Eighth Sunday after Trinity, 2009

Text: Genesis 24:1-27

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Trusting Your Aim”

Eight years ago this past July, Danielle and I were on our honeymoon down in the Cancun area – the Mayan Riviera, as they call it. And one of the things we able to do while we were down there was to go to this wonderful natural aquatic park/zoo called Xcaret, where you can swim with the dolphins and walk around the bottom of a little inlet from the ocean in one of those deep-sea diver’s helmets. It’s really a fun place. The thing we did that was probably the most fun was we got to swim down an underground river through a dead corral reef. It was a little reminiscent of floating down through the caves in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Danielle might tell you it was even a little bit spooky, especially because at points you could look down through your mask and see the bottom drop out into a black abyss. It was really cool!

But later that day we decided to go snorkeling in the inlet among the schools of brightly colored tropical fish. And so, of course, the last thing I did before we walked down to the water was I took off my glasses and left them on the little table with the rest of our stuff. Well, what do you know, when we got back my glasses were gone. Why anyone would steal a pair of prescription glasses, we still can’t figure out. But I guess Juan or Julio can see a little better now, and that’s alright with me. But the problem was, I can’t see anything without my glasses. Later that evening we went to “see” a couple of shows, and Danielle had to describe to me the various costumes the people were wearing and what they were doing. Luckily we only had a couple of days left in our trip, so I didn’t miss that much.

But the real adventure began when we got back here to the States. We landed back in San Francisco at about 10:30 p.m., and I had left my truck at my brother’s in Pacifica. So he came and picked us up, and brought us back to his place. And then we decided, because we were really wanting to get back home, we’d leave that night. Unfortunately, Danielle doesn’t drive a stick. So, of course, I insisted I could drive if she’d just give me a little help with the whole eye-sight thing. So we proceeded to drive back up Hwy. 1 in the dark, and the whole time Danielle kept giving me course corrections: “Now the road’s going to veer a little to the left… a little more to the left. Now it’s straightening out. Now it’s going to the right. Now you’re coming up to a red light….” And then, as if there wasn’t bad enough, when we got to Daly City we drove into a fog-bank, and now she can’t see either more than about a hundred feet, and I’m squinting so hard my eyes are beginning to hurt, and we hadn’t even gotten through the first of all the merges you have to go through on the freeway to get to the bay bridge, much less cross it. And yet, but for a couple of times when she said left when she meant right, we got home without incident. It was quite the adventure!

When it comes to trying to know and follow the will of God for our lives, sometimes we feel a little like I felt in the car that night - like we’re driving in the dark, in the fog, with no corrective lenses. And we wish we had a word directly from the Lord telling us which way to go – maybe even if it were only for the big things in life: who we should marry, what job we should take, where we should send our kids to school, what church we should belong to, where we should buy a home and settle down. Wouldn’t it be great if, when we were trying to discern God’s will for where we should live the word of the Lord came to us like it did to Abraham saying, “Get up from your country, and go to a land that I will show you.” It sure would take the ambiguity out of the decision.

I think for most of us there’s a constant struggle on the one hand to know God’s will for our lives, and on the other hand to follow it with confidence that we’re really headed in the right direction, and that we’ll finally arrive safe and sound and at home in what He’s ordained for us. In Old Testament lesson from Genesis chapter 24, we learn from an incident in the life of Abraham how he discerned the will of God and followed it with total confidence that his aim was true and that he would reach his mark at the center of what God had ordained, in this case, for his son. And so I think we should learn from Abraham how we can come to trust our aim, as well.

We tend to think of Abraham as going through life with one direct word from God after another. But as far as I can tell from Genesis those direct words from the Lord were few and far between. Most of the time it seems Abraham had to try to figure out God’s will for his life and for the life of his family just like the rest of us – and that was, first, by tracing out from God’s past word the direction he ought to aim; and then, second, trusting the providence of God to bring him the rest of the way, to bring him the goal. Those are the two things we need to learn to do if we would have confidence that we’re following the will of God for our lives: we need to be able to trace out from God’s past word – that is, from the Bible – the direction we ought to aim, and then we need to trust God’s power over all things to bring us where we need to be. That’s really the message of our passage this morning.

John Piper describes the first part of this process as following the “trajectories” of God’s Word. He says that, in this passage, three trajectories of God’s word in the past combine to show Abraham what God’s will is for the present.

