Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Covenant Oath: Sovereign Grace and Separatist Faith (Genesis 24:1-9)

Transcript

The Covenant Oath: Sovereign Grace and Separatist Faith (Genesis 24:1-9) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to the show.
• 0:02
  I'm really glad you could join us today.
• 0:04
  We're doing something a little bit different, something new.
• 0:07
  We're launching a special edition that we are calling
• 0:09
  Reformed Thinking. It's good to be here.
• 0:12
  Yeah. This new format is going to let
• 0:14
  us be very specific. We're going to take our source
• 0:18
  material. In this case, it's theological
• 0:20
  essays like Providence Without Compromise and The Covenant
• 0:24
  Oath, and we're going to apply a very particular, a very rigorous
• 0:27
  theological lens. Right.
• 0:29
  We're looking at the text through the framework of
• 0:31
  Reformed theology and specifically the Westminster
• 0:34
  Confession that's. The plan?
• 0:36
  And for this first session, we're opening up the Book of
• 0:38
  Genesis chapter 24 verses one through 9.
• 0:42
  And you know, when you first read it, it seems pretty
• 0:45
  straightforward. It does.
• 0:46
  Almost mundane. Yeah, it looks like a simple
• 0:48
  domestic errand. You have Abraham.
• 0:50
  He's an old man, and he's sending his top servant to go
• 0:53
  find a wife for his son. It feels like, you know, basic
• 0:56
  administration. It absolutely has that surface
• 0:59
  level feel. But our sources argue, and I
• 1:03
  think they're right, that what we're actually seeing here is a
• 1:05
  moment of of intense crisis. A crisis, Maybe 1.
• 1:10
  Of the most high stakes moments in the entire Old Testament.
• 1:12
  Looks like matchmaking, but the whole plan of redemption.
• 1:15
  I mean the entire thing is hanging by a single thread.
• 1:17
  OK, that's a very strong claim. So walk us through though, why
• 1:21
  are the stakes that high? Well, you have to go back to the
• 1:24
  promises God made to Abraham. You know, back in Genesis 12,
• 1:27
  Genesis 15, God promised him a land.
• 1:31
  He promised him that his offspring, his descendants,
• 1:33
  would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
• 1:36
  And of course, the most significant promise of all, that
• 1:39
  through Abraham's seed, all the nations of the earth would be
• 1:42
  blessed. The messianic promise the.
• 1:44
  Promise of the Messiah. So the entire global plan for
• 1:47
  redemption is tied specifically to this one family line.
• 1:52
  And at this point in the story, that family line is precarious.
• 1:56
  Very. It's in real danger of just
• 1:57
  being extinguished. This is what we're calling the
• 2:00
  empty cradle. Isaac is 40 years old.
• 2:03
  He's not married. There's no next generation
• 2:06
  insight. 40 years old to be unmarried in that culture.
• 2:08
  Very old. So if Isaac doesn't marry the
• 2:12
  right woman, or if he marries a local Canaanite and just gets
• 2:16
  absorbed into that culture, or, and this is critical, if he
• 2:20
  leaves the promised land, it goes back to Mesopotamia, the
• 2:23
  line fails. And if the line fails, the
• 2:25
  promise fails, correct? One of our sources has this
• 2:28
  great line. It says success without
• 2:30
  succession is failure. And you look at Abraham.
• 2:33
  He's a wealthy man. He is cattle, silver, gold.
• 2:35
  He's won military victories. But if he doesn't secure the
• 2:38
  covenant succession, he dies a failure.
• 2:41
  Wow. He is staring down the very real
• 2:43
  possibility that God's great promise dies with him and his
• 2:46
  Son. That really changes how you read
• 2:48
  the scene. It's not just an old man worried
• 2:50
  about his son being lonely. This is about the survival of
• 2:52
  the Gospel itself. It is a full blown covenant
• 2:56
  crisis and that's why we're digging into it like this.
• 2:59
  We're going to see how Abraham acts as a kind of covenant
• 3:01
  guardian, and we'll see this fascinating intersection of
• 3:04
  human responsibility, what Abraham and the servant
• 3:07
  physically do, and divine Providence, what God is doing
• 3:10
  behind the scenes. It sounds like it's on a razor's
• 3:13
  edge. It is.
