The German philosopher and scholar, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), was born a hunchback. Despite this deformity, which could have soured him on life forever, Mendelssohn was known as a wise and humble man.
While on a trip to Hamburg as a young man, Mendelssohn met a rich merchant who had a beautiful, young daughter, Frumtje. The young man fell hopelessly in love with her. She too was mature beyond her years, and despite his obvious physical defect, she was attracted to his gentleness, his charm, and his brilliant mind.
Mendelssohn stayed several weeks in Hamburg, spending much of his time with this lovely girl he had fallen in love with at first sight. When it finally came time to leave, he worked up enough nerve to speak to her father. It was either that or lose her forever.
The rich and powerful merchant hesitated for a long time. Mendelssohn finally asked him to speak his thoughts frankly.
"Well," said the older man, "you are known throughout Germany as a most brilliant young man. And yet... I must tell you my child was a bit frightened when she first saw you."
"Because I am a hunchback?"
Sadly, the merchant nodded.
Downcast, but not defeated, Mendelssohn asked only one last favor - the privilege of seeing her once more before he left. Admitted to her room, he found her busy with needlework. He spoke at first of various matters, then carefully and gradually, he led the conversation to the subject that was nearest to his heart. "Do you believe, that marriages are made in heaven?”
"Yes," she said, "for that is our faith."
"And it is true," he said gently. "Now let me tell you about something strange that happened when I was born. As you know, at a child’s birth, according to our tradition, they call out in heaven that the birth has occurred. And when it is a boy, they announce, ’Such and such boy will have this or that girl for a wife.’
"Well, there I was, just born, and I heard the name of my future wife announced. At the same time, I heard the great far off voice say, ’Unfortunately, the poor little girl, Frumtje, will have a terrible hump on her back.’ Quick as a flash, I cried out, ’O Lord God, if a girl is hunchbacked, she will grow up bitter and hard. Please give her hump to me and let her develop into a well-formed lovely, and charming young lady.’"
She married him and they lived a long and fruitful life together.
APPLY: Now that is one romantic story, and a true story - BUT… Are marriages really made in heaven? Is there someone out there who is picked out for each of us from our birth? In 1995, 85% of young adults age 18 to 24 said they believe every person has a perfect match. In other words, they were saying they believed that their potential for a happy marriage had been pre-arranged.
BUT is that a Biblical teaching? Is that what Scripture tells us… Not as far as I can tell. The idea that marriages are made in heaven sounds romantic, it sounds comforting and it’s obviously very appealing to people, but with the exception of Adam & Eve there is little evidence that God has ever “made” one person for another.
However - as this story of Isaac & Rebekah illustrates – while marriages aren’t “made in heaven,” under the right circumstances God CAN and WILL help us pick out the right person for us or our children – the perfect match.
But what kind of circumstances would cause God to seek out this right one for us or our children?
I. The most obvious: God was at the center of this story.
ABRAHAM made his decision to send his servant back to Aram Naharaim because of a promise God had made years before:
"The LORD, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’— he will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there.” (Genesis 24:7)
In other words, God had promised that Isaac would have children… SO, Isaac needed a wife. But the women of Canaan were not Godly women. That left Abraham with the belief that the best place to look seemed to be back in the land from which he came.
And then THE SERVANT counts on God to help him find this potential bride. He prays a very trusting and well thought out prayer:
"O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’— let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master." (Vss. 12-14)
Lastly, consider what ISAAC was doing as he awaited the servant’s return:
“He went out to the field one evening to meditate…” (Genesis 24:63)
Isaac is out in the field… meditating. Now, that doesn’t mean he was humming some indistinct tune while contemplating his navel. In the Bible, when someone “meditated” he was concentrating on God, focusing on His promises. He was talking with God.
So, it would seem, that Isaac’s entire household believed that the success of finding Isaac’s future bride hinged entirely upon God.
II. Biblically, that makes sense.
We read in James 4:2 “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.”
It would seem obvious. If you want God involved in finding the perfect match (i.e. God’s best for your life), it might be wise to get God involved in the beginning of selection process – before the dating gets started.
