Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #7 of Genesis, chapter 24, and I am going to read Genesis 24:5-9:

Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again. JEHOVAH God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again. And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and sware to him concerning that matter.

We have already talked about how this is a picture of the sending forth of the Gospel, and how the Gospel was like a “guided missile.”  It was sent forth for the elect and they were the ones that were the bride of Christ, so Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, is a figure of the Lord sending forth His Word into the world to find the bride that is made up of everyone God has saved, all the elect. 

The servant asked, “Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest?”  And Abraham said unto him, “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.”  This would relate to the fact that Christ, as typified by Isaac, entered into the world, born of the Virgin, and went through His period of ministry in the world.  It all concluded with His going to the cross and resurrecting on the third day, and then showing Himself alive for forty days, followed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

Isaac’s age matches up well with the age of the Lord Jesus Christ because from His birth in 7 B. C. to the time of the cross were 40 inclusive years.  From the time that Abraham’s servant was sent forth, we can make an educated guess that Isaac was about 39 years old, and we do know that he was 40 when the servant returned with the bride Rebekah, and he took her as his wife.  So there was 3 or 3 ½ years that passed from Sarah’s death, but, again, that is speculation, but it would match up with Christ’s 3 ½ years of ministry up to the point of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Eliezer went forth just as the Holy Spirit went forth and eventually returned with the bride of Christ.  Not everything matches up perfectly because we know that 33 A. D. was only the beginning of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to seek the elect, and it would not be until the completion of the little season of the Great Tribulation when the last of the elect was saved through the sending forth of the Latter Rain.  So I was not trying to say it is a perfect match, but there are similarities with the years associated with the Lord Jesus Christ’s first coming and the age of Isaac at the time of the sending forth of the servant and the return of the servant with the bride Rebekah.

And the command not to bring Isaac thither again would have to do with crucifying Christ afresh – that was not to be done.  What He had done in coming to the earth and the life He spent was sufficient.  There was not to be any “return” along those lines, although there would be the return of the Lord at the time of the end as He came in judgment to destroy, but this was during the time of finding the wife.  It was not the time to judge and to end everything.  It was the time to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel and, therefore Abraham said, “…bring not my son thither again.” 

Then it goes on to say, in Genesis 24:7-8:

JEHOVAH God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath…

Abraham was assuring his servant, who was probably Eliezer, that he was trusting the same God who swore to him and promised him the seed: “Unto they seed will I give this land.”  Of course, the seed (singular) is Christ, but the promise was through the line of Isaac.

“He shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence.”  This sending of an angel is also spoken of in Exodus 23:20-23:

Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

This is speaking of bringing Israel into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, to receive the promise that God had given to them, and God said He would send His Angel to keep them in the way and to bring them into the place which He had prepared.  As we read this language of “angel” here, the Hebrew word for angel is also a word that is translated as “messenger,” so the messenger that God would send before Moses and all Israel would be the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messenger of the Covenant.  He is the “Angel.”  As it says, “Beware of him, and obey his voice.”  That is, He is God.  He is not to be taken lightly.  He is to be submitted to and feared, and so forth.  So God, the Lord Jesus Christ or the Angel was to go before them and bring them in unto the Amorites.  Historically, God led Israel all the way through the wilderness with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and both the cloud and the pillar of fire identify with God and the Word of God or the Lord Jesus Christ.  Christ led them, historically, into the Promised Lane and He continues to lead His people, spiritually.  Today as we follow the guidance of the Bible and the Word of God, Christ Himself directs our path, as the New Testament tells us in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  He is the “way” we are kept on, as the Angel goes before us.  The Holy Spirit directs our steps and we follow Him.  And soon, the elect children of God will follow Christ, the Word of God, into the new heaven and new earth, as He leads us step by step.

Just to confirm that this “Angel” is God, turn to Exodus 3:2:

And the angel of JEHOVAH appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

Later on, Moses asked, “Who shall I say has sent me?”  God sent Moses, just like Abraham sent his servant, and Moses went to the land of Egypt and brought the Word of God which delivered the people and set them free, so Moses was a “messenger” or “angel,” and he was also a figure of Christ and a figure of the Law, the Word of God.  It was the Word of God that pronounced condemnation on Pharaoh and the Egyptians and, simultaneously, set the captives free.  So the Word of God does all these things – it is a two-edged sword.