• 3:15
  The preservation of this promise requires A strict separation
• 3:20
  from the world around them and a flat out refusal to use
• 3:23
  pragmatic shortcuts to get the job done.
• 3:25
  OK, let's get into the text itself then.
• 3:27
  Our first section is on the context of Providence.
• 3:29
  We're in Genesis 24, verse one. The very first thing that you
• 3:32
  notice when you read this, or at least that you should notice, is
• 3:35
  the silence. The silence of God.
• 3:37
  Exactly, you look at the chapters before this.
• 3:39
  In Abrahams life God is very vocal.
• 3:43
  In Genesis 12/15/17 God speaks with Thunder.
• 3:46
  There are smoking fire pots, visions in the night.
• 3:48
  It's very direct. Right there are these huge
• 3:50
  dramatic theophanies, but here, in what you're calling a major
• 3:53
  crisis moment, God is silent. That seems backwards.
• 3:57
  It does seem strange, doesn't it?
• 3:59
  If the stakes are so high, why isn't God giving crystal clear
• 4:02
  directions? You know why?
• 4:04
  No burning Bush telling the servant which road to take to
• 4:07
  find the girl. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:09
  Because Abraham has matured. He's grown in his faith.
• 4:12
  He's now operating in what our sources call the context of
• 4:16
  Providence. He doesn't need to wait for a
• 4:19
  new special voice from the sky. He acts on previous revelation.
• 4:23
  So he's taking what he already knows about God and his
• 4:26
  promises, and he's applying it to this new situation.
• 4:29
  That's it. And this really mirrors the
• 4:31
  Christian walk today. You know, it lines perfectly
• 4:34
  with Chapter 5 of the Westminster Confession, the
• 4:36
  chapter on Providence. We don't sit around waiting for
• 4:39
  writing in the sky. We look at what God has already
• 4:42
  said in His Word, and then we act in wisdom.
• 4:44
  He's deducing the will of God from the word of God.
• 4:47
  That's a great way to put it. He's using his theology to
• 4:50
  determine his biography. And we get a sense of the
• 4:52
  pressure he's under from his condition, the text says.
• 4:55
  He was old, well advanced in years.
• 4:57
  Right. And the Hebrew there is
• 4:58
  interesting. It's Zakhenbabai Amim.
• 5:00
  It literally means he had entered into the days.
• 5:03
  Entered into the days. That sounds heavy.
• 5:06
  It sounds like he's feeling the weight of every single one of
• 5:09
  those years. I think he is.
• 5:10
  He's about 140 years old at this point.
• 5:13
  Sarah is dead. We saw that in chapter 23.
• 5:16
  Isaac is 40. Abraham knows the clock is
• 5:19
  ticking. The urgency is being driven by
• 5:21
  his own mortality. He knows he's dying, and this
• 5:24
  one crucial piece of the promise isn't secured yet.
• 5:27
  The days are numbered. He has to act and he has to act
• 5:31
  now. And then we get this phrase, and
• 5:33
  I think this is central to understanding his mindset here.
• 5:36
  The text says the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things,
• 5:40
  but cool in all things. Now, from a Reformed
• 5:43
  perspective, we have to be really careful with that phrase,
• 5:46
  don't we? This isn't a prosperity gospel
• 5:48
  text, not at all. It's not saying Abraham was
• 5:51
  blessed because he had the best camel in the nicest tent.
• 5:54
  Precisely. It's not about material comfort,
• 5:57
  even though he clearly did have material wealth.
• 6:00
  It's a covenantal reality. He has wealth, yes.
• 6:03
  He's had military victory. He holds the title to the land,
• 6:07
  at least in the form of a promise from God.
• 6:09
  But there's a huge paradox here. He is blessed in all things but
• 6:14
  Cole, yet he lacks the one thing that matters for the future.
• 6:18
  Yes, the spiritual succession, All the material wealth, all the
• 6:22
  golden Canaan, it means absolutely nothing if there's no
• 6:25
  grandson to carry the covenant forward.
• 6:27
  The promise would just fizzle out.
• 6:29
  But he uses that past blessing as fuel for his current faith.
• 6:32
  That's the key insight from our source material here.
