Genesis 24:6 KJV And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.
KJV Cafe
Part 1 - Bible Study - Genesis 24:6
Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe, Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. It's a beautiful day at the cafe. Amen. The Lord is just blessed here. Today, the sun is out, I think. It looks like it is. Amen. Coffee's hot. We're ready to go. It's good to be here. If you're new to the program, we're a daily Bible study, 15 minutes from Genesis to Revelation. We're a podcast. That's our format. If you listen to some of the older episodes, we were on the radio all for a season, mostly here in the Southeast. So some of them mention radio, me mentioning radio, or some of them will mention like a radio introduction. Right now, we're just on your favorite podcast app, excuse me, on YouTube, wherever you can take your phone to, we're probably there, social media, etc. So just look us up, KJV Cafe, or we have the weekend edition, just 30 minute messages, very good stuff there. And then we have the one hour truck driver's hour program, which is kind of a mixed media where we have preaching, Bible study, and good news. Like this week, we talked about equine therapy on the week that I'm recording this, and a good story about that, a story about a Christian song and all these things. So check that out as well, truck driver's hour. Hey, we've got all the content you can consume, amen. But let's get right to it in Genesis 24. We've got many themes in Genesis 24. I mean, it's chock full of themes. It is a big chapter. It is 67 verses, amen. Man, there's a lot here. You kind of got the maturation of Isaac. You have the finding of a wife for Isaac. You have him being comforted now that Sarah's gone and the wife kind of playing that role. You have the beginnings of what would be the parents of Jacob and Esau, and Jacob, of course, being the father of the 12 tribes. You have Abraham's faith still coming in here, where he's asking Eliezer to promise that he won't get a child, or excuse me, a wife for his child from Canaanites where they dwell, but from his own kindred. So you have that theme. You've also got the theme of steadfast faith, right, of believing of the God of Abraham as Eliezer praise. You know, that's different than say like some pagan gods or singling out the God of Abraham and Isaac, which God himself refers to himself as at one point. So many themes here of faith, of trust, of what it took to bring forth the 12 tribes of Israel, right? But here we have in the first five verses we have, and I'll just read them, Abraham was old and well-stricken in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house that ruled over all that he had, put I pray thee thy hand under my thigh, and we got into details about why people made promises that way. Verse three, and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but thou shalt go unto my country and my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac, very specific there. Verse five, we have the servants doubt here, very natural. And the servants said unto him, pre-eventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land. Must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from which thou cameest. So verse five is setting up our text verse of verse six, and the servant here is responding to the master's request to go get a wife for Isaac in his homeland, which was not near where they were, right? And this is going to be a big kind of adventure to go do that. And this guy would literally be a stranger. Eliezer, we think his name, the eldest priest, he's going to be a stranger there in Abraham's homeland, or the calades. So what's going to happen? He's going to say, should I just bring Isaac, right? You know, like they're not going to believe me. This is going to look in modern day words, this is going to look shady, right? Like, you know, and I'm a big old guy and I like comfortable clothes. I mean, God really made me for recording stuff or whatever. I mean, sometimes we do videos, but I'm just tailor made for recording stuff. Like I said, I like, you know, sweats and hey, I was down with the athletic leisure trend way before it became a trend, amen? And so like, you know, sometimes my wife will have to remind me to dress up, you know, for like going somewhere where you need to look respectable. She's like, honey, we're a collar, you know, don't look shady, you know. So if someone asked me, you know, if someone, if I was the servant of a great master and they asked me to go fetch a wife for their son in a foreign land, I would be very concerned that anyone would believe me, that they would think I'm up to something. So it's a very natural reaction, but look at verse six, this is our text verse here, and Abraham said unto him, beware thou that thou bring not my son tither again. Bring him not again. So this is the idea of going backwards, of going back, right? And this is the idea spiritually of backsliding and we're going to dive into that theme when we get back from this break, so stay tuned. Hey, it's break time around here. Thank you for listening to KJV Cafe. If you haven't already, visit kjvcafe.com for more information. So what does it mean to be a backslider? This is, again, there's so many themes here, but we're going to park it on verse six for a little while for a few episodes at least, because this deals with something Abraham very old and age now, right? He's getting up there in age. We know Sarah has died, and we know Sarah was 127, and we know Abraham's 10 years older, so he's at least 137, if not older. He's getting up in age. We know he lived, so I think it was 175, and so he could be nearing that time, because this is the latter part of his life here, the very end part. And so he is wise, and he is saying to his servant, don't you bring him back there, right? We are not going back. And spiritually, there's a very good point here about not backsliding. Now, if you don't know what backsliding is, or you like a little context, there is something called the KJV Dictionary, and I relied on this pretty heavily some years ago. Even before I was preaching, I would just look things up on it just to be curious about a word I was studying or something I heard in a service or something. And so you can search up KJV Dictionary, AV1611.com, I think has it on there. The KJV Dictionary definition of backslide is to fall off. The idea is like a postate to turn gradually from the faith and practice of Christianity. This is loaded, by the way, in the book of Jeremiah. So if you want a place to see this in Scripture, and we're going to get to that in detail, but there's a ton of verses in Jeremiah that deals with backsliding. A backslider is in a postate, one who falls from the faith and practice of religion, one who neglects his vows of obedience and falls into sin. And so it is a falling from religion to sin. And you could say, "Well, Elie Azers is just saying, "Should I bring my son with you so they would trust me?" It's