Abraham, my Friend 62

Rebekah arose… and followed the man

The prodigal ‘arose and came to his father’; Rebekah arises and ‘follows the man’ whose responsibility is much like the burden Paul expressed for the church of Corinth:

For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. (2 Cor 11:1–2 NKJV)

He will now watch over her with scrupulous vigilance until he can place her in the care of her betrothed husband. As a consequence, we shall be able to see some links between the history of Isaac’s bride and Christ’s.

There is a Psalm and a whole Bible book which will help us to make the connections. The Psalm is 45, the book the Song of Songs. Just a word of caution before we begin; the ‘Bride of Christ’ is a phrase never used of individuals or local churches, but always of the whole body of Christ. Isn’t this confusing the pictures to speak of brides and bodies in the same breath? Not if we recall that Adam’s bride was ‘bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh’.

Charles Wesley wrote a wonderful hymn capturing all this rich imagery:

See there the quickening Cause of all
Who live the life of grace beneath!
God caused on Him the sleep to fall,
And lo, His eyes are closed in death!

He sleeps: and from His open side
The mingled blood and water flow;
They both give being to His bride,
And wash His church as white as snow.

We cannot pause to pursue the theme here.

A Song of Loves and the Song of Songs

Psalm 45 has the title ‘a Song of Loves’; note the plural. It is a song of two loves; the love of the Bride for her Bridegroom, and the love of the Bridegroom for his Bride. The Bride has eyes only for her Bridegroom, and he for her.

The first half of the psalm describes the Bridegroom whose garments have a unique perfume; you would scent Him before you saw Him. The odour is unmistakably His. His person evokes the scent, and His scent evokes the person. It is the opening theme of the Song of Songs:

Thine oils have a goodly fragrance;
Thy name is as oil poured forth;
Therefore do the virgins love thee. (Song 1:3 ASV)

The man and his sweet savour were one and the same. To speak his name was to smell the familiar scents of a hundred encounters. Perfumes have the power to evoke memories; some memories have the power to evoke perfumes.

The Bridegroom of Psalm 45 is a King; He has entered into His inheritance. His reign is settled and secure. It is an image of him who has ascended to His Father’s throne and the writer to the Hebrews uses the language of this psalm to confirm the truth:

 But to the Son He says:
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” And:
“You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands. (Heb 1:8–10 NKJV)

Christ has received His High-Priestly anointing and is now Priest-King forever, after the pattern of Melchizedek; the sweet smell of the anointing oil pervades the Temple-Palace. All the images begin to blend together, as another wonderful hymn writer expressed it:

1. Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love, and power,
That ever mortals knew,
That angels ever bore:
All are too mean to speak His worth,
To poor to set my Savior forth.

8. Jesus, my great High Priest,
Offered His blood, and died;
My guilty conscience seeks
No sacrifice beside:
His powerful blood did once atone,
And now it pleads before the throne.

9. My Advocate appears
For my defence on high;
The Father bows his ears,
And lays his thunder by:
Not all that hell or sin can say
Shall turn his heart, his love away.

10. My dear almighty Lord,
My Conqueror and my King,
Thy sceptre and Thy sword,
Thy reigning grace I sing:
Thine is the power; behold I sit
In willing bonds beneath Thy feet.

There are 12 verses to this hymn by Isaac Watts. If your church sings 6 you are being short-changed! No one image can set forth all that there is to be said, but at times the images blend wonderfully.

The Bridegroom begins to speak to his Bride:

Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear;
Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house: (Ps 45:10 ASV)

The bride must turn her back on all the past and its associations. Like the man, the woman too, must leave and cleave. Rebekah can never be the bride if she remains in her old country and among her own people.

The Bride of Christ is a people that has left all the old ways:

And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation…” (Rev 5:9 NKJV)

This is the Greek word ‘ek’ or ‘ex — out of’. Did you know that the Church of Christ is made up of ‘ex-es’? ex-kindred/tribe/clan, ex-language groups, ex-people groups, ex-nationals/ethnics. They were ‘no-people’ who have become the ‘people of God’.

Rebekah. and the bride of Psalm 45, and the Church of Christ must all put their people and their father’s house behind them. Behold, all things are made new. It does not mean that we will not retain an affection for our ‘roots’ but it can never take precedence over the new roots, and all the old relationships must fade into insignificance in the light of this new relationship:

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26 NKJV)

I wonder how many natural marriages have foundered because one partner refused to ‘leave’ when they ‘cleaved’? They bring others into their marriage — mothers, or sisters, or old memories, and in effect, do not ‘forsake all others’; three is one too many in any marriage.

