Mission & Maiden

Can we think our reading team, please? I’m extremely thankful we were going through. As you may know, we’re going through Genesis chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and even word by word. And this is the longest chapter in Genesis, and they read most of it. We’re going to finish the rest next week. But by them reading it, we’ve heard it. You heard the story now. And in a bit, we’re going to jump into what you just heard, which was a beautiful love story, and we’re going to dig into that in a little bit. But first, welcome. We’re glad that you’re joining us this morning. A special welcome to anyone that’s a guest here this morning. And of course, welcome to those that are joining us online as well. You just heard a beautiful love story, whether you realize it or not.

And so before we go into that text, I have to ask nowadays, where would you say is a good place to find a spouse? Shout it out. Shout it out because you guys can talk back here. CHURCH Of course. CHURCH okay, we got that one out of the way. So we’re work. Home Depot. Okay. Very specific. Okay. I like it. Concerts. The mall. Concerts are what are online. Pastor Tim has let me know that of the weddings he’s done in the recent past, more and more of them are couples that have met together online. You know, some of us, we’re fortunate that, you know, you either met your spouse just growing up, same hometown, same school, different ways. Now, it seems to me that you could do all those different things you just mentioned.

You could meet him at church. You can meet him at Home Depot. You can meet him wherever it may be. But now that he’s keep adding these things, you might as well just try a dating show. Right. There’s just so many of them that, you know, you just take your luck, take your pick of whatever one. I mean, this is just a few of them that made I do watch one of these because I’m a retentive good husband and my wife wants to watch. Its love is blind. I don’t know if anybody else anybody else watch that one is complete garbage. Don’t watch it. But the premise of it is interesting because they have folks come together, they can’t see each other, but they have conversation. So they see if they have an emotional connection. They have similar values.

And all in all, the vast majority of those relationships, they don’t work out. A culture tries to tell us, even through through things that are really overt, like shows like this, and then, you know, things that are a little bit more covered, like how we are supposed to pursue relationships, what relationships are ultimately supposed to offer us, how we’re supposed to prioritize, what values we have to have in line with someone else to choose a spouse, which is difficult in this culture. If you’re a Christian who’s single and trying to sift through all of this to determine how is it that I am supposed to find the person that God has in mind for me, you’re not going to find it from shows like this and you’re not going to find it through popular media or you’re going to find it. And what we’re looking at here today in Genesis 24, and so if you’re single, this will definitely pertain to you. If you’re married, this will pertain to you as well, because the way that you come into a relationship is a way that you should continue in to maintain it.

And also, if you’re a parent, then you want to know how you can go about praying for your children and hoping that their spouse will be a good and godly spouse as well. So I believe there’s something here for everyone today. So at the beginning of Genesis 24, as you just heard, we have our main character, Abraham, who we’ve been following along for a number of chapters now. And it starts off with saying that he’s very old, which is a bit of an understatement because if we look at the text surrounding this, he is 140 years old at this point. So he’s very old. And he says that the Lord blessed him in every way. And he said that the senior servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, he said, put your hand under my thigh. I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, 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 you will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son, Isaac.

Few interesting things that are taking place here. Abraham is 140. He had Isaac when he was how old? 100. Very good. Well done. Yeah. So some of you can track it a lot. So 100. So that means Isaac is 40, 40 years old. 40 years old. Hasn’t found a spouse yet for himself. So here dad is intervening, saying, okay, you’re 40, we got to find you a wife. And rather than going to Isaac himself, going, go find a wife for yourself. He finds his head servant, the one who in charge of all the Abraham owns and now is giving him this most important task. You need to go find a wife for my son. And what’s interesting is we’re going to highlight two things here in this text. One is he told his servant, Put your hand under my. It’s not what it says. That’s what that says. But that’s not what it says. See, in Hebrew, an agreed upon by every scholar, every commentator that I could come into contact with is it doesn’t say die.

Now it’s kind of the same region some of you are picking up. So Abraham knew that God had promised that he would be the father of many nations. And so he’s telling his servant, the one, the servant who saw his master, Abraham, have a child at 100 years old. He’s saying, this is where the promise, the promise from God has come through me and has come through my reproductive organs. You’re going to place your hand here also. This is where he had a circumcision. Which is to say this is the covenant that God has made with me. And His servant would have a covenant that circumcision as well. So he would understand that to be a significant thing to say, God has promised you this. Now, we’ve already had two sermons done by Pastor Tim on circumcision. Does anybody want a third order? We’re not going to do that today. But it’s nuanced and we kind of like blush at some of these things. But these details are important because what he’s telling his servant is, well, this seems really odd.

