This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day 24 of our look together through the book of
Genesis, chapter 24 today. In this chapter we're going to learn about the wisdom
of Abraham's servant, and it's amazing wisdom. It's wisdom that teaches you and
I some things about how to seek out God's will in the details of life.

There could be several options, details of life. How do I make good decisions
and good plans in those areas of life so that I can be successful in the things
that God asked me to do? Who will I marry?

Where will I live? What kind of job will I take? How can I make good decisions
about that?

Or even more to the details of life, what about this specific project that God's
asking me to do? How do I know if it's the right project? How do I carry it
through in a right way?

This chapter, Genesis chapter 24, is a famous chapter to us at Saddleback
Church. From the early days of the church, based on a message that Pastor Rick
did on this chapter, we have used 10 specific directions for success in God's
plans from this chapter. Abraham's servant just walks through how do you do it?

How do you look at a project that God has given you, a plan that God has before
you, and walk through it in a way that's not based on man's plan, that is
instead based on a faith plan, God's plan? There is a way that this world plans,
and it's all about me, it's all about my energy. There's also a way that you and
I as believers can plan.

Being a believer doesn't mean you don't plan, it just means you plan in a
different way. You plan with faith at the center. Let me just walk you quickly
through these 10 things, and it will be very quick.

You're probably going to have to look back at this chapter to see them again. 10
specific things that Abraham's servant teaches us here about how to enjoy
success in a project that God has given you. Step number one is you determine
your position.

You take an honest look at where you are right now. In order to have success in
the future, you have to say, "Where am I right now? " This happens with Abraham
and his servant in verses 1 and 2.

Abraham was now old and well advanced in years, verse 1 says, and the Lord had
blessed him in every way. He said to his chief servant of his household, the one
in charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh. " He asked him to
do that because that's how he took an oath in that day.

Abraham looks at himself and he says, "I'm old. My wife has already died. I'm
well advanced in years, and my son doesn't yet have a wife.

" Because he realizes he's old, he determines his position. He realizes, "I need
to do something now. The right timing is now.

" You determine your position, and based on that, number two, you define your
purpose. That's what happens in verses 3 and 4. Abraham says, "I want you to
swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and God of earth, that you will not get a
wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I am living, but
you will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac.

" Define your purpose. Abraham knew that the promise of God was for the people
of God, and so he didn't want his son to marry somebody who was from that land.
He wanted his son to marry somebody who was from his own descendants, his own
family, because the promise was, "Out of your descendants, I'm going to do this.

" He defined his purpose based on, and this is very important, the third step,
you determine your position. Where am I right now? What's something that needs
to be done?

You define your purpose. Okay, here's a direction I need to take, but then
number three, this is where the difference comes in, especially for the people
of God, you discover a promise. What has God said about this?

Not just what do I think about this, what has God said? Verses five to seven,
here's what happens, "The servant asked him, 'What if the woman is unwilling to
come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country
you came from?

' 'Make sure that you do not take my son back there,' Abraham said. 'The Lord,
the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father's household and my native
land, who spoke to me and promised me an oath saying, 'To your offspring I will
give this land. He will send an angel before you so that you can get a wife for
my son from there.

'" Discover a promise. Abraham was basing his actions on God's promise. God had
said, "To your offspring I will give this land," and so based on that Abraham
was going to get a wife for his son Isaac to bring back to the land so that his
offspring would grow up in that land.

He knew his son well enough to know that if he moved back to the homeland where
they'd all grown up, Isaac would just stay there. He was a different man than
Abraham. We're going to discover that in chapters to come.

Abraham knew that, and so he acted in a way that would fulfill God's promise
because he believed God's promise. You determine your position, you define your
purpose, but then you discover a promise. What has God said about this that I
can now live out?

And as you discover a promise, you do a fourth thing. You describe the prophet.
What is the P-R-O-F-I-T?

What is the good thing that God's going to do about this? What am I looking
forward to God doing? He just said it.

"He will send an angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from
there. " You picture in your mind what God is going to do. Not what you can do,
but what God, based on his promise, is going to do.

Not what great thing you want done so the world can applaud you, but what great
thing God wants done so that the world can turn their eyes to him. Describe the
prophet. And then number five, the fifth thing you do, and this is something
that a planner who did not know Christ, didn't have a relationship with God,
would never do.

The fifth thing you do is you desire in prayer. You don't lay up nights wanting
this, wanting this, wanting this, figuring out how you're going to make it
happen. No, you desire in prayer.

As Abraham's servant gets to the homeland of Abraham, the Bible says in verses
11 and 12, this happens. He had the camels kneel down near the well outside of
town. It was toward evening, the time when the women go out to draw water.

And then he prayed, "Oh Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today
and show kindness to my master Abraham. " The servant did not get the goal from
his master Abraham and then go out and do it on his own. No, he got the goal and
then he asked for God's help.

You desire, you express your desire for this goal to come about in prayer. When
you do that, a couple of things happen. First of all, you have a legitimate
place to express your desire and you should, you shouldn't pretend you don't
have any desires, but secondly, God is able to work with your desire.

If it's headed in a wrong direction, as you talk to him, as you converse with
him about it, he can head it in the right direction. If it needs to be amplified
and strengthened, God can do that. You desire in prayer.

And then as you do that, you do the sixth thing, you diagnose the problem. Every
plan has a problem. Everything that God wants to do in our lives, there is a
problem that goes along with it because we live in this world and there are
problems in this world.

For Abraham's servant, it was, "How in the world am I going to find the right
woman? I've come to my master's homeland. He wants me to find somebody from,
from somehow from his family.

I didn't even know how to find his family. All I know to do is to go to the
central place in town, the well, but if I just ask around, people might be
suspicious. They, they might begin to wonder why I'm asking.

