Here Comes The Bride

He said to the chief servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, Put your hand under my thigh. 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, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac.

Genesis 24:2-4

If you read this chapter through carefully, you will find that the central character is not Rebekah, the bride. Little of her reaction is recorded here; she has a secondary part. The spotlight of the story really follows Abraham's servant, the central character. This is a picture of the Holy Spirit's work. But remember, the Spirit of God chooses to do His work largely through men and women, through those of us who are His. This is especially true in the work of calling out a people for God's name. God has given us the responsibility and the privilege of being His instruments to call His bride out of the world. So this story becomes a beautiful picture of the whole process of personal evangelism.

The process of bringing others to Christ begins with the command of God the Father. The initiative here is with Abraham. He sends his servant to do this work and binds him to the task with an oath. When the servant puts his hand under Abraham's thigh, he is simply practicing an oriental custom that recognized that the loins of the thigh were the source of life. For the servant, it was a representation of being bound in a solemn oath.

As we apply this to our own situation and see God the Father standing in the place of Abraham here, He is asking every servant to give himself to this task. The servant is unnamed here so that you and I can put our names here. The Father calls us and commands us to go and take a wife for His Son.

This is not an option for a believer in Jesus Christ. God has said, not only in the fashion we see here but also in direct statements in the Word of God, that the obligation rests upon believers to give themselves to the task of reaching others for Jesus Christ. God has said, Take a wife for my Son. And to this end, the Spirit of God has come into our hearts to dwell. His whole purpose of coming into your life and mine is that He might be what He is and do what He came to do. Our Lord Jesus is the one dwelling within, and we are told what He came to do. He said, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). If this is what He came to do, we will find Him doing it in our lives if we give Him the opportunity.

Lord, help me to be responsive to the Spirit of God as He leads me to those He has prepared to hear about Your Son.