And if there was a human resource department, like, the servant could probably head straight there saying, Abraham told me to do something, but I don’t know. He’s saying this is this is what God has promised. By God has promised me not only that I would be a blessing, but I be the father of many nations. I would be a blessing to the entire world. And that through me, that the whole world is going to be blessed. So that means God has been faithful. The servant saw the son born 40 years ago to a 100 year old man, and he’s saying this God, the God has brought forth all this blessing already in the birth of Isaac is the same God that’s going to go with you in the thing. I’m going to ask the servant to understand all of that as well, that God is with Abraham. This is a reminder that God is with Abraham. And even though it seems very odd, that’s what’s taking place here. And he’s telling him also, I don’t want a wife to just be any wife. I don’t want a daughter of the Canaanites around me.

And there’s a few different reasons for that. First off, they’re worshiping other gods, but also in Abraham’s mind, it’s likely that he knows going back even a number of chapters earlier from his time on Earth is that he knew when the Ark landed there were three sons of Noah and a son of Noah that sinned immediately upon getting off of the ark. Is the father of the Canaanites, and he now is having this blessing from God given to him. And he’s saying, okay, they don’t worship God over here. And also, this is a family of a curse. And I don’t want to mix my blessing with this curse. We have to say in the same family, it has to go back. We have to go back to where God’s blessing is ultimately going to travel through. So that’s all taking place right here. And in the middle of it is Isaac. We don’t hear a single word from. He’s just this 40 year old guy who’s looking for a wife and his dad’s trying to help him out. I think there is something for us to glean from this text as we move forward, especially considering that nearly a third of the population in the US right now is single and half of that population actually wants nothing to do with a long term relationship, They don’t want to pursue a spouse, and even though they want to pursue a spouse, it’s happening later or it’s not prioritized in the same way, or they might want multiple significant partners. I mean, there’s this crazy stuff that’s going on. And for Christians who are single or for parents who have kids that will one day be single and looking for a spouse, we have to recognize is that it’s not just about attraction. It’s not just about emotional connection.

It’s not just about financial stability, but above all else, just as we saw what Abraham did, he is actually prioritizing of faith above all else. And it’s not just from Abraham in the Old Testament, actually, if you look forward to a second Corinthians, Paul writes this says, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness. That is not to say that a believer who is married to an unbeliever is in some sort of sin by marrying the unbeliever. But there is a blessing that comes from being aligned with a believer that has that faith in common. And if those other things follow, the emotional connection, the attraction, the financial stability, the family values, those are those are huge blessings. But the foundation has to be set upon faith. Otherwise it’s going to be difficult because life is difficult and not having the same foundation sets you up unequally. What I find interesting too, is that we have Christians singles who are looking for spouses that are other Christian singles. But part of the problem is that Christians look a lot like the world at this point, especially within our culture. You see, according to Relevant magazine a couple of years ago, which is a Christian publication, they said 80% of self-identified Christians have sex before marriage, and that’s compared to the 88% of the general population.

8% difference is not that big of a difference, is it? That’s a number of years ago. And those are the ones that were honest, too. It might even be worse. And not only that, but we’ve now prioritized our values as a culture as a whole to the point that folks will say the correct ordering of things typically is that, well, you go on a date that you then have sex, maybe then you meet family, and then if you meet family, then you can move in together and somewhere down the line, further down the line is having kids, having a house and then maybe getting married, getting married, usually being the last or the second to last priority on most people’s minds within our culture is that they don’t view that covenant relationship as a value because they want to hang on to their own autonomy. The problem is we just look a lot like the world. Abraham has something in mind. He wants to avoid all this. He wants to make sure that his son has someone that’s not only aligned with priorities, but is aligned first and foremost with their faith. So he takes this servant and the servant taking with him ten of his master’s camels loaded them with all kinds of goods, a good things from his master, and he set out for Mesopotamia.