The bride to be… followed and the servant took her and went his way

And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebekah, and went his way. (Gen 24:61 ASV)

She followed and he took her; what a lovely picture of separate but interdependent action. So Rebekah retraces the steps of Abraham who all those years before had obeyed the word:

Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee… (Gen 12:1 ASV)

There can be no continuing link between the old and the new; Abraham must leave it, Isaac must never return to it, and now Rebekah must ‘leave’ it too, before she can ‘cleave’. Every step brings her closer to her bridegroom, and every step takes her farther away from all her yesterdays. Old things have passed away, behold, all things are become new. If we will only ‘follow’, he will ‘take us’.

Glorious within

The Bride of Psalm 45 is not only richly dressed, but she is also ‘glorious within’.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. (Eph 5:25–27 NKJV)

This is the work of the Spirit today, to prepare a Bride for the Lamb, and it is the work of those who understand God’s purposes:

…of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily. (Col 1:25–29 NKJV)

The servant brings Rebekah to her bridegroom at just the moment when the bridegroom is walking in the fields ‘to meet us’. I cannot read the verse without hearing Paul’s words:

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thess 4:16–17 NKJV)

Oh with what longing our heavenly Isaac awaits this moment. As soon as Rebekah sees him and knows him she dismounts, replaces her veil and walks towards him; it is one of the most romantic moments in the Bible, but not as romantic as 1 Thess 4:16,17. The servant and the father’s son speak of the journey; what a journey it has been — thousands of years… and Isaac takes her and brings her into the privacy of his mother’s tent; it becomes their Bridal chamber, and we can follow them no further. The tent door flaps shut and Bride and Bridegroom vanish from our curious eyes.

…Draw me; we will run after thee:
The king hath brought me into his chambers…  (Song 1:4b ASV)

She has lost everything, Rebekah

All she has now is simply the result of her unique relationship to the father’s son, but listen to the testimony of the bride:

My beloved is mine, and I am his:
He feedeth his flock among the lilies.
Until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away,
Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart
Upon the mountains of Bether. (Song 2:16–17 ASV)

Treasures, cities, thrones, powers, inheritance, they all pale into insignificance: ‘My beloved is mine, and I am His’.

This is really the end of our story. The next chapter ties up a few ends, and Abraham’s death is followed by the simple account of his burial. Faithful Abraham, like David after him, ‘served his generation by the will of God and fell asleep’. Abraham’s body sleeps where it was planted but he has found his city, and when faith comes and we discover that we have already come, not to a smoking mountain…

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24 NKJV)

…we discover the spirits of just men made perfect. Abraham was not left behind; he is home.

Did I say this was the end of our story? Surely not, it is only the end of time’s story; the next chapters belong to the Son and His Bride. This is only the end of the beginning.

Thou dost seek a Bride all pure and holy;
Those who now belong to Thee alone.
Those who give thee all their hearts’ affections;
Of Thyself, a part; bone of Thy bone.

Lord, we answer to Thy heart’s deep longing,
‘Even so, come quickly’ Lord we say.
In our hearts we have the blessed answer;
‘Rise My love, my fair one. Come away.’

Drawn from every nation, tribe and kindred
By Thy Holy Spirit’s mighty power.
Finding rest in Thee, God’s great salvation,
Waits Thy Bride, for Thine appointed hour.

Sharing with Thee in this world’s rejection,
Putting on Thy death to gain a crown,
By Thy Blood and Word, we’re overcomers,
With Thee, in Thy Throne, we shall sit down.

Joy Palmer

Not the end. It does not yet appear what we shall be… for we shall see him as he is.

This is the final chapter in our tracing of the ‘steps of the faith of our father Abraham’ and I must take the opportunity of publicly thanking Allan Halton of Alberta, Canada for 62 weeks of faithful support in proof-reading and for his fellowship and encouragement. He has saved you much confusion and spared my blushes! This is not quite the end. God willing, we will create a book for publication later this year and, in time, for a Christmas present for someone? and perhaps an audiobook… And I propose to add a weekly audio version for ‘biblebase podcasts’.

Thank you for your company on our journey.