• 6:35
  Past blessings are not a pillow to sleep on.
• 6:37
  They are a platform to stand on. I like that a lot.
• 6:40
  So he's using the evidence of God's past faithfulness to trust
• 6:44
  him for this very specific, very present need.
• 6:47
  He is. He looks back at how God
• 6:49
  protected him in Egypt with Pharaoh.
• 6:51
  He looks back at how God gave him Isaac when Sarah was 90 and
• 6:54
  Baron. He remembers God providing the
• 6:56
  ram on Mount Moriah just in time.
• 6:58
  He's making a logical argument from God's character.
• 7:00
  He's arguing from precedent. The God who did all of that will
• 7:04
  certainly handle this. And that history of blessing
• 7:07
  doesn't make him complacent. It produces a calm, purposeful
• 7:10
  obedience. He isn't frantic.
• 7:12
  He's not panicking. He's settled.
• 7:14
  OK, so because he's settled, he calls in his servant.
• 7:18
  And this brings us to our second section, the solemn oath.
• 7:21
  This is in verses 2 and three. Now the servant is most likely
• 7:25
  Eliezer of Damascus. Is that right?
• 7:27
  It's the most likely candidate, yes.
• 7:29
  Yeah, he was mentioned way, way back in Genesis 15.
• 7:32
  And if it is him, there's a real poignancy to this scene.
• 7:35
  How so? Well.
• 7:37
  You have to remember, before Isaac was born, Eliezer was the
• 7:40
  potential heir. Abraham himself said it.
• 7:43
  I have no child and the heir of my house is Elizer of Damascus.
• 7:46
  So he was plan A for a while. He was, and now this same man,
• 7:51
  the one who was once the potential heir, is being
• 7:53
  commissioned to go and secure the bride for the true heir.
• 7:56
  That's a real picture of faithful service, isn't it?
• 7:58
  Serving the bridegroom without trying to take his place.
• 8:01
  It's a perfect picture of ministerial service.
• 8:03
  It's John the Baptist saying he must increase, but I must
• 8:06
  decrease. Eliezer is the faithful steward,
• 8:09
  but Abraham doesn't just ask him to do this.
• 8:11
  He doesn't just give him an order.
• 8:13
  He makes him swear an oath. And the ritual for this oath is,
• 8:17
  well, it's culturally very strange to our modern ears.
• 8:20
  Put your hand under my thigh. Yes, let's just address that
• 8:23
  head on. The Hebrew is Simnaideka
• 8:27
  Tachayeraki, and our sources are very clear that Yarrick refers
• 8:31
  to the loins to the place of procreation.
• 8:33
  It's an intimate, very serious gesture.
• 8:35
  It is, but we need to look past the cultural oddity and see the
• 8:39
  theological significance. By placing his hand there, the
• 8:43
  servant is on one level, touching the physical source of
• 8:46
  life and posterity. But for Abraham, it's much more
• 8:48
  than that. He's touching the mark of the
• 8:49
  covenant. Circumcision.
• 8:51
  Correct. The physical sign of God's
• 8:52
  covenant with Abraham was in his flesh, so the servant is
• 8:55
  effectively swearing by the sea that is to come from that.
• 8:58
  Line He's swearing by the Messiah.
• 9:00
  He is. He's invoking the messianic
• 9:03
  promise as the guarantee for his oath.
• 9:05
  The implication is severe. He's basically saying if I fail
• 9:09
  in this duty, if I break this oath, may the God who cut this
• 9:12
  covenant with Abraham also cut me off.
• 9:15
  Wow, that raises the stakes for the Servant's mission
• 9:18
  astronomically. This isn't just a business
• 9:20
  contract. Not at all.
• 9:22
  And look at the one he's made to swear by, Abraham says.
• 9:25
  I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the
• 9:28
  God of the earth. That's a big expansive title,
• 9:31
  not just my God. It shows how Abraham's own
• 9:34
  theology has grown. When God first called him out of
• 9:37
  UR, he might have thought of Yahweh as his personal, perhaps
• 9:40
  even tribal, deity. But after walking with God for a
• 9:43
  century, he understands him as the sovereign creator of the
• 9:47
  entire universe. And that has a very practical
• 9:49
  implication for the mission itself.
