FEB 23 2025 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S5E5 | The Story of Isaac: Wells, Weddings & Worship

Sea Change Church · FEB 23 2025 | Genesis S4E5 - The Story of Isaac: Wells, Weddings & Worship
Genesis 24:15-27
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

we can miss the human beings and opportunities in front of us, because, like we sang today as Danny led us, we don't make room for those things, we don't make room for the unexpected, we don't make room for God to lead us towards the stranger or the person on the street, Rebecca cannot make this decision if she doesn't have some margin in her life, if she doesn't choose to make room, if she doesn't have a pace of life that will allow her to stop, don't forget what she's doing, she's stopping to fill 250 gallons of water, that's what's enough for 10 camels to drink to their full, 200 to 250 gallons of water, and according to commentaries I read, it's at least, at least one hour of hard labor.

She stops in the middle of what she's doing in the middle of her day, and she gives this ridiculous act of generosity, because she's made room. Next time you're walking around La Jolla and a tourist comes to you, stops you on the street, and he asks for directions, he says, how do I get to the seals? Don't just point them to the seals, give them a piggyback ride, right? Like that's our modern, that's the modern equivalent, right?

Just like hop on, we're going to the seals, like that's, it's ridiculous. It's this incredible act of generosity, and I put in your notes, do not underestimate the potential of generosity and self-sacrifice to open doors for you. If you want open doors in your life, do two things, pray, and then respond to people, respond to human beings with generosity, with kindness, with love. Do those things and watch as God opens doors for you, but it's tough to treat people that way if you live a rushed, busied, hurried pace of life.

We usually, as we hurry and rush, we get, we get more curt, we get more unkind, and we don't slow down. She actually does what Jesus says to do. Jesus tells us in the New Testament, if someone asks for your shirt, what do you do? You give them your coat also. You give them more than they ask for. And so Rebecca is asked for a drink, and she generously gives much more than what is asked of her.

This is a really important moment in this story. This is actually the longest chapter in all of the Torah. So the first five books of the Bible, Genesis 24 is the longest chapter. And it's the longest chapter for a couple reasons. The main reason really is, is that the narrative, this narrative repeats itself. All of these things happen, and then Eliezer goes to Rebecca's family's house, and he retells the whole story nearly verbatim. And now that means that this idea of asking for a drink and receiving more than I ask for is actually repeated four times in this story.

Because he first prays, and he says, Lord, may the woman I ask for a drink give me more than I ask for. Then he goes, and he finds Rebecca, and he asks her for a drink, and she gives him more than he asks for. Then he goes to his father's house, and he says, you're not going to believe this. I won't even eat. They're like, come eat. He's like, I can't eat your food until I tell you this story.

He says, I ask God. And I said, Lord, let the woman I ask for a drink give me more than I ask for. And then I found your daughter, Rebecca, and I asked her for a drink, and then she gave me more than I asked for. And there's this repetition happening in the story, and it should bring to mind to us a time where a man and woman met at a well in the New Testament, where Jesus met a woman at a well, and he asked her for a drink, and she said, how could you ask me that?

She said, I'm a Samaritan woman. You're a Jewish man. No, how could you ask me that? And Jesus says to her, well, if you knew who I was, you'd ask me for a drink, and I'd give you more than you asked for. I'd give you living water, a well that would never run dry. And the woman in the story, she would have been very familiar with stories like this.

She would have been familiar with their implications. And there's multiple stories like this in the Old Testament that she would have been familiar with. First off, Adam and Eve. Multiple stories where men and women meet at a spring or a well where water comes from the ground, and they all lead to marriages. Adam and Eve. You're like, what do you mean? There's not a well there.

There's a spring. In Genesis 2, it says that a spring or a mist comes up from the ground and watered the whole land of Eden, and then God takes from that ground, and he makes man. And then you get the meeting of Adam and Eve, man and woman, by a spring in the Garden of Eden. Then you get our story with Isaac and Rebekah. The meeting of Rebekah and Eleazar that happens at a well leads to the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah.

