He Will Make Straight Your Path
Download MP3Genesis chapter 23. Now Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriath arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
Speaker 1:Then Abraham rose from before his dead and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner among you. Give me a burial site among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The sons of Heth answered Abraham saying to him, hear us, my lord. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our graves.
Speaker 1:None of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead. So Abraham rose and bowed to the people of the land, the sons of Heth. And he spoke with them saying, if it is your wish for me to bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and approach Ephron, the son of Zohar for me that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns, which is at the end of his field for the full price let him give it to me in your presence for a burial site. Now Ephron was sitting among the sons of Heth and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the sons of Heth. In the hearing of all those who went into the gate of the city, he said, no, my Lord, hear me.
Speaker 1:I give you the field. I give you the cave that is in it. In the presence of the sons of my people, I give it to you. Bury your dead. And Abraham bowed before the people of the land.
Speaker 1:He spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people and said, if you will only please listen to me, I will give you the price of the field. Accept it from me that I may bury my dead there.' Then Ephron answered Abraham, saying to him, my lord, listen to me. A piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver, what is that between me and you? So bury your dead. And Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth, 400 shekels of silver.
Speaker 2:Genesis 24 1 through 14. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years, And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to a servant, the oldest of his household, who had charged over all that he had, put your hand under my thigh that I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and 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 into my kindred and take a wife for my son Isaac. The servant said to him, perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me into this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?
Speaker 2: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 he shall take a wife from 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.
Speaker 2:So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. Then the servant took 10 of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master and he rose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor. And he came he made the 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, oh, Lord, God, my master 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.
Speaker 2:Let the 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. This is the word of the lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to god. If you would, pray with me. Oh, lord. We ask that you would honor the reading of your word. And as we hear your word spoken, it would penetrate into our hearts.
Joel Brooks:Lord, we come now desperate for a word from you. Not from me. My words bring death, but your words bring life. And all of us here need life. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But Lord, may your word remain. And may it transform us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I had thought about skipping over these 2 chapters in Genesis, as we were working our way through.
Joel Brooks:Actually, when I was looking at other sermon series that had gone through Genesis, I didn't find one that actually had preached on chapters 23 and 24. But I do believe, that these stories are here for edification and that we shouldn't just jump to Jacob and Esau, which is really good stuff. The author Moses, he obviously thought these two stories were important, because he devoted a lot of time to telling them. They are really, really long. This is, I think the first passage in which we didn't read all of the text because you would have had to, you know, bring your pajamas and we would have had to spend the night here.
Joel Brooks:It's really long. It's actually the story of getting a wife for Isaac is the longest narrative we have in Genesis. This story. And it was the length of these stories that intrigued me. Wondering why so much time was devoted to this.
Joel Brooks:You have in the beginning of chapter 23, you have the death of Sarah is mentioned in one word in Hebrew and Sarah died. And then the entire rest of the story is about how Abraham went about buying her burial plots. What's up with that? And then you've got the longest narrative in all of Genesis, which is about Abraham getting a wife for Isaac. And if you look at those 2 stories and the grand scheme of all of Genesis, you just got to kind of scratch your head and wonder why devote so much time to these stories.
Joel Brooks:And a lot of everything else that's going on in Genesis. But I think these stories are here for a couple of reasons. At least these two reasons, I'm sure there's more. One is they are more important than you think. More is going on here than you, than you think at first.
Joel Brooks:And second, it's here that we finally see Abraham doing some things out of faith without hearing a direct word from the Lord to do so. The way he buries Sarah, the way he finds a bride for Isaac, both of these take a tremendous act of faith, and yet the Lord does not tell him to do either of these things. Actually, besides one obscure reference in chapter 23, God's not mentioned at all in this, let alone giving a direct word. And so up to this point in Genesis, God has spoken directly to Abraham. And every time he has said something to Abraham, Abraham has sprung into action.
Joel Brooks:He'll say, Abraham, go. And Abraham goes. He says, Abraham, I want you to circumcise your children. And he circumcises his children. He says, I want you now to send Hagar and Ishmael away.
Joel Brooks:And he sends Hagar and Ishmael away. Then he says, I want you to sacrifice Isaac. And he goes about trying to sacrifice Isaac. And and everything that the Lord commands. He instantly Springs into action and he does.