This is the region which Abraham was called from and made his way to a town called Naga, which you’re going to see in a moment is actually means dry. But I want you to put a pin in this idea that there’s ten camels. Ten camels is significant. And we’re going to return to this. The journey would have looked something like this with our best estimate as a servant route to a whore and insert the servant routes back. If you actually measure it out, the distance that he traveled was roughly 500 miles. So you have to imagine that the servant, as he’s walking there, was thinking, I would walk 500 miles, and then on his way back I’d walk 500 more. Do it. You did it. Sorry. By the size, Just about 500. What’s important to note here, too, is this would take with ten camels. So he has this, like, entourage. It’s going to take him a month to two months. A month? If they’re really making great time. Up to two months for him to travel from where Abraham and Isaac are back to all the way back from where they had come years and years and years ago to find his wife and then come back to Abraham and Isaac. All in all, this could have taken four months.

But if you’re considering the time the servant was also in, they are going to take an even longer. It’s going to take a nearly half of a year. So he travels there and he has this in mind that God’s made this promise. He’s made this promise to Abraham and and this covenant relationship with Abraham, and that he’s going here and God’s going to provide. And so when he finally gets there a month to two months of travel, his camels kneel down near a well outside the town. It was toward evening. And the time that the time the women go to draw water, which is interesting. You’ve traveled, you have these camels now. Horde literally means dry. This is a desert region and they head to the well, but they don’t have the well just because they’re thirsty. But they had the well, because the women go out to draw water there. So the servant is using his reason within reason. He’s going to wear the he’s going to wear the women are he’s going to a well, he knows at this time of day at this area, there will be women. I’m here to find a wife. So this is as far as I can take this thing. And what I mean by using your reason within reason is that he has now come to the end of himself. He’s traveled again for days and days and days. It’s over 500 miles to come here.

And the best plan he has is like, well, there’s women over here at the well, I guess I’m just going to go over to the well, I believe the trouble that we get ourselves in sometimes is that we actually try to stretch our reason and our judgment. and our discernment further than it really ultimately should go. And instead of just putting ourselves in the path of potentially finding a spouse, a significant other, or even solving some other sort of problem in our life is that we try to reason and think our way out of problems and we eventually just become paralyzed by analyzing the situation or trying to figure it out in our own strength. What’s unique about the servant here is that he does what he’s called to do. He’s faithful. He uses the gifts that God has given him that he can look around. He sees, okay, there’s women here at this time. I’m going to go there. And then what follows is his faith. He then prayed. He came to the end of himself. He didn’t start running around and asking about family units or different things. He goes there and he prays. He knows what Abraham told him. He knows. Abraham said, God is going before you. God is with you. And so he said, Lord God of my master Abraham, make me successful today and show kindness to my master. He’s wanting to be a good a servant, and he has a plan in mind. He says, See, I’m standing behind beside this spring, and the daughter of the townspeople are coming to draw water.

There’s within reason. There’s women here. I’m trying to find a wife. May it be that when I say to a young woman, Please let down your guard that I may drink? She says, Drink and I’ll water your camels to 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. So he’s doing something significant here. Not only is he hatching a plan and somewhat putting God to the test, but he’s also making sure that the woman that he’s trying to find is within the lines that Abraham and ultimately God had set up. Because when it comes to relationships or other problems we’re trying to solve in our life, when it comes to prayer, it’s not about praying. So that we can move the hand of God or change God’s will, but rather through prayer. What’s happening is prayer aligns our priorities with God’s priorities. What he knows is that I’m supposed to find a faithful woman. I’m supposed to find someone within the right family. I’m supposed to come to this region. He’s just being a faithful servant. Now, I don’t know if it ever went through the servant’s mind, but it went through my mind when I was reading it. It was like, well, if he wasn’t for what he could have done, he’s taken ten camels gone a couple streets over, found a Canaanite wife, hung out for a month or two, came back, you know, and just lie about the whole thing.It’s been a lot easier for the servant right?

Rather, he’s been faithful. His priorities are aligned with Abraham’s, Abraham’s are aligned with God’s.And now here the servant is aligning himself with God’s priorities. I want to find the right wife. God already has her in mind. So now I just need to put myselfin the placethat I can come to seewho that woman ultimately is.And then I love these following words.Before he had finished praying.How many times in our lives does it take us getting to falling to our knees to pray, to then only realize that God was already in the process of answering your prayer?Before he finished praying, Rebecca came out with her jaw on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Matthew. All a son of Milka, who is the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahum. This isn’t the same family. This woman was very beautiful, a virgin. No man had ever slept with her. And so she went out to the spring and she filled her jar and filled her jar and came up again. What we’re seeing here, what the author is showing us that the servant doesn’t yet know, is that that is that Rebecca is qualified. Rebecca is the one. The author is telling us, the reader, that Rebecca is the woman. She’s the woman.

