Abstract
‘Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her.’ Here is a true love story.
Old father Abraham sends his most trusted servant to find a wife for Isaac from among the relatives that he had left behind so long ago in Mesopotamia. This servant would appear to be one Eliezar of Damascus. We were introduced to Eliezar back in Genesis chapter 15. He was the servant who would have inherited Abraham’s wealth if Abraham had not produced a son of his own. But Abraham did produce a son, with the help of the Lord, and it was for this son, Isaac, that Eliezar was sent to find a wife.
Perhaps the first thing to notice is the faithfulness of this servant Eliezar. He could well have resented the birth of Isaac and sought to recover the inheritance for himself. But he seems to have gone on faithfully serving both his old master Abraham, and the new young master Isaac.
Eliezar goes back to the city of Nahor, and by a miracle of God’s Providence he meets Rebekah, a great-niece of his master Abraham, who has come to draw water at the well. Rebekah’s brother Laban welcomes the visitor into the family home, and Eliezar explains his errand. Laban and their father Bethuel recognize the hand of the Lord in the encounter at the well, and give permission for the marriage to go ahead. But first Rebekah must be asked if she wants to go with Eliezar or if she wants time to think it over. Without hesitation Rebekah replies, ‘I will go.’
The second thing to notice then is the courage of Rebekah: she agrees to go with a complete stranger, to meet and marry a man she has never met, in a land that she has never seen or visited. There is nothing to suggest that this is Rebekah’s last chance of marriage. On the contrary she is described as being ‘very beautiful and a virgin’. Rebekah too must have felt that this was the hand of God on her life, and so she put her trust in God to guide and protect her and went with Eliezar.
The returning caravan arrives back in Canaan one evening as Isaac is walking in the fields, communing with God. The bride and the groom are introduced to one another, and it appears to have been love at first sight, for Isaac takes her into his tent and they become husband and wife.
Sweet!
But there is another way of seeing this old story, a way that depends on what is called typology. It is a thoroughly Biblical idea: the Letter to the Hebrews is full of it. It means that the institutions and stories of the Old Testament can be seen as ‘types’ or shadows of things that are fulfilled in Jesus. It is the reason that Jesus can explain to his disciples on the road to Emmaus that, ‘what was said in all the Scriptures’, concerned himself. So let us read the story of Isaac and Rebekah again, as a ‘type’ of things that were to come, as things concerning Jesus.
Abraham then is a type of God, the Father. Isaac is a type of Jesus, the Son. And Eliezar is a type of the Holy Spirit! The Father is eager to find a bride for his Son, so he sends the Holy Spirit into the world to search for and to bring back a bride for his Son. That is the mission of the Holy Spirit, just as it was the mission of Eliezar, Abraham’s most trusted servant. The Holy Spirit’s mission succeeds and he brings back the church as the bride.
Where then do we find ourselves in this parable?
We can find ourselves in two places if we look. First, we are Rebekah, the bride. Somewhere in our lives, probably when we were least expecting it, and probably without knowing who it was, our lives were touched by the Holy Spirit, in a way that set us on the path to meeting Jesus and to giving ourselves to him. In our own lives, it may have been a person who spoke to us, or a book that we read, or something that we saw, or just a thought that came into our minds. But it was the Holy Spirit sent by God to search for a bride for his Son.
No-one forced us to go with him. Unlike Rebekah, we may have wanted time to think about it. Or else, like Rebekah, we might have responded with alacrity, something telling us that this was what we had been looking for all our lives. In either case, we agreed to go with this stranger, the Holy Spirit. He brought us to Jesus, and Jesus took us into his tent, the church, and made us one with him. The story of Eliezar’s mission is the story of our own conversion or commitment to Jesus Christ.
But then there is also a second way of reading the story. This time, we are Eliezar. We are the ones whom God is sending out into the world to find a bride for his Son. ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ If we succeed in making even one more disciple for Jesus Christ and bringing them into the church, it will be by the person of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and working though us. But the Holy Spirit usually uses human agents: as God used Eliezar, so he uses even people like us. What God requires of us is what Abraham required of Eliezar, faithfulness, faithful service to both the Father and the Son.
When we succeed in finding someone new to become a bride for the Son, we, like Eliezar, will also recognise that it was God who prepared the way for us, who went ahead of us, and who worked with us every step of the way. It is in recognizing the hand of God in our everyday encounters and conversations, as Eliezar did, that we shall be able to serve the Father and succeed in the work that he has sent us out to do.
So, as we leave the church today, and as we go about our daily lives tomorrow, let us remember that we are called to be both Rebekah and Eliezar; at one and the same time the bride of Christ and a servant, sent out into the world to search for a bride.
What better ending is there to any story than this: ‘and he loved her’? Let it be the ending of our own story with Jesus, and the ending of the story for many others whom we have been instrumental in bringing to Jesus too.