Then you get Jacob and Rachel. The meeting of Jacob and Rachel happens at a well leads to their marriage. Same thing with Moses and Zipporah. Moses meets his wife Zipporah at a well. And so all of these stories would have been very familiar to a woman meeting a man at a well and a woman who has had five marriages, as we find out. And none of them have worked out.

They have all failed. They have not had a storybook ending. And Jesus meets her there and says, I can redeem this. I can give you more than you ask for. Ask me for a drink. Sometimes I think we mistakenly villainize the woman at the well because we make some assumptions. We assume that she must have been adulterous. We assume that she's done some things wrong to have five failed marriages.

And obviously, like, you're a participator in that. I'm not saying she hasn't done anything. But we should remember that a woman in that time had very little grounds to divorce a man. It was more likely the man would leave her. We should remember that she could have been widowed. Any of her husbands may have died. We don't know. The story doesn't tell us.

All we know, she's had five marriages. And they're not working. And now she's at the point where it seems like she's given up on marriage, as Jesus points out, because he says, well, the man you're living with is not your husband. And so he meets her in the midst of this and tells her, I can give you a relationship that won't run dry, a love that won't fade, that won't die, that will not forsake you.

So ask me for a drink. I want to encourage you if you're here today and you've yet to put your trust in Jesus. Ask him for refreshment. Ask him for rest. Ask him for peace. He is the source of all love, all joy, all kindness, all meaning, all hope. And he can give you rest as his burden is light. So if you're here and that's you, ask him for a drink.

Now let's keep reading in our story. Let's go to verses 22 through 27. It says, when the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a 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 worshiped 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 kinsmen.

I think I want to notice one thing. As we said, Eliezer has traveled 450 miles. Rebecca has filled 250 gallons of water. They've both worked really, really hard. And things are going well for them as a result. And, I mean, as Eliezer, Eliezer's mission is very important. It's teeming with the promise of God, continuing in the line of Abraham, and he accomplishes it, like, first try, right?

And he's probably considering, like, a new career in matchmaking, right? Because he's pretty good at it. He just accomplishes it quick. And then you look at the character of Rebecca. I mean, Rebecca, she's, the Bible says she's beautiful. She says she's very attractive. I don't know how beautiful you have to be for the word of God to cement that into history.

But, you know, pretty good looking, right? So not only is she, she's really good looking. She's hospitable. She's kind. She's hardworking. Willing to stop what she's doing and just work hard. This is a full package lady. And notice Eliezer doesn't stop and praise for Rebecca. Oh, my gosh, you're so beautiful. You're so hardworking. You're so amazing.

This is perfect. He doesn't praise her. He doesn't pat himself on the back. He bows his head, and he worships God for his faithfulness. He says, God, you've been faithful to me and to my master Abraham, and you've not forsaken your steadfast love. He says, God, you've been faithful to us. See, faithful people tend to attribute their success to God.

And we can learn a lot from faithful people and faithful characters, like we've been studying these characters, and you learn a lot from them. But from their perspective, it's never about their faithfulness. It's always about the faithfulness of God. And it's great that God often demonstrates his faithfulness through the actions of faithful people.

Which is why I put in your notes that one of the best methods of evangelism is a lived example. It's a faithful life. If you want to be a witness to God's faithfulness, an evangelist to God's faithfulness, you don't need to go to seminary. You don't need a public speaking class. Live a faithful life. Be faithful to your spouse. Be faithful to your children.

Be faithful to your neighbor. Be faithful to your friends. Be faithful to your clients. Live a faithful life. And the example of your life will proclaim the faithfulness of God. And speaking of the faithfulness of God, this next part of the message is really my favorite part. This is what gets me excited when I read scripture. It's because I want to show you this whole thing.

This whole passage. This whole passage. The story of Isaac from birth to marriage to Rebecca is all a foreshadowing to Jesus. This whole story is about Jesus. And that's the stuff that gets me really excited about a message like this. And I think sometimes, you know, when we read the Old Testament, there's a couple common mistakes we can make. Number one is not reading it, right?

Because we love the New Testament as Christians, right? Number two might be reading it without any context. But number three is reading it only through the lens of moral allegory. And what I mean by that is if we read it and we only, it's good to do some of that, right? But to only do that and to miss the Bible and the Old Testament is full of all these patterns and all these things that point to Jesus.