Joel Brooks:And those stories are great. They're good, But if you're anything like me, you have a hard time relating to those stories. I will confess something here. For me, the most frustrating phrase that I find in the Bible Over and over, the the most frustrating phrase is this, and God said and God said. And it's all over the Bible.
Joel Brooks:And God said, and I always want to ask, Well how did he say it? Was it a dream? Was it a vision? Were you just kind of walking along and you heard the audible voice of the Lord? And yet it's, and God said to Abraham, and God said to Moses and God said to David and God said to Samuel, and it's always and God said and I'm always screaming, how?
Joel Brooks:How did they know with such clarity? How can they be so certain? I mean, I think if I were just walking along and I heard the audible voice of the Lord, I think I would instantly spring into action too. I think I would do those things. But what normally happens with me and perhaps you too, is you kind of feel this inner impulse to do something.
Joel Brooks:I'm like, well, is this of you, Lord? Or perhaps a quiet whisper and you're like, was that the radio station going in and out? What, what was that? I don't hear God so clearly. I have this absence of an audible voice and it leaves me with doubts and sometimes it cripples me to inaction.
Joel Brooks:I don't do anything because I'm waiting for that voice. So one of the reasons I believe this story is written is it shows us how we are to act when we don't hear that audible voice of God. Can we act in confidence in doing his will? And the answer is yes. This story gives us some answers as how to do this.
Joel Brooks:Chapter 23 begins with Sarah dying. So after Abraham almost loses his son Isaac, he now actually loses his wife Sarah. And we all know that when someone dies, you bury them back home. That's what you do, is you take the body back home, and you bury them home. And so one would not be surprised at all if Sarah or Abraham got his wife's body and took her back to Ur, the place that they were from, the place where her relatives are from.
Joel Brooks:Her home took her back there to bury her. But Abraham doesn't do that without any explicit word for the Lord, from the Lord, without the, the Lord saying, Abraham, do this. Abraham says, no, I'm going to bury Sarah here and I'm going to purchase land for her here, which is something he has not done up to this point in Genesis. He owns none of the promised land. But he's gonna do it now.
Joel Brooks:For him, he sees this as the next logical step in keeping with God's promises. If he really does believe God's word, when God said to Abraham, Hey, this is your home. This land is your home. Well then he's, he can act upon that by burying Sarah here. She's gonna be buried in this land of promise, and she's not gonna be buried in somebody else's cave, in somebody else's tomb.
Joel Brooks:He's going to own the place where she is buried. It will be his possession because God has promised him that he will possess the land. And so Abraham, he goes to the Hittites and he asked to buy some land. This is, a very unusual request. It's a very bold request to do this because as a sojourner or a foreigner, really it's a, it's a, it's a term for a resident alien, which is what Abraham was.
Joel Brooks:He could not purchase land. He didn't have the right to purchase land. And so for him to come with this request was pretty bold. And you know, he talks to the Hittites about this. Let me have this one little place right at the end of the field here.
Joel Brooks:And it seems like they're being very generous. Oh, Abraham, take this. Just use it. But they're actually not being very generous. What they're saying is, hey, you could just use this tomb, but it won't be yours.
Joel Brooks:Even when they say, I give you this land. This is just a gift for this burial. And then when her body is decayed and gone, we'll keep using this tomb. And so Abraham keeps pushing it. It's like, no, no, no.
Joel Brooks:I want to buy this land. And he says, I actually have this piece of property picked out. And that owner says, no, you can have it. You can use it. Because, no, I want to buy it.
Joel Brooks:I want to buy it. And finally the person says, Yeah, it's, it's worth what? 400 shekels. What's that to me and you? It's actually a lot.
Joel Brooks:It's a King's ransom. It's 10 times the going price for land. It'd be like, you know, Hey, why don't y'all come over to my house? I'll sell to you for over $1,000,000 right now. I'm in Crestwood.
Joel Brooks:Okay? It is a King's ransom for a price here. And Abraham takes it like that. Okay. He doesn't haggle down.
Joel Brooks:He just says, okay. Yes. And so he spends a fortune on this tomb. But why? God didn't tell him to do it.
