Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Connect with Skip Heidzig. We're glad you've joined
us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exist to
connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's
why we make messages like this one today available to
you and others on air and online. Before we kick
off today's teaching, we want to let you know that
(00:22):
you can stay in the know about what's happening at
Connect with Skip Heitzig when you sign up for email updates.
When you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email
to inspire you with God's Word each week. So sign
up today at connectiskip dot com. That's Connect with Skip
dot com. Now let's get into today's teaching with pastor
(00:42):
Skip Heitzig.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
The fact that they're getting married shows that they believe
that two is better than one. These two together are
better than either of us on our own, two is
better than one. But essentially Solomon says three is better
than two. Now, how does that apply to marriage? Well,
as you are committing yourself to another person in a
(01:06):
marriage relationship, if you had the strength of God that
would wind himself around the commitment that you make your
strength is infinite. A threefold cord or a rope of
three strands is not quickly broken. It's a beautiful analogy.
If you took a single string and you hung a
(01:28):
weight from it, and then you put a little more
weight on, a little more weight on, eventually it's going
to have a breaking point. It's going to snap. If
you double the weight and you take two pieces of
string and wrap them together and you hang a weight
on it, and then more weight and more weight, and
it's going to withstand more. But if you add another
(01:49):
strand exponentially, the strength of that strand goes up. So
if it's a husband and a wife and they look
dreamy eyed and they say I love you, I'll always
love you, you can count on me. Well, tell death
do us part. Often it's not till death do us part.
It's like till death to us part, but I'm gonna
kill you by the end of the week. Or it's
(02:11):
till death do us part, or till you get ugly
and I get ugly and we find somebody better looking,
do us part. But imagine if a young man and
a young woman had the strength of God himself, wrapped
around that relationship and entrusted their future to the God
(02:34):
who would bring them together. How different it would be.
So here's the father finding a wife for his son
Isaac in trusting the unnamed servant to go get one,
and you'll see it's the perfect one. She's beautiful, she
wants to go, and it's a marriage that will last.
(03:00):
So look at verse five again. The servants said to him,
perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me
to this land. Must I bring your son back to
the land from which you came. But Abraham said to him,
beware that you do not take my son back there.
He didn't want his son going back. His son had
(03:20):
been here in Canaan. This is the land God wanted
him to remain in. He had already left a couple times.
Remember he learned the lesson. I don't want my son
leaving this land. He's staying here. He might just decide
to hang back at home. Oh this is kind of
a cool place. I didn't know about this place. This
is I'm just going to be here. Don't even bring
him back. You know, there are certain places God just
doesn't want you or I to go. Don't bring him
(03:42):
back just go on this mission, but don't bring him back.
Verse seven. The Lord God of Heaven, who took me
from my father's house and from the land of my family,
and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying
to your descendants, I give this land. He will send
his angel before you, and you shall take a wife
(04:03):
from my son from there. Now, there's a principle I
want you to notice before we go on in this story,
and that is another principle of a long lasting relationship.
It's the principle of separation. Abraham does not want his
son marrying a pagan Canaanite without the same worldview and
(04:23):
belief in God that he has. Now, there's a principle
in the New Testament that goes beautifully with this. You
know it well, and probably some of you knew I
would be going there. I'm going to read it to you.
It's out of Second Corinthians, chapter six. Let me read
it to you, Oh Corinthians, we have spoken openly to you.
Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us,
(04:46):
but you are restricted by your own affections. Now, in
return for the same I speak to you children, you
also be open. Just so you know, in context, Paul
is going to say, you guys need to be very
careful the relationships you have because some of the people
around you are false prophets, false teachers, and they're ruining
(05:08):
the fabric of truth within the church. But listen to
what he says and the way he puts it. Do
not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship
has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
And what a chord has christ with belile? Or what
(05:30):
part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement
has the Temple of God with idols? For you are
the temple of the Living God. It's a very powerful analogy.
It's a farming analogy. A farmer would be wise when
he wants to work a field to pick two animals
that will be yoked together with the same size, the
(05:51):
same temperament, Not a clean and an unclean animal, not
an ox and a goat. He wants to get two animals,
same species, same size, same temperament, because they need to
plow in the same direction. They need to go in
the same direction. The unequal yoke. Another translation puts it
(06:13):
this way. Don't be mismated with unbelievers. So now put
it in a relational context, a marriage context. If you're
a believer, and if in your heart you truly want
to go God's way and do God's work and fulfill
God's will for your life, that's the direction you're going in.