• 9:51
  It does. Think about it.
• 9:53
  If God is only a local God of Canaan, then he has no power in
• 9:57
  Mesopotamia 500 miles away. He's out of his jurisdiction.
• 10:00
  Right. If he's just the God of this
• 10:02
  particular hill, he can't help you once you're across the
• 10:05
  desert. Exactly.
• 10:06
  But Abraham asserts God's total sovereignty over geography.
• 10:10
  He is the God of heaven, so he rules everywhere.
• 10:14
  And he's the God of the earth, so he is in control of the
• 10:17
  ground the servant will walk on. Abraham is expressing his
• 10:20
  confidence that God can ensure the success of this mission even
• 10:24
  in a foreign land. So the authority is established,
• 10:26
  the oath is serious. Now we get to the actual
• 10:28
  instructions. It's our third section,
• 10:30
  separation and selection, verses 3 and 4.
• 10:33
  Abraham starts with a negative command, a prohibition.
• 10:36
  He does. You shall not take a wife for my
• 10:38
  son from the daughters of the Canaanites.
• 10:40
  This is the law part of his instructions.
• 10:42
  A clear boundary is drawn. And we need to be very clear
• 10:45
  here because modern years here do not marry these people and
• 10:49
  they immediately think it's about race or ethnicity.
• 10:51
  That's the default assumption today, but it's wrong.
• 10:55
  The Bible itself proves it's not about race.
• 10:58
  Think about Rahab. She was a Canaanite.
• 11:00
  Went from Jericho. And Ruth was a Moabitus.
• 11:03
  Both of them are grafted directly into the line of
• 11:05
  Christ. So this is not about DNA.
• 11:07
  It is entirely ethical and theological.
• 11:09
  So what's the issue with the Canaanites?
• 11:10
  The issue is their worldview, their religion, their entire way
• 11:14
  of life. Theologically, they represent
• 11:17
  the seed of the serpent from Genesis 3.15.
• 11:21
  They are living under the curse of Noah from Genesis 9.
• 11:24
  Their culture was defined by gross idolatry and deep moral
• 11:28
  depravity. So it's about the principle of
• 11:30
  antithesis, the deep divide between the people of God and
• 11:33
  the world. You cannot mix the holy seed
• 11:35
  with the unholy. You cannot.
• 11:37
  A Canaanite marriage would be like introducing A rival altar
• 11:41
  directly into the heart of the covenant home.
• 11:44
  Abraham knows with absolute certainty that you cannot
• 11:47
  nurture the promise of Yahweh in an environment that is
• 11:50
  fundamentally hostile to Yahweh. And this connects directly to
• 11:53
  the New Testament and our own confessions.
• 11:55
  It does straight to the Westminster Confession, chapter
• 11:57
  24, Section 3. It states it is the duty of
• 12:00
  Christians to marry only in the Lord.
• 12:03
  It's the same principle. That's a very difficult
• 12:05
  teaching. In our culture today.
• 12:06
  You see so much of what's called missionary dating, the idea that
• 12:10
  oh, I can convert them, or that love can just paper over huge
• 12:13
  theological differences. And Abraham would say that it's
• 12:15
  just pragmatic nonsense. He refutes the idea that you can
• 12:19
  compromise the spiritual foundation of the home and still
• 12:23
  expect a godly lineage to come from it.
• 12:25
  It's interesting, too, that he's so insistent on Isaac getting
• 12:28
  married at all. Yes, and that's an important
• 12:31
  point. In doing this, he's also
• 12:33
  implicitly refuting a kind of over spiritualized elevation of
• 12:37
  celibacy that you see in, say, Roman Catholicism.
• 12:41
  Abraham wants a married son. The family is the very engine of
• 12:44
  the covenant, but it has to be a Holy Family.
• 12:48
  Bad theology leads to bad ethics.
• 12:50
  It always does. The purity of the home is a
• 12:52
  direct prerequisite for the purity of the next generation.
• 12:55
  OK, so that's the negative command, no Canaanites.
• 12:57
  The positive command is go to my country and to my kindred.
• 13:01
  And again we have to ask why? Why there is not?
• 13:04
  Because his relatives in Mesopotamia are above Saints.
• 13:06
  Right, we find out later that Laban has household idols.