BUT, is that how it’s done these days? Do single people in our culture usually ask God to help them find the best mate for their lives before they begin dating? Some do… but too often, if God’s consulted at all – it’s more of an after thought.
The general practice of “courtship” in our culture is to kind of drift along in life until we “just happen” find someone who “appeals” to us. Then - maybe - God gets asked His opinion. It’s little wonder that in a recent poll, 84% of parents said that their children had had their hearts broken at one time or another in their lives. If God isn’t drawn in at the outset of a romantic involvement then the result can be disastrous.
At this point, some of you are looking at the person you married sitting next to you and saying: “Soooo, that’s what went wrong!!!” No, no, no, no… That’s not how God works.
EVEN IF your spouse wasn’t the most wonderful person in the world, the same God who can create the perfect date can also make the difference in the one you’re married to now
SO, the 1st key to a person finding God’s best for their lives or lives of our children – ask Him
Are you dating now? Ask Him. Do you have a child or grandchild or nephew or niece who’s single? Ask God to find the right person just for them. I’ve heard of parents who start praying at their child’s birth that God would begin right then to prepare the right mate. They have understood that while marriages aren’t “made in heaven” – God will prepare the right person for their child if they are humble enough to ask.
III. If you’re single, the 2nd principle of finding God’s best for your life is to look for the right person in the right places.
Abraham told his servant: “I want you to swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living” (Genesis 24:3)
I don’t know what Abraham didn’t like about Canaanite women, but there was something wrong with those girls. The situation was so terrible in the land you couldn’t find a nice girl there if you had tried.
The point is, there are wrong places to look for a life long mate, a person who would please God. Bars, Casinos, certain kinds of parties and dances. It’s not as if we need a laundry list of places that we can’t go if we want to meet God’s best for us. It’s really quite simple: If you’re single, don’t go to those places. And if you’re a parent/ grandparent or uncle & aunt, discourage your family from looking there. You will not find god’s choice for you in those places.
IV. Not only are there right places to look for Godly spouse there are right qualities to be looking for in a potential mate.
Often it isn’t until older that we recognize this.
ILLUS: Dear Abby: I am 44 and would like to meet a man my age with no bad habits. - Rose
Dear Rose: So would I.
Question: How do people generally decide to date someone? Answer: most often it’s how they look. In fact: according to one poll 40% of Americans said they believed in love at first sight. In our culture, people are evaluated on how they look, on how well they kiss, and whether or not they can carry on a conversation long enough to keep each other interested between kisses.
That’s not always true… but it’s true often enough it is a recipe for disappointment. Our country has had a higher rate of divorce in past 50 years that seemingly ever before. WHY? Partly because Hollywood & Television and the Entertainment industry have educated us believe in love at 1st sight.
V. What’s interesting, is that in Isaac’s culture there was almost a de-emphasis on physical beauty. Not completely, mind you. The Bible tells us Rebekah was “very beautiful” (vs. 16)
But notice the 1st thing Rebekah does when she sees Isaac:
She asks “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.” Genesis 24:65
In that culture, it was improper for a husband to see his bride before they married. In fact, that custom has carried over into our day. When a bride gets married, what does she usually wear as she comes down the aisle? A veil. As far as we can tell, Isaac never saw her face until after he married her
That alone would be noteworthy… BUT consider the servant’s prayer when he’s asking God for the right girl:
"O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’— let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master." (Vss. 12-14)
Notice he doesn’t ask God for a “good looking woman.” He’s not searching a beauty queen, he’s not looking for sultry babe. It doesn’t even come into his prayer. All he asks is for a girl who’ll water his camels.
It common courtesy in those days to draw water from a well for a stranger, kind of like a man opening a door for a woman. BUT for this servant to expect a young lady to water his camels was another thing entirely. Do you have any idea how much water a camel can drink? A really thirsty camel can drink up to 21 gallons of water – and there were 10 camels there at the well. For Rebekah to offer to water these goes wayyyyy beyond just good manners.