(06:36):
Do you really think an unbeliever wants to serve the
Lord and work for the Lord and go in God's direction. No,
So when you get married, essentially you and her are
you and he. If you're a girl, and I'm speaking
to both men and women, if you go under the
yoke because you're going to be tied together in marriage,
(06:59):
you'll be going in our directions. Can you imagine two
animals trying to plow a field that are trying to
work in opposite directions, No work will get done. So
don't be mismated or don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
There was a survey that was done among Christian teenagers
that revealed forty percent of the Christian teenagers said that
(07:22):
they would date a non Christian and twenty five percent
said that they would be willing to consider it. Now
I've heard the reasons I've heard. I was going to
say the excuse is, really that's what they are. Well,
I haven't found a guy around the church or in
(07:43):
that's a Christian that is suitable to me, but somebody
else that I know that as an unbeliever, is suitable
to me. Or there's just no good Christian guys left,
or there's no really great Christian gals left. It's a
lame excuse, because what happens is after the infatuation wears off,
(08:05):
at some point that believer is going to start getting
serious again with serving the Lord and find that other
one that he or she is tied to saying, ah,
not so fast and not so much, don't want to
go there, And so you find yourself in a lifelong
tug of war. That is why I'll give you another
scripture that goes along sort of with that as First Corinthians,
(08:26):
chapter seven. As Paul is talking about marriage and divorce
among believers, he says, a wife is bound by law
as long as her husband lives, but if her husband
dies and she is at liberty to be married to
whom she wishes. Only in the Lord do you get
that little last part. Only in the Lord. So if
(08:49):
a husband dies, you want to get remarried. Great, go
get remarried, says Paul. But just make sure it's in
the Lord that they love, the Lord, that their believers
going in the same direction, pulling the plow. You're yoked
with that person in the same direction. So it's not
a tug of war. So we find that in its
(09:09):
nascent form back in chapter twenty four of Genesis, as
he commissions a servant to go out. I love verse seven.
You know what it shows me. It shows me that
Abraham is a man of faith, now all the way
through to the end. From here on out, this is
quite a statement of faith. Just go. The God who
gave me the promise is going to send his angel.
(09:31):
Just go. He's a man of faith, because after all,
did not God promise that he would have a son,
And after all the years of wrangling and disbelief, they
had a son, And did not God spare his son
by the angel withholding his hand in chapter twenty two,
and he was going to plunge a knife into him.
So here's the son. He knows that God, if he's
(09:52):
provided this sun and he's kept him alive all this time,
certainly God wants him to have a life and children,
because after all the promises in your seat, all the
nations of the earth will be blessed. For that to happen,
God to have more, the race has to continue. So
God will go with you. Just go for it, and
(10:15):
if the woman is not willing to follow you, then
you will be released from this oath. Only do not
take my son back there. I'm sure Abraham was thinking, Okay,
suppose this doesn't work out. It must mean God has
another plan and I'm just not seeing yet. But God
will come through. So the servant put his hand under
the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him
(10:39):
concerning this matter. And so the unnamed servant is on
a mission to find a bride for the Sun and
bring the bride back to the home again. It's a
picture of the Holy Spirit. I just want you to
notice as we go through, why unnamed Well, didn't Jesus
say of the Holy Spirit? When the spirit of truth
(11:00):
has come, he will guide you into all truth. He
will not speak of himself, but he will speak of
what he hears. And so the unnamed Servant, like the
Holy Spirit, goes out and did not even Jesus himself.
I think is Matthew twenty two say, the Kingdom of
God or the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain
king that arranged a wedding for his son. Here's a
(11:22):
father arranging a wedding for his son like the Kingdom
of God.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig before we return
to Skip's teaching. If you've ever wondered what the Bible
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(11:48):
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(12:09):
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for more of today's teaching.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Verse ten, the servant took ten of his master's camels.
He's getting the dowry all together, and departed, for all
his master's goods were in his hand. And he arose
and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor, and
he made his camels kneel down outside the city by
a well of water in the evening time when the
(12:46):
time the women go out to draw water. Notice that
not the men, the women. Again, it's a shock to
our system. But I have been in the Middle East,
and I've been in Bedwin tenths where this kind of
culture is still prevalent, and it was. It was a
mind blower to me, because if you go into the
tent during the day, you see no women. You see
the men, they're laying down on the rug, they're drinking coffee.