Joel Brooks:There's no direct word from the Lord here. He could have had a place to bury Sarah for free. But he decided to do this, and it was the right thing to do. For Abraham, this was his declaration. It was his declaration that this land is now my home.
Joel Brooks:I believe in the promise of God. It's him also recognizing that God is the one who gave me my wealth, and I will spend it on his promises. I'm not gonna worry about haggling as if this was my money. God gave me this money and I will spend it on his purposes without reservation. And so even though he doesn't hear a direct word from the Lord, he sees that, you know what, this is in line with the Lord's promises, and so I'm gonna act accordingly.
Joel Brooks:And One of the things that strikes me about this story is in the grand scheme of things. This is so small. This is so small. I mean, look at it. God had promised back in, you know, chapter 12 and in chapter 15, he promised all these things to Abraham.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna make you famous. I'm gonna make your name great. You're going to become a great nation. I'm going to bless the whole world through you. I'm going to do all of this and here's going to be fulfilled.
Joel Brooks:You get to buy a little plot of land to bury your wife.
Jeffrey Heine:It's just small.
Joel Brooks:It's it's almost nothing. Yet, Abraham fights for it. Says, this is what the Lord wants. I'm gonna go after this and I'm gonna buy this in faith and in hope and what is to come. And he sees us as the first fruits of God's promise.
Joel Brooks:And I think all of us should be able to relate to Abraham in this. I mean, in the grand scheme of everything that is happening in the world, look at the decisions you've made this week, this year, your life. It seems pretty small. In the grand scheme of things, it's just so small and seemingly unimportant. And yet, as believers, as Christians, we we place our faith and our hope in these little teeny decisions.
Joel Brooks:And as Christians, our first fruits don't come from a filled tomb. Our first fruits come from an empty tomb. That's what we look to. We look to an empty tomb and we see Jesus resurrected and we say, that's the first fruits. That's what awaits us.
Joel Brooks:Is a resurrected body in a new kingdom and it is already broken in and we can live all of life according to that. Every little decision is lived in light of that. After Sarah or after Abraham buries Sarah, he then decides it's time to find a wife for Isaac. Once again, there's no direct word from the Lord. You need to go do this.
Joel Brooks:But Abraham, he can deduct from the promises that the Lord has made. Isaac's gonna need a wife. If truly I'm gonna have descendants that are, you know, more numerous than the stars, Isaac's gonna have to put out some grandbabies. He's gonna have to get married. It's a logical conclusion.
Joel Brooks:And so he acts accordingly. This is the Lord's will. And then he comes up with this plan to find a wife for Isaac. This is what strikes me about it. He is so confident in this plan that didn't come from the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Wasn't a word from the Lord, but he is so confident in it. Look at verse 7 chapter 24. Abraham is saying this to the servant. He says, 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.
Joel Brooks:I mean, God didn't say He was going to send His angel before him, but yet Abraham had such confidence that this was the Lord's plan and that he could trust according to that. I I don't know about you, but I've I've rarely, if ever felt so much confidence that this is the Lord's will. Like I say, God is going to send his angel before me to make sure this all happens. But Abraham does this. His plan is for his servant to travel back to his homeland and to find a bride for Isaac.
Joel Brooks:He has to travel, you know, 4 to 500 miles at least, somehow find the right woman who will some, for some reason, decide to come back with him to marry a person she has never met. That's his plan. It's a bad plan from a worldly standpoint. It's a bad plan from a common sense standpoint. There there's, I mean, gosh, I could think of so many other easy alternatives.
Joel Brooks:Abraham, just go into town and pick a wife. You could pick the wife. You don't have to trust a servant. You can just go there and look around and be like, she would be great. I mean, wouldn't y'all want your parents picking your spouse?
Joel Brooks:Isn't that what we all hope and dream for? And and Abraham, he could do that and it'd be so quick. I mean, 500 miles there, 500 miles back, that's a 1000 mile journey. It's not going to be quick to do it his way. If he had also just gone into town and picked up a wife, he would have gained status as a citizen, which is seemed to be what he wanted.
Joel Brooks:Because if you marry a local, then you become a legal citizen. But instead he goes with this bad plan that he sees as the Lord's will. You gotta kinda think. I mean, initially, just poor Isaac in all of this. I mean, his dad tries to kill him, gets over that, and then his dad's like, I'm gonna find you a wife.
