An overview for Sunday School teacher and Bible study leaders of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Genesis 24:12-20, 24-27, for Sunday, March 10, 2024, with the title, “Guidance Needed.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO:  In 1898 Winston Churchill was a young war correspondent, covering the British Army in their war in Sudan, Africa. In William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill he writes: 

“Various duties kept Winston behind on the river’s east bank; he had been told to join the column that evening at its first camp, fifteen miles away. His chores took longer than he had expected, and it was late afternoon before the ferry steamer Tahra carried him over to the west shore. He asked for directions and was told: “It is perfectly simple. You just go due south until you see the campfires and then turn towards the river.” He nodded and left. An hour later the sun sank; darkness enveloped him. To avoid the thorny bushes on the Nile bank he struck inland and rode down through the desert, steering southward by keeping his back to the North Star. After two hours of trotting he paused for a drink and rations. To his dismay, clouds drifted across the star, and the pointers of the Great Bear became invisible. He was lost. Unless the overcast lifted, he would have no choice but to wait. Picking a spot, he passed the reins around his waist, leaned against a rock, and tried to sleep. The night was sultry; “a hot, restless, wearing wind blew continuously with a mournful sound”; slumber was impossible. Then, at 3:30 A.M., the sky cleared and “the beautiful constellation of Orion (the Hunter) came into view. Never did the giant look more splendid.” He rode toward it, and after two hours he found the Nile.” (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory, pp. 271-272)  

??? Anyone here ever navigate by the stars??? (I haven’t!) Winston Churchill (like many explorers and navigators over the years) got the guidance he needed from looking at the stars. But often we need the kind of “guidance” we can’t get from a telescope or a compass. We need God’s wisdom and knowledge to guide us in making important decision in our lives.

??? What was a specific time in your life when you needed guidance from the Lord???

(I have needed God’s guidance many times in my life: deciding what church to serve; whether we would answer a call to go to another church; making all kinds of decisions in church ministry, etc.     

We ALL have times in our lives when we need guidance from the Lord. Maybe some of you/your class members, need God’s specific guidance RIGHT NOW. If so, this lesson is for you — but it’s really for all of us, because we all have times where we need God to guide us.

??? What are some time/things we might need God’s guidance for today???

(Job direction, wisdom for raising kids, relationships, etc.)

CONTEXT

We left ofs in our study through Genesis with Chapter 22, when Abraham was tested as to whether he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, whom God had finally given him — but it ended up it was just a test, and God provided a ram as a substitute for him, a picture of how He would provide a substitute for US in Jesus.

Then in chapter 23, Isaac grows, and his mother Sarah dies and is buried, which brings us to Chapter 24. Abraham is now very old, :1 says, but he has one more thing he wants to see completed before he dies: he brings in his servant and makes him swear that he will not get a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanites, but that he will go back and get someone for him from among his own people.  

His servant (who is never named in the passage, interestingly, which has application for us: if we are His servants, we don’t need “publicity” or recognition; it is enough that we are His servants!) asks him in :5, what if the woman will not come back with me, should I take him back there — and Abraham responds almost violently in :6, “Beware that you do not take my son back there!”  And he tells him in :7, “the LORD (YHWH) the God of heaven … HE will send His angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there.” So Abraham expresses great faith again here: He says, GOD WILL PROVIDE this wife for Isaac, and he will give you the guidance that you need. 

So Abraham’s servant heads out to “Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor (Abraham’s brother),

(You’ll want to have a MAP like this one, of the Middle East/Mesopotamia to show where the servant went) 

Verse 11 then says “He made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at evening time, when women go out to draw water.” 

This brings us to our focus passage for this week, from Genesis 24:12+, with the emphasis on “Guidance Needed.”  

OUTLINE

I. The Prayer For Guidance  (:12-14)

II. The Prayer Answered  (:15-20)

III. The Providence & Worship  (:24-27)

TEXT

I. THE PRAYER FOR GUIDANCE (:12-14)

??? What do you notice about :12-14, what is this???

(It’s a PRAYER! He starts off: ‘O LORD, the God of my master Abraham …” so he’s talking to God.