(13:09):
But you look outside and you see the women. They're
working in the fields, they're working with the livestock, and
they're at every beck and wish of the husband. And
so the women did the physical labor, the important physical labor,
while the men did the more important labor of drinking coffee,
lounging around and making negotiations over future plans. That's how
(13:34):
they saw it. Now watch this verse twelve, and he said, oh,
by the way, Elias are, the un named servant would
be called the friend of the bridegroom. Now that's a
term in Judaism that is more reserved that at least
(13:54):
we notice it. In the New Testament, John the Baptist
called himself the friend of the bridegroom, the friend of
Jesus Christ being the bridegroom. But the servant acts is
the friend of the bridegroom. He's making the negotiations with
the bride's father. He's going to give the dowry. He's
going to be the guy who swings the deal and
closes the deal friend of the bridegroom. Verse twelve he said,
(14:20):
now watch him pray, Oh Lord God of my master Abraham,
please give me success this day and show kindness to
my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well
of water, and the daughters of the men of the
city are coming out to draw water. Now let it
be that the young woman to whom I say, please
(14:44):
let down your picture that I may drink, and she says, drink,
and I will also give your camels a drink. Let
her be the one that you have appointed for your servant, Isaac,
and by this I will know that you have shown
kindness to my master. There's a second principle I want
to bring into this. If you're looking for a mate,
not just separation, marrying only a believer and not a
(15:07):
non believer. But number two, supplication, pray, pray. You're entrusting
that future to God. Prayer is through this entire chapter.
You're gonna see the servant pray, and then you're gonna
see him pause and then pray again and worship God.
And you'll see Isaac meditating out in the field toward
the end of the chapter. The Rabbi has always said
(15:28):
that meant he was praying. If you're looking for a
way to break the ice on your first date, try this.
What do I say? What's like my opening line here?
It is, let's pray. If she goes, oh what you
do not want to date her? Or if you gal say,
(15:52):
would you mind praying? He goes, I'm not a praying
kind of a guy. You dump him, Just open the door,
push him out, get on with your life. It will
break the ice. And here's why. In a wonderful way,
you are taking the relationship and moving it to a
(16:14):
spiritual level. Immediately. You're placing it on spiritual ground right
off the bat. It's one of the first moves you make.
You pray about it. And let's say it doesn't work out.
Let's say you find he's a creep, or she doesn't
want to be with him, or he didn't want to
be with her. So what what have you lost? You've
had fellowship, You've prayed for each other, and you can
continue to pray for that a person long after that.
(16:39):
But you haven't lost anything because you've made it a
spiritual exercise. You've moved it onto spiritual ground. He prays, Now,
this is an unusual prayer, one of the most unusual
in the Bible, simply because it's answered before he's done praying.
Wouldn't that be great if every prayer was like that.
You can't even say amen, just boom there it is.
This is one of those instances supplication. In verse fourteen,
(17:05):
when the servant says, please let the young woman to
whom I say, please let down your picture that I
may drink, and she says drink. It's very detailed in
what he's asking God to do. Notice this, let her
be the one you have appointed for your servant, Isaac.
A better rendition of this is that let the person
(17:26):
that I meet be the one you have chosen. Let
her be the one. The one that I meet first off,
be the one you have chosen. So I'm involved, but
I'm trusting that you are the one that has made
the choice. And by this I will know that you
have shown kindness to my master. So it's all about
(17:46):
the will of God. I love it. It's all about Lord,
you've made a choice, Show me who it is. Now
you're going to discover she's really beautiful. But that's not
what he prays for. No, he'd be on the lookout,
no doubt for a good looking girl, gonna get it
for a something want Isaac hate in his whole life.
But I find it interesting that in the prayer he didn't.
(18:07):
So God, I pray that she'd be five foot eight,
blonde hair, have a bachelor's degree in fashion, and a
healthy stock portfolio in Jesus' name, Amen, though she has
some assets, though she's beautiful. It's a spiritual prayer. It's
on a spiritual level, and God will honor that. And
(18:30):
it happened verse fifteen before he had finished speaking, that
behold Rebecca, who was born to Bethel, well son of Milka,
the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, came out with her
pitcher on her shoulder. Now the young woman was very beautiful,
(18:51):
to behold a virgin. No man had known her. And
she went down to the well, filled her picture and
came up. The servant ran to meet her and said, please,
let me drink a little water from your picture. I
just want to say something before I move on. The
Bible notes that she's beautiful. The Puritans had an interesting idea.
(19:14):
They believed that physical beauty was of the devil. Don't
look at physical beauty, man, And so if you find
somebody beautiful, it's of the devil. Well, technically, I guess
that's true. The devil himself was beautiful. He was a
beautiful creature because God had given him beauty. But the
(19:35):
idea that because a person is beautiful physically, that that's
nothing to include into the equation is wrong. You see,
even scientists recognize that there's a thing called love mapping.