Joel Brooks:You don't get to pick her. I'm just going to send a servant to go and find somebody for you. And he's already had to wait till he's 40 to get married. But that's the life of Isaac. And so he sends his servant to travel all of this way, confident that the angel of the Lord is going before him.
Joel Brooks:Now, how could Abraham be so confident in all this? How? It's simply once again remembering God's promises. He knew that he could not pick a woman from the town right down the street because God had cursed the Canaanites. We found that out after the flood.
Joel Brooks:You go back to Genesis 15 verse 13 and we read this. God says to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in the land And afterward, they will shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You'll be buried in a good old age. And Abraham knows right there that the the Amorites where he is living, they're wicked people.
Joel Brooks:He cannot marry these wicked people. It was just this little thing God said, but he remembers this. And he knows he can't send his son, Isaac, there. A matter of fact, you find several times he says to his servant, do not, do not. Isaac cannot go back there.
Joel Brooks:You see this in verse 5 and 6. You see this in verse 8. Isaac is not to go back home. Once again, he's trusting in the promise of God. That's not our home.
Joel Brooks:God took us out of there and I'm not gonna send my son back there, No matter what. That's not the Lord's will. And so Abraham, he tells his servant to find a wife for Isaac. He tells his servant to make sure that she's not a Canaanite, but to go back to his homeland. And he tells his servant, no matter what, you are not to take my son back there.
Joel Brooks:Those are 3 very specific things that the God did not tell him. Yet it was absolutely the Lord's will. By this point in Abraham's life, he knew the heart and the character and promises of God, his servant does the same. You could say a whole lot about Abraham's servant. There's a lot of different ways to, to preach on this and there's a lot of different things you could focus on.
Joel Brooks:You could focus on how man he is the model of what a Christian should be. He is humble. He is obedient. He is prayerful. He is always praising the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Those are great things. But in keeping with what we've been looking at, I want us to look at how his servant now makes his decision on who should be the wife of Isaac. Abraham gave his servant no instructions. Isaac gave his servant no instructions. The Lord gave his servant no instructions as to what this woman should look like, what her personality should be like, what characteristics, you know, he was to look for.
Joel Brooks:None of that was there. Yet the servant did look for certain qualities that he knew to be from the character of God. He looked for someone pure. Twice it mentions her purity. And then he looked for someone hospitable and hardworking.
Joel Brooks:You know, when the Lord saw Rebecca, he prayed for a sign. He prayed for a sign, trusting that this is the will of the Lord. He prayed for a sign and it's not like the signs that we pray for when when we're trying to discern the Lord's will. I think we pray for hilarious signs. We usually ask for something either really random And God is this the one.
Joel Brooks:And so you know, you pray, Lord, if this boy is the one tomorrow when I wake up, my may my alarm clock may have woah play Beyonce's Crazy in Love. May, may that be the song that I wake up to, Lord, and then I know. And is it just random, ridiculous things. So, or, or you'll pray something so common. You know, Lord, if, if this is the person that you want me to marry, may they call me up sometime this week.
Joel Brooks:You know, come on, it's like going to a store and saying, God, if you really want me to buy something in here, may there be something on sale? You know, there's, there's you're gonna find these signs. It's gonna be something, usually asked for something absolutely random and ridiculous or something so common that you know it's going to happen. But that's not what this servant does. Look what he asked for.
Joel Brooks:He asked for something keeping him with the heart of God. He says, I want a woman who will water my camels. That's what you need to look for in a woman. This is not an easy task. I read one commentary that said this is a Herculean task.
Joel Brooks:Because the servant came with 10 camels, a thirsty camel can drink about 25 gallons. So this is about 250 gallons here. If the woman carried like an average size or a pretty large jar that maybe carried 3 gallons, she is going to go to this well or to this spring 80 to a 100 times, drawing water for these camels. 80 to a 100 times. It would be, it would take hours, it would be absolutely exhausting.
Joel Brooks:It would be better than any workout you have done this week, I promise you. And she springs into action and says she does this quickly and she ran and she didn't hesitate in doing this. Now the servant asked for this, not because he heard a voice from the Lord, but because he understood once again the character and the heart of god. He understood the promise of god. He understood that whoever was going to be a wife to Isaac was going to be a princess.
