Genesis 24:1-4 KJV
1 And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.
2 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:
3 And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and 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:
4 But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.
Hey, men, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to cafe. It's a great day at the cafe here as we are Turning a new page literally in the Genesis 24 If you're new to the program, we are a daily Bible study and my name is Clark Covington. I'm your Bible study teacher, amen And yeah, we're not supported by any one group organization We are just simply teaching the word day by day For a couple of years now. We've been at this this effort and then Previously before podcasting we're on the radio for several years as well. So Yeah, that's what we do and welcome to the program and if you're returning then you already know all this So I'll just get right to the study. So we're on Genesis 24 here and Unlike the last chapter, which let's see we tackled all of Genesis 23 in four parts This chapter we're going to probably be a little bit more than four parts in to get through it because Genesis 24 is a Whopper it's um 67 versus amen and It's there's a lot of lessons here, but generally thematically This is the the meeting the putting together of Isaac and Rebecca And this is the beginning of the promised child then having the Rebecca who will then have Jacob and Esau and Jacob will then be the father of the 12 tribes and so this is the Genesis if you will of That put it being put into action. Of course where you kind of put a marker in the ground when Abraham is called Right away from his pagan household. He's called to Canaan land. Okay, so that's kind of the very beginning I suppose of this this event Playing out, but this here is is we're starting to see it speed up and so we see here What I'll do is I'm just going to read the first four verses and we'll spend a couple episodes on there And then maybe an episode or two on verse five All right so Genesis 24 verse one and 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 the thy hand under my thigh and I will make thee swear by the Lord the God of heaven and the God of the earth that thou shall not take a wife under my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell But thou shall go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac All right, there's a lot to unpack here, right? And so What I want to do oddly is go down to the very last verse in Genesis 24 verse 67 and Isaac brought her into his mother's tent and took Rebecca Rebecca and she became his wife And he loved her and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death And so we see at the very end of this chapter Something that's alluding to kind of the timeliness of the beginning of this chapter when Abraham is calling his eldest Servant who we believe to be Eliezer To go and find him a wife of his own people and the reason of the timeliness is that in Genesis 23 What do we see we see the death of Sarah? We see the beginning of Genesis 23 and Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years old So 127 years old these were the years of the life of Sarah. So we see Genesis 23 Sarah dying Abraham Purchasing the the burying place in Mac Pelia the cave in Mac Pelia from the sons of Heth Him doing that in humility and so forth to bury Sarah Presumably him understanding. He also would be buried there and so forth and so the death of Sarah is Genesis 23 Genesis 24 We now have Rebecca moving into the picture and it is pretty interesting too because You may wonder well, is this chronological did these things happen in parallel? But then as it ends in Genesis 67 or excuse me Genesis 24 verse 67 it's saying that that Isaac was comforted from his mother's death and You know, you know the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law is a pretty interesting relationship And it may have had to be that Sarah would live out her life and then Rebecca would come along Before that could you know take place in the way God would have it or maybe they would have gotten along like peas and carrots I have no idea, but it is interesting that his wife is now comforting him as From from grieving from his mother's death Which gives us that kind of timeline or in indication that this happened after and that's why we see it here in the next chapter So what we're gonna do is look at a lot of things here Why is Abraham asking someone to put a hand under his thigh? Being blessed in old age all of these things will do that. We come 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 KJV cafe.com for more information So let's just start where this chapter starts off and Abraham was old and well-stricken in age and The Lord had blessed Abraham and all things. You know that verse right there. We'll preach now What is old to you? I don't know What is old to me? I'm still trying to figure that out, right? Has being has has getting old? Progressed as as as society and medical innovation is progressed is getting old now something that's a later date or has it accelerated with COVID and different the pandemic and in the stresses of this world and turmoil has now I Mean really and some could argue young people feel quite old for what they've been through I mean imagine a child being born Around the year 2000. I mean I I'd be a pretty you've got the recession of 2008. You've got Let's see You've got 9/11 right of 2000 of course they would have been very young at that time But you still have that in their lifetime. You've got of course the pandemic Tempted assassination on the president inflation record inflation Wars and rumors of wars man Someone again that would be round 23 24 25 has really dealt with a lot in their time and the advent of Technology which has been a blessing but also a curse in that it forces people I think to be much more insular you look around everyone's got their head and their phone. They're no longer Spending time with each other which was happening before the mobile phone There's a great book called bowling alone that I read when I was in college about this idea that back in the old days People used to go to bowling leagues together and now they weren't doing that and this was before the mobile phone really exploded And so that only intensified everything so whether you're young and you feel old whether you're old if you feel old whether you're Somewhere in the middle and you don't know how you feel that's kind of where I'm