I'll tell you a little bit more about that toward
the end of the study. But it's the way our
brain works chemically, physiologically, and what features in certain people
(19:59):
we find attractive and why that is and what that
mechanism is in the brain that brings that attraction. When
we look at a person go wow, she's beautiful, there's
an initial attraction. You would want that, you know, you
would want him to bring Isaac a beautiful girl. You
(20:19):
wouldn't want Isaac after By the way, it's a four
hundred and fifty mile trip one way, so close to
one thousand miles round trip. It's going to take a
couple months to make that journey there and back. You
don't want to go through that and then bring a
gal who's going to get off for camel and Isaac's
going to look and go, oh, my goodness, okay do
(20:43):
I have to And he noted it's a very beautiful woman.
But while it's mentioned again, it's on a spiritual level,
and he's praying for just the right one, just the
right one. I love that the servant is praying. I
love that Isaac will be out in the field praying.
(21:05):
And it could be as some commentators believe that every
single day this servant would get up in the morning
and pray, commit his journey to God. Get up in
the morning, commit his journey to God. Next day, commit
his journey to God because he's praying all the way
through this encounter at the well. Okay, so your first date,
you open in prayer. Don't stop there and see. Yeah,
(21:25):
well we prayed our first day. We're done. Now pray
through your relationship. I had an interesting meeting. This was
so many years ago, I think I'm safe to tell it.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was told that
I had a meeting with a couple whom I was
supposed to marry perform their wedding on the following day, Saturday.
(21:49):
Now there was a process then as there is now.
They had seen an assistant pastor, they had been through
a counseling, I assumed. And now I was just you know,
they had been met and disciple. I'm just simply going
to tie the knot. So I asked the couple, tell
me about your relationship with each other. They told me
how they met, and they were looking at each other,
and then I said, tell me about your spiritual relationship.
(22:11):
Dead silence, And not only was there dead silence. But
the man, the soon to be husband, started shrinking in
his chair and was silent, while the gal just sort
of kind of stood up and got puffed up and
definitely mythed you could see the body language. She was
not pleased that I asked that, so I decided to
(22:32):
press a little bit more. I said, now, does that
make you uncomfortable? Do you pray together? Do you read
the Bible together? What's your favorite scripture? I just started
asking some questions and she said, that's none of your business.
I said, oh, really, you're asking me to perform the
wedding tomorrow and you're telling me it's none of my
(22:54):
business that I ask you, as a pastor, as a
servant of God about your spiritual relfe relationship. That's right,
it's none of your business. Well, I decided to press
a little further and ask her why it was none
of my business and do they read the Bible at
all or pray together? Come to find out, they didn't.
But she was so incensed that I even asked about
(23:16):
her walk with God. She got up from the table
and stormed out of the room. While this guy is
just sitting there saying nothing. He was such a whimp,
just a noodle, just melting in the corner. Hey, So
I said, okay, so you're the leader of this relationship.
Ah yeah, well yeah, you know she is this way.
(23:37):
And I said, okay, well you got It's like two
o'clock in the afternoon. You've got about three more hours
to get her back into this room and we'll finish
the counseling sessions or I'm not going to do your
wedding tomorrow. But it's in the invitation. I don't care
what invitation, I don't care who's coming in from out
of town. You're going to have the president and the
Pope there. I'm not going to do the wedding before
(24:00):
God unless I know you have a spiritual relationship. So
you've got three hours to get her back in here
and finish this up. They never showed up. I didn't
do the wedding. I don't know where they got married,
but I did hear that wasn't long before they divorced,
very very sad. So Abraham is holding his servant to this,
(24:23):
and his servant is taking it very seriously. He's planning
for success. Is going to work. I'm going to trust God.
I'm going to pray all the way through and make
sure it's on a spiritual level.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember
that when you give fifty dollars or more to help
reach more people with the Gospel through connect with Skip Heitzig,
we'll send you God Speaks Biblical Answers for Today's Issues,
which contain six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you
understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism,
the importance of truth, suicide, and Heaven and Hell. To
(24:59):
request that's your copy of God Speaks Biblical Answers for
Today's Issues, Call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight.
That's eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight, or
visit connect with Skip dot com slash donate for more
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available at connectiskip dot com slash store. Come back next
(25:22):
time for more verse by verse teaching of God's Word.
Here onconnect with Skip Heidzick.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Make it Connect, make a Connect, The Cross chats songs,
Make Connect.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Connect with Skip Heidsig is a presentation of connection communications
connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.
