Here comes the bride! Who doesn’t love a love story? But what’s with this old man leading the search team?
As Genesis 24 opens, Abraham is old, “well advanced in age.” When we first meet him in Ur, he is already about 70 years old. At 75, he moves from Haran to Canaan (Gen 12:4). Ten years later, encouraged by Sarah, he takes Hagar and bears a son, named Ishmael (16:3ff). At the ripe age of 100, finally Isaac is born (21:1-5). When Sarah dies, he is 137 (23:1) and will live to the remarkable age of one hundred and seventy-five (25:7)! But at this point in the saga, we read the sweet testimony, “and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things” (24:1). Isaac has been prophetically promised, miraculously birthed, divinely selected to advance the Messiah’s line, and supernaturally saved at Moriah. But wait! Isn’t something missing? If he is to father a son who, renamed Israel, will provide the twelve progenitors of Israel’s tribes, he needs a wife! And not any wife, but, just as surely as he was selected, the wife of God’s choosing. Now Abraham, so often a prototype of God the Father as Isaac is a picture of God the Son, has an ancient and unnamed servant who will be sent to find a bride for that beloved son. It hardly stretches the imagination to see him as representing the Holy Spirit and His present work of wooing and winning a Bride for Christ. There would be no unequal yoke on this occasion; he must bring home one who was in the family. So it is that, when the heavenly Bridegroom brings His Bride home and presents her to His Father, all within that redeemed company will bear the Family image, sharing through grace her Beloved’s bloodline. The wedding day is coming! “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” (Rev 19:9). Have you accepted His invitation? If not, why not?