at Abraham was old. He was well-stricken in age and the Lord had blessed Abraham and all things and so I think it's important Because for me if I see you know I'll just watch stuff to pastime and there'll be a chef at a restaurant and he's 80 years old He's still working and I'm like oh praise God. I'm doing the math in my head Maybe I'll be able to work at 80 years old or there'll be somebody that's 70 and they're running the marathon. Oh praise God, you know, so I'm inspired by that and maybe you will be too that you know Abraham didn't even leave. He didn't even leave For his call until he was 75 Amen So the time for Abraham You know the promise being given Genesis 12 1 through 4 so let's go to that Genesis 12 1 through 4 I'm using a chart a Great timeline chart from harps crossing church. It's harps crossing calm I don't know if you just search up timeline from Abram to Exodus, but there's a really good chart tons of stuff on here for those that are visually visually inclined And so let's see here. So we look we look at Genesis 12 1 through 4 So Abraham departed his lord had spoken unto him and lot went with him and Abraham was 75 years old When he departed out of haran Okay, so you remember you've got er the caledese Babylon the family goes up to haran Then Abraham is called out of haran to go to Canaan and when he departs out of Canaan, Genesis 12 4 tells us that he's 75 years old Okay, so he's starting at 75 right. I mean that's really incredible. He's starting at 75 And living this long life. He's living a hundred years from then God gives him another hundred years I can't even imagine But it's inspiring and it kind of makes you think about All that Abraham had been through right Going through canan land Going to egypt because there was a famine battling with the kings meeting malchizedek of course rescuing lot Dealing with the birth of ishmael when he would have been roughly 86 um Man all of these things, you know, he went through a lot Having to cash cast ishmael out, which was very painful um man Of course having to bring Isaac to be sacrificed And so what we see here is that God had blessed Abraham in all things and those blessings by the way May not be what what we would say is a is a blessing right For example, he gets in trouble And with one of these kings, right? Whether it's in egypt or whether it's in garar with the bimlic but he leaves with gifts and power and And people and you know prosperity and so god is continuing to bless Abraham even as he falls into these Situations again wasn't a blessing to go to war with the five kings But what kind of notoriety would he have once he defeated the five kings right once he brought lot and the sodomites back And once everyone realized who he was again He would have never met Melchizedek there to be affirmed by Melchizedek as being blessed Amen that wouldn't have happened and Melchizedek was the the king and the priest that picture of jesus That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't gone through it So one lesson of being older And being very blessed by god is that we go through a lot And as we go through a lot often in the midst of it, we want to say why god certainly Abraham probably had those thoughts but as we go through it we're more and more blessed right like Things don't work out as we think but we're very blessed and i'll say briefly when lord called me to plan a church It was in 20 18 2019 right before covid We couldn't find anywhere to meet so we had this little like weekly rental in a chapel that was in a field called chapel in the field And it was dirt cheap Oh man just a few hundred dollars a month and uh the brother that was our landlord was also Uh in the ministry he would tie the back some of the money. It was it was really nice Hey covid hit and we all had to be you know, uh shelter in place You know so forth quarantine that was the word um And so While it didn't seem like a great fit for a church plant because it wasn't really our building We were only there for a few hours on and on. It was a place where people Got married so there was like a wedding there. We might not be able to meet but look It was perfect because what god did was he blessed us So when the outbreak came the pandemic came which no one could have predicted We had a very low overhead. We had really had no issues We were able to just seamlessly transition to online stuff and again looking back on it It was all god's hand right and we came out more mature from that Just you know greater faith from that Um strong, you know stronger bonds and all from that, you know incident Right and so you're as you grow older in life. I'm just giving you a simple example And as you face turmoil oftentimes if you really think about it God is blessing you through that turmoil and he's blessing you in old age you're more blessed As you as you grow an age in the lord and if you think You're too old to be blessed by god. Look at abraham. He was blessing abraham Up to 175 years old and abraham is now being blessed in eternity. Amen. We know that because of the rich man lazarus and uh That lazarus was uh in in abraham's bosom, right? Uh, and the rich man was calling out asking right asking for just a drop of water And he and he couldn't he was asking who was he asking? He's asked asking uh father abraham, right? He was asking father abraham. Okay, so The point is that and i've got a bunch of verses that i'm saving for next episode for time's sake The point is that getting old in this society may be frowned upon But getting old biblically is a wonderful thing I mean age for think of god. He's eternal. So if we're worried about being old and we want to be like god He's always has been always will be right alpha and omega beginning and end So We have nothing to worry about with aging though the world tells us we do and in fact It is a blessing to get older and in fact many mighty men in the bible God didn't even bother to use until they were way up in age moses being another one, you know He spent 40 years in egypt 40 years in the wilderness and then god called them to lead the israelites Out of bondage and do all these miraculous things he was older And and again, we don't you know you see the pictures the pictures don't often depict that If people were to paint a picture or draw a picture of what this might be like But it is true and we'll get much more into this in the next episode. So tune in then. Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless. Amen Thanks for listening to kjv cafe and we'll see you at the cafe tomorrow