Welcome to Connect with Skip Heidzig. We're glad you've joined
us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exist to
connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's
why we make messages like this one today available to
you and others on air and online. Before we kick
off today's teaching, we want to let you know that
(00:22):
you can stay in the know about what's happening at
Connect with Skip Heitzig when you sign up for email updates.
When you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email
to inspire you with God's Word each week. So sign
up today at connectiskip dot com. That's Connect with Skip
dot com. Now let's get into today's teaching with pastor
(00:42):
Skip Heitzig.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
The fact that they're getting married shows that they believe
that two is better than one. These two together are
better than either of us on our own, two is
better than one. But essentially Solomon says three is better
than two. Now, how does that apply to marriage? Well,
as you are committing yourself to another person in a
(01:06):
marriage relationship, if you had the strength of God that
would wind himself around the commitment that you make your
strength is infinite. A threefold cord or a rope of
three strands is not quickly broken. It's a beautiful analogy.
If you took a single string and you hung a
(01:28):
weight from it, and then you put a little more
weight on, a little more weight on, eventually it's going
to have a breaking point. It's going to snap. If
you double the weight and you take two pieces of
string and wrap them together and you hang a weight
on it, and then more weight and more weight, and
it's going to withstand more. But if you add another
(01:49):
strand exponentially, the strength of that strand goes up. So
if it's a husband and a wife and they look
dreamy eyed and they say I love you, I'll always
love you, you can count on me. Well, tell death
do us part. Often it's not till death do us part.
It's like till death to us part, but I'm gonna
kill you by the end of the week. Or it's
(02:11):
till death do us part, or till you get ugly
and I get ugly and we find somebody better looking,
do us part. But imagine if a young man and
a young woman had the strength of God himself, wrapped
around that relationship and entrusted their future to the God
(02:34):
who would bring them together. How different it would be.
So here's the father finding a wife for his son
Isaac in trusting the unnamed servant to go get one,
and you'll see it's the perfect one. She's beautiful, she
wants to go, and it's a marriage that will last.
(03:00):
So look at verse five again. The servants said to him,
perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me
to this land. Must I bring your son back to
the land from which you came. But Abraham said to him,
beware that you do not take my son back there.
He didn't want his son going back. His son had
(03:20):
been here in Canaan. This is the land God wanted
him to remain in. He had already left a couple times.
Remember he learned the lesson. I don't want my son
leaving this land. He's staying here. He might just decide
to hang back at home. Oh this is kind of
a cool place. I didn't know about this place. This
is I'm just going to be here. Don't even bring
him back. You know, there are certain places God just
doesn't want you or I to go. Don't bring him
(03:42):
back just go on this mission, but don't bring him back.
Verse seven. The Lord God of Heaven, who took me
from my father's house and from the land of my family,
and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying
to your descendants, I give this land. He will send
his angel before you, and you shall take a wife
(04:03):
from my son from there. Now, there's a principle I
want you to notice before we go on in this story,
and that is another principle of a long lasting relationship.
It's the principle of separation. Abraham does not want his
son marrying a pagan Canaanite without the same worldview and
(04:23):
belief in God that he has. Now, there's a principle
in the New Testament that goes beautifully with this. You
know it well, and probably some of you knew I
would be going there. I'm going to read it to you.
It's out of Second Corinthians, chapter six. Let me read
it to you, Oh Corinthians, we have spoken openly to you.
Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us,
(04:46):
but you are restricted by your own affections. Now, in
return for the same I speak to you children, you
also be open. Just so you know, in context, Paul
is going to say, you guys need to be very
careful the relationships you have because some of the people
around you are false prophets, false teachers, and they're ruining
(05:08):
the fabric of truth within the church. But listen to
what he says and the way he puts it. Do
not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship
has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
And what a chord has christ with belile? Or what
(05:30):
part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement
has the Temple of God with idols? For you are
the temple of the Living God. It's a very powerful analogy.
It's a farming analogy. A farmer would be wise when
he wants to work a field to pick two animals
that will be yoked together with the same size, the
(05:51):
same temperament, Not a clean and an unclean animal, not
an ox and a goat. He wants to get two animals,
same species, same size, same temperament, because they need to
plow in the same direction. They need to go in
the same direction. The unequal yoke. Another translation puts it
(06:13):
this way. Don't be mismated with unbelievers. So now put
it in a relational context, a marriage context. If you're
a believer, and if in your heart you truly want
to go God's way and do God's work and fulfill
God's will for your life, that's the direction you're going in.
