Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #50 of Genesis, chapter 24, and we are reading Genesis 24:56-60:

And he said unto them, Hinder me not, seeing JEHOVAH hath prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master. And they said, We will call the damsel, and enquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.

In our last study we were looking at verse 56, where the servant responds to the request that she stay longer, up to the tenth, and the servant said, “Hinder me not, seeing JEHOVAH hath prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master.”  We looked at a couple of places, like Nehemiah and Ezra and in the New Testament, that show that the Gospel was often fought against.  There was often much opposition.  God would command His people to do a thing, and the enemy forces would rise up to oppose the thing that God commanded to be done, and so it is today.  It has always been this way.

I just want to go to one other place in the New Testament where we read this word “hinder.”  It says in Galatians 5:5-8:

For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.

God calls, and Rebekah was being called.  The call to her was to go with the man and to be Isaac’s wife.  She responded to the call.  She did go with him.  On one hand, we have that work.  The servant came with the message and Rebekah responded, and she would go with him to become the bride.  There is the Gospel picture.  But, on the other hand, we have Laban and his mother and those of his house wanting this not to be done so quickly: “Give us some time, a few days – at the least ten.”  It is understandable.  It makes sense in the historical context in the natural realm.  It is how a great many people would behave, by saying something similar.  But, spiritually, it is teaching an important truth.  When God sent forth His servants to find the bride and save the sinner, Satan would oppose and seek to hinder, and that was the case with the building of the wall in the book of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the city and temple.  It is the case with the truth of the Gospel, as it said: “Who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?”  Who is it that hinders people from obeying the truth when God speaks the truth?  When God says something (no matter what it is), there will be those that seek to hinder it and to keep the one hearing it from responding in obedience. 

For example, during the Great Tribulation when the report arose from the Scriptures as God brought this information forth and opened the eyes of His people to it and they declared it, many professed Christians heard this message from God: “The church age is over.  Satan has been loosed, and he has taken his seat in the temple; that is, within the midst of the congregations he is ruling.  God has departed out and the light of the Gospel has been extinguished in all the churches in the world.  Therefore, get out!  Depart out of the midst and flee to the mountains.”  And what happened?  God’s elect obeyed the truth, but we experienced hinderance, including those of our own families, like the wife, the husband or our own children that did not want to leave the comfort and safety of their congregation.  People had been trained within the churches to go to the pastor or an elder with an issue or problem.  “Well, yes, I should go to my pastor with the information I heard Mr. Camping teaching on Family Radio and telling us that it is the end of the church age and God is commanding that we should come out of the churches.  Let me go to my pastor and see what he has to say.”  So the person went to his pastor with the verses he heard, and he asked, “What do you think?  Is the church age really over?”  And the pastor would give a disgusted look and say, “I cannot believe you are listening to that guy.  Do you not know about him?”  Then he would proceed to run down the faithful ministry of Family Radio at that time. (Family Radio is no longer a faithful ministry, but they were at that time.)  They ran down the faithful ministry of Family Radio and the faithful servant of the Lord, Mr. Camping, who taught faithfully.  “Oh, he spiritualizes.  He has this odd way of looking at the Bible.  Look, no other pastor agrees with him.  No theologians agree with him.  Just check and see.”  They were not going to the Bible itself, but it was the opinion of others of their occupation or of the church world, but nothing from the Bible.  And if they did go to the Bible, they would misrepresent it: “Look, he says the church age is over.  Turn to the book of Matthew and see what Jesus said concerning the church – the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  So, you see, the church cannot be overrun.  Satan cannot be ruling there.  That is impossible.”  And they misapply that verse because Jesus was speaking of the eternal church that consists only of the elect.  He was not speaking of the outward corporate church because that verse would be wrong a thousand times over because all through the church age churches had been overcome by the dark forces of the kingdom of Satan, and whole denominations had become corrupt and fallen away.  So, obviously, that verse cannot refer to the outward corporate church, but refers only to the invisible, eternal church.

What was the pastor trying to do?  He was trying to hinder the man and his family from leaving the church, but he was really hindering the response of active obedience to God’s command.  “Who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?”  God says that Sunday is the Sabbath Day of the New Testament.  And some say, “What are you talking about?  You are placing yourself under a works gospel, if you believe that.”  But that is all wrong.  A “works gospel” is a gospel wherein people think that if they do a certain work, they will become saved.  But that is the opposite of what the Bible teaches.  The right understanding of what the Bible teaches is that once you are saved, you will do good works, and one of the works that God would have you to do is to keep His commandments.  And one of the commandments is, “Turn away thy foot from the sabbath.”  Whatever the truth – and you can name the doctrine – you will see lines of opposition forming against it because it is true.  That is what Jesus said: “And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.”  The enemies are only a hinderance to the truth, but they will often support and encourage the lie because they have no opposition to that.  It aligns with them because they are of their father, the devil, who was a liar from the beginning.  Therefore, they have a deceitful heart of unbelief, and if people have a deceitful heart, it is a lying heart and they are inclined to believe and trust the lie over the truth.  That is their nature, and they have no real knowledge or experience of truth, and as Jesus would say, “ I never knew you: depart from me,” as He is the truth.