She’s qualified, she’s within the family, she’s a virgin. She’s not married to anybody else. This she is a qualified individual to be not only the wife of Isaac, but the wife of Isaac, who’s going to carry forward the promise that was given to Abraham, and that is now going to flow through Isaac and this potential wife. And so now it is for the servant to actually discover what God has already ordained. And so the servant sees her, knows none of this, and he comes up to her and he says, Please give me a drink of water. Her husband’s drink, my lord, she said quickly, and lowered her jar and gave him a drink. After she had given him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels too, until they’ve had enough to drink. Okay. I told you to hang on to it. How many camels? Ten camels. How many gallons of water can a camel drink at one time? Anybody know a lot? That is the correct answer is a lot. It’s actually somewhere between 20 and 25 gallons. Now, does anybody know how much does one gallon of water weigh in Paris? 8.3 for you all do that, right? So here, this is important. Again, details really matter within scripture because you can see some insights that pop up. Ten camels, they’ve been traveling.

They’re at this town that’s called dry. So they’re really thirsty. And here they’re going to drink somewhere between 20 to 25 gallons and each of these gallons weighs 8.3, £4 per gallon. And she has a jar that also weighs two, which I didn’t factor in, which an engineer from the previous service told me that I’ve missed it. So but according to my calculations here, she would have done anywhere from 668 to 20, £85 of work and recognizing the fact that she would have a jar that’s not that big, maybe at the most is five gallons at a time, is that she’s going to go down probably at the very least 60 times down to the well, if not even more. And you have to recognize this, too, is that there’s not a road, there’s not a way, a pulley system. So the well itself would actually have steps that she would go down the steps, fill up the water tap, come up the steps, come over and offer water to the camels. What this woman is actually doing is close to a metric ton of work. And you know what? The man did nothing. And nothing has changed in 4000 years of relationships. And again, this isn’t counting for the jar. She’s doing a ton of work. So, again, you have to take a close look at this, Right? So he asks for a drink of water. A drink of water cost her nothing but for her to freely offer. I’m willing to water all your camels. Seeing the ten, I’ve seen the whole entourage with this servant.

This is not only an act of humility. This is just a ton, literally a ton of work that she was willing to do. It’s not something that we should even gloss over, because I think there’s an insight inside of here, too, that Rebecca did ordinary work. Rebecca didn’t even realize that there was a potential suitor out there for her, that she would potentially have a spouse or a proposal that day. She was just living her life, doing ordinary things faithfully. God calls us to do the same as well. It’s not necessarily getting a metric ton of water for camels, but it might be taking out the trash loading, unloading the dishwasher, doing the laundry, taking care of things around the house, the ordinary things, just going to your job and doing your job well. God calls us to be faithful with ordinary things. And are you willing to not only just do those ordinary things and do them faithfully, but are you willing to do that kind of ordinary work for your relationships? So I think our culture  wants us to believe in this fairy tale type thing, that there’s one person, perfect person for every other person, and you’ve got to find them. And once you find them, everything just falls into place. And what it misses is that before you meet that person and when you meet that person and after you are with that person, there’s ordinary stuff that just needs to be done and it needs to be done faithfully in love towards them and ultimately in faithfulness towards God.

God calls us to just do regular stuff. And that’s exactly what Rebecca is doing here. She’s just doing regular stuff. And in the process, what the servant is doing is trying to discern. He’s trying to see is this, is this the woman for my master’s son that I’m supposed to take home? So she emptied her jars quickly. She ran back and forth. She’s been very faithful on this and without saying a word, this man, this servant, he watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. So he’s just watching and he’s trying to learn. He’s trying to lean into this again. He uses reason within reason. He okay, I got to go to the well where the women are. He prayed to a God that was already with him and already was orchestrating this plan. And now he’s just trying to discern thisis the type of person that Abraham knew he could trust because imagine this. How many of us will trust others with simple things in our life? How many of you will trust your spouse with a simple run to the grocery store to pick up a few things? Here Abraham is entrusting this servant, the spouse, for his son, and he knows that it’s not just trusting the discernment of this individual, but he’s trusting that this individual is ultimately leaning on God’s judgment. Guess who’s judgment can you trust above your own? In the book of Proverbs, chapter 19, verse 21 says, Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but the Lord’s purposes will ultimately prevail.