(06:36):
Do you really think an unbeliever wants to serve the
Lord and work for the Lord and go in God's direction. No,
So when you get married, essentially you and her are
you and he. If you're a girl, and I'm speaking
to both men and women, if you go under the
yoke because you're going to be tied together in marriage,
(06:59):
you'll be going in our directions. Can you imagine two
animals trying to plow a field that are trying to
work in opposite directions, No work will get done. So
don't be mismated or don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
There was a survey that was done among Christian teenagers
that revealed forty percent of the Christian teenagers said that
(07:22):
they would date a non Christian and twenty five percent
said that they would be willing to consider it. Now
I've heard the reasons I've heard. I was going to
say the excuse is, really that's what they are. Well,
I haven't found a guy around the church or in
(07:43):
that's a Christian that is suitable to me, but somebody
else that I know that as an unbeliever, is suitable
to me. Or there's just no good Christian guys left,
or there's no really great Christian gals left. It's a
lame excuse, because what happens is after the infatuation wears off,
(08:05):
at some point that believer is going to start getting
serious again with serving the Lord and find that other
one that he or she is tied to saying, ah,
not so fast and not so much, don't want to
go there, And so you find yourself in a lifelong
tug of war. That is why I'll give you another
scripture that goes along sort of with that as First Corinthians,
(08:26):
chapter seven. As Paul is talking about marriage and divorce
among believers, he says, a wife is bound by law
as long as her husband lives, but if her husband
dies and she is at liberty to be married to
whom she wishes. Only in the Lord do you get
that little last part. Only in the Lord. So if
(08:49):
a husband dies, you want to get remarried. Great, go
get remarried, says Paul. But just make sure it's in
the Lord that they love, the Lord, that their believers
going in the same direction, pulling the plow. You're yoked
with that person in the same direction. So it's not
a tug of war. So we find that in its
(09:09):
nascent form back in chapter twenty four of Genesis, as
he commissions a servant to go out. I love verse seven.
You know what it shows me. It shows me that
Abraham is a man of faith, now all the way
through to the end. From here on out, this is
quite a statement of faith. Just go. The God who
gave me the promise is going to send his angel.
(09:31):
Just go. He's a man of faith, because after all,
did not God promise that he would have a son,
And after all the years of wrangling and disbelief, they
had a son, And did not God spare his son
by the angel withholding his hand in chapter twenty two,
and he was going to plunge a knife into him.
So here's the son. He knows that God, if he's
(09:52):
provided this sun and he's kept him alive all this time,
certainly God wants him to have a life and children,
because after all the promises in your seat, all the
nations of the earth will be blessed. For that to happen,
God to have more, the race has to continue. So
God will go with you. Just go for it, and
(10:15):
if the woman is not willing to follow you, then
you will be released from this oath. Only do not
take my son back there. I'm sure Abraham was thinking, Okay,
suppose this doesn't work out. It must mean God has
another plan and I'm just not seeing yet. But God
will come through. So the servant put his hand under
the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him
(10:39):
concerning this matter. And so the unnamed servant is on
a mission to find a bride for the Sun and
bring the bride back to the home again. It's a
picture of the Holy Spirit. I just want you to
notice as we go through, why unnamed Well, didn't Jesus
say of the Holy Spirit? When the spirit of truth
(11:00):
has come, he will guide you into all truth. He
will not speak of himself, but he will speak of
what he hears. And so the unnamed Servant, like the
Holy Spirit, goes out and did not even Jesus himself.
I think is Matthew twenty two say, the Kingdom of
God or the Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain
king that arranged a wedding for his son. Here's a
(11:22):
father arranging a wedding for his son like the Kingdom
of God.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig before we return
to Skip's teaching. If you've ever wondered what the Bible
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(11:48):
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(12:09):
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fifty dollars or more. Now let's get back to skip
for more of today's teaching.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Verse ten, the servant took ten of his master's camels.
He's getting the dowry all together, and departed, for all
his master's goods were in his hand. And he arose
and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor, and
he made his camels kneel down outside the city by
a well of water in the evening time when the
(12:46):
time the women go out to draw water. Notice that
not the men, the women. Again, it's a shock to
our system. But I have been in the Middle East,
and I've been in Bedwin tenths where this kind of
culture is still prevalent, and it was. It was a
mind blower to me, because if you go into the
tent during the day, you see no women. You see
the men, they're laying down on the rug, they're drinking coffee.
