Archive for the ‘well’ tag
June 7, 2009: Rebekah Serves at the Well
The text for this lesson is Genesis 24:10–28.
Key Points
- By moving Rebekah to selfless service (drawing countless gallons of water for a man and his camels), God identified an ancestor of the One who would serve us by His suffering and death.
- Law: In our sinfulness, we think only of our own convenience and pleasure.
- Gospel: Jesus’ selfless sacrifice of His life and death (Romans 8:32) gives us all we need and frees us to serve others gladly.
- Law: As sinful people, we labor only for the value or compensation it brings us.
- Gospel: God uses even our seemingly insignificant chores to accomplish His perfect will for the world.
Context
Genesis 12:1–9 sets the stage for the entire history of Israel—and of the Christian Church! God called Abram to leave his homeland and become “a great nation” (Genesis 12:2) and the one in whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). The Messiah (Christ), first promised to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15), would come from Abraham’s offspring (Genesis 12:7; Galatians 3:16). His son Isaac would need a wife to continue the Messianic blood line. Isaac had to remain in the Promised Land but not intermarry with the local Canaanites, so Abraham commissioned his chief servant to go find a wife for Isaac among Abraham’s kin in Mesopotamia (Genesis 24:1–9). Abraham promised that the Lord would send an angel ahead the servant (Genesis 24:7).