AND: notice that he’s not just talking to “any” god; he’s talking to a SPECIFIC God. You see “LORD” in all 4 caps in the Old Testament, and that indicates that it is the name YHWH, or “Jehovah,” the personal name of God that He gave Moses in Exodus 3.  So he’s talking to YHWH, his master Abraham’s God. 

This is important: when we seek guidance from God, we want to make sure we are seeking it from the RIGHT GOD! 

Tim Keller wrote in his great book on Prayer:  “Anne Lamott’s book on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers … ‘Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness … to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in: to something unimaginably big, and not us. We could call this force Not Me … or for convenience we could just say ‘God.’ …  (But) you cannot grow in a relationship with a person unless you learn who he or she is.” (Timothy Keller, Prayer, p. 60-61)

Keller is right. We shouldn’t just pray to “any” god; not Allah or Baal or anyone else; not to the grandfatherly “moralistic therapeutic deistic” god most Americans believe in; but Yahweh God, the God of Genesis & Exodus; the God of the Bible; the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

When you’re seeking guidance, you need to make sure you’re getting it from the right person who can really help you!

Too many people are getting their guidance and direction from the wrong source! 

So here’s one of the most important lessons when we need guidance: PRAY!  And make sure you are praying to the right God: the God of the Bible; and hopefully the God that YOU KNOW personally through His Son Jesus Christ, and through His word.  

So he is praying, and then just WHAT does the servant ASK in his prayer? 

He asks two general things, and one very specific thing:

— He asks “please grant me success today”

— He asks “and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham”

Those are two very general things; then he prays something very specific in :13-14, “Behold, I am standing by the spring, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water; (:14) now may it be that the girl to whom I say, ‘Please let down your jar so that I may drink,’ and who answers, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels also’ — may she be the one whom You have appointed for Your servant Isaac; and by this I will know that You have shown lovingkindness to my master.”

What does he ask God in this 3rd request? To give him a very specific answer to prayer. 

This is something that we see a couple of times in scripture; I don’t necessarily believe we should do this routinely, but I think there is a time and a place when it might be appropriate to do it. God evidently led this servant to do this in this case — and as we will see, He did hear and answer him in this.

??? Can you think of another time in the Bible where someone asked God for a specific answer to prayer like this???
(Gideon in Judges, he asked 3 times regarding the “fleece,” some have called it, “putting out a fleece” — if this is really God’s will, show me this specific thing. 

Again, I don’t think this should be our “every day” method of operating — but there may be a certain time when God leads you to do it.

??? Has anyone had an experience when you “put out a fleece,” or made a specific request of God like this, and He answered you??? 

This whole request serves to remind us that one of the most important prayers we can pray every day is for God’s GUIDANCE. I’ve shared before how I believe the Lord gave us the Model Prayer as an outline; in that prayer, “Thy Will Be Done” would be the place where we pray for His guidance, for doing His will in the day, or any certain decisions that we/our loved ones have to make.

??? You might ask if anyone here today/someone you know has a need for God’s guidance about something they’d like to share??? 

(PRAY for those requests — either here or at the end of the lesson)

II.  THE PRAYER ANSWERED (:15-20)

It’s always a blessing when God answers our prayers, isn’t it?

??? WHEN does :15 say God answered this servant’s prayers???
(:15 “BEFORE HE HAD FINISHED SPEAKING”! Now that’s a quick answer to prayer, right? Many of us have had long-time prayers answered, and we’re grateful for those. But it’s also nice to have our prayers answered quickly — and that is what God did here.

:15 continues: “”Before he had finished speaking, Rebekah who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah,  the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder.” 

Getting water was one of the most important jobs women had in those days. We take it for granted now — we just turn on the faucet in our kitchen — but even just a few years ago in America this was a vital, draining daily task for women:

(In 1978 Robert Caro and his wife Ina moved to the Texas hill country to live for three years, to explore the boyhood home of Lyndon Johnson for a book he was writing on President Johnson. While there the Caros talked to a number of elderly women about what it was like before LBJ brought water and electric power to the area.)