What should I do? How am I going to get the right answer? How would he find the
right woman?

You diagnose the problem and then based on that number seven, you design a plan
and listen to the plan. It's the great wisdom of Abraham's servant in verses 13
to 15. He says in verse 13, "See, I am standing beside the spring and the
daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water.

May it be," he says to God in praying, "may it be that when I say to a girl,
please let down your jar that I might have a drink. And she says, drink and I'll
water your camels too. Let her be the one that you've chosen for your servant
Isaac.

By this, I will know that you've shown kindness to my master. " Before he'd
finished praying, Rebecca, who was going to be the one, Rebecca came out with
her jar on her shoulder. He designed a plan and he designed a plan that valued a
servant heart, a woman who would not only give him a drink because he was
thirsty, but would offer to go the second mile to water his camels.

And that was no easy job. Camels are thirsty animals. This was a very difficult
job that she would be undertaking, pail upon pail upon pail of water for these
camels.

Rebecca comes out and she gives him a drink and she says, "Let me water your
camels as well. " He designed a plan. And when the answer came, he praised God
for the answer.

That's part of, by the way, designing a plan. Because God worked, you don't
praise yourself. You don't pat yourself on the back.

You recognize what God had done. The Bible says in verses 26 to 28, "He then
bowed down and worshiped the Lord, saying, 'Praise be to the Lord, the God of my
master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my
master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my
master's relatives.

' And then the girl ran and told her mother's household about these things. "
The servant's going to go to Rebecca's house. And as he goes to Rebecca's house
and he begins to meet her family, begins to talk about God's plan, he does
something incredibly important for success in the plan of God.

He does an eighth thing. Let me walk through them again. I know there's a lot of
them.

You determine your position, number one. You define your purpose, number two.
You discover a promise, number three.

You describe a prophet, the prophet, number four. Number five, you desire in
prayer. Number six, you diagnose the problem.

Number seven, you design a plan. And then number eight, you discipline your
actions. You have to discipline your actions in order to fulfill the plan.

Here's what happens in verse 33. "Then food was set before him. " When the
servant went to the house, they sit down to talk about this.

"But he said, 'I will not eat until I have told you what I am here to say. '
Then Tellus, Laban, who is Rebecca's brother, says, 'He did not procrastinate.
He didn't wait a moment.

He disciplined himself to not just eat the meal and enjoy the surroundings. He
immediately said, 'This is the plan. ' He described to them the plan, what God
had been doing.

And based on his description, the family agreed that Rebecca would go to marry
Isaac. He refused to be detained. Not only here at the beginning, he told them
the plan and then they agreed, but listen to what happened the next morning,
beginning down in verse 54.

When they got up the next morning, he said, 'Send me on my way to my master. '
But her brother, Laban, and her mother replied, 'Let the girl remain with us 10
days or so, and then you may go. ' But he said to them, 'Do not detain me, now
that the Lord has granted success to my journey.

Send me on my way that I may go to my master. ' And then they said, 'Let's call
the girl and ask her about it. ' So they called Rebecca and they asked her,
'Will you go with this man?

I will go,' she said. So they sent their sister Rebecca on her way along with
her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men. He refused to be detained.

He disciplined his actions all along the way to accomplish God's promise. And as
he was doing this, this discussion, there is a ninth thing that was happening in
the midst of this discussion. Number nine in verses 53 and 54, which we skipped
a moment ago, he deposited the price.

There is a cost that goes along with fulfilling God's plan. In this case, verse
53 and 54, 'Then the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of
clothing, and he gave them to Rebecca. He also gave costly gifts to her brother
and to her mother.

And then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night
there. ' There is no plan of God in our lives that has no cost. It will cost
time, it will cost resources, it will cost energy, it costs.

So you have to deposit the price at the same time as you're disciplining your
actions. Those two things go hand in hand. And as you're walking through this,
there's a tenth thing that always happens.

It's happened all the way through this experience of Abraham's servant. The
tenth thing is you have to depend upon people. All along the way, he had been
depending on God's work in and through other people's lives.

As he sits at the well and Rebecca comes along, he depends on her to respond,
and he goes to the families and he talks to them, he depends on them to respond
to what God is doing. He is having to depend on other people. You cannot fulfill
a great plan of God in your life without depending on other people.

So how do you do this? How do you depend on other people in faith? Well, the way
this servant led was by telling the story of God's work in his life.

If you go and you read this chapter, verses 34 to 49, a big chunk of this
chapter is this servant retelling what had happened in detail. He's bringing
them into the story of what God is doing. And that is one of the keys to faith
success.

Bringing other people in your life into the story of what God is doing in your
life. And because of all this, because he did these ten things, you might want
to listen through again and write them down and think about how you can live
them in your life. Because he did these ten things, he enjoyed success.

Verses 62 to 67. Now Isaac had come from Berlahi Roy and he was living in the
Negev. And he went out in the field one evening to meditate and as he looked up,
he saw camels approaching.

Rebecca also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and he asked
the servant, "Who is that man in the field coming to meet us? " "He is my
master," the servant answered.

So she took her veil and covered herself. Then the servant told Isaac all he had
done. And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah and he married
Rebecca.

So she became his wife and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his
mother's death. Let's pray together.

Jesus, when we look at your plan in our lives, we know that it's a good plan.
And we can see how that plan works out in the breadth of our lives, that you're
heading us for heaven. You're growing us in you.

We also know there are details of faith in our lives. How am I going to live out
this ministry? How am I going to do this project?

And God, I pray that this example of Abraham's servant would encourage us today
and how we can live with faith in the details of life. Show us how. Show us the
next step today.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. And join us tomorrow, Abraham is going to pass
from the scene and we're going to begin the story of Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob
and Esau.