Later in Exodus 3, God answered (Moses) and said, “I AM THAT I AM.”  That is His name.  And, again, the Lord Jesus said in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  In several other places in the New Testament, He identifies Himself as the great I AM, the ever-existent One.

Exodus 14 has a lot of information about this “angel of JEHOVAH.”  It says in Exodus 14:15:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward:

They were at the Red Sea at the border of the sea.  Then it says in Exodus 14:16-20:

But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea. And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the Egyptians shall know that I am JEHOVAH, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen. And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

We are told, “And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them,” and that had to do with the pillar and the cloud.  It was just as God had said.  His angel would lead them into the land of the Canaanites.  And it was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led Israel, and both the cloud and the pillar of fire can be shown to identify with the Word of God or with Christ.  He is this “angel.”

It also says in Numbers 20:15-16:

How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians vexed us, and our fathers: And when we cried unto JEHOVAH, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:

So, again, the angel of JEHOVAH delivered Israel from Egypt.

Let is look at just one more passage in Exodus 33:1-4:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it: And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.

Once again, He said, “And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite…”  It was a process that pointed to the inhabiting of the Promised Land, and that relates to the building up of the “bride,” or the gathering of the company of the elect or forming the spiritual house.  These are all figures God uses to describe His salvation plan where in every generation people that were chosen before the foundation of the world were found through the hearing of the Gospel and added to the formation of the “woman,” and so forth.

Let us go back to Genesis 24:7-8:

… he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again.

This was reiterating not to bring his son thither again.  Christ was not to be crucified afresh, if the woman was not willing.  Now that may relate all the way to the time of the end when God ended the church age and the congregations within the churches of the world were no longer willing, as the Holy Spirit was no longer working or operating there.  But we do know that God says concerning the people He has determined to save that were elect and predestinated unto salvation that they would be willing, as it says in Psalm 110:3:

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power…

God makes them so.  God moves in the lives, hearts and minds of His elect people, and they are made willing.  They may not have been willing immediately.  By the way, we are talking about a time period that is now past, the day of salvation, but at that time the Gospel could enter into a person’s life during the day of salvation when they were younger, and they were not willing.  They ignored it and they went away from it.  That is possible, and it could have been that they were under the hearing of the Gospel in their home and in the church for decades and never became saved.  They were never truly made willing in their hearts.  For example, the thief on the cross was a Jew, so he was certainly under the hearing of the Gospel at that time within Israel, but it was not God’s plan to make him willing and to break his spirit and humble him and cause him to be in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ until the very end of his life when he was on the cross.  That was possible for any of the elect.  All we know is that within their lifetime before they died, they would become willing.  They might have resisted, resisted and resisted, but at the last God would have made them willing if they were, indeed, one of those predestinated and chosen by Him to be saved.  They would all be made willing. 

And if the woman would not be willing to go with the servant Eliezer to return and be the wife, that would picture someone that was not one of God’s elect, so do not force her or bring her back.  But Rebekah was willing because she was illustrating the people of God that are made willing, as we read in John 6:44:

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

I would encourage everyone to look up the word “draw.”  It is found in Acts 21:30 concerning the Apostle Paul as they “drew” him out of the temple.  It was a very violent action because they had thought he brought a Gentile into the temple, so they were not being considerate concerning his feelings or physical wellbeing.  He was being forcibly dragged out, and he was being bloodied as this was being done.  And that is the word God uses when He says, “No man can come to me,” so it was necessary for God to grab hold of the person and to make them willing and to “draw” that man or woman to Himself against their own wish and will.  It could be an atheist or agnostic or a person of any other religion or the worst of sinners, as the Apostle Paul explained of himself: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”  That is not an understatement, I am sure, so God could save the worst of mankind or the worst rebel, and He often did this as He brought that person to Himself.

But, again, it was said in Genesis 24:8:

And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath…

Lord willing, when we get together in our next study, we are going to look at the word “clear,” and see the implication of the use of that word, and what it would mean spiritually concerning the sending forth of the Gospel into the world.  We will have to talk about that in our next Bible study.