• 13:09
  Exactly. So they're not perfect, but they
• 13:11
  are Shemites. They come from the line of Shem.
• 13:13
  They still retain some connection to the Ebright
• 13:16
  heritage, to the memory of the true God.
• 13:19
  They are, at the very least, distinct from the pervasive
• 13:22
  moral depravity of Canaan. So it's a kind of ecclesiastical
• 13:26
  separation. He's sending the servant back to
• 13:28
  the broader church, so to speak, even if it's a flawed church.
• 13:31
  That's a good way of thinking about it.
• 13:33
  The covenant community has to maintain a distinct identity.
• 13:36
  And let me be clear, separation is not isolation.
• 13:39
  Abraham lived among the Canaanites.
• 13:42
  He did business with them. He had good neighborly
• 13:44
  relations, but he kept his covenantal bonds, like marriage,
• 13:47
  completely distinct. We are to be in the world, but
• 13:50
  not of the world. That's the principle.
• 13:52
  OK, so the instructions seem clear enough, but the servant
• 13:55
  immediately sees a potential problem.
• 13:58
  And this brings us to our fourth section, the crisis of
• 14:00
  pragmatism. This is verse 5.
• 14:03
  The servant asks the question that any good project manager
• 14:06
  would ask. He's thinking through the
• 14:08
  logistics. He says perhaps the woman will
• 14:11
  not be willing to follow me to this land.
• 14:13
  Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?
• 14:16
  It's a completely logical question.
• 14:18
  He's looking for a contingency plan A, Plan B.
• 14:21
  He is, he's thinking. OK, the main goal here is to get
• 14:24
  Isaac married. If the primary method which is
• 14:28
  bringing the girl here fails, surely we should adjust the
• 14:31
  parameters and move the boy there in order to achieve the
• 14:33
  goal. That is the very essence of
• 14:35
  pragmatism, isn't it? The end justifies the means.
• 14:38
  It is, and it's important to see that the servant isn't being
• 14:41
  rebellious here. He's being realistic, He's being
• 14:44
  prudent. But his very realistic question
• 14:47
  exposes a deep theological dilemma.
• 14:49
  He's asking if the ideal path is blocked, do we compromise on a
• 14:53
  core principle, the location to get the result we want?
• 14:56
  Yes, and that is the temptation to just make it work.
• 14:59
  It's the logic that says surely God wants this result, so we can
• 15:02
  probably bend the rules a little bit to get there.
• 15:04
  We see that logic everywhere in the modern church.
• 15:07
  All the time. If the world won't come to the
• 15:09
  Gospel, well, let's take the gospel back to the world's
• 15:11
  terms. Let's dilute the message to make
• 15:13
  it more attractive. Let's send the son Isaac back to
• 15:16
  Mesopotamia because, hey, that's where the potential brides are.
• 15:20
  It sounds so reasonable on the surface.
• 15:22
  We just want Isaac to be married.
• 15:24
  Isn't that what God wants? It sounds perfectly reasonable,
• 15:27
  and that's exactly why Abraham's reaction is so immediate and so
• 15:30
  intense. And this brings us to Section 5,
• 15:34
  the theology of the land. Abraham's response is basically
• 15:38
  a spiritual fire alarm. He says beware.
• 15:41
  The Hebrew is hish shamer. It's a powerful word.
• 15:44
  It's like a visceral gut level warning.
• 15:47
  Beware, unless you take my son back there.
• 15:49
  It is a visceral reaction, because for Abraham, this isn't
• 15:52
  just a discussion about a change of address.
• 15:54
  For him, taking Isaac back to Mesopotamia is functional
• 15:57
  apostasy. Because God's grace moves in One
• 16:00
  Direction. It's a one way St.
• 16:01
  God called Abraham out of earth. He called him out of his
• 16:04
  Father's house and his culture. To go back is to reverse the
• 16:07
  redemptive call is to say God called me out, but I'm going
• 16:10
  back in. It reminds me of the Israelites
• 16:12
  in the wilderness constantly wanting to go back to Egypt
• 16:15
  because at least they had food there.
• 16:16
  It's the exact same spiritual temptation and we have to
• 16:19
  understand that the land here isn't just dirt.
