is no famine. That's where I'm going to go. And as we see that narrative carried out in Genesis, that was a course of unbelief that led to disaster. If God had not mercifully intervened in the life of Abraham at that point, there would have been all kinds of disasters that would have come about. It makes sense. right, for Isaac to go to Nahor. It makes sense for him to be there to pick out his wife, right? This isn't like some weird patriarchal, yeah, I'll choose my son's wife for him. None of that's happening here. We don't have the law of Moses. We don't have arranged marriages in that sense. This is, it's as strange as it sounds in every way. It makes perfect sense that if the woman is hesitant about going back, that Isaac gotta go down and meet her so that they can know, hey, we're compatible, this is gonna work out really well for us. And none of the plan makes any sort of practical sense. But remember this, God loves to make foolish the wisdom of the world. that God enjoys this. And I mean, all throughout the scriptures, this is what we find. God taking worldly, practical, pragmatic, expedient wisdom and making it foolish with what Paul calls the foolishness of God, right? Foolish things like this plan right here. Isaac. It's very clear God doesn't want Abraham or Isaac to leave the promised land. It's very clear God doesn't want Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman. Those two principles direct the course of actions that follow instead of practicality or what we might say is human sensibility. Now, that's so important. I want to camp there for just a moment. If you would look at the New Testament in Matthew chapter 16, Matthew 16's got a lot of really good stuff. Verses 21 through 23, I think, make this point as vividly as it can be made. Again, Matthew 16, 21. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord, this shall never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's. That's the most severe rebuke that Jesus gives in the entire Bible. Get behind me, Satan, he says to Peter. Why did Jesus say that? Peter loved Jesus. He proves this later at the end of the book of John, right? Peter wants Jesus to stay alive. He doesn't want Jesus to get tortured. He's thinking, Jesus, we've got to avoid Jerusalem because if we go there, the chief priests and the rulers are going to take you. They're going to torture you. They're going to arrest you. They're going to kill you. It doesn't make any sense for us to start moving towards Jerusalem so that you could be arrested and tortured and killed. That's folly. May it never be, Jesus. Get your mind out of that folly and let's do what's right. Let's use practical wisdom to solve this problem. And Jesus tells him, You have misdirected motives. Your motives are so wrong. You have become the tool of Satan and a stumbling block to Jesus himself because you are fixed on the interests of men and not on the interests of God. So often, our lives are directed by our own self-interest. not on what God tells us to do. God asks us to do hard, difficult things, and we want to kind of ease our way out of them, find a reason not to do them, find a reason to avoid it. That doesn't seem practical. That's going to create a problem. Why would I say or why would I do that? And here again, we find Abraham. In a situation just like that, this is going to be hard to find a woman for Isaac under these circumstances, but he's learned. There are basic principles that we have to follow. Don't take the Canaanite pagan wife, and don't leave the promised land. Stay in the promised land where you belong. And this is exemplifying something that's so very important, and it's right in the heart of Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, where it says, Don't think that you can solve the problem practically in your own mind. Instead, in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight. So Abraham's done with his own ways. He's figured out, my ways are the bad ways. My practicalities have ended in disaster every time. So he's done with trying to make things happen on his own. And this is because he's old now. He's seen the folly of his own understanding and trying to do his own stuff. And so as a man of principle now, he's become a man with character. And so he's directed by principles, not by whims. he believes God can do the impossible. And so he sends his servant on an impossible task. Notice this, verses 10 through 14. Then the servant took 10 camels from the camels of his master and set out with a variety of good things of his masters in his hand. 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 evening time, a time when women go out to draw water. He said, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show loving kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, I'm standing by the spring, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Now may it be that the girl to whom I say, please let down your jars so that I may drink, and who answers, drink, and I will water your camels also. May she be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac, and by this I will know that you have shown loving kindness to my master. I want you to notice the servant here, and how he approaches this task, and he makes it even more difficult. And he approaches it with two mediums for accomplishing it, okay? The first medium's prayer, and the second one is godly wisdom. Okay, godly wisdom is being exemplified here. So, he's following the underlying principle, no Canaanite women, no pagan idolaters, and no taking Isaac along, but he's got a