Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #23 of Genesis, chapter 24, and we are going to read Genesis 24:23-28:

And said, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father's house for us to lodge in? And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor. She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in. And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped JEHOVAH. And he said, Blessed be JEHOVAH God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, JEHOVAH led me to the house of my master's brethren. And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things.

I will stop reading there.  We have seen how this historical parable is pointing to the sending forth of the Gospel.  Also, it has reference to the Gospel as it was brought within the churches and the congregations, and we saw a couple of references that directed us in that way.

Now Abraham’s servant had set up this scenario in his mind and he requested that the girl that would come to the well and give him drink and give his camels drink would be the one, the bride for Isaac.  As soon as he was done praying and speaking to God, it happened.  So he wondered at her and he also wondered if the Lord had made his way prosperous, or not. 

He had already taken out the golden earring of half a shekel and two bracelets for her hand of ten shekels of gold, and we spent a good deal of time talking about the spiritual meaning of that. 

He asked the question, “Whose daughter art thou?”  She answered that she was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah (and Milcah means “queen”) which she bare unto Nahor.

Now we are going to look at Genesis 24:25:

She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.

She was answering his question stated in the second part of verse 23: “Is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in?”  So she is answering, “Yes, we have straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in.”  She is actually doing what God’s people have done throughout the entirety of the church age of 1,955 years, and that is to bring the Gospel out to the world to the strangers they would meet.  Then where would they bring them?  They would bring them back to their “father’s house,” or the church.  That is where God wanted His people.  We are living at a time when the church age is over.  It has been over since 1988, and it has been officially over since 1994.  God opened up the information about the end of the church age in a complete way around the year 2001, and Mr. Camping wrote the book, “The End of the Church Age and After.” 

Every now and then, we hear someone say, “Well, I haven’t gone to church since the 70s or early 80s.”  They are trying to say that they were “ahead of the game,” and they saw this (the end of the church age) way back then.  But, no, they did not because it was not the end of the church age at that time, so if there was a man or woman back in 1970 or 1980 or 1987 and they heard the Gospel, then they would have been correctly directed to go to a church, and they should have gone to church.  That was God’s program from 33 A. D. with the sending forth of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and that was His program until May 21, 1988, the day before Pentecost in that year.  (If Pentecost had come again, it would have been as though the church age was renewed for another year.)  But it was the day before Pentecost when God ended the church age; there would be no more renewal.  The time had run out.  The Lord had given space for the churches and congregations to repent, and they did not repent, so it was the end of the church age.  But even at that point, He did not make the command to come out of the churches known to His people.  He did not open up the understanding of His people to that until much later (2001), so any one that says they left the church in 1985 was doing so in rebellion.  They should have been looking around for another faithful church.  Only God is the one that determines “times and seasons,” and when His people are to move on, and it is not for the individual to determine it.

Here, again, Rebekah was explaining to the servant, “We have both straw and provender enough.”  What does that mean?  Historically, it means that they had plenty of food.  They had plenty to give to the camels.  They had straw and provender, and they had rooms to lodge the man and the men with him, so they had plenty of space and food.  Again, he had asked in verse 23: “Is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in?”  And she was saying that there was room. 

But we are looking at this historical parable as it ought to be looked at, which is spiritually.  We are not doing anything out of the expected.  We are certainly doing something “out of the norm” for the corporate churches that have emptied the Bible of its meaning and made it void of any deeper spiritual truth, for the most part, and they have left it as a wooden, empty translation that they say must be understood only “historically, literally, morally, and grammatically,” but not spiritually where there is the nourishment, meat and sustenance for the people of God.  And that is what “feeds” God’s elect people who have been given life in their souls.  We need spiritual food, and in order to find spiritual food, we must use the methodology the Spirit sets forth, which is to compare Scripture with Scripture, and the Holy Ghost will teach.  Also, the Lord Jesus established a principle when He was asked why He spoke in parables: “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”  And we are told in the Bible that Jesus spoke in parables and that without a parable He did not speak.  Christ, the Word, always spoke in parables in order to teach how to properly understand the Word, the Bible. 

So, here we are in Genesis, looking for the parable.  Just read Galatians 4.  We spent a lot of time going over that when we were talking about Sarah and Hagar and Abraham.  In Galatians 4, it said, “Do ye not hear the law?”  And then God goes on to explain that Sara and Agar are the two covenants.  And regarding their sons, one was the child of the “free woman” and the other was the child of the “bondservant.”  These were the two covenants, and one covenant identifies with Agar and her son and mount Sinai where the Law was given, and the other identifies with the grace of God and God’s true Gospel program wherein He saved according to His choosing and not man’s.

So we are following the same principle in our studies.  We will not go through this again, although it is always worthwhile to be reminded how God wrote the Bible.  And once you understand that when you are reading about Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, the two women represent “ two covenants,” that is the spiritual meaning.  It is an allegory, as it states in Galatians 4.  So, of course, it is obvious that we should not change from that type of understanding in looking for the allegory and the spiritual meaning when you go on to the next chapter or the next account we read about in the Bible.  This is how we must consistently approach the Bible, and we are seeing that we are able to do that in Genesis.  We have been doing this since Genesis 1 and now we are in Genesis 24.  It makes every chapter, paragraph, sentence and word interesting.  It is interesting!  We do not read it and think, “Now I know everything this verse is saying.” 