Joel Brooks:She was going to have to build a nation. She was gonna have to be part of building the kingdom of God. And this was gonna take hard work. Hospitality was gonna be needed. These were signs that he needed to look for.
Joel Brooks:It wasn't just random, it had to do with the heart and the character of God, and what God had promised Isaac. And God answered his prayer. So what should we take from all of these stories? You know, why why exactly were they written? Certainly, it was to show us that God keeps his promise to Abraham.
Joel Brooks:Don't miss that. I mean, it's almost so obvious you don't want to say it. A lot of these points are so obvious, you you feel like, I shouldn't even have to say them. But we do. God keeps his promise.
Joel Brooks:It was hanging on a thread. Isaac needed a wife. God provided. But also these stories are here to teach us how to entrust ourselves to God and to always seek his will and find it. In order to make wise decisions, in order to move forward in life and confidence, you have to understand God's promises.
Joel Brooks:You have to understand his character and his word. You have to. Doctor. John Piper calls this understanding that trajectory of God's word. So when you pour over this book here, when you pour over it, his will for your life starts unfolding before you.
Joel Brooks:Or trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. You begin seeing his will in the direction you should follow. I mean, I get consumer reports magazine, and I can pour over that. You know, if I need to get a new dishwasher, I will go over every little review.
Joel Brooks:I will look up the consumer reports online. I study like crazy and then I, I never act because there's too much information out there. But but I pour over that that data. Some of you have huge decisions you need to make, but you're pouring over the wrong data. You're looking at, okay, if I take this job, how much money could I make?
Joel Brooks:How how large of a house could I buy? Will this job be easier for me if I take it? And you're looking at the wrong data, but all the while you're you're praying, I'm really seeking the Lord in this decision. How? I mean, most of us when we say, hey we're really praying through this.
Joel Brooks:When we say that, for most of us it's an absolute lie. We say that because it's the right thing for us to say, but really have we got on our knees and sought the Lord's heart for these decisions? Or was our prayer as we were driving, Hey God, help me in this. And then we look at all the other data before us. But we should make our decisions in line with the promises of God and the commandments of God.
Joel Brooks:We know God has commanded general things for our lives. That we are to help the poor. That we are to seek the welfare of the city and the welfare of our neighborhoods. That we are to seek justice. That we are to learn to be content with all we have and not just make a move because we're, we don't like what we're at or we're not content where we're at.
Joel Brooks:That we're not to be greedy. We're not to just do things so we can have more and more money. That we're always supposed to be thinking how we can share the gospel in other people's lives, that we're supposed to be loving our enemies. These are commandments that we know from God. That's the data we put before us.
Joel Brooks:And so if there is this job offer, we think, okay, not how much does it pay, but in light of this data, in light of the character of God revealed in His word, does this line up? If I take this job, can I better serve the poor? Will I have more opportunity to share his gospel? Will I be able to love my enemies better? Or is it just so I can be comfortable?
Joel Brooks:Which isn't in the bible. Some of us need to take a long drink from the word of god. We have so many decisions we need to make, and we're going around saying, hey, I just wanna hear the audible voice. I just want to hear this. And God's saying, first learn my heart.
Joel Brooks:1st learn my character. 1st learn my word. Get the data before you, and the path unfolds before you. And so if you have a big decision you need to make, take some time. Take 3 to 4 hours with your bible and put it before you and just take a long drink and see if things begin clearing up for you.
Joel Brooks:See if you begin feeling that heart and the character of God beating in your own heart, beginning seeing the situation for what it is through his eyes. To where you can finally say, you know what? In light of all of your promises, in light of everything scripture is saying, although I don't hear a direct word from you, Lord, I can act in confidence that this is your will. With so much confidence, I can say your angel will go out before me and make it happen. But that can only come through seeking Him and His word.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Lord, this is a long, laborious text. It's not one for easy reading. It's one that the truths are so simple that we want to jump over them and jump into something complicated. But Lord, here you're saying that you will provide, you keep your promises.
Joel Brooks:And here you're saying that if we know your promises and we know your word, we can make wise and good decisions knowing it is in line with your will. So right now I pray for everyone here that you would give them a deep and abiding hunger to know you through your word. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
