Oops. The blessing stops here. Rebekah is barren!

Genesis 24 provides a delightful narrative on the marriage of Isaac, who is however essentially peripheral to events! His father Abraham takes action to find him a wife. So it is his father who sends his servant to go to their original homeland and family to get a wife for himself. It is his father who is confident that the Lord ‘will send His angel’ before the servant so he can ‘get a wife for [Isaac] from there.’ [24:7] And perhaps Abraham fears that if Isaac returned to what was their homeland he might not come back, hence he commands ‘do not take my son back there.’ [v8b]

The servant is not named. He is one of the many billions of the anonymous servants of the Lord, through whose obedience and trust the Lord achieves His purposes. When he arrives at the town of Nahor he prays that the Lord will give his matrimonial mission success [v12-14]. An initial prayer that is backed up by his bowing down and worshipping the Lord for fulfilling Abraham’s hopes and leading him to the house of Abraham’s relatives. [v26-27] His whole approach to the task Abraham has given him is threaded through with respect for Abraham and trust in the Lord. [24:12;21;26-27;45;48;52;56]. Even Laban, perhaps more out of politeness rather than real faith recognises that the servant is blessed by the Lord [v31] and that what is happening is from the Lord [v50]. This adventure of the servant’s search concludes with happy news that Isaac and Rebekah marry. [v67b] After the sad news of Abraham’s death and burial and the listing of the sons of Ishmael, from whom twelve tribes descend, our expectations are primed for the news of children for Isaac and Rebekah.

Isaac married Rebekah when he was forty [25:20]. We are not told Rebekah’s age but we can surmise she was young and of an age to bear children for she was ‘a virgin who had never lain with a man.’ [24:16] On this marriage depends all the promises of God to Abraham that he would father multitudes through Isaac [22:17] who will bring God’s blessing to the world [22:18] Therefore we expect children. But there is no honeymoon fruit of tiny feet. By five years there is no sound of the cry of the first breath of a new born. By nine years of marriage there are no signs of any babies of the promise. By fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years there are no offspring fulfilling God’s promises. Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage is full of years but their cribs and cots are empty. [25:21]

What may this say to us for our focus on Revival?

These three things at least we might consider.

[1] Assuming that Abraham had told Isaac of God’s covenant promises and his and Sarah's long journey to parentage was Isaac an through him Rebekah perhaps complacent in their expectation of children? After all unlike Sarah, Rebekah was young and of child-bearing age. And surely it was God’s intention for her to be a mother. There would be no need for miracles, but only for the work of normal nature. And perhaps as the delays continued did Isaac keep presuming upon God, saying to himself and to Rebekah that children are bound to come for my father’s God has promised them. Pointing even to the sons that Ishmael was fathering as supportive evidence, for as the Lord had promised children to himself so He had promised children to Ishmael [17:20], therefore if Ishmael was fruitful so would they be. But by eighteen years the emptiness remains. Perhaps in Rebekah’s heart the fact of Ishmael’s children became less a promise of comfort than a blight of blame. And did Isaac in the long years of their emptiness come to conceive their plight as Rebekah’s blame?

What is there to do? They pray. The NIV wording: ‘Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren.’ may also be read, according to Joyce Baldwin as ‘Isaac prayed with his wife’. Baldwin also suggests, rightly to me, that the verse is ‘surely an understatement representing years of persistent intercession.”[ p104 The Message of Genesis 12-50 The Bible Speaks Today. Joyce G Baldwin IVP 1986. UK ISBN 0-85110-0759-1; US ISBN 0-87784-298-1]

And does Isaac’s praying because she was barren shows that he had moved from seeing it as her problem to his problem? Did the tragedy of their constant childlessness have to work a deep dependence within, bringing them to God as Hannah would later do in a mix of bitterness of soul, and weeping misery[1Sam c1], expressing trust in God, seeking His mercy, asking Him to hear and act for His name’s sake. For their loss was personal but not only personal. It was also theological, for it suggested that God could not keep His promises, that some things are too hard for Him and a desperation for the world, for if they had no children God has no people, and the world has no blessing.[Gen 18:14a] But now the Lord answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant.

[2] This also reminds us of a truth that Jacob later spoke to Esau, which they both may have heard their parents say, ‘children are the gift of God’ [Genesis 33 v5]. Life is by Grace. Consider: did you in the Nothingness determine that you would come to be? Did you decide these folk will be my parents? Did you decree your name and place, your times and purpose? Our existence is in God's hands. Grace expresses our dependence upon God.

Not everyone recognises or rejoices in this dependence. Like Satan many seek to exalt themselves over God, preferring their own counsel, their own will, their own kingship on earth, their own ‘ego eime’. Choosing to scoff and mock [Psalm 1], they stand as protesters before Pilate yelling for the freedom of Barabbas, declaring ‘we have no king, but Caesar’ [John 19:15c] and then gather at the cross sneering. In contrast those who trust God come to prayer: the praise of God, the confession of their own distance from God, the hope of forgiveness and a place in the rota of the doorkeepers in the house of God. [Ps 84:10b]

[3] And there is also this, which is a constant in Scripture revealed life, God is sovereign. He rules over all things. Though the serpent opposed His way and beguiled Eve and Adam to rebel against His one and only law, God’s eternal purposes are not thwarted. He acts to raise and bring a people to Himself, overcoming their Fall into rebellion to raise them up into a new creation, where He and they will dwell together in love and joy and peace without any evil, sin, and death. As it was intended so it will be. Nothing is outside his sovereign will. ‘If He meets with resistance, He either allows it for His purposes, or He overcomes it for His purposes.’ [see https://www.desiringgod.org/topics/the-sovereignty-of-god#god-is-sovereign-over-salvation]

God’s sovereignty is not the manipulating terror of tyrants who violate all goodness but the expression of God's nature, the 'compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’The God of justice as well as mercy who ‘does not leave the guilty unpunished.’ [Exodus 34:6-7b]

By grace God calls a people into being. By His sovereignty He guides His people and purposes. Nothing is by our worthiness. Not even as the promised son of and the chosen daughter-in-law of Abraham. In swift steps of human time God acted to bring Isaac and Rebekah together but then He made them wait twenty years for children. To ask if they may have been complacent is to ask were they truly depending on the Sovereign God for their children? Did they trust in the grace of the Lord as the giver of children or did they depend on the works of nature, that by their own actions they would bring forth the next generation of God’s people? But God’s ways are not bound by human expectations, as if Isaac and Rebekah should have had children straight away. Rather their long wait may have been necessary to deepen their dependence and fruit within them a truer, stronger faith?

In Genesis 26 we see various struggles in Isaac’s life, by which the Lord blessed him, appeared to him, and re-affirmed His covenant promise for many descendants. And for the first time we read that Isaac ‘built an altar and called on the name of the Lord.” And we see that his relationship with God is not hidden but visible to others, who saw clearly that the Lord was with him. [26:25 and 28]. Isaac had become a person of blessing to others. But then there is the disturbing news that Esau married two Hittite daughters who were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah. But to mention Esau is to come to Jacob.