You know,  the churches and theologians say with one side of their mouth, “Oh, you can never mine the depths of the Word of God.  It is so deep in knowledge and understanding that we can never come to fully know all that God has said to us in His Word.”  Then in the next breath, out of the other side of their mouth, they empty the Bible of all its depth of meaning by saying that we should not look into the deeper spiritual understanding: “That is spiritualizing!”  And they just see the “surface gold,” which is often the “fool’s gold,” and they see the nuggets that are just on the surface, and they believe they have mined that verse.  They are just skimming the surface, and they have not gone into it at all.

OK, let us get back to our study where we are trying to understand what “straw” and “provender” mean.  This word “straw” is #8401 in Strong’s Concordance, and it is found in Judges 19.  I think when we are done looking at these words, we are going to find something very insignificant and interesting, and we will have confirmation as the Lord is reassuring us that we are doing the right thing when we are looking up these words carefully, and when we are looking at what these words mean spiritually. 

Yes, we could spend the next five or ten minutes talking about the customs and traditions of that time and the hospitality that was shown.  And we do want to talk about hospitality as it relates to the Bible.  But the churches would just lay forth some particular customs of the people of that day in that part of the world.  To tell you the truth, I have listened to this kind of teaching and it is very hard not to “nod off.”  It really is.  I have gone to seminary and I have heard it there, because you have to read the books that they tell you to read, and I have read it in the books of the theological commentaries.  Also, for several years I was working with Family Radio from 2005 to about 2011, and I was finding articles for their announcers to read on air.  So I searched everywhere I could, including books, online, and articles all down through church history and right up to the modern day.  I had to look at various items because I was providing articles for all the announcers, including “Music to Live By,” and “Rise and Rejoice,” and so forth.  I had to comb the Christian Home and different types of materials, so I was gleaning everything.  Of course, I can see how the Lord has used that background of my life because I have a fairly good grasp of what the churches understood in their partial understanding.  The Lord had kept much truth back for them over the church age, and I have seen how they approach the Bible and the things that they say.

OK, let us get back to the subject regarding “straw” and “provender” and what we find in Judges 19:16-21:

And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even, which was also of mount Ephraim; and he sojourned in Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites. And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou? And he said unto him, We are passing from Bethlehemjudah toward the side of mount Ephraim; from thence am I: and I went to Bethlehemjudah, but I am now going to the house of JEHOVAH; and there is no man that receiveth me to house. Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses; and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing. And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street. So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the asses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink.

This is regarding a Levite from Bethlehemjudah, and this is the chapter where his concubine was abused all the night, and she would be found dead outside the door in the morning.  He will cut her up and send a piece to all the tribes of Israel, and they will be horrified at what had happened, and they will come out and do battle with the Benjamites and almost completely wipe out that tribe.  This chapter identifies with the Great Tribulation.  There is not really too much we are going to take from this passage at this time, but I just wanted to look at those two words that are also found here: “Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses.”  It also says that the old man that took them in “gave provender unto the asses.”  We are curious about the “provender,” but we will look at that word a little later.

The word “straw” is #8401, and it is translated a different way in Job 21:17-18:

How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! and how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger. They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.

The Hebrew word translated as “straw” in Genesis 24 and Judges 19 is translated here as “stubble.”  It is “stubble” or “straw” before the wind. 

In another place in Jeremiah it is translated in a third way.   It says in Jeremiah 23:28:

The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith JEHOVAH.

The word “chaff” is Strong’s #8401.  “What is the chaff to the wheat?”  So this word is translated as “straw,” “stubble” and “chaff.”  Keep these verses in mind and, again, we hope you are studying the Bible.  We hope you just do not listen by computer, radio or phone in the background, but you are doing other things.  We hope you have your Bible and a notebook and a pen, or just a Bible and a pen.  If you are taking some notes, it may be good to have a notebook because you may not be sure what to write down in your Bible yet.

OK, we have looked up the word “straw,” and, again, keep that in the back of your mind and in your notepad, and now let us look at the word “provender.”  The Hebrew word “provender” is Strong’s #4554, and it is only translated as “provender,” and not as any other English word, but we are helped in understanding what it represents.  For example, if I asked you what provender is, you might “Goggle it,” and you might find someone’s definition of what it is, but that is not a Biblical definition.  We want the Bible to tell us, and I think the Bible does tell us, in Genesis 42:25-27:

Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way: and thus did he unto them. And they laded their asses with the corn, and departed thence. And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the inn, he espied his money; for, behold, it was in his sack's mouth.

We know this is the story of Joseph and his brethren.  Jacob had heard there was corn in Egypt, so he sent his sons and they went.  Then Joseph recognized them, and so forth.  They filled their sack with corn.  The money was there, but what other food was there?  Nothing – it was just corn.  According to these verses, corn was in the sack.  When they stopped to give the ass “provender,” and he opened his sack, what was he looking for?  He was looking for corn to give to his ass.  That helps us to understand what is “provender.”  It is corn.  It is the only thing in the Bible that I believe can be seen from the context to define what provender is.  Maybe it could be other things, historically, but as far as knowing for certain, we can know it was corn, based on what these verses are saying.  Why is that important?  Let us go back to Jeremiah 23 where we just saw the word “straw,” and that Hebrew word, #8401, was in Jeremiah 23:28:

The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith JEHOVAH.

The word “wheat” is the same word translated as “corn” in Genesis 42.  “What is the chaff to the corn?”  And when we understand that corn is provender, we can make this substitution: “What is the straw to the provender?”  Now that opens up some interesting things, because we see that “chaff” is to “wheat” as “straw” is to “provender,” as they are set against one another.  And Rebekah is saying of her father’s house: “We have both straw and provender enough,”  or, “We have both chaff and wheat enough.” 

Well, we will have to come back to this.  I am sure you can see the direction this is going in and, Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will try to follow that a little bit further in that direction to see where it leads us.