Genesis 15:1-2 KJV After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. [2] And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?
l. ELIEZER
-The Bible states that Eliezer was the steward of Abraham’s house. Obviously as the years passed by and there was no heir born to home of Abraham, Eliezer began to look around and assess the holdings of Abraham. One of these days. . . . . All of this will be mine. . . . . He was to be the heir of it all.
-He lost every bit of it on the day that Isaac was born.
• I wonder how that he felt on the day that Isaac was born?
• I wonder how that Eliezer felt when he noticed that Isaac had gotten sick?
• Did he want him to die?
• I wonder how well things went when Abraham instructed him to teach Isaac how to handle the flocks and the herds?
• I wonder how instructive and supportive that Eliezer was in doing his best with Isaac? Especially knowing that Isaac was the one whom would gain everything that once was going to be his!
A. Selecting the Bride
-Then there came a day that he is the one that’s called upon to get Isaac a bride.
-If most of us would have been Eliezer, we would have gone out and tried to find the ugliest girl in the world. Snaggle-toothed, and what teeth that were left were crooked as a dog’s back leg and black. We would have looked for the hunch-backed, bow-legged bride. She would have been the finest in the land, about like the Possum Queen that comes from Wausau every year. That is what we would have looked for.
-Eliezer proved his true colors when he was sent on this assignment by Abraham. What a man - he selects the finest woman he could find!
-The instructions given to Eliezer: Don’t make Isaac re-walk everything I walked - this is why Abraham wouldn’t let Isaac go get his own wife in Ur of the Chaldees.
PAINT THE PICTURE: The dusty desert. The weary ride. The ill-temper of the camels. Days on end in the saddle. Very hot days and very cold nights. He could have looked in the very first village that he stumbled across. He could have been satisfied with much less. However, Eliezer refused to do so. He looked until he found the most beautiful bride in the land. He found Rebekah.
B. The Bride Will Cost Everything, She Is Very Expensive
-Brides are very expensive - They will cost you everything - as preachers, as ministers, as leaders, the Bride will cost us everything.
2 Corinthians 11:2 KJV For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
-Anyone who is involved in ministry is a presenter of the bride!! Don’t present to him less than he paid for. . . . and what a cost that was required for the Bride of Christ. That is why I refuse to just let anything go. To have an apathetic approach toward ministry. Any minister who is worth his calling is going to be very concerned with the Bride that he is presenting to the Groom.
-For a minister to present a Church, it will cost him everything.
ll. THE OX
Isaiah 1:3 KJV The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
-The only characteristic of the ox is his ability to work. He cannot be trained to do tricks. That is not what the ox is meant for.
-The ox had two purposes in Old Testament:
• Primary means of harvest
• He was used as a peace offering. Anytime there was trouble between God and his people, the ox was sacrificed on the altar.
-The ox lived his life between the plow and the altar! What a place to live your life, between a place of production and a place of death.
-The ox never knew which one would be the order of the day, but he knew his owner - and trusted him. There is an incredible education that comes from the yoke.
Matthew 11:29-30 KJV Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
-It is an education that you will not get in a seminar, nor a classroom, or even from a book. This education comes only from submitting to the hand and purpose of God. If you fight against the yoke, you will never be what God desires for you to be.
-Communion with God involves bread that came from ground wheat (death) and then was heated to rise (resurrection).
-Communion with God involves wine that will come from crushed grapes. In Bible times the grapes were smashed under the feet of men and this was where the blessing of the vine came from. The crushing process.
-In your walk with God, in your efforts to help the Kingdom of God, never despise the bottom rungs of the ladder, they will help you get to the top.
-How do you insult a servant? How do you put down a servant?
Matthew 25:23 KJV His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
-The servants greatest threat will always be an entitlement mentality! What is in this thing for me? Such thoughts will destroy any plan that God has for your life.
Luke 1:52-53 KJV He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. [53] He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
James 1:9 KJV Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:
lll. CONCLUSION -- LOVE THAT IS POURED OUT
She was nearly blind. She was born on April 14, 1866 to Irish immigrants. Life was hard and from the age of three her vision began to fail. To add insult to injury, Annie’s mother died at when she was eight to tuberculosis. Her younger two sisters were farmed out to relatives. Annie tried to care for her father by herself. But at the age of nine, she was sent to Massachusetts State Poorhouse in Tewksberry. He poor vision, though, became a blessing in disguise and at the age of fourteen a new institute welcomed her into their open arms, the Perkins Institute for the blind.
Six years later, Annie at the age of twenty would graduate from college. Then on March 3, 1887, Annie stepped from a train into a small town in Alabama where she was met by a young mother named Kate. Kate had a daughter who had been born with all of her senses but at the age of nineteen months she had become deaf and blind. Kate’s daughter was named Helen.
So began the fascinating story of a teacher who was almost blind, who opened the world to a seven year old child, who couldn’t see, who couldn’t speak, who couldn’t hear. Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller would be inseparable in life. It was indeed, the blind leading the blind.
In fact they would even be united in death for in Washington Cathedral, along with presidents, life Woodrow Wilson and his wife, Edith, there would be a special chapel reserved for them and there Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller would be buried in that chapel, together in Washington’s Cathedral.
It was long after Annie’s death that Helen Keller spoke at a ceremony at Radcliffe College where she had gone and received her degree. That day a fountain was being dedicated in honor of Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher. Although Helen could speak at this time, although Helen was a prolific author at this time, although Helen was a world traveler at this time and welcomed in the halls of Parliament and in the courts of kings and queens. Although was a highly intelligent woman and had made speeches all over the world. . . . . but on that day, emotion overwhelmed Helen and when it came time for her to speak at the dedication of the flowing fountain, she uttered one word. One word. . . . . just one word. The same word that was signed into her hand over and over and over by her teacher. The word that had opened her world. The word that had connected her back to the land of the living. At that moment, standing before a fountain in Boston, Helen’s mind went back to a little Alabama town where she had raced from the house so frustrated and went to her favorite hideout by the well.
Her teacher, Annie, had found her there and she had began to pump water from the well and as it splashed over Helen’s hands, Annie began to sign that one word over and over again into Helen’s hands. Until from the memory dredged up when she was nineteen months old, she remembered a word, a word that she had spoken, and she began to try to speak that single word. That same word that the now-eloquent Helen spoke at a dedication ceremony, seventy-three years later. The shortest public speech in history, a single word. That word. . . . . water.
I found a quote from Annie Sullivan. She said, “Love is something like the clouds that are in the sky. You can’t touch them, you know. But you feel the rain and you know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You can’t touch love either. . . But you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.”
-The power of something is it’s ability to be poured out.
Philip Harrelson
October 23, 2005
barnabas14@yahoo.com