The first trajectory Abraham is able to project from God’s past word is that Isaac, his son, must have a wife. God had never come to him and said, “Isaac must marry.” And yet almost all of His past promises pointed in that direction. God had said to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen. 12:2), and as the stars in the heavens are countless, “so shall your descendants be” (Gen. 15:5), and “in Isaac your descendants shall be named” (Gen. 21:12). So clearly Abraham could project upon these promises that Isaac must marry and have children. It was God’s will, even though Abraham had not received a direct word from the Lord commanding it. It was God’s will that Isaac should marry. No debate about whether he and his girl-friend could just “live together” and carry on the family line apart from the bonds of holy matrimony. The promises concerning Isaac combined with God’s past commandment on marriage that “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.” And so Abraham could be certain that God’s will was that Isaac must have a wife. That was the first trajectory Abraham could trace out from God’s past word.

The second trajectory was that Isaac’s wife was not to be taken from among the Canaanites. As far as we know, God had not given Abraham an explicit command forbidding inter-marriage with the Canaanites. And yet God’s past prophecy regarding the Canaanites told him that he should turn his aim away from that direction. Back in Genesis 15 God told Abraham that his descendants would go down to a foreign land and be oppressed for four hundred years, but then in the fourth generation they would come back to the land of promise. Why? “Because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” The Amorites represented all the pagan peoples of the land of Canaan. And this prophecy told Abraham that they were marked out for judgment because of their wickedness. And so Abraham heard in that past word of God a warning against making marriage alliances with the pagan peoples of the land. So even though he hadn’t received a direct word from the Lord, Abraham was able to trace out the trajectory of God’s will which would only later be made explicit in the Law. The trajectory of God’s past word gave Abraham the right aim for seeking out a wife for his son; it told him to aim for someone from among his own people.

And so let me ask you young people: how’s your aim? Are you looking in the right direction for a potential spouse? Because the Bible still directs us to look for our future husband or our future wife from among our own people - that is, from the family of faith. We may not get a word of the Lord from heaven saying “Here’s the person I want you to marry.” But we can trace out from His Word where we ought to set our sights. For it is written, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” (II Cor. 6:14). And again, “A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord (I Cor. 7:39). Abraham had confidence that this was the will of the Lord for his son, and so he says to his servant, “You will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites.” That was the second trajectory.

The third trajectory Abraham was able to project from God’s Word was that he could not allow Isaac to go back to the land Abraham had come from. He was absolutely certain on this point. So he said to his servant, “You must not take my son back there.” Why? What had God’s past word said that would indicate this was His will for the present? I’ve already alluded to it. God had told Abraham to get up out of his own country and go to a land that He would give to him and to his descendants. And so for Abraham to send Isaac back there would be to lead him into temptation – the temptation to settle back in the old country and to reject God’s promise for the new.

It is never God’s will that we should lead our children into temptation. What did Jesus say? “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown in to the sea” (Mk. 9:42). Like Abraham with Isaac, once we’ve brought our children into the covenant, it’s then our responsibility to see that they embrace the covenant promises for themselves, and not, for our laissez-faire attitude towards whatever they might happen to choose to believe, to tempt them to reject the covenant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Christian parents tell me that they’re going to let their children decide for themselves what religion they should belong to. This is total folly. What this really is is getting our direction form our relativistic culture, rather than from the Word of God. Abraham discerned from God’s past covenant promises that it was not God’s will that he risk his son’s rejection of the covenant by putting him under the temptation to settle outside of the sphere of God’s promises. And we need to learn that this is God’s will for our children, as well. The sphere of God’s promises is the Church, and we must not tempt our children, either by our own behavior or by our lack of guidance, to reject the promises of God by turning away from the Church.

And so you see how these three trajectories of God’s past words to Abraham converge to form a single line of decision. Isaac must have a wife, for God promised descendants. His wife must not come from the Canaanites, for he must not be exposed to the coming judgment. He must not go back to the old country, for God had promised to give him a new country and make His covenant with Him there. And so, you see, by tracing out these trajectories of God’s past word, Abraham is able to discern what God’s will is for the present situation.

And look how confident Abraham is about this decision. He’s so confident that this is the Lord’s will, even though God had never given him an explicit command, that when he servant ask, “What happens if the woman will not come back with me?” he says, “The Lord God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.” In other words, Abraham trusts that, since God’s word had given him the right aim, God’s providence would bring him the rest of the way and make him hit his mark.

So I believe there are two lessons we can take away from this episode in the life of Abraham. One is that we can discover God’s will for our lives by tracing out from God’s past word the direction we ought to aim. And the second is, if we are obedient the direction God’s word leads us, then we can be confident that God himself will bring us to the goal. He will send His angel before us, and we will accomplish what he has ordained for us.

The Scripture says “Our times are in his hands.” He is in control of all our circumstances. And therefore if we are obedient to the direction He gives us by His word, He is able by his good providence to bring us the rest of the way.

It is written in Proverbs 3:6 “Acknowledge him in all your ways, and he will direct you paths.” That’s the bottom line message from Genesis 24. +