better medium to solve this, prayer and biblical wisdom, or godly wisdom. Now, that still, though, as you think about the underlying principles, he can't be a Canaanite woman, and he can't take Isaac. That doesn't narrow the field much. I don't know how many people or how many women were in the world at that time, but he hasn't narrowed it down even within a few thousand at this point. So what does he do? Well, first of all, he begins by acknowledging the Lord. You notice his prayer in verse 12. Oh Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show loving kindness to my master Abraham. He starts not by thinking, well, if I just, if I figure this out in my own mind, I can make things happen, but rather he takes it to the Lord. That's so vital in our lives. It's this step that we just kind of, we think we don't have to take it for some reason, but throughout scripture, we have to bear in mind, we are called to ask. Scriptures call on us to ask God for success. Again, God loves to make foolish the wisdom of the world. God loves when we have these impossible requests that cannot be fulfilled through any human means. And yet we come to him in prayer and we say, you are a God who can do the impossible. And I'm asking you now, do something impossible. Give me success in this impossible task of finding a wife for Isaac. Now, acknowledging God begins in prayer. It begins with that humble confession, I can't do this. I can't make this happen. Not your way. My way is going to mess it up. You're going to have to make this happen. As James tells us, but if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him." In Matthew 7, 7 through 11, we have this whole story of the father, loaves and a snake, and Jesus ends it saying, ask, just ask, and God is there to give you what you need. And so the servant knows the task, he knows the parameters of the task, he sees the impossibility of the task, so he prays to the God who does the impossible. Now, he's also gotta narrow it down. He's gotta know which woman is the woman that God has chosen for Isaac. So success, he has to know what that success is. So what he does is he utilizes, we're just gonna call it godly wisdom. In verses 13 and 14, he talks about the woman that he wants to come out. The woman that it is, is one to whom he says, please let down your jars so that I may drink, and who answers, drink, and I will water your camels also. Now, He is establishing a test here that does a few things. Number one, to identify the woman that God wants. Secondly, that test is going to weed out a lot of women, right? Who, when they're coming out to get their own water, which is, I mean, if you've ever carried a five-gallon bucket of water around, at least they've got a handle on them, and it's hard to carry. But they had these clay pots that they had to go and fill up with water. Now, who comes out, fills up their thing, a stranger asks for a drink, and then you say, hey, by the way, could I go ahead and just water all 10 of your camels as well? You can imagine how much water camels drink. What this is doing is it's a test to measure the character of the woman who comes out. Right, he's really narrowing down the kind of woman that he wants to bring back to Isaac. And so he doesn't say the next beautiful woman to come out, let it be her. He doesn't say the first woman who agrees to this plan, let it be her. He sets the bar even higher because he wants a woman of character for Isaac, right? There's a whole sermon right there, you know, in this woman of character, one who is kind, one who is generous, one who is given to hospitality to strangers. And and it's interesting as we read this, how little our culture cares for character anymore. Right. As Christians, we should value godly character above everything. We should value godly character of a beauty. We should value it above wealth, riches, compatibility. passion, all of those things. You should value godly character above your reputation. That's another whole sermon right there, but that's very important. It is better to have a godly character and have everybody lie about you than it is to have a good reputation and a poor character. There are millions and millions of beautiful people in this world all over, right? Physical beauty is not hard to find. It's really not rare. But a godly character, a godly character is, you know, that's a rare diamond. And it's more precious than any other attribute that a person could have. And so biblical wisdom prayerfully seeks out the things that God values. Now, Obeying God, as we've seen, is motivated by the acknowledgement of his blessings. It is carried out not according to human wisdom, but on the principles and commandments of his word. It is done prayerfully, and you see how the servant incorporates godly wisdom into the task. He applies godly wisdom to the situation, even when the godly wisdom makes the situation more difficult. And I think that's a great lesson for all of us about obedience. Abraham, he's sojourned for a very long time now. He's at the end of his road. He's had enough of his own ways. He's had enough of trying to make things happen on his own terms. And what he does for us here is he is exemplifying for us a life of trust. a life of obedience to God, seeking God's ways, following God's commands, expecting God to bless him. And for us, we learned the lesson that Abraham needed to learn earlier on. We can slow down, right? We can slow down. We can learn to wait on the Lord. We can learn to trust the Lord, and we can learn to order our lives in obedience to the Lord. Let's pray.