This is all in view with this word “hinder,” but then it goes on to say in Genesis 24:57-59:

And they said, We will call the damsel, and enquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and his men.

Now Laban, his mother and his family did not say anything about this earlier when Abraham’s servant was forcing the issue: “Tell me, will you send her with me, so I know whether to go to the right or to the left?”  And they said, “She is before you; take her and go.”  Of course, in our modern world it must be the case that the woman be willing, but in past times marriages could be arranged.  If the head of the house agreed to the marriage, then the daughter would obey her father and go, even if she did not want to go.  So this is a bit of a surprise, but it does go along with Laban’s character and the fact that he would make a deal and then go back on the deal, like he later changed Jacob’s wages ten times.

So, here, they called Rebekah and asked at her own mouth if she wanted to go.  “Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go.”  You know, this almost fits in with the free will gospel, does it not?  It gives that kind of idea, and I could see some free will preacher saying, “Let us go back to the book of Genesis.”  (If they even had any understanding that the deeper spiritual context has everything to do with the Gospel and God’s salvation program, which they very likely do not.)  But if they had any inkling or understanding of how God wrote the Bible and the spiritual pictures He establishes in these historical parables, free will believers could come to this verse and say, “You see, they could not just send Rebekah.  They had to ask her.  It had to be her choice.  She had to decide whether, or not, she would go to be the wife of Isaac.”  Therefore they would conclude, “We have a choice whether, or not, we will be the bride of Christ by accepting Jesus.  That is what accepting Jesus is all about.”  You would think they would have found these verses and tried to lay down that kind of idea.  But, of course, that idea does not fit the Bible.  “Will you go?  The man has come for a bride to take you back to Isaac.”  And she agreed.  She was willing to go.  It is a picture of salvation and it is a picture that she is willing to go, but it has nothing to do with free will salvation.  And, again, an Arminian who believes in the free will gospel put forth by the theologian Jacob Arminius believes salvation has to do with the will of man.  We could go to many verses that show that a man’s will has nothing to do with salvation and being born again, but we will go to one verse in John 1:13:

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

It is a very, very direct statement by God who moved the writer of the fourth Gospel to declare that it is not by the will of man, but by the will of God.  That is how we become born again.  It is according to His will.  Read Romans 9 where it says that God will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and He will save whom He will save.

So, yes, Rebekah was “willing,” but she was willing because of what 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.

And, remember that this is all about Rebekah coming to Isaac, a type of Christ, and Rebekah represents the elect or those that become saved.  You see, God is involved in Rebekah’s decision.   The invisible God operated in the invisible realm to draw her; that is, He moved within her in giving her this desire, arranging all circumstances so she would respond in a positive way.  This was the will of God.

We can even wonder, historically, “Why was Rebekah willing?”  She was a beautiful young woman and she loved her family, I am sure, and she was certainly comfortable where she lived.  She did not live in an impoverished household.  It was a nice home; from everything we can read in the Bible.  And there were other eligible men around, and we can probably speculate that other fine young men in the area would have been interested in this beautiful young woman.  Why would she want to leave with this servant that had come?  Yes – he had given her some riches, but she did not have too much information, and then she would have to take a journey to a far land, the land of Canaan, and meet and marry a man she had never met and become his wife.  There would be a lot of reasons for her not to be willing and to opt for just staying in Haran and saying, “You know, I am interested, and it sounds exciting to travel, but I just want to meet him first.  Can you go back and tell him to come here?  He can stay here with my family for a few days, and we can get to know him, and then I will be much more ready to decide to go.” But she did not say any of that.  She was willing to leave her people, her family, and her mother.  She was willing to leave her land and the security of all that she knew there, and to go with a strange servant to a strange land to meet and marry a strange man and spend the rest of her life with him.  We wonder, “Why was she willing?”  It was because God made her willing, and God’s giving of that willingness illustrates what God has done for all His chosen people.  It says in Psalm 110:3:

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

That is, God’s people shall be willing.  How can we be sure of that?  God will make it so, and, again, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.”  God draws forcefully, against a person’s will, even of avowed atheists, agnostics, or people just enjoying in their ignorant bliss their position in the world.  God brought His Word to them, just like this servant of God brought the Word to Rebekah, and via the power of the Word of God they were drawn to God.  God drew them.  There is a theological term for this called “irresistible grace.”  And the word “irresistible” is very accurate.  No man or woman can resist the drawing power of the Word of God, once God activated it within his or her life.  They may have been out in the world for years and years.  (Again, we are referring to the day of salvation.)  They may have been out in the world in the day of salvation, without ever hearing the Word of God.  But then one day, the Word of God entered into their life, perhaps through the radio.  They turned the channel and heard a hymn or the Open Forum program; or a Bible reading; or they turned a corner and received a tract that was true to the Word; or they went to a church where they heard the truth preached from the pulpit.  Once they heard the Word, they could even have tried to turn away and to resist it, but they would not be able to do it.  Of course, God is almighty and all powerful, and He can exercise His will far above what mind’s feeble little will could resist. 

And we see this with Rebekah, and there are many verses that support this conclusion.  That is what is going on here as Rebekah is willing.  “Will you go with this man?  Are you willing?”  And she said, “I will go.”  It is not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.  God saves His people.