“Some of those interviews contained moments of revelation—of shock, really. A woman with whom my earlier conversation had been stilted and unrevealing, this time suddenly blurting out, ‘you’re a city boy. You don’t know how heavy a bucket of water is, do you?’ Walking over to her garage, she brought out an old water bucket to which a long length of frayed rope was attached, I walked partway down a slope to a well that was covered the wooden boards. Pushing them aside, she handed me the bucket and told me to drop it in. It dropped quite a way: When it seemed full, she told me to pull it up, and I felt how heavy it was and thought of how many buckets she — mostly she alone, her husband working in the fields or with the cattle all day, her children working beside him as soon as they were old enough, no money on Hill Country farms or ranches to even think of hiring a hired man — had to pull up every day. I found a 1940 Agriculture Department study of how much water each person living on a farm used in a day: forty gallons. The average Hill Country family was five people. Two hundred gallons in a day, much of it hauled up by a single person.

And then they had to get the water to the house. It was another eIderly woman who asked me, “Do you want to see how I carried the buckets?” I suppose I nodded. Walking over to her garage, she pulled up the door, and there was her yoke. I don’t know if I will ever forget that woman — old and frail now, but her shoulders were thin, and her arms, too, you felt, had always been thin— standing there in front of that heavy bar of wood.”  (Robert A. Caro, Working, Introduction, p. Xvii)

Caro’s story really fills in the background on this story in Genesis 24. THIS is the kind of thing that Rebekah was doing here: going to get the water for the daily needs of their family. As Caro describes, it was an extremely difficult, draining, continual task.

Which says a lot about the way that Rebekah responded here!

:16 says Rebekah was very beautiful, not married, “and she went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up.”

Then :17 says “Then the servant ran to meet her, and said, ‘Please let me drink a little water from your jar.’”

(Doesn’t his request take on a little more significance when you understand how HARD it was to get water? It wasn’t like, “Oh, can you hand me a bottle of water?” This was HARD! It was asking her to share something that was very difficult to get!

But she responded very graciously: :18 says “She said, ‘Drink, my lord,’ and she quickly lowered her jar to her hand, and gave him a drink.”

A couple of things in this verse demonstrate Rebekah’s gracious attitude towards Abraham’s servant, ??? CAN YOU SEE THEM???

— that she said YES and gave him the drink was itself very gracious

— then it says she called him “my lord.” Now, she wasn’t saying he was “God,” or anything like that; it was a term of polite address, like a knight calling his king “My lord.” So she was gracious, polite.

— then it says she “quickly” lowered the jar; it wasn’t slow and reluctant; she was quick to serve; enthusiastic! 

All these things are signs that this was not only a very hard-working, but also a very gracious, woman.

But so far that didn’t really fulfill the servant’s request, did it? Because she hadn’t yet said she would water his camels also.

But that’s the next thing that came in :19, “Now when she had finished giving him a drink, she said, ‘I will draw also for your camels until they have finished drinking.”

So now she DID say she would water his camels also — but there was a little “gap,” wasn’t there? It might have tested the servant a little bit in the meantime; he might have been thinking, “Well, she said she would give me a drink, but she hasn’t YET said she would water my camels …”, so there might have been some anxious, questioning moments there for the servant. But NOW she DID; now the prayer was answered, just as he had asked! 

NOW notice also in her watering of the camels some MORE signs of graciousness from Rebekah: (??? Maybe ask your group what they see in :19-20???, and/or then point out:)

— In :19 she said she would water the camels “until they have finished drinking.” That could be a LOT! Camels store up water for those long desert trips, but now they were getting to replenish their “tanks”! This could have been a LOT of water — and as we have seen, that water is a lot of work to get — but she committed to give “until they have finished drinking”!

— :20 again says “she QUICKLY emptied her jar into the trough”

So it was not slow and reluctant, but quickly, energetically, enthusiastically!

— :20 = she “RAN back to the well to draw”

— :20 continues “and she drew for ALL his camels.” (Now :10 says he had TEN CAMELS! This was a LOT!)

So it was “QUICKLY;” it says she “RAN,” and did it for “ALL” his camels. More evidence for what a hard-working, gracious woman she was!

So the bottom line is, God heard Abraham’s servant’s prayer, and He showed him the woman he had asked for Isaac’s wife — and not just “an” answer, but a woman who was everything he could have asked for: hard-working, and very, very gracious.

This is a good reminder that God hears and answers prayers!

And He still does today, doesn’t He?