not saying, "Let's fall back into sin." But it is really, if you think about it, the homeland, where you're from, like where you were, the natural man, going back to that place is a picture of that idea. We love that idea that we often are tempted by backsliding. And why? And why would that be a sin? Let's look at it in a little bit of detail. So if you've been saved, there's all kinds of Bible words for who you are now if you've been saved. You've been reconciled to God, so you have peace with God. You're a new creature in Christ, amen? All things have changed in you, right? You are a new creature in Christ. Old things have passed away, all things are new, right? So you're a new creature in Christ, you are reconciled to God, you have peace with God. You are now his own, you're now blood-bought, amen? We like to, I have a little t-shirt printing machine, it's nothing fancy, it literally just prints on the garment. It can only print on certain type of clothes, shirts and stuff. It's not really like for a big operation, but you know, I print shirts up and, you know, give them to people and so forth. We would sell them here and there. And one of the shirts that print up was called a blood-bought. And it literally just was like text that wrote blood-bought and there's some blood on there. And it's pretty popular because that is who you are, right? You've been bought by the blood of Christ, right? So you are now blood-bought and that's something that is worth advertising, if you will. And if you want to get my take on Christian t-shirts, my favorite idea is to just put scripture on them like verbatim. You know, so a lot of Christian t-shirts have like themes or pictures. I actually really just like scripture on there because people will look at it and, you know, I've got a few that I wear all the time. By the way, that's just like standard protocol. If you're preaching, if you're in the ministry, you just wear Christian t-shirts, that's what you do, amen? No matter the denomination, this seems like everybody does that. You can pick out a preacher at like a kid's soccer match. You just see who's wearing the Christian t-shirt. Anyways, people do look at him. So I like the idea of just putting scripture on there. So that's my favorite there and maybe we'll do more t-shirts and stuff in the future. I've even thought about giving some away on the program and so forth. And maybe they will have designs on it, but certainly they'll have scripture on there. Okay, so you have blood-bought, you have reconciled, you have peace with God, you have this new creature, right? And the idea is when you've been born again, you know, your mind is different, right? Like you no longer think like you used to think. You know, it's kind of like I'm trying to think of a way to put it that is appropriate and contextual to what we're talking about. But it's kind of like you're an adult, right? You're an adult and I think Paul writes about this, like, you know, he puts away the childish things, you know? You're an adult, so I am an adult, whether I like it or not. Amen, I'm very much an adulthood. I'm right near the 45 mark, so I read an article yesterday where they're calling that middle age and I guess it is. I'm an adult, a middle age, I can't believe it, I still feel like a kid at heart. But I don't think like a kid, right? A kid may think about, oh, that was the best sleep, I'm just going to sleep in, a kid may think about, let's just eat pizza and a kid may think about, let's just go play, right? My kids got up this morning, they're young seven and eight and they, both of them said, "Dad, take us to the trampoline park." Like that, in their mind, that's their day, right? Like trampoline park, maybe squeeze some pizza in or something, that for them is a day. As an adult, what are you thinking about? You know, are the bills paid? Is every, you know, how's the health of everyone in the family? Are we saved? Do we have to, you know, restock this in the cabinet? Who's prepared to take dad to the doctor on Monday and the kids to the doctor on Tuesday for their appointment? And what needs to be done for work? And did this item ship out and did this, you know, bill get paid? All of these things, right? You're different as an adult than you were a kid. And think about this, if you were to go back to being a kid and you woke up and said, "Let's go to the jumping park today." And he said, "And that's all you add on your mind." Well, that may be good on a very blue moon like your birthday or something. Generally speaking, that's not productive as an adult, right? That's not productive. That would lead to bad things because then you wouldn't have your cabinet stocked and you wouldn't have the bill paid and you wouldn't have the appointment to keep for, you know, for the medicine for the kids and alls. That's the point. Spiritually, we don't want to go back to where we came from. As an adult, it would be foolish to go back to acting like a child, right? Like, you're an adult, you have responsibilities. As a saved Christian, you cannot go back to the way things were and expect things to be okay. Now, some people, you know, look, there's nothing wrong with nostalgia. I mean, again, I just mentioned I'm like a kid inside, you know, like, I love watching football. I used to play football when I was in high school. I played for a year in college. Like, I like watching the coaches drop the plays on the board and stuff. You know, in a way, I'm sure in my mind, I'm going back to that time, right? There's nothing wrong with those things. I don't think in context of living life as a mature person that is doing what you're supposed to do and so forth. And so backsliding is the idea that you're almost in denial of who you are and you're trying to be someone that you're not. And by doing that and falling into that role, you fall away from the faith. That's why people can say, oh, it's not a sin to, you know, go back home or it's not a sin to just go out to this bar. It's not a sin to just go watch this worldly movie that that blasphemes God, which, you know, look, that's bad. And it may be a sin, okay, especially it is a sin. They're blaspheming God. We know that, amen, and God will hold them accountable for that. But the greater sin is in the willful ignorance. The greater sin is in the stubbornness. The greater sin is in the rebellion of falling back. And Abraham is commanding LEAs or saying, don't you let him go back. And what we'll do for time's sake is in the next episode, we'll go through a lot of scriptures like that in Jeremiah and so forth of what it means to backside biblically and what that means for us and how we can kind of accept the idea of being born again and actually enjoy it and actually have childlike faith and actually have joy unspeakable. All that, again, will tackle in the next episode or two. So tune in then. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, God bless, and amen. Thanks for listening to KJV Cafe, and we'll see you at the Cafe tomorrow.