We can have tons of plans and tons of ideas, and we have these reasoning and judgments and discernment to try to figure it out. And this is the right person. And this is why this is the right season. And we’re going to make this call or this decision and this is when we should get married or we get a hold off on getting married because we have to wait for things to be lined up or be financially stable. And all that causes a whole bunch of noise. It doesn’t lead to any trust or assurance or competence because ultimately it’s the God who’s behind all of those things that are in control. And for us to make proper judgments, whether it is for a spouse, for ourselves or a spouse or a relationship for our children or friends is trusting that God is. And again, that should be the first priority, that God is at the center of it. So as he’s discerning after she finishes, as we heard right earlier, she tells him and offers out that she is from this family. And the servants response is something that we can also emulate. See, the man then bowed down after he hears this woman is within the same family. Is it praise be to God, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master? As for me, the Lord has led me on a journey to the house of my master’s relatives. He recognizes that God was in this the whole time, and He actually pauses to praise him because it’s so easy, whether it’s looking for a significant other or if it’s getting some prayer answered, that once it’s answered that we don’t go back to God and praise Him, that we move forward and we just cling to that blessing.

But the servant takes the time to actually praise God and thank him. So if you’re single here this morning, or maybe you’re in this long term relationship, you’re in a marriage, you’ve been married a number of years, What can we learn from the texts that we’ve heard? I believe it’s fairly simple that we can pray for our relationships. When is the last time that you went to God in prayer to just pray for your relationship? To pray for the relationship for your children, for this, their future spouse one day trust in that God. Here’s your prayers and your already has good plans in mind for your children. Are you willing to work for those relationships if you’re not in a relationship yet? In a long term marriage relationship, are you willing to just do an ordinary regular work and just be okay with that? God has called you to be faithful in this season and faithful with small things that He might at one point show you his plan, show you the person, and then if you have that person, do you go back to God and continually praise him for the gift that they are? They might not always feel like that gift, but they are that gift because the gift that God has given you in a believing spouse is not a spouse that offers you perpetual happiness, but they offers you someone that will help you grow in holiness, to refine you, to help form you into who God has ultimately made you to be.

What I recognize, even as I’ve gone through this text, I looked at this list as I, I feel a sense of conviction because I don’t always do these things well myself. You see, for me, I my season of singleness only lasted 18 years  and those were the 18 first years of my life because I met my wife in high school, which is when this photo was taken. It wasn’t taken a couple of weeks ago, like most think, but we went to the same high school, went to a Christian high school together. The very first time that we went on a date, we went to a Saturday night contemporary church service at her church, went for a walk, had a great conversation. We went on a few more dates and this was the summer in between our senior year and our freshman year of college, when we knew we were going to go to different colleges. Remember a couple of dates into the thing, It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks. We’re sitting in her car in a parking lot and kind of fumbling through,not really having the words to say, but trying to articulate, trying to ask. Well, Stephanie, like, I’ve really enjoyed all these dates, so like, are we like boyfriend and girlfriend? Are we like, are we going steady now? Or whatever the term may be? And remember that she looked up at me, said, no, what are you thinking? We’ve only got a couple of dates like that. We’re boyfriend girlfriend. But but she continued to date me.

I continue to date her and then I continue through our freshman year of college long distance. We ended up at the same university and continue to date each other. And I remember as my time as a student was coming to a close and being surrounded by godly friends and godly roommates. And I remember turmoil inside of me and had nothing to do with her and had everything to do with me that I knew I wanted to marry her. I knew I wanted to propose, but I didn’t feel as if I had arrived to that point yet.I didn’t feel qualified to even ask her to marry. I had no way of how would I going to provide for her financially or how am I going to be good enough for her? How am I going to be a good enough husband or a good enough father? And I’m here to tell you this morning that I wasn’t. And much like many of you, that when you got married, you weren’t good enough to be a spouse. And when you became a parent, were you ready to be a parent? No. No one has ever been ready to be a parent. No one has ever been good enough to marry a spouse because we don’t fulfill that list faithfully. We don’t pray for you if we don’t do the work faithfully and everything. We don’t praise God and treat our spouses as God has actually called us to treat them at all times, treating them as a gift and a blessing that he’s given us. And as I wrestled with this, it actually made me look back at the way that God provides spouses. Actually, all throughout the Old Testament, there’s a number of times when we already saw one. See, he provides spouses in these and these unique ways, and they happen at Wells.