ILLUSTR:  (After he was nearly drowned in a canal accident, young James A. Garfield, who would one day become President of the United States, returned to his home, in answer to his mother’s prayers.). “Garfield returned home soon after his near drowning a changed man, but also a very sick one. He had contracted malaria on the canal, and by the time he reached his family’s log cabin, he could barely walk.  “As I approached the door at about nine o’clock in the evening,” he later recalled, “I heard my mother engaged in prayer. During the prayer she referred to me, her son away, God only knew where, and asked that he might be preserved in health to return to her.” When Eliza ended her prayer, her son quietly stepped into the cabin.” (Candice Millard, The Destiny of the Republic, p. 22)

We’ve talked before about how sometimes we have to pray requests for years before we receive an answer — but sometimes, like for James Garfield’s mother, and for Abraham’s servant, the answer comes immediately! 

??? Can anyone share an answered prayer that God has given YOU recently??? (Or EVER — if there is a special prayer like the one of this servant that they want to share today)

(I had a young man on my prayer list since last year, that God would get ahold of him, and that he would lead his family back to church — and a couple of months ago, God answered that prayer! And several weeks ago this young man shared with me his testimony of how God got ahold of him, and I thought, WOW, the Lord really worked, and answered that prayer!)

You/your group can share your answered prayers — praise God for those — and encourage each other to continue to pray! 

III. PROVIDENCE & WORSHIP (:24-27)

So :22-23 says when the camels had finished drinking, the servant gave her a ring and bracelets, and asked her whose daughter she was, and if he might be able to stay in her father’s house.

Verse 24 says “She said to him, ‘I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.”

So she WAS indeed a relative of Abraham’s (just as he had asked the servant in :4 to go back and “go to my country and to my relatives, and take a wife for my son Isaac.” 

Nahor was Abraham’s brother, and Rebekah was Nahor’s grand daughter, so they were indeed relatives (technically Rebekah and Isaac were “first cousins once removed” — My wife Cheryl — or an expert in your own class — can draw a chart just how they were related as “1st cousins once removed”!) But the point is, Rebekah was just what Abraham was seeking for in a wife for Isaac; someone from his own relatives, not from the wicked people of Canaan). 

Then she responded positively to his request for lodging in :25, “Again she said to him, ‘We have plenty of both straw and feed, and room to lodge in.’”

So everything Abraham’s servant asked for, God provided: God answered his prayer, He led him to Abraham’s relatives, He brought him right to the right person God had picked for Isaac, and now he was providing for his lodging. Answers and provisions left and right. 

We saw last time how Abraham called God “Jehovah Jireh,” “God Provides,” or “YHWH/The LORD the Provider.” God did provide for this servant in a very miraculous, providential way. 

??? So how did this servant RESPOND to what God did???

:26 “Then the man bowed low and worshiped the LORD.”

And he continued in :27, “He said, ‘Blessed be the LORD (YHWH!) the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His lovingkindness and His truth toward my master; as for me, the LORD has guided me in the way to the house of my master’s brothers.”

He responded to God’s gracious answers with worship.

And that’s how WE should respond to God, too. Because of all His goodnesses and mercies and grace to us, we should respond with worship. 

It reminds me of Psalm 116, that I have been working on memorizing, which asks in :12, “What shall I render to the LORD for all His benefits toward me?” He answers in :13, “I shall lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.  (:14) I shall pay my vows to the LORD, Oh may it be in the presence of all His people.” He says, God has been so good to me, I am going to worship Him — and he says I am going to worship Him publicly: “in the presence of all His people”! 

So we should be committed to worship God, publicly and privately, because of all His goodnesses to us.

And it’s interesting that the servant calls YHWH here “the God of my master Abraham” — almost as if YHWH may not be HIS God (he said the same thing in :12, “O YHWH the God of my master Abraham”).

But ALSO notice how he adds to that here in :27, “AS FOR ME, the LORD (YHWH) has guided me in the way …”. So he does now have a personal testimony of what the LORD did for HIM, personally.  Hopefully, if not before now, the servant now does believe that “the LORD, He is God” for HIMSELF, as he has experienced His blessing and provision.

And you might close the lesson with an admonition that we each need to make sure that we don’t just know the Lord as someone else’s God — our parents, friends, etc. — but that we ourselves have our own personal testimony that Jesus is OUR own Lord & Savior, and that Yahweh is OUR God too!

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