Women & More Life Lived for the Lord Lesson 4: September 25, 2014 agape There s not a woman I know who doesn t enjoy a good love story, and the Bible is, of course, one big love story His! History is in fact His story! But there are tucked into Scripture some beautiful, and I mean beautiful, human love stories. We will look closely at one at the top: Genesis 24:1 Abraham was now old and well advanced in years, and the LORD had blessed him in every way. The unnamed chief servant and the one in charge of all that Abraham had was called in and made to swear to find a wife for his master s son Isaac among Abraham s family. Verses 3-4 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, 4but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac. There was a bit more conversation between Abraham and his servant before he packed up ten camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master. Scripture says he set out for Aram Naharaim and made his way to the town of Nahor (the name of Abraham s brother). We know that he came to a well outside the town where he had the camels kneel down. Then this servant did what his master would have done, and what had obviously been taught to his master s household he prayed: O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. He asked God to give discernment to him in the way that the young virgin he approached would respond to his request for a drink: She would give him a drink and offer to give water to his camels. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. Verse 15 says, Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the granddaughter of Abraham s brother, and she gave him drink and offered to water his camels. God was fully engaged as He always is! And all of this is thrilling to us, as we see Abraham trust God and send for a wife from his people and send his trusted servant how wonderfully our God worked then and now. So here Rebekah got her call to be a wife! Are we ready? In Genesis 24:58 after the servant had shared all that he had come to do for his master Abraham which was to find a wife for Isaac and told how the LORD has worked everything out, the family agreed to give their daughter in marriage, and they called Rebekah out and asked her, Will you go with this man? I will go, she said. It reminds us of Isaiah s Here am I, send me words. So the servant took Rebekah, along with her maids, and left. The stage is set!
2 Here it is: 62 Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. 63He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. 64Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel 65and asked 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. 66 Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. 67Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother s death. And there is the wife who was loved dearly for one night! One of Rebekah s sons fell in love with a young woman that he ended up marrying, but not before, unknown to him, he was given her older sister to wed first. Genesis 29:21 Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her. Verse 25a records: When morning came, there was Leah! It s hard for us to imagine, but after Jacob worked for Laban for seven years for the woman he loved, he spent the wedding night without actually seeing her. It was not common for women to marry for love in biblical days, but picture how Leah felt being given in marriage to the man whom she had to know was in love with her beautiful younger sister, Rachel. And Scripture made clear who was loved Genesis 29:30a Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. Leah spent much of her married life seeking Jacob s love! The Law was on her side in Leviticus 18:18 though Jacob was tricked Do not take your wife s sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living. When Leah gave birth to her first son, Reuben, she said, Surely my husband will love me now. And though she could not will Jacob s love, again, the Law was on her side in Deuteronomy 21:15-17a If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, 16when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. 17He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. After the birth of her second son, Simeon, Leah said, Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too. She bore her third son, Levi, and said, Now at last my husband will become attached to me. Leah will now accept her husband s attachment to her. But when she had her fourth son Judah she said, This time I will praise the LORD. Remember that it is from Judah that Jesus came. God is awesomely at work! Leah later bore a fifth son, Issachar, and a sixth, Zebulun. What she now said showed that her desire for love has been adjusted up and it is beautiful: Genesis 30:20 God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.