We just heard about it. Isaac is eventually going to find Rebecca. I’m sorry to give it away. Rebecca will be his wife. The part to come back for that next week. And then later on Jacob’s going to find his wife, Rachel, and he’s going to find her at a at a well, Moses, later on in the Book of Exodus, is going to find Zipporah, his wife, at a well, I thought this is kind of a interesting thing, that there’s repetition even in the fact that they’re finding wives at Wells. Wives at Wells. Why is this happening over and over again? Well, then it made me think, what about Jesus? Who is Jesus? His wife? So anybody know it is the church Scripture tells us clearly that the church is his bride, that he is the groom, that we are the bridegroom, and that we are waiting to be with our groom, our savior. And then it made me think, well, Jesus actually went to a well, not to marry to someone, but actually to go to a well, to go to a woman who is not like Rebecca, who’s not like Rachel, who’s not like Zipporah. You see, when Jesus goes to a well, he doesn’t find a qualified woman, He doesn’t find a virgin, He doesn’t find someone from the right heritage or the right lineage. He doesn’t find a woman who’s willing to go bend over backwards to make sure that he’s happy rather, what Jesus finds at a well is a tarnished, blemished, sinful woman, that the whole town knows all of her sin, and that’s the woman that Jesus approaches.

That is the bride, that He comes to is someone who’s been unfaithful time and time and time again. And he’s coming to her at a well. And what I believe that we can glean from this, that we can see in this is that is the bride that Jesus chooses. He doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up or for us to be qualified, but rather Jesus chooses a bride You see, in Ephesians chapter five, it actually tells us husbands how to love your wives and it tells us this is how we’re supposed to love. We’re supposed to love as Christ loved the church. The church who is his bride and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, he might make her holy, he might cleanser and wash her with the water and with the word. You see, what I believe is inside of this for all of us is that you see this faithfulness of Rebecca. You see this faithfulness of the servant, you see the faithfulness of Abraham, you see the faithful. It’s love, even the family that hand over Rebecca to be married. And the problem is that there’s a tension with the text in my own life is that I’m not always faithful. But if I look at the broader context of Scripture and I see that Jesus comes to me and He comes to you at a well and he’s not asking us to be enough, do enough or to be qualified in any sort of way. But he looks at us and all of our brokenness and all of our sin and all of our baggage that we know on qualifies us to be with him. And he says, I’m going to wash all of that away. And not only am I going to wash it away with water, not only going to wash it away with my word, but I’m going to wash away all of your sin with my blood, that I’m going to pour out on a cross.

A cross that you deserve. My bride, the one who I love the most. I don’t care about any of that. I don’t want you to think that you need to be good enough to be my bride. I want you to know that you are good enough because I have called you my bride. You are now holy. You are now sanctified. You are chosen, you are mine and you are beautiful. And I believe that’s what we need to hear this morning. Whether single or married is that broken people coming together around this foundation of faith, but not just faith in a God who’s far off, but a God who’s come close, a God who knows every disgusting detail of our sin. And he says, I still choose you and I love you and you are mine. Now, from that place, from that place, we’re able to love a spouse. Well, knowing that they can fall well are broken just as much as we are, and that we need to cling to our true broom. Christ. And if you’re single, recognize this. You’re not totally single. That you already have a groom. You have a loving groom who doesn’t see any of your sin anymore in Jesus Christ. And through his work on the cross, the blood that he shed and now through an empty tomb, that we have hope, hope and confidence that we can move forward in this life with a God that ultimately loves us, not because of who we are, what we’ve done, but because of who Jesus is and what he’s done for us.

Will you pray with me this morning? Gracious Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the reminder that all of our times of unfaithfulness God, that you still come to us, that you still love us, that you still wash us and make us whole. God, I pray that by your Holy Spirit you spur on in us the desire to have godly relationships, godly marriages, ones that would bring honor and glory to you. And that when we fall short, that we quickly run and cling to your cross and that ultimately God that we would trust in you, trust in you for our relationships, trust in you, for our marriages, trusted with trust in you, for all that you have given us in our lives. For you all this in Jesus name, Amen.