AND I believe that’s precisely why the servant made this request. Any girl who would offer to water someone else’s camels had a servant’s heart. This would be a woman with a good heart, a woman who tho’t of someone other than herself. She wouldn’t be type to spend all her time looking in the mirror. She was going to be the type who seeks to please her husband
In fact, Paul writes that for God’s people “… a married woman is concerned about … how she can please her husband.” 1 Corinthians 7:34. That’s one of the marks of a good Godly woman. (And the men said “Amen”). BUT it’s also one of the marks of a good Godly husband. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:28 “… husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
SO, there’s a right place to look for a mate.
And there are right qualities to look for in a mate.
ILLUS: When I was younger, I had trouble dating. It seemed I couldn’t find a girl I wanted to go out with who wanted to go out with me. Then one summer I interned under a preacher in Sault St. Marie, Michigan called Roy Chenowith. Roy took me aside one day and asked: “Are you going to get married some day?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I hope to.”
“Have you ever asked God to supply the woman you’ll marry?” he continued.
“Sure,” I answered, “many times.”
“Have you ever told Him what kind of girl you’re looking for?”
Well that struck me as kind of presumptuous, and I told him so. Then he explained: “If you don’t tell God what kind of girl you’re looking for, how will you know when He brings her to you.”
That sort of made sense, so set down and made out a list of about 5 or 6 things that I felt I had to have in a mate (I didn’t want to make too many requirements – I was having a hard enough time finding a date as it was). Among my requests were that she would be a Christian, that I could talk to her easily and that she would be the type that I could look at and say “Thank you God for this girl” rather than “Dear God, what have you gotten me?”
Once I prayed this prayer, I felt a sort of peace come over me. In fact, I was so confident of the outcome of my prayer that I didn’t date or attempt to date for the next 3 years.
After I graduated from college, I returned to my home town and began teaching Sunday School in my home church. It was then that God brought the girl he’d been preparing for 3 years into my life. She was the friend of the preacher’s daughter and had come to visit that Sunday. She came, not just for church, but for Sunday School as well. And she immediately fell in love… with the youth minister. That was ok, because that kept her around long enough for me to court her.
What was interesting was that when I first saw her, I knew she was the one I had waited for. And not only me. My dad, who was the Sunday School Superintendent at the time saw her as well. After church that day, he took me aside and said “Jeff, I think I’ve just met the girl you need to look at.”
We were married a year later.
VI. Lastly, I want you to notice that part of having God involved in selecting a mate is perhaps the hardest for people to accept. It is being willing to allow God to say “no.”
“The servant asked (Abraham), ‘What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? … (Abraham replied) ‘If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine.’” (Genesis 24:5&8)
What’s Abraham saying here? He’s saying that God might just say “no.”
One of the problems in people’s lives is the belief that if they don’t get married – it’s the end of the world. Let me pass along to you some wisdom I heard a long time ago: There are worse things to experience in this life than NOT getting married. You could get married to a terrible person. A person who’ll hurt you, or cheat on you, or spend all your savings on gambling or alcohol. There are all kinds of things that are worse than not being married.
But, if you trust in God, and seek His way in your life… you’ll get God’s best. As Jesus said: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33
If you do that – if you allow God to lead and pick out the best course for your life – then, even when you’re heart is broken, you can turn to God for your strength.
CLOSE: Albert L. Peace was a man in love. His fiancée was all he had ever wanted in a woman and they planned to soon be married. Then he encountered a problem that would crush all his plans.
He was going blind.
The woman he had loved and hoped to share his life with walked out of his life forever. She could not stand the possibility of living her life with a man whom she unquestionably would need to care for the rest of her life.
Albert was shattered. But in the midst of his tragedy he sought and found the love of
the One that he knew would not reject him.
Taking pen in hand he composed the words of a long favored Christian hymn:
“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES
Choose Wisely - Genesis 24:1-24:67
The Perfect Mate - Ephesians 4:17-5:5
Total Commitment - Ruth 1:16-1:17
The Wedding - 1 Corinthians 13:4-13:8