(13:09):
But you look outside and you see the women. They're
working in the fields, they're working with the livestock, and
they're at every beck and wish of the husband. And
so the women did the physical labor, the important physical labor,
while the men did the more important labor of drinking coffee,
lounging around and making negotiations over future plans. That's how
(13:34):
they saw it. Now watch this verse twelve, and he said, oh,
by the way, Elias are, the un named servant would
be called the friend of the bridegroom. Now that's a
term in Judaism that is more reserved that at least
(13:54):
we notice it. In the New Testament, John the Baptist
called himself the friend of the bridegroom, the friend of
Jesus Christ being the bridegroom. But the servant acts is
the friend of the bridegroom. He's making the negotiations with
the bride's father. He's going to give the dowry. He's
going to be the guy who swings the deal and
closes the deal friend of the bridegroom. Verse twelve he said,
(14:20):
now watch him pray, Oh Lord God of my master Abraham,
please give me success this day and show kindness to
my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well
of water, and the daughters of the men of the
city are coming out to draw water. Now let it
be that the young woman to whom I say, please
(14:44):
let down your picture that I may drink, and she says, drink,
and I will also give your camels a drink. Let
her be the one that you have appointed for your servant, Isaac,
and by this I will know that you have shown
kindness to my master. There's a second principle I want
to bring into this. If you're looking for a mate,
not just separation, marrying only a believer and not a
(15:07):
non believer. But number two, supplication, pray, pray. You're entrusting
that future to God. Prayer is through this entire chapter.
You're gonna see the servant pray, and then you're gonna
see him pause and then pray again and worship God.
And you'll see Isaac meditating out in the field toward
the end of the chapter. The Rabbi has always said
(15:28):
that meant he was praying. If you're looking for a
way to break the ice on your first date, try this.
What do I say? What's like my opening line here?
It is, let's pray. If she goes, oh what you
do not want to date her? Or if you gal say,
(15:52):
would you mind praying? He goes, I'm not a praying
kind of a guy. You dump him, Just open the door,
push him out, get on with your life. It will
break the ice. And here's why. In a wonderful way,
you are taking the relationship and moving it to a
(16:14):
spiritual level. Immediately. You're placing it on spiritual ground right
off the bat. It's one of the first moves you make.
You pray about it. And let's say it doesn't work out.
Let's say you find he's a creep, or she doesn't
want to be with him, or he didn't want to
be with her. So what what have you lost? You've
had fellowship, You've prayed for each other, and you can
continue to pray for that a person long after that.
(16:39):
But you haven't lost anything because you've made it a
spiritual exercise. You've moved it onto spiritual ground. He prays, Now,
this is an unusual prayer, one of the most unusual
in the Bible, simply because it's answered before he's done praying.
Wouldn't that be great if every prayer was like that.
You can't even say amen, just boom there it is.
This is one of those instances supplication. In verse fourteen,
(17:05):
when the servant says, please let the young woman to
whom I say, please let down your picture that I
may drink, and she says drink. It's very detailed in
what he's asking God to do. Notice this, let her
be the one you have appointed for your servant, Isaac.
A better rendition of this is that let the person
(17:26):
that I meet be the one you have chosen. Let
her be the one. The one that I meet first off,
be the one you have chosen. So I'm involved, but
I'm trusting that you are the one that has made
the choice. And by this I will know that you
have shown kindness to my master. So it's all about
(17:46):
the will of God. I love it. It's all about Lord,
you've made a choice, Show me who it is. Now
you're going to discover she's really beautiful. But that's not
what he prays for. No, he'd be on the lookout,
no doubt for a good looking girl, gonna get it
for a something want Isaac hate in his whole life.
But I find it interesting that in the prayer he didn't.
(18:07):
So God, I pray that she'd be five foot eight,
blonde hair, have a bachelor's degree in fashion, and a
healthy stock portfolio in Jesus' name, Amen, though she has
some assets, though she's beautiful. It's a spiritual prayer. It's
on a spiritual level, and God will honor that. And
(18:30):
it happened verse fifteen before he had finished speaking, that
behold Rebecca, who was born to Bethel, well son of Milka,
the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, came out with her
pitcher on her shoulder. Now the young woman was very beautiful,
(18:51):
to behold a virgin. No man had known her. And
she went down to the well, filled her picture and
came up. The servant ran to meet her and said, please,
let me drink a little water from your picture. I
just want to say something before I move on. The
Bible notes that she's beautiful. The Puritans had an interesting idea.