• 16:22
  It's not just a piece of real estate.
• 16:24
  It is the specific God ordained theater of redemption.
• 16:28
  It's the stage where the story has to unfold.
• 16:31
  It is God promised this land to Abraham's seed.
• 16:35
  Isaac is the heir of that promise.
• 16:37
  He must remain in the land oriented toward the fulfillment
• 16:41
  of that promise. If he leaves the land, he's
• 16:44
  abandoning the post that God assigned to him.
• 16:46
  And one of our sources brings up the Israel Church distinction at
• 16:49
  this point. Yes, and for those who hold to a
• 16:52
  more dispensational view, this text is very significant.
• 16:56
  It highlights that the land promise in Genesis 15 is a
• 16:59
  literal, physical promise. Isaac cannot just become a
• 17:03
  citizen of the world and carry the promise with him.
• 17:05
  He is a sojourner, yes, but he must be a sojourner in the land
• 17:08
  of promise. He has to stay put.
• 17:09
  But the servant's question is still hanging in the air.
• 17:12
  What if the woman just says no and Abraham gives him an answer?
• 17:15
  It's a kind of release clause in verse 8.
• 17:17
  And this to me is one of those incredible displays of faith in
• 17:21
  the whole story, Abraham says. If the woman is not willing to
• 17:25
  follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine
• 17:28
  only. Do not take my son back there.
• 17:30
  He is saying he would rather the entire mission fail than have
• 17:33
  the mission succeed through compromise.
• 17:35
  That is the absolute key take away.
• 17:38
  Abraham prioritizes obedience over outcomes.
• 17:41
  He would rather risk Isaac remaining single for now than
• 17:45
  get him married by compromising on the principle of staying in
• 17:47
  the land. He understands that a holy
• 17:49
  uncertainty is safer than a sinful security.
• 17:52
  That's a perfect way to summarize it.
• 17:54
  A holy uncertainty is safer than a sinful security.
• 17:58
  We are often so terrified of the uncertainty of the what if that
• 18:01
  we rush into a sinful compromise just to secure the outcome we
• 18:05
  think we need. We want to guarantee our future.
• 18:07
  And Abraham says no, that's not our job.
• 18:09
  Our job is to wait in the place of obedience and trust God with
• 18:12
  the outcome. But he isn't just waiting
• 18:14
  blindly, is he? He expresses a great deal of
• 18:16
  confidence that this will work. And this leads to Section 6,
• 18:20
  divine agency and typology. In verse 7, Abraham gives this
• 18:26
  threefold argument for his confidence.
• 18:29
  He does. He grounds his confidence in
• 18:30
  three solid realities. First, he grounds it in the very
• 18:34
  nature of God. He says the Lord God of heaven.
• 18:36
  He starts with God's character and sovereignty.
• 18:39
  Second, he grounds it in history.
• 18:41
  He says, who took me from my father's house?
• 18:44
  This is a reference to his effectual calling.
• 18:46
  He's reasoning if God was powerful enough to start this
• 18:49
  whole process by sovereignly calling me out, then He is
• 18:53
  powerful enough to see it through to completion.
• 18:55
  And the third ground for his confidence.
• 18:57
  It's the oath or the revealed word of God, he says, who spoke
• 19:00
  to me and swore to me, saying to your offspring, I will give this
• 19:03
  land. This is what theologians call
• 19:06
  the analogy of faith. He's interpreting his present
• 19:08
  difficulty through the lens of God's past unbreakable promises.
• 19:11
  The logic is airtight. God swore to give the land to
• 19:14
  his seed. Therefore there must be seed.
• 19:16
  Therefore, God must provide a wife to produce that seed.
• 19:19
  It's a beautiful chain of covenantal reasoning.
• 19:22
  And then he says something that can seem a bit mysterious.
• 19:24
  He will send his Angel before you.
• 19:27
  The Malak YHWH yes. And in these patriarchal
• 19:31
  narratives, the Angel of the Lord is very often a
• 19:33
  Christophany. It's a pre Incarnate appearance
• 19:36
  of Jesus Christ. So Abraham is essentially
• 19:38
  telling the servant you are not going on this mission alone.
• 19:41
  The mediator of the covenant is going ahead of you to prepare
• 19:44
  the way. That is the immense theological
• 19:46
  comfort packed into that line. The servant has to act.