So if we only look at it for like, what can I learn from this moment or this character? Like, for example, I heard a pastor preach on this exact passage. And he used the whole passage to talk about modern day dating and tips we can learn for dating, which is fine. I gave the men a pretty sweet tip for dating earlier in this message. But it's not what the passage is about.

The passage is actually about Jesus. And the more you see Jesus in your Old Testament, the more you're going to love the Old Testament. And so let's go to that. And I included a table as an insert in your bulletin. So you guys should have all gotten this table. We're not going to go through the whole table. If it immediately overwhelms you, that's okay.

But I made this table for us today. And we're going to just go through it very quickly, but not the whole thing. I want you to look at in the far right column. We're going to go through what the gospel is, the gospel pattern, okay? The gospel pattern set forth, okay? You have the miraculous birth of the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is born of the Virgin Mary.

You have the death of Jesus Christ, which is the substitutionary death of Jesus, where he dies in our place for our sin. You have the resurrection of Jesus, as Jesus is resurrected from the dead on the third day. You have Jesus' ascension to the Father as he returns to the Father's house. You have the Holy Spirit sent out, and Jesus calls the Holy Spirit what?

He calls him an advocate, or it can also be translated helper. The helper. So the helper is sent out from the Father's house. Why? To secure a bride for the Son that is the bride of Christ, us. The bride receives the Son through faith, and they're united in marriage by the seal of the Holy Spirit. And the bride, us, receives comfort from death due to the provision of the helper and the marriage.

That's the gospel pattern. Now, quickly, in our story, Isaac from birth to marriage. Left side of your column, Genesis. Miraculous birth of the Son. We know Isaac was miraculously born to Sarah because he was born in her very old age, past childbearing years. Isaac is to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah by his father, the same mountain range where Christ would have been sacrificed.

He is to be sacrificed by his father. But a substitute is provided for Isaac in Aram. So he does not have to be sacrificed. Then, that means on the third day, he gets to go down the hill with his father. And the book of Hebrews says it's as if he is resurrected from the dead because he receives his life back to him. And so then Isaac returns to the father's house in the land of Canaan.

And then the helper, Eleazar, this is why his name's important. Eleazar, the helper, who means my God is help, he is sent out from the father's house to secure a bride for the son, Isaac. And I love this too about the helper. Eleazar, he does two things on this mission that we didn't talk about. One, he gives gifts. He brings gifts. He gives her gold, these gold rings.

And then he goes to the father's house and he testifies about the riches of the father's house, of his master Abraham, the riches of his master's house. That's what he testifies about, okay? The Holy Spirit does multiple things, but let's talk about two. The Holy Spirit brings gifts of the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, will testify about me, will testify about the father's house.

So you see Eleazar is like the Holy Spirit in this passage. And then Rebecca agrees to go and be united with Isaac. And then it says in Genesis 24, 67, Isaac receives comfort from the death of his mother. He receives comfort from death. When you pick up on patterns like that and you see this whole thing's about Jesus, I personally, I find that so encouraging.

Because it's a reminder to me about God's faithfulness. That God has been orchestrating all of history to point to a moment where he saves me. That's deeply encouraging to me. And we shouldn't be surprised about it either because Jesus says to the Pharisees, he says, you search the scriptures and you look for eternal life. But the scriptures testify about me.

That's what he tells the Pharisees. So when we read our Old Testaments, look for Jesus. And I think you're going to be deeply encouraged. It reminds me, one, this is real. Like there's no way through thousands of years of writing this stuff, you're going to make this all work, right? There's no shot. This is amazing. It's real. And it shows how faithful God is.

And honestly, there's plenty of times where I need that reminder. Because in my own life, I often don't get an Eleazar quick response to my prayers. Sometimes I wonder where God's steadfast love and faithfulness is. I wonder where his presence is in my life. But just this week, actually, we were, I was driving home from work. It was around 9 p.m. and I was getting home.

And as I was driving, I was reflecting on, we'd had this really challenging season with our son Jude. And where he was just, he just could not get healthy. He could not get healthy. We had probably two to three months of just sickness. And we were hospitalized for four days. And then we get home from that. And he kept, he just kept catching colds and things like that.