(19:14):
They believed that physical beauty was of the devil. Don't
look at physical beauty, man, And so if you find
somebody beautiful, it's of the devil. Well, technically, I guess
that's true. The devil himself was beautiful. He was a
beautiful creature because God had given him beauty. But the
(19:35):
idea that because a person is beautiful physically, that that's
nothing to include into the equation is wrong. You see,
even scientists recognize that there's a thing called love mapping.
I'll tell you a little bit more about that toward
the end of the study. But it's the way our
brain works chemically, physiologically, and what features in certain people
(19:59):
we find attractive and why that is and what that
mechanism is in the brain that brings that attraction. When
we look at a person go wow, she's beautiful, there's
an initial attraction. You would want that, you know, you
would want him to bring Isaac a beautiful girl. You
(20:19):
wouldn't want Isaac after By the way, it's a four
hundred and fifty mile trip one way, so close to
one thousand miles round trip. It's going to take a
couple months to make that journey there and back. You
don't want to go through that and then bring a
gal who's going to get off for camel and Isaac's
going to look and go, oh, my goodness, okay do
(20:43):
I have to And he noted it's a very beautiful woman.
But while it's mentioned again, it's on a spiritual level,
and he's praying for just the right one, just the
right one. I love that the servant is praying. I
love that Isaac will be out in the field praying.
(21:05):
And it could be as some commentators believe that every
single day this servant would get up in the morning
and pray, commit his journey to God. Get up in
the morning, commit his journey to God. Next day, commit
his journey to God because he's praying all the way
through this encounter at the well. Okay, so your first date,
you open in prayer. Don't stop there and see. Yeah,
(21:25):
well we prayed our first day. We're done. Now pray
through your relationship. I had an interesting meeting. This was
so many years ago, I think I'm safe to tell it.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was told that
I had a meeting with a couple whom I was
supposed to marry perform their wedding on the following day, Saturday.
(21:49):
Now there was a process then as there is now.
They had seen an assistant pastor, they had been through
a counseling, I assumed. And now I was just you know,
they had been met and disciple. I'm just simply going
to tie the knot. So I asked the couple, tell
me about your relationship with each other. They told me
how they met, and they were looking at each other,
and then I said, tell me about your spiritual relationship.
(22:11):
Dead silence, And not only was there dead silence. But
the man, the soon to be husband, started shrinking in
his chair and was silent, while the gal just sort
of kind of stood up and got puffed up and
definitely mythed you could see the body language. She was
not pleased that I asked that, so I decided to
(22:32):
press a little bit more. I said, now, does that
make you uncomfortable? Do you pray together? Do you read
the Bible together? What's your favorite scripture? I just started
asking some questions and she said, that's none of your business.
I said, oh, really, you're asking me to perform the
wedding tomorrow and you're telling me it's none of my
(22:54):
business that I ask you, as a pastor, as a
servant of God about your spiritual relfe relationship. That's right,
it's none of your business. Well, I decided to press
a little further and ask her why it was none
of my business and do they read the Bible at
all or pray together? Come to find out, they didn't.
But she was so incensed that I even asked about
(23:16):
her walk with God. She got up from the table
and stormed out of the room. While this guy is
just sitting there saying nothing. He was such a whimp,
just a noodle, just melting in the corner. Hey, So
I said, okay, so you're the leader of this relationship.
Ah yeah, well yeah, you know she is this way.
(23:37):
And I said, okay, well you got It's like two
o'clock in the afternoon. You've got about three more hours
to get her back into this room and we'll finish
the counseling sessions or I'm not going to do your
wedding tomorrow. But it's in the invitation. I don't care
what invitation, I don't care who's coming in from out
of town. You're going to have the president and the
Pope there. I'm not going to do the wedding before
(24:00):
God unless I know you have a spiritual relationship. So
you've got three hours to get her back in here
and finish this up. They never showed up. I didn't
do the wedding. I don't know where they got married,
but I did hear that wasn't long before they divorced,
very very sad. So Abraham is holding his servant to this,
(24:23):
and his servant is taking it very seriously. He's planning
for success. Is going to work. I'm going to trust God.
I'm going to pray all the way through and make
sure it's on a spiritual level.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember
that when you give fifty dollars or more to help
reach more people with the Gospel through connect with Skip Heitzig,
we'll send you God Speaks Biblical Answers for Today's Issues,
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understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism,
the importance of truth, suicide, and Heaven and Hell. To
(24:59):
request that's your copy of God Speaks Biblical Answers for
Today's Issues, Call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight.
That's eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight, or
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available at connectiskip dot com slash store. Come back next
(25:22):
time for more verse by verse teaching of God's Word.
Here onconnect with Skip Heidzick.
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