• 19:50
  He has to saddle the camels, pack the gifts, and walk the 500
• 19:54
  miles. But God in Christ is creating
• 19:57
  the path for him. It's a perfect illustration of
• 19:59
  Reformed theology. God ordains the ends, yes, but
• 20:02
  he also ordains the means. The servant travels, but the
• 20:06
  mediator goes before him. Precisely.
• 20:08
  So let's talk about the typology here.
• 20:10
  Our second source draws this out beautifully.
• 20:12
  It suggests that this whole narrative is a shadow, a picture
• 20:15
  of the pactum salutis, the covenant of redemption between
• 20:18
  the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's a stunningly beautiful
• 20:22
  picture when you see it. You have Abraham, who functions
• 20:25
  as a type of the father. He initiates the entire plan for
• 20:28
  the wedding, he possesses all the wealth and authority, and he
• 20:31
  is the one seeking a bride for his son.
• 20:33
  OK, so Abraham is the father, then you have Isaac.
• 20:36
  Isaac is the son and you have to remember his back story.
• 20:39
  He is the sacrifice son for Mount Moriah, who was, in a
• 20:42
  sense, received back from the dead.
• 20:45
  And notice what's so unique about Isaac in this chapter.
• 20:48
  He is entirely passive. He doesn't do anything.
• 20:51
  He does nothing. He doesn't go to find his own
• 20:54
  bride. He waits in the land while the
• 20:56
  bride is sought out and brought to him.
• 20:58
  And this is a beautiful mirror of Christ, who has ascended and
• 21:01
  is now waiting at the right hand of the Father for his bride, the
• 21:03
  Church, to be gathered in. And that leaves the unnamed
• 21:06
  servant. The servant is a type of the
• 21:08
  Holy Spirit. Notice he's not even given a
• 21:11
  name in this entire long chapter.
• 21:13
  He doesn't doesn't speak of himself.
• 21:14
  He speaks only of the Father's wealth and the Son's glory.
• 21:18
  He takes the gifts of the Father and uses them to woo the bride
• 21:21
  and persuade her to come. And Rebecca, then, is the
• 21:24
  church. Rebecca is the church.
• 21:27
  She is founded a far country away from the promised land.
• 21:30
  She hears the servants testimony, she accepts the gifts
• 21:33
  by faith, and she agrees to leave her father's house, which
• 21:37
  is a type of the world, to go and marry a groom she has never
• 21:41
  seen. It's just like first, Peter
• 21:42
  says. Though you have not seen him,
• 21:44
  you love him. That's the verse.
• 21:46
  It's the gospel story, the whole plan of redemption encoded right
• 21:50
  here in a historical narrative in Genesis.
• 21:52
  It's incredible, but you also have to be careful not to overdo
• 21:55
  it, right? Our first source offered a word
• 21:57
  of caution here. A very important caution.
• 21:59
  We shouldn't turn this into a secret coded map or a pure
• 22:02
  allegory that erases the history.
• 22:03
  This was a real event. It was a real man on a real
• 22:06
  camel on a very long dusty Rd. But the typology works precisely
• 22:11
  because God's redemptive history is coherent and consistent.
• 22:15
  The primary point is God providing for the messianic
• 22:18
  line, but the pattern of redemption shines through it
• 22:21
  all. OK, so with all of this theology
• 22:23
  in place, the Providence, the oath, the separation, the
• 22:26
  typology, the servant is finally ready to go.
• 22:30
  This brings us to our last section, Ratification and
• 22:32
  Application, verse 9. So the servant put his hand
• 22:36
  under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him
• 22:39
  concerning this matter. He's locked in.
• 22:42
  The deal is done. It moves from instruction to
• 22:44
  obligation. The servant is now bound by the
• 22:47
  sacred oath. And you know, this is such a
• 22:49
  challenge to our modern casual way with words we say, yeah,
• 22:52
  I'll try or I'll do my best. The servant binds his very soul
• 22:57
  to the fear of God. He cannot redefine this mission
• 23:00
  later on when he gets tired or frustrated on the road.
• 23:02
  OK, let's bring this home for us today.
• 23:04
  What does all of this mean for us?