3 And this honor came to pass: Leah bore 5 of the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel along with the Levitical Priesthood, and Scripture tells us that she also had a daughter, Dinah. Be sure that God saw Leah s situation from beginning to end. And for all the love Jacob had for Rachel, he could not keep her from dying in childbirth, leaving Leah to remain Jacob s first and last wife. And when Leah died, she was buried next to Jacob Genesis 49:31 loved by God! Rachel could rely on her good looks and the love of her husband, but we do not know about her relationship with God: remember it was she who stole the household gods of her father Laban. But through the painful experience of being the unloved-by-her-husband wife, Leah was brought into the presence of the Great love of God. God will draw us to Himself often through pain and rejection, difficulty and distress. And so, recognizing that God so loved her, Leah loved Him back! In yet another love story, there is the account of a young widow who came to love her mother-in-law, so much so as to leave her country, culture and family community and go with her to a foreign land. So much more importantly, more movingly, though, she had come to love her mother-in-law s God the God of Israel. Ruth chose to love Naomi s God! And that s where this lesson will go: As believers we who have repented of sin and received Christ s horrible death as payment for our sins we get to realize from Scripture just how much we have been so very loved by God to make all this possible. And if we realize His great love for us, then we will choose to love Him back with agape! God s redemptive plan is to make us right right with Him something only he can do! The best time to receive Christ was years ago, but the next best time is today! In salvation, it is Who you know that counts. Ellen G. White, author of Peace Above the Storm, pointed out: It is when we most fully comprehend the love of God that we best realize the sinfulness of sin. Calvary stands as a memorial of the amazing sacrifice required to atone for the transgressions of the divine law. Let us not regard sin as a trivial thing. There are many who discount sin and disregard God s way through His Son, Jesus Christ, completely. Hugh Hefner, in a Time Magazine article said, Everyone should have the right to go to heaven or hell in his own way. And the article added that Hefner himself is trying for heaven. We know that if Hefner maintains that attitude, he will not be in heaven, because John 14:6 says that Jesus is the way to the Father. A Christian must be the enemy of all God s enemies. Pray and try to win them, but do not befriend their waywardness. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. James 4:4 You adulterous people, don t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses
4 to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Proverbs 20:6 Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find? In contrast, Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:15, claimed to be chief among sinners Christ came to save. When Saul the Pharisee opposer and oppresser of Christians was turned around on the road to Damascus by Jesus Christ, he became the Apostle Paul and authored 13 of the New Testament s 26 books: Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians, Philippians, 1-2 Timothy, 1-2 Thessalonians, Titus and Philemon. He wrote a lot about agape God s love. We don t love God first; we love Him because He first loved us! The Holy Spirit produces agape in us including love for the Lord our God: serving love, sacrificing love and sanctifying love. Ephesians 2:4 says, But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions it is by grace you have been saved. Psalm 107:43 Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the LORD. As we contemplate His great love for us, we love Him as He commands. After sharing some of his life s story, Charles Stanley said, I experienced God loving me. Thank God that He loves us enough not to leave us where we are. Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees on the topic of there being no marriage in the resurrection (and they didn t believe in a resurrection) when the Pharisees decided to take a swipe at Him, recorded in Matthew 22:35-38 (and Mark 12:28-30) One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? God knew that this was a trick question from an impure motive. If He said that a particular command of the Ten was greatest, then the asker would contest: Aren t the other nine important? God is brilliant in verses 37-38 Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Mark adds all your strength). 38This is the first and greatest commandment. With one sweep of His spoken brush Jesus covered the first four of the Ten, because if we love God as outlined, we will take care not to misuse His name, His image, His Sabbath, nor place anything or anyone gods before Him. Sometimes when we think about the greatest commandment, and rightly rehearse what s written above, we may be too quick to add and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus covered the last six commands when He issued that second command as like unto the first. But we can be absolutely certain that Jesus stamped: This is the first and greatest commandment on loving God, making it the first and greatest most important command of all!
5 So in Matthew 22:38 Jesus said, This is the first and greatest commandment about loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. How can we love God like that when human love is so fickle, flimsy, and faint? How can we know we love God? Scripture says by our obedience. John 14:15 If you love me, you will obey what I command and 21aWhoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. There s 1 John 2:5a But if anyone obeys his word, God s love is truly made complete in him and 1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. The one who loves God is careful to do what He says to do, and not do what He forbids! Look at John 14:23-24a to see what those who love God do, followed by what those who do NOT love Him don t do: Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. Ready for the second command in Matthew 22:39? And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. And Scripture answers every question we can conjure up: Who is my neighbor? What if I don t love myself? How will I know I love others? Our carrying out the second is contingent on our fulfilling the first 1 John 5:2 This is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out his commands. We can t even begin to love others until we love God. We may think we do, but we don t love them with God s love, because only loving Him first will give us agape. Hebrews 6:10 God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. Billy Graham, Men must love God before they can truly love their neighbors. We must love them to life because after death there is no second chance to repent! If the love and grace of God doesn t produce a changed heart in this life, even a sampling of the horrors of eternal damnation won t cause men to repent, said Hal Lindsey. Even if someone could come back from the dead to warn men of hell, it would not produce a change of heart. Jesus made this very clear in the story he told about a beggar named Lazarus and a rich man. There are no doovers in hell: Hebrews 9:27 Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment the time to know and love and serve God is now. Psalm 91:14 Because he loves me, says the LORD, I will rescue him; I will protect him for he acknowledges my name. If we have moved away from loving the Lord our God with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength, then we are in sin and we are of no use in the kingdom work of loving others. In Revelation, Scripture warns the church at Ephesus and all who believe to: Return to your first love.