And then he hit his head at like 9 p.m. one of the days. And he hit his head so hard, he had to go, he cut himself open. He had to go get stitches. So then we're back in the hospital getting stitches till like 3 a.m. And then we come back. And then very shortly after that, he gets a double ear infection on both sides. And it was just like, it was such a challenging season for us.

And you know, as a parent, like, you know, parents in here, you understand, like, you don't sleep during that time. You're not sleeping. You're always up with your child. In fact, one of his only things that could comfort him, we tried everything, was it was like 2 a.m. And I would walk him around La Jolla at 2 a.m. And it was the only way he'd stop crying if I would just walk him around outside at 2 a.m.

It was a really challenging time. And so I was thinking back to that as I was driving home and reflecting on all of that. And I started just praising God because we have since been in a season of health. Like, things have been really, really good. He seemed really healthy. Healthy is starting to feel like a norm. I think I included a picture of Jude just because why not include a picture of Jude?

It's my boy. Vinny is giving me shade because he's like, dude, every time you preach, you show a photo of Jude. I'm like, yeah, correct. And I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry. But I started praising God because I'm like, man, he's been healthy. We've been good. Healthy is slowly starting to feel like our norm. And I was just elevating God's name for that.

And I go home and I get to bed. And around 1230 midnight, I wake up to this just blood-curdling scream. And I get out of bed and I go to him. And Kalina and I are both with him. And it seems like something's really wrong. And he's screaming and he's really upset. And all of the anxiety, all of the PTSD of what I had just experienced comes flooding back to me in that moment.

All the anger. I'm like, are we here again? How could we be here again? And I started praying. I said, Lord, I just praised your name tonight. I was just elevating your name tonight. Now I'm waking up at 1230 and my baby's screaming and it's here we go again. How could you do this, Lord? Where are you, Lord? It turns out he was just gassy and had a tummy ache.

He was fine. Homeboy just needed to let it rip a little and he was okay. And that's okay. Fine. But I want us to notice, man, how quickly did my faith struggle? How quickly my doubt crept in. How quickly that anger from the real things we experience creep back into our lives. And we need to be reminded that God is faithful. And that's one of the reasons we gather.

That's one of the reasons we look at the gospel in the Old Testament. Because it reminds you of the faithfulness of the Lord. That he has been planning your redemption throughout all of history. He's faithful to you. And we need to be reminded of that because our circumstances are real. To be reminded of his steadfast love and faithfulness to us.

That he will not forsake us. And I believe that if you follow Jesus, you're going to be able to look back on your journey like Eleazar does in the end of our passage. And say, well, as for me, the Lord has led my way. As for me, the Lord has guided my steps. As for me, the Lord has not forsaken me on my journey. Because he is faithful. Amen? Amen.

Let me pray for us. And I'm going to invite up the worship band as well. And I'll pray. And then we're going to, I'll invite up the prayer team as well. Prayer team, you can come up. And we're going to close in a song of worship in response. And so I just want to invite you to stand as we respond together in worship. And you can just lead us standing.

I'll come up and pray after. Amen. Amen. Amen. We are. We are. We are. We are. We are. We are. Ito. And the. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. we. no one no one who else is worthy there is no one only you Jesus there is no one only you Jesus there is no one only you Jesus who else is worthy who else is worthy there is no one only you Jesus there is no one only you Jesus there is no one only you Jesus if you want to receive prayer today I want to just invite you after we pray together come forward and receive prayer be prayed over come and gather if you need more next steps what's going on in our church or you want to talk to someone more about Jesus next steps in your faith we have a next steps table in the lobby let's pray let's pray Father God we just like Eliezer right now we bow our heads and we recognize recognize it's all about you that you are alone are worthy of our praise all of our successes Father we thank you Jesus we give you the praise for those things we thank you God that how you orchestrated all things for our salvation that you love us that you see us that you remain steadfast and faithful in spite of real circumstances you meet us in the midst of trial in the midst of circumstances like the woman at the well and you meet us and you you challenge us to ask for refreshment so we come to you now asking for a drink in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Amen Amen we love you guys we'll see you next week peace