• 23:06
  Let's use that framework of head, heart, and hands.
• 23:09
  First, the head, the doctrine, the things we believe.
• 23:13
  The big intellectual take away is that we have to confront
• 23:15
  pragmatism in our own hearts and in the church.
• 23:17
  That's the real battle. We must actually believe that
• 23:20
  God's prescribed methods are sufficient to achieve God's
• 23:23
  desired ends. So when the woman is not
• 23:25
  willing, when the world rejects the gospel.
• 23:28
  We do not change the message. We don't take the sun back to
• 23:31
  earth. We stand firm on the truth, even
• 23:34
  if it looks like we're failing by the world's metrics of
• 23:36
  success. That is very hard to do when the
• 23:38
  pews are emptying out and the budget is tight.
• 23:40
  It is the hardest thing, but faithfulness is the metric God
• 23:43
  uses, not numbers in a spreadsheet.
• 23:46
  OK. Now for the heart, our
• 23:48
  affections, our desires. This whole passage speaks
• 23:52
  directly to holiness in our relationships.
• 23:54
  The principle of not being unequally yoked isn't some
• 23:57
  arbitrary restrictive rule. It is a loving protection for
• 24:01
  God's people. And it's a huge challenge,
• 24:03
  especially to Christian parents. We have to ask ourselves, do we
• 24:07
  care more about our children's academic success or their
• 24:10
  athletic scholarships or their financial security then we do
• 24:13
  about their covenantal purity? Abraham risked everything, the
• 24:17
  entire promise of God, for the sake of holiness.
• 24:20
  He would rather have a single son who is holy than a married
• 24:23
  son who is compromised. And that really strikes at the
• 24:25
  fear of loneliness, doesn't it? Our own or our children's.
• 24:28
  We fear loneliness more than we fear compromise.
• 24:30
  We often do. We have to learn to trust God
• 24:33
  with the empty cradle, to trust Him with our singleness or our
• 24:36
  children's future, rather than rushing to fill that void with
• 24:40
  Canaanite compromises that we know are outside of His will.
• 24:43
  And finally, the hands are actions.
• 24:45
  What do we do? We act.
• 24:47
  Faith is not passive. Waiting the servant went.
• 24:49
  He packed the bags. He saddled the camels, He walked
• 24:52
  the long miles. We are called to act, but we act
• 24:55
  with a settled confidence because we know the Angel Christ
• 24:58
  himself has gone before us to prepare the way.
• 25:01
  And culturally. Culturally, this means that
• 25:03
  church leaders must have the courage to refuse to marry the
• 25:06
  Church to secular ideologies. Our source material specifically
• 25:10
  brings up things like critical race theory or intersectionality
• 25:12
  and examples of modern Canaanite worldviews.
• 25:15
  We cannot form a covenantal bond between the church and these
• 25:18
  philosophies. We must maintain the antithesis.
• 25:20
  So to sum up, we've seen Abraham model of faith that absolutely
• 25:24
  refuses backward solutions. Yes, for him, going back was
• 25:28
  never an option. And the empty cradle, the
• 25:30
  apparent lack in his life, was not a sign of God's absence.
• 25:33
  It was the very stage God was setting for His miraculous
• 25:37
  provision. The narrative moves from the
• 25:39
  shadow of death really, to the security of the covenant.
• 25:41
  And the servant walked out of that camp, not knowing the
• 25:44
  specific outcome, but knowing his guide.
• 25:48
  And that was enough. And that's really the essence of
• 25:50
  faith. So here's the final thought for
• 25:52
  you, our listener, to consider. The servant walked into the
• 25:56
  desert with an oath and a promise.
• 25:58
  Where in your life are you tempted to go back to secure
• 26:02
  your own future? Maybe it's a relationship you
• 26:04
  know is wrong, a job that requires compromise, a habit
• 26:09
  from your old life. Where are you tempted to return
• 26:11
  to the place God called you out of simply because the path
• 26:14
  forward looks uncertain and difficult?
• 26:16
  That's a question we all have to face.
• 26:18
  And Abraham's example tells us, instead of going back, trust the
• 26:21
  Angel who has already gone before you.
• 26:23
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into reformed
• 26:26
  thinking. We will see you next time.